David's Blog

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Illich’s essay on Learning Webs casts a vision for education that could certainly be achieved much more easily today (and is to an extent).  To borrow an idea from a colleage, if e-harmony can help us find our soulmates, couldn’t we do something like that for teachers and learners? The network is in place – it’s widespread, robust, and fast. Global communication is happening in ways that really are astounding. We just need someone to build the software to match learner and teacher. But who will do it?

And, if we build it, will they deschool? At its worst, the public school system is a ginormous, self-perpetuating brain-drain and money-suck. At its best, public education is the most effective tool of empowerment and equality we have today. Illich might go for the former. I like to think it’s somewhere in between, and School seems like a stabilizing institution in a society running short on stabilizing institutions.

Maybe Illich’s vision of learning webs is best applied in moderation (is that even possible?) and maybe much of it can happen within School.

Modern programmers typically rely heavily on “learning webs” like stackoverflow.com or online communities built around a particular language. Expertise is often based on quantity and quality of contributions. Sharing of information is not only valued, it’s an expectation.

Can this model be extended into the School? Can Teachers be renamed Guides instead? Can the teachers who are truly expert actually be called Experts? And can this all happen within the bureaucratic structure known as the Public School System? Maybe or maybe not. But I don’t think it’s going to happen without the School. Sorry, Ivan.

While reading Viola, I’m aware of a question that exists continually just below the surface of my daily existence:

Is my data still there?

Rarely do I ask this question aloud, but the fear of data loss is real and always somewhere in the back of my mind. Even with backups, and backups of backups, there’s always a chance that data can disappear.  What I don’t worry about losing (even though this risk is real) is my collection of books on the shelf, or the collection of church figurines that my grandmother gave me years ago, or my children’s artwork displayed on our refrigerator.  I just worry about my data.

Viola talks about the artificial memory systems that have been built (in physical space) over many centuries from the early Greeks onward, and then goes on to say, “Data space is fluid and temporal, hardcopy is for real — an object is born and becomes fixed in time.” This aspect of modern data space is surely one of its most appealing features, but the more we “build” in the data space, the more entrust the data space to contain our memories, are we more or less at risk of losing our individual (and collective) memory?

I do a lot of work and spend a good bit of time “building in data space”. I’m now realizing – and confessing – that I have a constant vague sense of fragility when I look over what I’ve built, and I don’t think any amount of data-backup will ease that tension.

If building a stone monument to some great event is a way of editing our collective memories (and those of future generations) by writing history, and if such monuments are considered valuable, what’s our equivalent of a monument in data space?

So, the “typo” we identified in the title of McLuhan’s book has an interesting little story. As someone mentioned in class last time, it was evidently a publisher’s mistake which McLuhan relished and rolled with. (New and Improved! 2x the Wordplay!)

I wonder, though, if McLuhan would have been willing to roll with a typo like “The Medial is the Message” or “Teh Medium is teh Message”?

Probably not. I would guess McLuhan would have a problem with the content of the title. Why? Because content, that message which is carried by media, is not simply, as McLuhan says, a “juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.”

The messages we send to and receive from each other, both intentional and otherwise, are important.

Don’t get me wrong. I think McLuhan’s observation that the form our media takes changes human society in fundamental ways is right and important to note. It may very well be one of the grandest observations to be made about human society.

But to say the content of the media-du-jour doesn’t count, to diminish what we are continually trying to communicate (e.g.,desire to be loved and accepted) to one another, even if we are communicating as “one hypnotized by the amputation and extension of  his own being in a new technical form”, is a sad and depressing omission.

Nelson’s idea of a “computer priesthood” hits close to home for me. He observes that this “priesthood” possesses secret knowledge of the inner workings of computers and maintains the secrecy in order to maintain power over the layperson.

I confess that, over the course of my years as a professional techie, I have privately and momentarily enjoyed the rush that comes from that “power”. The ability to instantly induce eye-glazing among the laypeople is occasionally enjoyable and sometimes useful for escaping harrowing conversations.

The problem with priesthoods is that they aren’t really dreamers. They are “keepers” because, in the act of keeping, there is power. Priesthoods really don’t have an interest in out-of-the-box thinking, or radical new approaches, or dreams of a new day. Nowadays, a lot of people know a lot about computers. But how many “dream machines” have we created? Mostly what we have is more of the same, but better and faster and smaller. Only occasionally do you find dream machine brought to life by someone who knows a lot about computers but also has the capacity to dream. (any suggestions of examples?)

Who, then, are the ones dreaming about what computers can become in our world? Who is responsible for eliciting these dreams? I say we turn to an unexpected source of unbridled creativity – our children.

The desktop metaphor of modern operating systems is entrenched as the primary way we interface with data on our computers. Those who envisioned the personal computer many years ago sought a way to make the computer familiar to users and the workplace desktop, with its files and folders, was a perfectly good metaphor for this purpose and has served us well for many years. Many, many years. Almost half a century.

It’s time for a change.

Engelbart, responsible for creating many of the conventions of today’s personal computer operating system, envisioned a system “around cards and mechanical sorting, with automatic trail-establishment and trail-following facility…that would enable development of some very powerful methodology for everyday intellectual work.”  If my magic wand and I were able to *presto* create a fully-realized and optimized version of this augmentation system from thin air, would it look like the computer I’m typing this on right now? I don’t think so.

The files on my physical desktop are limited by their very nature. They are atoms. Atoms are not easily indexed, searched, moved or duplicated. In order for us to keep track of atoms, we must keep them in proximity to other related atoms;  the ”file folder” accomplishes this for some, loosely-related piles for others. If we misplace a collection of atoms (e.g., a receipt), we might spend several hours looking for that particular collection because of the very real possibility that it is lost to us forever.

Bits are not like atoms. They are easily indexed, searched, moved, and duplicated. In order for us to keep track of bits, we only need to enter search terms. Bits can remember relationships — trails, to use Englebart’s term.  Yes, bits can be lost, but they can also be easily duplicated (backup your files!).

The modern OS, composed and dealing entirely of and with bits, feels constrained by the artificial limitations of the atom-based desktop metaphor. We are asked by the modern OS to get our files in the right folders, to organize our emails (yuk!), and to keep our desktops clean (though there is some virtual feng shui to that).  In the early days, when processing power was scarce, this was enough. But now, our desktops have the power to index and track every single bit in storage and present us with the right collections of bits within seconds of a search.  So why do we cling to our digital files and folders? Can we imagine an OS that eschews the desktop metaphor completely and uses the vast amounts of processing power available in the average PC to intuitively establish connections between meaningful collections of bits and allows us to navigate these bits in a way that is more in line with the way our brains already work?

How about an operating system that feels more like the Internet and less like my office?

Granted, we have seen the “personal computer OS” become less and less relevant as the Internet grows.  Has the Internet itself actually become the de facto operating system for most users?  Maybe, but I still think there’s interesting development to be done with the personal operating system, but I don’t know if it’s going to be done by the Big Two.

There are alternative OSes out there, and there’s the rapidly growing area of mobile OSes, but an interesting take on a new metaphor for the OS is happening with the Sugar OS.
Video of the Sugar OS

Hammer on

One of my least favorite household tasks is hanging pictures on the wall. As nice as the end result may be, I can’t enjoy the measuring, leveling, marking, and spacing. The one part I can enjoy is the hammering, especially if I have the right tool for the job. If you’ve ever tried to drive a nail into a stud with something other than a hammer (like the blunt end of screwdriver, the bottom of a shoe, or your hand), you know that nothing can replace a hammer.  It is the right tool for the job.  My hammer stays in my toolbox until I need it, which is usually about once a month.

Technology as tool

A theme in my graduate work highlighted the utilitarian nature of technology as a tool in education. The idea that technology is a tool for accomplishing certain tasks was frequently espoused. But that categorization of technology as tool seems too limited. If a tool is often something with fairly limited purpose that may sit in a box until the situation demands the specific functionality that it offers, then the technology we have today must be far greater than just a tool. What about the student for whom the smart phone feels less like a tool that gets used for a specific purpose when the need arises and more like an extension of personality or even identity?

Carpenter’s hammer

Maybe to the modern student, the smart phone feels much like the hammer does to the Master Carpenter: as an extension of the body and mind. While the carpenter is working, the hammer becomes more than just a tool as it bends to the will of the master, responding precisely to her every desire.  The hammer becomes a part of the carpenter’s body, not just a tool with a limited purpose. As technology becomes more personalized and wearable, as our children grow up surrounded by silicon, when does the conversation shift from technology as a tool to technology as an extension of our beings?

I don’t know how healthy it is to see technology as an extension of ourselves. Seems like there’s much to debate there, but things do seem to be headed in that direction.

I read a young adult novel a few years back about teens who had implants that kept them connected to the web and all of their social development happened in this virtual environment but I can’t remember the name of the book. Anyone?

My favorite keyboard shortcut recently has been “Merge All Windows” in Safari.  It does just what it says — it takes any Safari windows that are open and merges them into one window with multiple tabs.By default, there is no keyboard shortcut for this command, but you can easily create one.  I did and I use it all the time.

1. Open the Keyboard & Mouse pref pane, and click on Keyboard Shortcuts.
2. Click the “+” to create a new keyboard shortcut.
3. Under Application, choose Safari. 
4. In the Menu Title field, enter the EXACT (no extra spaces, etc.) name of the command: “Merge All Windows”
5. Specify your keyboard shortcut. I used Shift-Command-M. 

Let me know if find another homemade keyboard shortcut particularly useful.