Let’s Bring a Level of Artistry to Building Forms of Digital Life

Matthias Melcher’s post on the digital humanities has got me thinking about extending the ideas from my post here that  referenced Lee Drutman’s ideas on the creativity of quants.

Let’s start with this John Shotter quote about Foucault’s Archeology of Knowledge; ideas about how the world got to be the way it is now.

But now, many take seriously Foucault’s (1972: 49) claim that our task consists of not – of no longer – treating discourses as groups of signs . . . but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak.

In many discussions the humanities and the sciences are structurally defined by how they differ from each other.  But step back; distance oneself to see the practice and form of life that normally escapes notice.  People engaged with educational discourses are shaping educational practices (forms of life) and students (their object) much as a painter shapes the forms on his or her canvas.  This is not to critique these practices, but to bring to our attention the artistry that is possible in creating all forms of life: not just painting and literature, but no less in educational practice, data science, or social science.  Also, as participants jointly engaging in these forms of life, let us also bring artistry to the objects of which they speak; us.

Here’s my main point: Data science is about to transform education.  It can take many different forms.  Will we take the notice and expend the effort to add a level of artistry in what we create, or will we blindly stumble through.  Can data be an architectural tool through which we create a more beautiful world.