Pedagogy of the Digitally Oppressed: Unseen in the Scene

It was the final night of Patrick Marmion’s play Keith at the Arcola theatre in East London last night.

The play was a farce replete with gender bending and intelligence services.

I came across Patrick Marmion last year when he wrote the script for Will Self’s Great Apes, also at the Arcola.

Patrick has also done a play about RD Laing.

I hope he is able to continue with his interest in mental health issues.

Apparently the system for financing theatre takes into account various factors, which by definition excludes certain storylines on the basis that the cast is not sufficiently inclusive.

Rather ironically I was discussing the existence of opaque algorithms with Patrick and he said that not enough is known about them to spark a potential audience’s interest.

To be clear, he thinks the subject is interesting but that the public are not yet sufficiently interested!

Patrick says he is interested in portraying that which can’t be seen.

This reminded me of a line from the Upanishads I heard onstage at the Barbican 12 years ago :

From death to death will go the man who discriminates between what is seen in the unseen world and unseen in the seen.

I will begin to monitor AI in a slightly more interested way than before.

Expect more postings on the subject of Algorithms, Economics, Language, & Storytelling.