Participant: Mark William Johnson and Paul Hollins
Affiliation: Institute for Educational Cybernetics, University of Bolton
Format: Poster and Conversation
Themes: recursion, praxis

Computer technology, whilst responsible for generating huge amounts of data which can threaten to swamp institutions and individuals, can also provide rich ways of exploring and analysing data. This paper concerns the ‘embeddedness’ of time in the processes of engagement with technology, as data is explored for its meaningfulness over time and how data from such data explorations may itself be explored recursively. We call this recursive data exploration “Recursive Visualisation’. Drawing on techniques of ‘visual analytics’ we consider whether this might provide a way to help institutions identify meaningfulness in complex data and consequently to steer themselves more effectively.

We argue that the embeddedness of time in this process is important because it overcomes the essential abstraction of time in cybernetic mechanisms. We argue that whether a cybernetic mechanism describes the recursive process of observation (as for example, in Von Foerster’s conception of an Eigenform), or whether it describes ‘objective’ processes of communication and control in a machine, assumptions about temporal successionism and Humean causal thinking are impossible to escape. Here there are some fundamental questions to ask: How can there be difference without time? How can there be information without difference?

We consider these problems with some live examples of ‘recursive visualisation’ deploying interactive technologies of the real-time web and using data drawn from ‘learning analytics’ work in UK universities. We ask to what extent technology in framing an experience may overcome the problem of the abstraction of time in thinking about mechanisms. In particular, we consider whether the recursiveness of data exploration using technology may help to reveal latent structures in data which may relate to its meaningfulness. Fundamentally, we ask whether technology will allow us to retreat from the need for abstraction in thinking about mechanisms, providing instead deeply recursive experiences of group reflexivity which may in turn be operationalised by institutions and societies.