The semester is coming to an end and it is time to wrap up my experience in this course. First of all, I chose to take this course because it was offered face-to-face in my study department. I was happy to finally have the opportunity to take face-to-face classes after more than a year and a half where my studies have been done online since the pandemic started.

When I first went to this course, I immediately understood that the method used by the teacher to teach his course was a new approach, more human and pedagogical than a normal course. This new teaching method made me want to continue to go to this course. The way the course worked was very new to me, it was the first time I had to write afterwards on a blog about what I had thought, felt and learned during the course. I found this way of doing things interesting because you have to ask yourself questions about your own feelings, like a kind of introspection. Before, no teacher had ever asked me to ask myself what I felt during the class. However, I think it is important to reflect on the experience we have had in class in order to give meaning to our experiences

In addition, sharing our experiences on the blog also allows us to see how others experienced the course. It was interesting to see the different perceptions of each of us as we went through the same experience. We don’t all remember the same things and references, we don’t all have the same opinion, we express ourselves differently. Also, I found that the group activities were a good way to interact with others, it brings a human side to the course and it allows us to get to know each other.

Through the content of the course, I learned a lot of different theories that I didn’t know or that I knew vaguely before like Reductionism, Self-organization, Emergence, Anthropocene, Complexity, Singularity and so on and so on. So as interesting as others. It was very interesting to reflect on each concept. It was sometimes not easy to understand each concept but the definitions, quotes, cartoons, pictures and videos helped me to get a clearer idea.

At the beginning of the course I saw the system as essentially social. But I realized that the systematic approach was even broader than I had imagined from the first course. Each course gave me a clearer concept of systems theory. Generally speaking, a system is a set of elements that interact with each other according to certain principles or rules. As I have met with others, I have learned that system applies to a variety of phenomena. Among them, the ecosystem is a form of system because there is the formation of a living whole formed by a grouping of different species in interrelations, notably for feeding and reproduction. The balance of the ecosystem is maintained in the conservation of interactions between these organisms. This stability is important in any system. In order to maintain an equilibrium, the organisms function according to a self-organization. The system can also take other forms and be seen in the infinitely small with the atomic system and electrons or in the infinitely large with the solar system and galaxies. I find each system fascinating

The complex and unified whole of a system is supposed to have a specific purpose. It is still complicated for me to understand some forms of systems through their purposes. The cellular system seems more complicated to me than the social system. To me, these science-based systems are full of mysteries that are difficult to understand because you need to have knowledge of the physical or biological sciences to understand them well. Science plays an important role in understanding all kinds of phenomena. It frustrated me that I didn’t understand everything, but I finally understood that it was normal not to understand systems perfectly, because we can never be 100% sure of the objectives of each system, even scientists have difficulty explaining them. We can only guess at them. This is why systems are complex. I find it funny to think that we are just a group of atoms trying to understand groups of atoms.

I found the concepts of the Anthropocene and the Singularity very interesting. They both show the changes that humans can bring to the Earth. The Antropocene highlights the period of time that human activities have had an environmental impact on the Earth, considered to be a distinct geological era. The current problems in ecosystems caused by human activity are of concern. Humans have been so intent on appropriating their environment that they have totally altered it to the point of destruction. Fortunately humans are becoming aware of this and are increasingly taking action to preserve our environment, nature and animals. We are masters of ourselves and we can consume better and adopt better habits of life that will not or less hinder the ecosystems. Even if our actions are done on a small scale, the important thing is that our consciences are formed and concerned about the subject. Education can be a key to change the consciousness about the environment and the current ecological problems.

The Singularity illuminates the hypothetical moment when technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, leading to unforeseen changes in human civilization. It is an interesting theme that may still seem utopian at the moment, but it could happen soon when we see the ever more creative technological inventions that humans are able to create with artificial intelligence. Wondering if human robots can become more intelligent than humans is not stupid when we see that humans have a lot of trouble setting limits.

It made me realize that every human action can have a huge impact on the system. Even the smallest actions that may seem to have no impact can actually impact the system to the point of changing its course, either positively or negatively. Complexity means that every decision made or action taken can have a very different consequence in our future lives. In addition, it is important to consider the idea of interconnectedness. Every system is interconnected to such an extent that if we want to try to solve ecological, human, and economic problems, we have to consider these problems together and not divide them.

This course was enriching both on a human level and in terms of content. It made me question myself on several important themes of our society. At the end of each course, I left the room satisfied to have learned and thought about new concepts, but also to have been enriched by the opinions of everyone. Thus, I will keep a good memory of the course “System Theory, Psychology and Social Media”. I learned a lot about systems theory. It was a nice paradox for me to be gathered in the same room to attend a course that explained what a system was.

I have learned to question what I have understood, what I have learned, what I have not yet understood, and how it might be useful in my future life. I have found it essential to ask myself these questions and plan to continue to do so in the future, not only in my college classes but also in my life experiences.
I will keep in mind the map that showed where we each grew up. It was a nice symbol to show the bond that people from different countries have.
I also liked one of the closing words of the last meeting, “Janus.” It is both the God of the beginning and the God of the end. He is represented by two faces, one that looks back and one that looks forward. This means that at the end of each experience, there must be a new door to another experience.

So it was a pleasure to meet you and I wish you all the best

The different points of view, different references and opinions between the protagonists in the film Mindwalk make for an interesting exchange of dialogue. I really enjoyed Sonia’s arguments and the quotes that Thomas was quoting.

There is a quote that I noticed “The world changes faster than people perceive it”. Indeed, ideas are constantly changing and it is not easy for humans to adapt to them. Humans tend to be convinced by certain beliefs that they take as absolute truths. Then when these “truths” are challenged by scientific advances, humans may find it difficult to accept that what they believed to be the truth was not the truth. We all have beliefs anchored in us since childhood by our entourage, by society, and by what we learned at school. My curiosity makes me wonder which ideas I believe in purely and strongly today will seem totally idiotic a century from now.

Science makes surprising discoveries that even scientists are sometimes surprised by. How can an atom, which seems to be made up of small, solid particles, be made up of empty space? There are atoms all around us, yet they are invisible to the human eye. The universe has different scales of size through the infinitely small and the infinitely large. When I observe nature, I find ants so small. But when I find myself in front of a mountain, it is me who seems so small. We feel so big in relation to the infinitely small and we feel so small in relation to the infinitely big.

Sonia emphasizes that seeing a tree in Descartes’ way as a trunk, branches and leaves is only seeing things in an independent way. We can change this perception by becoming aware of the interconnections in nature. I think we can indeed feel the energy between the relationships of nature and ourselves. Even if we can’t see the infinitely small and infinitely large, we can connect to it through energy.

Describing our city and how we see it was a cool idea to learn more about each other, share where we are from, find out where others are from, and understand how people represent their own city. We all shared a part of ourselves through our descriptions.

Each of us sound very attached to our city. No one of us have experimented the same experience, each one is subjective. We have similarities and differences. And even people who come from the same country but not from the city have different views. Some of us come from large urbanized cities and others come from smaller rural towns. Some come from very cold countries in winter, others come from warmer countries. There is a big difference between coming from Siberia where it is -19 degrees in winter and living in Athens where it is 15 degrees in winter. 

We all seem to be attached to our memories, to the city where we grew up, where we had our habits, our hobbies and where we met our childhood friends: it defines us. Similarities between us allow us to identify with someone, but the differences make us unique.

The map made me realize the extent of Europe through a concrete visualization. Some countries may seem very far from each other, and others closer. The descriptions of the people made me want to travel all over Europe even more and to discover the countries I have not yet had the opportunity to visit.

The web shows that we are connected in the moment together despite the distance between where we come from. Thanks to the internet today, we can also communicate more easily and instantly with people from all over the world. I am glad that I was born in a time when we can easily travel to discover other cultures and other landscapes.

Nowadays, we can communicate very easily and instantly with people from all over the world on the internet. And I am glad that I was born in a time when we can go and travel easily to discover other cultures and landscapes.

Artificial intelligence, gaia hypothesis, singularity are concepts that are becoming more and more important in our lives since the innovation of technology. The technological advance has been meteoric in the last few years and the innovations are more and more innovative one than the other. Machines are getting smarter. So much so that one wonders if computers will surpass human intelligence ? However, human intelligence itself is not yet well understood by humans. How does the brain work? Researchers had shown that we use only 10% of our brain. There are still some things about the human body and especially about the brain that science has difficulty explaining. Brain is actually the most mysterious part of the body in research. A lot of research is currently being done on the brain to try to better understand how it works. In the video we said in the course, John Iwata, who works for the company IBM, says that computer science will not be able to surpass human intelligence. The first Cognitive computer Watson is a system that is unprogrammed and that learnt, it can improve itself. It creates confusion among humans because it can talk and answer question with great confidence. Humans wonder if Watson is able to think. Humans tend to attribute consciousness to robots, but they don’t have any. In my opinion the real limit of technology is the human bias towards robots because we generate more and more artificial empathy. Studies have shown that when some robots break, humans generate empathy towards the robots. Indeed, according to Carpenter, J. (2016), some U.S. deminers take significant risks to retrieve their robot and even some Afghanistan veterans experience psychic and somatic distress when their demining robot has been partially destroyed. I think that the attachment of humans to robots is dangerous. We talked about the movie Her in progress, in which the character falls in love with the voice of a virtual assistant. Nowadays, with social networks there are more and more exclusively virtual relationships. Couples are formed without ever having seen each other in reality. This way of loving seems to me very dangerous. I think there is a real limit to not go beyond, the one according to which virtuality can fill us more than our reality.

#emergence

I learned in the last course that complexity appears if in the same initial conditions, there are different consequences. This concept is attempted to be explained by science. Physic and mathematic try to predict what can happen. Scientists as Lorenz and Newton worked on the prediction but in the case of complexity, nothing can be predicted. It’s like the weather, you can predict whether it will be sunny or rainy tomorrow, but the forecast can change.

Videos of pendulums show the unpredictable motions of the lines. We can be predictable at the beginning but eventually the motions become so different to be predictable. We have the feeling that all can be predictable. Sometimes, we imagine our future, we plan to how futures days can be and finally when it’s happened it’s not as we imagined it. An appointment, an event, a trip can be very different from what we thought. I think it’s important to appreciate present moment because it’s the only thing that we can really control. Instead of trying to organize everything, we need to appreciate spontaneous events in our daily life.

We tend to blame negative impacts humans on planet due to them innovations but it’s interesting to understand why each innovation was created by humans and in what context… DDT spray was used to treat malaria illness. Indeed, it allowed to save 25 millions of people. However, a few years after humans discovered its negative effects on animals. Therefore, the innovation of DDT began with good intention on the part of humans to save people but has had a negative impact on the planet.

#emergence

At first, this course on the Anthropocene brought out in me a disappointment towards human behaviors that cause a very negative impact on the environment. Fires, traffic, extinction, deforestation, the over-consumption, pollution, wars…. There are many negative results in the environment that have been caused by human activity, it is a real disaster. The figures that show that our planet is becoming saturated with human activity are disturbing. There is a huge contrast between the overconsumption of North America and Rwanda… Many futile matters are prioritized by humans to the detriment of the planet. I realize that self-centeredness can kill us. But an awareness can save us. Will we go so far as to cause our own destruction? Two years ago, I was fascinated by the series The 100, which features human survivors aboard a space station following a nuclear apocalypse that ravaged the Earth and decimated its population a century earlier. On the one hand, one wants to say that this series is only science fiction but when one realizes the damage that humans are capable of causing, it seems possible.

Moreover, this course made me realize that we are only a very small part of the world, we represent a single generation among thousands. The Earth would have existed for 4 and a half billion years, life on Earth would have appeared about 3.5 billion years ago, modern man would have appeared 200,000 years ago… There have been so many evolutions on our planet. Believing that our generation is the only one that counts is indeed a huge flaw in our education system. We need to broaden our worldview and think about future generations.

Futhermore, I realized also that intelligence cannot be summed up in a score of intelligence out of 10. When I was younger, I used to think of my intelligence as the average I got per semester in school. But I realized as I grew up that it was stupid to think that way because we are all creative and intelligent in our own way.

#emergence

Why do birds fly together? Why do ants make life boats? Why do slime molds explode? This class made me wonder about nature. It’s fascinating to see how different entities like insects and molecules can communicate together and have a cohesion spontaneous to create together a self-organization.

Firstly, I always found beautiful the birds fly in the sky together and this can be explain because birds are less vulnerable to predators together and it would also allow them to save their energy by flying together. But are these animals aware of this? I wonder if these animals do it by understanding the utility or if they do it by pure instinct. It is also so fascinating to see that ants are able to create a boatlife together. Some ants are eaten by fish while the boat life move forward on the water. Why do ants put their lives at risk while the queen of ants is well protected ? And how do they choose their queen? 

Moreover, it is even more intriguing to see that metronomes are able to synchronize. I just wonder how this is possible? If they are able to do this, it means that they can communicate with each other. But is it just the outside world acting on them to synchronize or is it an inner force within them that allows them to do this? 

After all, maybe humans also live in a self-organization? We have the impression that we each live our lives the way we want to live them, but perhaps the reality is quite different… because our reality is in fact only our own perception of the world. 

To summarize, I have always wondered how nature can be so perfect. Indeed why the snowflakes are so symmetrical ? Why do zebras and cheetahs have such beautiful symmetrical patterns on them? Nature intrigues me a lot. So, this course brought up many questions I have about the organization of nature.

#emergence 

What is the difference between the system and part of the collection? I found the reflection on the subject interesting because it allows us to think about the way we see the world around us. Before this reflection, everyday objects had only a material function for me, but know I can considered them in the system. For instance, we can consider the kitchen as a room equipped with tools to prepare food. Each of these tools can be considered as part of a collection. But this can change depending on the context we adopt because in a restaurant, the cook works in the kitchen, there is an interdependent. If a tool to cook the elements does not work, the cook cannot obtain the result he would like to have. Moreover, the restaurant is interdependent of the customer, because without customers there is no money coming in. So it is a system where each agent has a role that contributes to the smooth running of the restaurant. If one piece of the puzzle is missing, it can make the connection between all the agents wrong. So this reflection made me aware of the diversity of approaches that one can have on the system. 

Regarding the video I find it fascinating to see the ecosystem reliving as wolves have been reintroduced into Yellowstones National Park. Nature is an interdependent system between animals, plants, oxygen. One thing can affect so many other things. The wolves kill certain species like coyotes, and this allows other species like birds, foxes, bears to live better and also allows for better vegetation. It’s an evil for a good. Nature is able to regulate itself.  It’s a positive message and I think it can give hope that nature can be healthy again, that scientists can find alternative solutions to extinction of species and pollution in the environment.

I found that the hands-on experience was a good way to get to know our classmates. It brings an even more human side to the course. I like this type of practice because it creates an exchange of opinions in a more interpersonal than formal way.

I’ve been really happy to come back in face-to-face classroom. It’s more human like this than course online. We’re in real conditions with other people in the same class, it’s better to interact together in real life and not only behind a screen due to the covid.

Also, I found fantastic to be in same class with people who from different countries! I am very happy to be in Erasmus and to have chosen Athens. Nevertheless, I was apprehensive about the course in english because I was afraid of not understand it well. But it makes me feel better that teacher supports the enjoy the class without we’re worry our level of English. And it’s a good idea to ask us anonymously to reflective about our own feeling at the end of course.

Regarding the course, the course content on technology and social media is for me a new approach of the psychology. So, I’m happy to have chosen this course and I look forward to discovering the future content of this course.