I’m indebted to Sherri Spelic for introducing me to the term ‘incuriosity’. In her excellent post last year she writes “This concept of being ‘incurious’ fascinates me. ‘Not curious’ means that we feel no need to pose questions about a thing or to wonder about its origins. It’s not so much that we are against the thing, it simply stays off (not even under) our radar”. Incuriosity is defined in the dictionary as “indifferent, unconcerned, incurious, aloof, detached, disinterested mean not showing or feeling interest. indifferent implies neutrality of attitude from lack of inclination, preference, or prejudice”. But there is a cultural angle to it also. Sherri links to this…

(Photo by James Clarke from Unsplash) I’m giving a talk for Sian Bayne’s group up at Edinburgh this week, exploring the idea of the unenlightenment and open education. I’m using the talk to explore some of the ideas myself, so if you’re going, don’t expect coherence or polish. My main pitch is that we are experiencing a different attitude towards knowledge, experience, education in large parts of the population. This is particularly apparent with the successes of Brexit and Trump, which made this mistrust of expertise a key part of their campaigns. But it isn’t a ‘how did Trump happen?’ talk but rather an exploration of the various cultural phenomena…