Articles

Gamification was always just behaviorism dressed up in pixels and point systems. Why did we fall for it?

(Conversation recorded on March 25th, 2024) Show Summary: In this episode, Nate is joined by educator and Latinx researcher Vanessa Andreotti to discuss what she calls “hospicing modernity” in order to move beyond the world we’ve come to know and the failed promises that “modernity” has made to our current culture. Whether you refer to it as the metacrisis, the polycrisis, or - in Nate’s terms - the human predicament, Vanessa brings a unique framing rooted in indigenous knowledge and relationality to aid in understanding, grieving, and building emotional resilience within this space. What does it mean to live and work within systems that are designed to fail, embedded in an aimless culture? How do we as individuals steady ourselves and create inner strength before engaging with such harrowing work? Importantly, what could education look like if founded in the principles of intergenerational knowledge transmission and emotional regulation, that are centered on our collective entanglement with the Earth? About Vanessa Andreotti: Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti is the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. She is a former Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change and a former David Lam Chair in Critical Multicultural Education. Vanessa has more than 100 published articles in areas related to global and climate education. She has also worked extensively across sectors internationally in projects related to global justice, global citizenship, Indigenous knowledge systems and the climate and nature emergency. Vanessa is the author of Hospicing Modernity: Facing humanity's wrongs and the implications for social activism, one of the founders of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Arts/Research Collective and one of the designers of the course Facing Human Wrongs: Climate Complexity and Relational Accountability, available at UVic through Continuing Studies. For show notes, including referenced articles and additional resources: https://thegreatsimplification.squarespace.com/episode/125-vanessa-andreotti 00:00 - Intro 1:52 - The House of Modernity 16:34 - Hospicing the House of Modernity 22:56 - Theory of Change 31:49 - Affective Responses 43:55 - Healing Trauma 54:42 - Relational Intelligence 59:11 - Metabolical Literacy 1:04:59 - Dopamine Dependence 1:07:25 - Depth Education 1:09:27 - Reception with Young People 1:14:38 - How Do You Keep Going? 1:20:22 - Personal Advice 1:28:34 - What Would You Do with a Magic Wand?

By aligning within and across communities, we will amplify our impact and create an unstoppable force for good. While we transition, our communities will provide insulation from shocks and harms along the way.

Presentation slide deck

As June is Pride Month, we share ways employers can truly support for inclusion and celebrate their LGBTQ employees this month and beyond.

We are smart, linguistic, ultrasocial, tool-making primates who have recently stumbled upon an energy bonanza. We’ve accomplished wonders. But we have also become our own worst enemy. Collective survival will require setting aside our hubris and coming to terms with environmental and social limits.

As rampant consumerism continues to drive us towards climate breakdown, a growing number of people are committing to a

The emerging golden age of home-cooked software, barefoot developers, and why the local-first community should help build it

Big tech is playing its part in reaching net zero targets, but its vast new datacentres are run at huge cost to the environment, says economics professor Mariana Mazzucato

Marcus Maeder, Miriam Quick & Duncan Geere discuss the emergence of data sonification as a powerful tool in raising public awareness of climate change.

80 climate startup pitch decks on my desktop. 58 claim they will be doing things at scale. Most of the rest have similar goals. Typically in some variation of “decarbonising [industry] at sca…

An important new paper lays out the importance and complexities of ensuring increasingly advanced AI-based assistants are developed and used responsibly

The toymaker has announced a new annual KPI to encourage all salaried employees to help the company lower emissions across its factories, stores and offices...

Nature - Solving problems in a safe, collaborative environment can help us think out of the box and build empathy — crucial skills in a warming world.

It's ok to not be ok

So. Much. Scenius.

The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local Call reveal.

The Climate Psychology Alliance shares the challenges of addressing eco-distress in our current mental health paradigm.

In the French Alps, writer and philosopher Simon Parcot teaches us about the connection between mind and feet.

Less is more...human

The need for discernment is amplified when generative AI enables anyone to create anything. Creative skills will still be necessary to produce superior designs.

The theme for this year's Met Gala is supposed to celebrate circular fashion. But TikTok’s sponsorship of the event sent mixed messages.

Researchers find instances of systems double-crossing opponents, bluffing, pretending to be human and modifying behaviour in tests

A new worldview is emerging, and it’s much richer, more meaningful, and more beautiful than the thinking that currently dominates our societies. I’m talking about planetarism, or what some also call planetarity.

Exclusive: Planet is headed for at least 2.5C of heating with disastrous results for humanity, poll of hundreds of scientists finds

Inside the worker-led effort to get the world's most valuable company to stop helping the oil and gas industry drill.

When I was in grad school in the 1990s, we talked about “surviving the AI winter.” Explosive, transformative progress in AI had been…

Ruhi Khan, ESRC researcher at the LSE, argues that as companies increasingly use artificial intelligence and people gravitate towards relying on large language model chatbots like ChatGPT for ubiqu…

In the DRC, demand for cobalt to power electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies is leaving behind a toxic legacy.