Hyper-learning and Unlearning: A Narrative Speculation on Urbanism in Media Ecologies

2026-03-16

AI Summary

This study investigates how digital media ecologies reconfigure learning mechanisms, positioning urban space as a formative site of cognition and agency. Through a micro-perspective on architectural education, it introduces the concepts of “hyper-learning” and “anti-learning,” reconceptualizing the city as pedagogical infrastructure in the posthuman era. Integrating speculative animation, media ecology theory, and interdisciplinary approaches from architecture, algorithmic studies, and platform critique, the project reveals how digital platforms reshape professional knowledge, collective memory, and spatial experience. Challenging institutional monopolies over knowledge, the research redefines the city’s role as a cognitive medium and offers a new paradigm for understanding the interrelations among education, authority, and space in an age of platformization.

Technology Category

• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Agent Architectures
• Multiagent Systems: Agent/AI Theories and Architectures
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Social networks and social learning
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web applications in cross-disciplinary domains and verticals such as mixed reality, smart cities, and digital health

Abstract

Hyper-learning and Unlearning is a speculative animation that reflect how learning is reconfigured within digital media ecologies. Using architectural education as a microcosm, the work reframes the city as a hyper-learning apparatus where urban space, algorithmic systems, and platform infrastructures condition cognition and agency. By staging both hyper-learning and the unlearning induced by machine-supported cognition, the work critiques institutional gatekeeping while revealing how platforms reshape expertise, memory, and spatial experience. This project invites viewers to reconsider how urban space becomes pedagogical infrastructure in a posthumanism era.

Problem

• hyper-learning
• unlearning
• media ecologies
• urbanism
• posthumanism

Innovation

• hyper-learning
• unlearning
• media ecologies
• algorithmic systems
• posthumanism