A protest in New York against Trump’s science spending cuts.
Photograph: Erik McGregor/Barcroft Images
FIRST—
TRY NOT TO THINK AT ALL
It can be overwhelming (even for very smart apes) to ponder the relentless, manic buzz of the internet; with its bot-driven personalized feeds, modified user behavior, time-sucking, kitschy memes, faux news, seductive, cultish conspiracies, banal scams, cruel anonymous trolling, hard and soft porn, enticing clickbait with ads, ads and yet more ads, and the downward gravitational pull of junk-infested rabbit holes… So let’s take a few moments to pause and reflect… Or, even better, just pause… and try not think at all.
The contents of our Zen TOK page can help you with this. Why not spend just a few soothing moments there to refresh your mindfulness and holistic emotional wellbeing? Just click this innocuous button.
SECOND—
KNOWING AND THINKING
The new TOK curriculum is a welcome shift. It accomplishes much in its 100 hours. It is more accessible and more relevant for students. Its rigor is undiluted. Its raison d’être is clear and unapologetic… In this digital, anthropic era there is an imperative to increase the critical mass of informed, globally-minded, young adult citizens who have the meta-cognitive tools to navigate complexity, noise and obfuscation. We want students to learn to how to think for themselves, not confuse multiple perspective with outright relativism, and to care—really care—about the pursuit of truth.
THIRD—
DEEP FAKERY
Here, for undiluted discombobulating voyeurism, is Deepfake Queen: The Making of our 2020 Christmas Message. The broadcast final cut can be found in the Post-truth? unit in the knowledge and politics theme.
What will be the impact on knowing and thinking as a consequences
of perfecting digital techniques like this?
FOURTH—
KNOWLEDGE AND TECHNOLOGY INTERSECTING
WITH KNOWLEDGE AND POLITICS
Evoking the TOK Exhibition here is a gallery of cautionary images from the Knowledge and Politics optional theme.
