Ivan Illich Transcript

WTP – Ivan Illich Transcript van Illich with Jerry Browe We the People, KPFA – March 22, 1996

“Brown: This hour we have a very special privilege and opportunity. We have here in the studio in Los Angeles Ivan Illich and Carl Mitchum, two friends of mine who I hope you’ll enjoy our conversation. Listen in. You’ll find it instructive. Ivan Illich is the author of a book, very famous in the 1970s, called Deschooling Society, another book called Medical Nemesis. He’s also the author of Celebration of Awareness, Tools for Conviviality, Gender, and now his most recent book called In the Vineyard of the Text, a commentary on a 12th century scholar and saint, Hugh of St. Victor. Along with us here in the studio is Carl Mitchum, a professor of humanities, presently Visiting Scholar at the Colorado School of Mines and on a more permanent basis a professor at Penn State where Ivan Illich and his friends and fellow scholars meet every year for a few months to study these ideas that over the next hour we’re going to do our best to elucidate and share. Ivan, why don’t we just start with the book that I first encountered when I became aware of you, and that is the book Deschooling. Can you reflect on what you were thinking about when you wrote it and how you might see that reality today because we’re still struggling with schools in this society. There’s still a dependency on professionals that seems to have control of how we learn or don’t learn and I just have to wonder have we made any progress in creating the context where people get the sense that they are in charge of their own learning?”

Interesting discussion. Does the world a context sensitive help? Not in schools which subvert that. Xenos – Zeus and hospitality? Acedia the inactivity which results from seeing how enormously difficult it is to do the right thing – is it a sin?

There is also insight into the interface – the pupil of the eye which takes in with its psychopods the other person. But they do not really grasp the potential of the medium for – conviviality and friendship.

Later Saturday, 7 May, 2011

I don’t understand a word of my own comments either.

The link above does not work, but I’ve put the whole item below. Found here:

http://www.wtp.org/archive/transcripts/ivan_illich_jerry.html

Continue reading “Ivan Illich Transcript”

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Silicon Valley | 03/27/2002 | Journalistic Pivot Points
Dan Gillmore writes:

” Yesterday at PC Forum, I was part of a key moment in this evolution.

“I was blogging a session on wireless technology, and wrote something about SkyPilot, one of the presenting companies. Duncan Davidson, SkyPilot’s CEO, finished his presentation and sat on the podium, reading on his laptop, while other people talked.

Then, in the Q&A, he corrected something I’d written in the blog. In other words, he’d caught this in near-real time and had better information (he should). I immediately posted another paragraph, which began, “I’ve been corrected….”

Whoa. I’m still not entirely sure what happened. But I do know this. My journey in journalism hit a pivot in that moment. Maybe journalism itself hit a pivot point, as pretentious as that sounds.”

How interesting to hear this from one who was not only there but in it, doing it. This links in of cousre with an earlier post I made here from Esther Dyson The conversation continues… THE WI-FI PEANUT GALLERY

All I know for sure is that I’m jazzed that it happened, and I’m going to think about it, hard.

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Look what the search engines found for me!

Curriculum Vitae Walter Logeman

“I did some primary school teaching in the sixties. In 1974 I founded ”Four Avenues” a state funded secondary school based on the principles of Ivan Illich. Taught in the school for four years.”

hehehe

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A PROFILE OF IVAN ILLICH

“Illich’s radical anarchist views first became widely known through a set of four books published during the early: Deschooling Society (1971), Tools for Conviviality (1973), Energy and Equity (1974) , and Medical Nemesis (1976). Tools is the most general statement of Illich’s ideas. The other three volumes expand on examples sketched there in order to critique what he calls “radical monopolies” and “counter productivity” in the technologies of education, energy consumption, and medical treatment. This critique applies equally to both the so-called “developed” and the “developing” worlds, but in different ways to each.”

Illich came to mind during these last few months while I have been learning GNU/Linux (I hate being this purist using this name for it, but I think the underlying GNU ideas and WORK are vital

The reason is that i have this memory from the seventies of Illich philosophy which advocated tools that people could fix. Car engines that one could get into, even valve radios because they were modular. Well, did it work for technology in the world of matter? Perhaps the success of the PC is an example. But in the world of software it is *imperative* to keep access open. When one person fixes something it can be available to all, instantly. Making that impossible is so wrong. It is worse than dumping food while people are starving… information is of a higher order and knowledge could lead to a better world. Dumbing down the world for profit – that is not only MS but all closed software projects. How can this be prevented?

I’d like to revisit Illich on this…