Author: SY Jason
In thinking about how to best play this role
for others, a new phrase
came to light last night: "21st Century Yoga." Yoga is designed to be a
universal system of holistic education, a process that helps one tap
into the divine energy within through intellectual inquiry, altruistic
acts, devotional practice, and the meditation and physical exercises
that have been popularized in the west. There is a great emphasis on
unity and harmony between the mind, body, and spirit. My question is
this: how is the process of this harmonization affected by the
integration of our minds with the information appliances we have begun
to integrate into our lives? Perhaps I am peculiarly enthusiastic
about technology, but I definitely see my computer as an extension of my
mind. I even run a piece of software called "PersonalBrain" that allows
me to visually map concepts, web pages, and files on my computer so that
it stores information more similarly to my biological brain. Microsoft
Outlook, with all of its tools for "personal information management" has
become a prosthetic of my memory and my communicative voice. I believe
there is a "yoga" for the new cybernetic self that emerges, a discipline
of insight into the way we organize our thoughts and our data, a
discipline of manipulating the boundaries of ego as we immerse ourselves
in virtual and interconnected worlds. In the corporate world, this
discipline overlaps with the nascent trend of "knowledge management,"
but the latter falls short.
To be a silicon yogi, one would have to master the tools of information
and knowledge management and learn how to so deeply integrate them into
one's habits and life that we would cease to know where the brain stops
and the chip begins. One would teach others about the tools and
possibilities, when to use the machine and when NOT to use the machine
as a mental prosthetic. The greatest wisdom will lie in the knowledge
of when to step away from the silicon. And I believe one would develop
the software and interfaces further to facilitate people's harmonious
use of technology for personal growth. It is to push myself in these
directions that I am currently applying to graduate programs in
educational technology at several schools of education (Stanford,
Harvard, Berkeley, and Northwestern). Exciting research and design are
afoot, but I have yet to see great efforts to develop practice and
discipline.
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