Towards Critical Search

Critical Realist
Sep 6, 2018 · 3 min read

I recently sat down (via Skype) with Robert Isaksen to talk about critical realism. Robert is completing his thesis in Curriculum and Pedagogy (https://ioe.academia.edu/KarlRobertIsaksen). Like me, he’s interested in gamification, how to use case studies, simulations and stories to teach the basic tools of critical realism (What is Critical Realism? http://www.asatheory.org/current-newsletter-online/what-is-critical-realism).

I’ve found more space for doing critical realist work in the business world than in academia, but in the former it is often being boiled down and marketed as design thinking, systems thinking and the like, possibly to avoid focusing attention to structural level issues like racism or capitalism. I started using stories and games drawn from Capoeira Angola to teach critical thinking and strategic thinking for youth leaders with The Barcam in 2006. Our methods demolished the artificial wall between what you find in the Systems Thinking Playbook and Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (TOTO) methods. Like Sam Selvon’s literature, both are about finding out where you are positioned in a system and then beginning to think critically about the roles various people and institutions play in that system. Systems Thinking’s aim is better teams, management and competitive innovation, whereas TOTO is more about organizing and innovating for freedom struggles and coping with oppressive systems. What I’ve found that these aims can and should be combined….

Sam Selvon Doodle

But back to Robert. At the end of our talk, we hit on a common passion: the clear need for critical realist journalism. Hopefully we’ll work together on this concept, which stretches from doing critical reviews of the sources of information people use to build their arguments, to analyzing how much arguments align with specific schools of thought.

Working within a software company like Coded Arts changes your way of approaching problems like this. It’s possible that we would be rowing against the stream by launching a publication that doesn’t have a specific ideological bend. Sites like Civil and Medium are allowing people to control their own news-feeds. It’s always a good idea to compare what happening in education and in news media, and there’s a growing trend towards giving students more control over how and what they learn. Many news markets, including social media, are tending towards what called pillarization, which means that they figure out what you think, and give you (news) content that they think you want to consume. So instead of rowing ahead of the stream, let’s get ahead of the trends. If social media and search is taking over news, can we make search more critical?

William Lockard’s Work- Design Thinking 101

We have emerging knowledge graphing services like Diffbot that are going to shake up the fact-checking world (https://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2018/08/30/ai-web-mining-startup-diffbot-opens-its-knowledge-graph-to-all-companies). My question is: Can we take this a step further and use critical realist epistemology to ‘train’ AI on mine data intelligently and present us with different perspectives and assessments of their relevance, contextual information around facts and events, and options and possible outcomes of different types of action?

Yes, I’m asking if we can automate journalism, and make it better, more critical. I think, with some of the advances in search and work now available on self-organization and decision-making, it is possible.

And if we can do it, how to we make it attractive for people to break out of their ideological lanes and explore other perspectives? Especially when social media feeds off giving you more of what you already like. Well, that’s why I’ve been working on the gamification of social change processes for the last four years, including in the development of critical gaming services here at Coded Arts.

Chanzo

Critical Realist

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An attitude of critical openness…, a way of engaging with complex historical transformations & intersecting paths in the contemporary world. (James Clifford)

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