Shortcuts To Shortcuts

As my friend and colleague Christophe Thibaut puts it:

Shorcuts are convenient, but there's no shortcut to shortcuts.

I've been increasingly bothered by people taking pictures at conferences -- especially open space conferences -- pictures of flipcharts output, pictures of people doing weird exercises. Not only does it feel unsafe when you're the one doing the exercise, it also removes you from the "now and here" context which, to me, is crucial in experiential learning. The frantic photographers will explain me, though, that since they can't attend all sessions at the same time, they want to keep track of what's done so that they can learn later. Or so that others who didn't attend the conference may still get some flavour of it.

There seems to be a crave these days for "things" that capture the enriching moments we couldn't attend. We're like cannibals eating our ennemies to absorb their strength and get stronger. Photos, explanatory texts, powerpoints are the enveloping flesh of strong experiences that we hope to assimilate, have we been attending them or not. There's also (at least in France) the idea that, as long as you read the textbooks, you may skip the class and do more interesting stuff -- such as your homework. What's sad is, it works for many classes. What's sadder is, nobody bothers to explain you that there's more to life (especially once you're out of college) than getting grades.

Videos, books, pictures -- they are great shortcuts for representing, "reifying" our own experiences, discussing with others who share the same experiences. However, we may want to stop looking for shortcuts to assimilating the experience itself -- I, at least, suspect there's none.