Ruminate

[photo by factoryjoe]

Wikipedia is just an incredible thing. It’s fact-encirclingly huge, and it’s idiosyncratic, careful, messy, funny, shocking, and full of simmering controversies—and it’s free, and it’s fast. In a few seconds you can look up, for instance, “Diogenes of Sinope,” or “turnip,” or “Crazy Eddie,” or “Bagoas,” or “quadratic formula,” or “Bristol Beaufighter,” or “squeegee,” or “Sanford B. Dole,” and you’ll have knowledge you didn’t have before. It’s like some vast aerial city with people walking briskly to and fro on catwalks, carrying picnic baskets full of nutritious snacks.

I heart Nicholson Baker to the attack… even more now that I’ve read his essay on Wikipedia in the New York Review of Books. His piece is generous, funny, fair, and– amazingly– accurate. A bit more:

This sounds chaotic, but even the Pop-Tarts page is under control most of the time. The “unhelpful” or “inappropriate”—sometimes stoned, racist, violent, metalheaded—changes are quickly fixed by human stompers and algorithmicized helper bots. It’s a game. Wikipedians see vandalism as a problem, and it certainly can be, but a Diogenes-minded observer would submit that Wikipedia would never have been the prodigious success it has been without its demons.

This is a reference book that can suddenly go nasty on you. Who knows whether, when you look up Harvard’s one-time warrior-president, James Bryant Conant, you’re going to get a bland, evenhanded article about him, or whether the whole page will read (as it did for seventeen minutes on April 26, 2006): “HES A BIG STUPID HEAD.” James Conant was, after all, in some important ways, a big stupid head. He was studiously anti-Semitic, a strong believer in wonder-weapons—a man who was quite as happy figuring out new ways to kill people as he was administering a great university. Without the kooks and the insulters and the spray-can taggers, Wikipedia would just be the most useful encyclopedia ever made. Instead it’s a fast-paced game of paintball.

This is such a cool concept (and so wonderfully executed) that I have to steal it for myself… or someone. An annual report for a company of one. I’d have to make up a lot of data that I’m not detail-oriented enough to keep.

[Linktribution: Iconolith]

Creative Commons has just released a new comic explaining Creative Commons licenses for a general audience. Looks useful for the inevitable “what do you mean” questions about CC and for sharing with (indoctrinating) youngsters.

Normally I’d just throw something like this in my link log, but one of the things I’ve recently changed my mind about is giving in to the constant pressure to be fair and even-handed… even ambivalent. No longer! At least not all the time (I forgive you in advance if I haven’t struck you as being particularly impartial up until now).

[photo by snorkeldaddy Brett]

Creative Commons– and addressing our horrific system of copyright and the subsequent gutting of the information commons thanks to crooked big media and other special interests– is one of my hobby horses.

This seems like a good place to point out my friend Robert’s very useful pointer: Ross Mayfield on Strong Opinions, Weakly Held.

[Linktribution: someone on my Twitter network that I can't locate now]

[collage by Jen]

I can’t call this a Northern Voice wrap-up post or summation… those terms imply that the experience is something that can be wrapped up, that what I learned can be effectively summarized, and that what I feel isn’t an ongoing sense of transformation and revelation. None of those are true.

[photo by D'Arcy Norman]

It is true that in two conference days, one of which was the unscripted unconference day of Moose Camp, I had more concrete “takeaway” than I do in many times that number of days at other, traditional conferences. Takeaway includes not just ideas that are new to me, but a significant change in my understanding of the importance and utility of ideas. In work terms, I discovered some new tools, all of which will be shared here eventually, and new sites which will find their way here as well. My major work-related insights are all part of the same cluster:

1. I realized how greatly I have been discounting impromptu and informal media. I’m a word-person and not particularly enamored of my voice or visage, so participating in the audio and audiovisual space makes me uncomfortable… but I can’t deny the power nor can I ignore the growing number of ways available to create and share low-production media.
2. I was struck by the importance of the visual (creation and viewing) in understanding (for the person sharing and the person learning). We seek images and imagery the same way we seek narrative, but my expectations and operational processes had shifted far toward the latter. There are so many ways to create that everyone can find something, even if the simplest (and for me most uncomfortable due to my extremely obvious lack of talent)– pen and paper– might be the “best.”
3. My core belief that all of this only works if you can tap into passion and self-expression was reaffirmed. As trying as the length of some of the open-mic readings were, I loved the activity. It reminded me of poetry readings where sometimes the poems themselves are nowhere near as important as the flashes of insight you get into the humanity and creative processes of the person reading them.

[photo by Jen]

But the importance of Northern Voice in my life are the bigger picture items– some of which defy explanation– but all of which will shape my thought and action for at least the next year. I’m thinking here of things like the addition of “love” to my deep vocabulary of understanding social networks, learning and media, where it joins two other apparent abstractions: “scale” and “resonance.” I have a feeling everyone around me will be sick to death of my invocation of these terms, but I can’t get out of my head how love– and all of its facets (in both the popular and classical senses)– are woven so deeply into culture and interaction that we can’t ignore them if we hope to understand what is happening all around us.

[photo by (for) Alan Levine]

Like last year, the people-power of Northern Voice was overwhelming. While there are many people I want to meet and work with, my super-duper shortlist was made considerably shorter by getting some quality time with Alan Levine and Jen Jones. I hate to start listing names because I will inevitably forget some of them, but I want to pass some link love to as many people as I can… if I forgot you or just ran out of time, I apologize in advance!

[photo by D'Arcy Norman]

• Scott Leslie - we complain about other conferences, but not for our shared frustration at a bad conference session we may never have met, I may never have met most of the people on this list, and I surely would never have attended Northern Voice! You are da(standing, dancing) man!
• Brian Lamb - I was a bit nervous– being sick and without a voice last time meant I had to live up to expectations this time around (and live down my sadly un-pirate-like and not-so-deep real life voice). We share some records, a lot of books and a whole lot of ideas. I can’t thank you enough for your hospitality and contributions (and your spoon-playing + kazoo wizardry).
• Keira McPhee - you might be surprised to be the inspiration from someone you don’t feel you know very well, but it doesn’t surprise me at all. Your dedication to your community and passion for change are clear and entrancing.
• Jim Groom - your encyclopedic knowledge of film and unabashed WordPress fanboy-ism can’t obscure your dedication to changing the world for students. And you sing a mean blues too. The Eduglu Blues will be in my head for a long time.
• Alan Levine - you were a rock star in your session and on the guitar and you might just be the one of us who actually reaches the end of the internet and starts over in an attempt to lap us.
• D’Arcy Norman - you let your camera speak for you sometimes, but then you let loose with crazily incisive comments. Your five minutes on EduGlu was a masterpiece of concision… EduGlu is going to blow up!
• Jennifer Jones - it’s no wonder you have 500+ Twitter followers. I’d follow you around in real life if I could (and if your husband wouldn’t be unsettled by it ). Your U-Streaming of sessions was great, but your company and thoughts about technology and education/distance education were even better.
• Nancy White - having your visual participation on my panel was incredible– participating in your session and talking with you were highlights of my time at Northern Voice. Your thoughts on love and respect and groups have already changed my thinking.
• Bill Fitzgerald - in addition to having a company whose name is so completely me, you are a generous coder, philosopher, and english literature wonk… in other words, you fit right in with the crowd and write code better than we can…
• Mikhail - I enjoyed your words, as few as they were. I think I understood– I felt similarly at least year’s event. Those other guys (and gals) can be overwhelming
• Thanks for thinking of me for a podcast interview, goetee-less Chris Heuer. How great was it to not only serendipitously meet the charming Kristie Wells, who I know as a Joyent customer/Textdrive VCer, but then discover she is your wife!?
• Doug Symington - you’ll be hearing from me soon… it was great to meet yet another crazy Canuck Twitterer!
• Robin Yap– you are even more intensely energetic in person than online. Try to make it to Alaska during your travels!
• Jeffrey Keefer– maybe I’ll make it to New York next. Thanks for your Northern Voice liveblogging… and for your own blog, which I do read year round. I appreciated your comments throughout the conference and recognize much of myself in your assessment from year to year. 

[collage of Northern Voice photos by Duane Storey]

[photo by Kris Krug]

I’ve long used this famous quote from Leaves of Grass to explain (and explain away) my rather marked inconsistencies:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then, I contradict myself;
(I am large—I contain multitudes.)

I feel a need to justify my inconsistency because most of the people I follow and admire could be fairly grouped together based on their amazing surety. If they knowingly contradict themselves or, as I sometimes do, forget their former position and come to something new, it’s not something a lot of them (with some obvious exceptions) choose to share with the rest of us. For reasons that aren’t relevant to this particular discussion, my mental model has been one that not only equated consistency with being “right” but put changing one’s mind in the same class as intellectual weakness.

So I found myself glued to the monitor when I discovered that the Edge World Question Center’s annual question for 2008 was “What have you changed your mind about and why?”  Seeing so many incredible thinkers sharing details of sometimes sweeping changes of mind was inspiring. If they’re OK with it, why shouldn’t I be? This thought, in combination with my recent experience at Northern Voice– where I had the opportunity to learn from so many peers, colleagues and intellectual idols whose passion is clear and strong without being dogmatic– has proven to be a heady and unnerving potion. Some part of me has been opened up that was formerly barely open a crack. If you know me, you might find this literally unbelievable, but I was actually hugging friends– and not just as a barely-tolerated gesture, but the real thing– and making sure I got my share of the hugging action. I hadn’t willingly hugged another person in that way, recognizing deep, Platonic kinship, for years (except for one glaring exception that happened at at Northern Voice last year)!

So here are some things I’ve changed my mind about relatively recently– some exceedingly large and some small and unremarkable:

• It’s OK to need people. I have a lot of weaknesses… refusing the benefits of friendship doesn’t have to be one of them. Even lone wolves and introverts can have friends… they probably need them. Ultimately tied to this is the realization that:
• I have something unique to offer. I’ve done a lot of teaching and given a lot of presentations. I know I have a minor talent for it. But only recently have I begin to believe that my work has lead to a powerful and unique (or very rare) combination of skills, knowledge, and obsessions.
• Tackling the big problems directly isn’t necessarily an act of hubris. What do Lawrence Lessig, Barack Obama and Barbara Ganley have in common? They’re all willing– in very different ways and approaches– to tackle the big, abstract problems. I have to reconcile my  belief in transformation and innovation with the acts of the individuals that can make that happen.
• The power of individual talent and genius shouldn’t be overlooked. I believe in the power of collective intelligence, social networks and group sense-making (thus it follows that Andrew Keen and Lee Siegel are dorks). That being said, many of the things I love most– such as great works of art– are the product of immense individual effort by often less-than-admirable individuals. In our understandable rush to realize the power of the social, let’s leave more than just room for these misfit impulses to operate… let’s embrace them. Then each of us can embrace them within ourselves.
• The possibility of the Divine… and my need to make sense of that possibility even if it means uncomfortable changes follow in my life.

What have you changed your mind about?

I can’t remain as blasé as some about Blackboard’s recent win in court and the obscene patent they have been granted (as usual, Stephen Downes has a good roundup of reactions to the decision). Here’s why:

Whether it should or will matter later, the LMS matters now. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m all about getting out from under the thumb of the LMS. That being said, my own institution is– like many others– pretty tightly wedded to Blackboard and is likely to remain so for quite some time. It doesn’t matter if I agree with it, the situation is simply part of the context. I’m also relatively pessimistic about how long it will take before a significant amount of instruction at institutions– particularly those that use Blackboard now– moves outside of the LMS. If it does… and there are no guarantees that it will.

The LMS can improve! Given the reality of institutional bonds and decision-making around technology, I can’t just quietly overlook removing one of the only significant forces stimulating the already slow improvement of Blackboard. And it can improve… perhaps not to the point that it could challenge the much better idea of the PLE, but that leaves a lot of room for positive change.

A better LMS actually helps my (our) cause. Ironically, by getting better it would be a lot easier to guide faculty toward new, superior tools. For example, I can just imagine how much more readily an educator who had experience with a good discussion tool in Blackboard would consider and accept a move to more open, social systems. In fact, I don’t have to imagine… I’ve seen it happen with analogous situations. The only way most institutions will change away from Blackboard (or resist it) is if they have a base of vocal, successful educators exerting appropriate pressure.

You can’t expect rational business decisions to follow irrational ones. I don’t buy the argument that the bad taste coming from this decision will spur institutions to move beyond the LMS. The reasons for adopting and keeping a system like Blackboard have very little to do with good teaching or pedagogical affordances (particularly this late in the game), and much to do with economic pragmatics, utilitarian information technology-centric feature sets, and systemic inertia. Expecting a rational decision to switch away from a product when the things that spurred its adoption and powered its retention remain largely– if not wholly– unchanged is wishful thinking at best.

I’d like this decision to be something other people have to worry about, but it isn’t. I’d like the decision not to matter– in line with my inclinations and general philosophy– but it does. At least for me and my institution… and I suspect many others in a similar position.