Dilettante

For those unable to be in the office today, we spent most of the session just discussing some of the administatory aspects of bringing this blogsite and the seminar/meetings cohesively together and getting some form of informal system in place that allows for everyone to post interesting and relevant ‘stuff’ that can both be discussed on the blog and in the organised sessions.

Gianni has played with the template to allow it to be more functional, displaying the tags and categories and more on the right hand side. It was suggested today that for the time being the blog should be used as somewhere to post items that we find useful for our PhDs, with an eye for sharing influential references, resources, techniques, work etc for the others in the group. This will – hopefully – generate some discussion on the blog that can thus be taken forward in the Dilettante research sessions. Some basic categories have been set up as well – Theory, Practice, Methodology, Issues and Seminars – which if stuck to for the time being will keep it simple. All this can be altered of course, so any feedback or thoughts, especially those unable to attend today, is appreciated.

After all this discussion there was no time to talk about actual PhD matters, so it was supposed that we carry forward what Hannah proposed last time for the next meeting. If anybody has any more thoughts, or wants to post something to generate discussion before the meeting, then please do! Also, we need to decide when will be a good time for the next Dilettante session… next Weds there is a PhD pre-viva presentation, so not suitable.

Sorry if I have forgotten anything from today guys – I’m sure I have – so edit/add anything that should be here.

http://www.consciousentities.com/

This site may be useful to those who are trying to meander through the unenviable task of understanding certain aspects of consciousness and the minefield of theorists that are out there. Although one person’s view at the end of the day, the articles are written in a curious manner and attempts to explain two-sides (or more) of the mind/body/world problem. The site is also regularly updated, which is a bonus.

Please see the web site below it provides an general (basic) overview of phenomenological understanding and some interesting applications of embodied interaction:

http://www.prusikloop.org/mrwatson/?m=200706

I found this video very useful, especially the part about learning (tennis playing) …. It is something what Heidegger (hammer), Ihde (chalk), Merleau-Ponty (gun) and many others argued for…. [Kay, tennis racket]

Alan Kay is the guy who claimed to be the first developer of a graphical interface (GUI)…. (http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/timeline/Kay.html)

More about Alan Kay: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay