rob_rogers's blog

Abolish school? Replace classrooms with references services, skill exchanges, peer matching, and occasional encounters with professional educators? What is Ivan Illich thinking? I enjoyed school! I was smart, didn’t question the rules, preferred structure and specificity, and could memorize easily. Also, I was reasonably personable and assertive, so I got the help I needed from my teachers. Plus, I went to good schools and my parents were supportive (i.e., insistent) of my efforts to perform well. And the results haven’t been all that bad.

So, why “deschool” society? Because education should not be a contest of survival in which only those with certain personality types and social demographics are rewarded by the establishment. It took me quite a few years to realize that my peers who dropped out of school either mentally or physically were not dumb or lazy. One enlightening episode was when, as a graduate assistant, I did a literature review on entrepreneurs for a professor who was developing a high school drop-out prevention program. I discovered that the profile of successful entrepreneurs is almost exactly the same as that of school dropouts! They do not like structures, rules, or routine. They are motivated to learn by having real life problems to solve or challenges to overcome. They like being physically active and working independently. Such folks are literally “misfits” within the typical educational environment. I think they would thrive in a deschooled society.

But is a deschooled society the route to engaged learning for all? I consider Illich’s proposed system useful for stimulating thinking about reform. However, I think his open systems approach to learning, like the school-based system it is intended to replace, heavily favors people with certain personality characteristics such as inquisitiveness, flexibility, persistence, and extroversion. And vouchers to pay for some services is no substitute for the competent, active support of parents or guardians. I applaud Illich for doing more than complaining about current arrangements, but replacing schools won’t necessarily improve learning for all.

What a struggle! All last week I wrestled with Brenda Laurel’s articles, “The Six Elements and the Casual Relations Among Them” and “Star Raiders – Dramatic Interaction in a Small World,” trying to find the stimulation to write something. I appreciated learning about Aristotle’s elements of qualitative structure and was impressed with her application of them to human-computer activity. But reading and reflecting about video games resurrected feelings of disappointment spiked with betrayal. My on-again-off-again relationship with digital media includes being enticed time and again by video games only to be disillusioned by their seemingly pointless activities. Whether it was Pac-Man, a Madden’s football game, or one of the plethora of adventure games, the pattern was the same. An enthusiast would motivate me to try the latest and greatest. After investing hours in learning the rules and honing my coordination skills, the experience of playing the game left me feeling as though I had wasted my time. For a brief while, I thought SimCity with its socially constructive potential was a match for my interest in community development; but my enthusiasm and visions of constructing utopia were swallowed by the quicksand of rules and logistics.

I had just about given up writing an entry for my blog this week, when I began reading “Video Games and Computer Holding Power” by Sherry Turkle. At last! Here was some explanation for my failure to connect with video games. One quote sums it up best: “Children musing about objects and their nature has given way to children in contest. Reflection has given way to domination, ranking, testing, proving oneself. Metaphysics has given way to mastery” (Wardrip-Fruin & Monfort, p.500). I have no problem substituting “adults” (i.e., myself) for “children” in this statement. It seems that to have a really positive experience with video games requires emersion or fusion with the mind of the game, including total acceptance of its rules and the underlying logic of simulation. And many (most?) of the games are violent and competitive to the max.

What an exorbitant price to pay to be entertained or manage stress! Turkle reports that for some users, there is the euphoria of feeling that the game can go on forever and that they can achieve perfect control over the simulated world in which they have lost themselves. That is not even appealing, let alone motivation for me to engage in any activity. I wrestle with my own demons of perfectionism and certainly don’t need to test myself against some programmer’s manufactured demons. Likewise, an endless game is not my notion of an eternity worth pursuing.

After a week of wrestling with this topic, I am feeling a degree of satisfaction about having the good sense not to surrender myself to anyone’s simulated world. That’s not to say there are no simulations worth exploring … but that’s a topic for another week!

In “Will There Be Condominiums in Space?” Bill Viloa describes a friend’s experience with musicians in Central Java. While rehearsing a song with them, he could not get the musicians to focus on and play only parts of it. “The idea of taking a small part out of context, or playing just a few bars, simply did not exist. The music was learned and conceived as a whole in the minds of the musicians” (The New Media Reader, p. 466). Earlier in the article, Viola comments on how perceiving things as discrete parts enables us to rearrange them (p. 464). The contrast between this holistic way of perceiving and our typically fragmented view of everything struck me profoundly.

Why do we constantly fracture things and experiences into pieces and then examine and critique the parts? I think our motivation is control. We want to eliminate uncertainty and the anxiety that accompanies it. But at what price? The scientific method is the primary means we employ to understand and manipulate the world in which we live, including our bodies and minds. The benefits of this method have been incalculable … and the costs, too. Viola speaks to this when he quotes Coomaraswamy: “Decadent art is simply an art which is no longer felt or energized …” (p. 466) because the connections among its parts, its deeper meaning has been lost. In far too many ways my experience of life has been a mere shadow of the whole, because I have been trained to see only fragments. I feel challenged to use my emerging awareness of the new media and nascent skills with this technology to experience more of the wholeness of life and fewer of its shadows.

One aspect of Marshall McLuhan’s writings in The New Media Reader and our class discussion this week has hooked me most.  That is the notion that each generation is captivated on enslaved by the effects of the dominant media of its era. I don’t think McLuhan is a gloomy pessimist about the fate of humanity. However, I wrestle with the evidence that individuals and societies are, as one of my colleagues said yesterday, “like dogs wagged by the tails of their inventions.” I am already dazed by the growing awareness of how much of our thinking and behavior is pre-programmed by our DNA. The prospect that our freedom is further diminished by the tools we create is disheartening.

Thankfully, some in the class have read more broadly than our assigned readings. They explained that McLuhan advocates for our attaining a level of meta-awareness where we become aware of the dominant media and their powerful effects. The implication is that this awareness will lead to exercising some control over the tails that wag us. How do we reach this level of consciousness and regain some degree of control of our destiny?

Certainly, we must be astute observers and interpreters of history, as McLuhan was. However, I think the primary route is more of an inward journey. He warns that “Any medium has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary.” (p. 206); and that “Program and ‘content’ analysis offer no clues to the magic of these media or to their subliminal charge.” (p. 208). Carl Jung has taught us that the less we know about ourselves the more likely we are to project onto others or things portions of our unexamined psyche. Then, captivated by what we see, we idolize these persons or objects and pursue them with blind passion, becoming slaves to the projections of our own shadow selves. I think this projection is the underlying dynamic behind our captivity and the “numb stance of the technological idiot” (p. 207). We have access to media that enable us to express our individuality, explore the wonder of our imaginations, and interact with others. Instead of being liberated, we exhibit more herd mentality blindly pursuing the latest fad which has gone viral via the new media.

According to McLuhan, any medium is an “extension of ourselves” (p. 203). The lesson I have relearned this week is that freedom lies in the hard work of trying to knowing my deepest inner self as I try to extend it through any medium.

Dynabook capabilities + computer as media player and a network communication device + ??? = “… the computer, viewed as a medium itself, can be all other media …” (Kay & Goldberg, p. 393). What’s lacking in this equation to complete the dreams of the new media we have been reading about? For one thing, ease of use of the myriad of tools. Too much technical expertise is still required to operate them. We are nowhere close to Kay and Goldberg’s standard for Smalltalk: children as creators. Another is a common operating platform or interface for the tools. The seamless integration of disparate functions is essential to spontaneous and playful exploration and invention. Like Microsoft a generation ago, Google is attempting to foster a universal Android platform through a free, open-source model. However, encouraging Android to evolve at hyperspeed seems to be a recipe for fragmentation. Also, the necessity and inevitability of continuous improvement, even within products lines, renders both hardware and software obsolete. That requires users to constantly upgrade or lose the use of their data. I have a decade of documents that are useless because they are on storage media that were state-of-the-art in the 1990s and I didn’t upgrade regularly.

Then there is matter of matching symbol structuring to concept structuring as in Bush’s “web of trails,” Engelbart’s “antecedent links,” Nelson’s stepping “backward (or forward) in time” in documents, and Kay and Goldberg’s “cross-indexed file systems.” The capacity to create and navigate networks of thoughts is to me the real Holy Grail of the new media.

Finally, inevitably, is the human factor. Reaching a tipping point of media consciousness among leaders (technological, business, educational, and political) would seem to be a precondition to building a global infrastructure that that would make memex-type devices accessible to everyone. But the centrifugal forces of creativity and innovation as well as proprietary and cultural self-interests counteract the need for a stable or common core infrastructure. I don’t see that balance of forces occurring except perhaps for a very brief shining moment in the distant future. I am not a pessimist about the new media. However, I find myself settling for more limited incremental goals even as the window shades of my mind are being raised ever so slightly, and I glimpse the promise of the new media.

It has taken several days, but I’ve calmed down. Reading “Computer Lib/ Dream Machines” was a field trip in emotional archeology. Nelson’s critique of the traditional “items-sequences-dialog” instructional system stripped away my defense mechanisms and exposed a layer of fermenting rage. My entire K-BA experience consisted of being carried by conveyor belts of curricula past endless subject stations where teachers routinely attempted to infuse information and test retention before sending my batch of students to the next station. (Fortunately, I was jettisoned from the assembly line before the process was digitized in the form of computer-aided instruction.) I loved to learn and threw myself into it with intensity in every grade and most every subject. I did well because I was obedient and persistent and did not let the mind-numbing boredom kill my spirit. Too many of my peers were not that fortunate, dropping out mentally or physically along the way. Why the fury? Generations of students have been betrayed! Learning has never had to be reduced to a survivor’s contest or a test.

I must admit that my reaction is fueled in part because I feel threatened. As a teacher and academic administrator, I desperately do not want to be guilty of perpetuating the injustice of command-and-control, data disseminating, standardized educational processes. Nelson’s call to media consciousness inspires me. His lively and vivid descriptions of using the new media to empower rather than control users expose a layer of emotions deeper than my rage. I’m getting a glimpse of the Big Picture that he, Bush, and Engelbart advocated … and I feel hopeful.

Too often, hope is faith in something unseen. In my case, the hope of designing learning systems that empower students to develop their potential and pursue their dreams is a present opportunity. The Baylor School of Social Work is beginning a self-study for reaccreditation by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). In 2008, the CSWE Accreditation Committee radically altered the education and policy standards for reaccreditation. Gone are the prescriptions of subjects and sequence, infusion areas and clock hours. Instead, social work programs will be assessed on the competence of students at the end of the degree program. And guess what … the new standards do not even prescribe the outcomes!

This is almost the blank computer screen Nelson describes. My challenge is to help my colleagues and students use his Fantics concepts and the 21st century versions of hypergrams, Stretchtext, Thinkertoys, and Stellavision to design learning experiences that excite their imagination and engage them fully in the rigorous and fun work of becoming professional social workers. The reaccreditation clock is ticking. I have no time to lose. To lead in this process for my school, I need to overcome my intimidation of media tools. Media consciousness must transcend my ingrained habits of items-sequences-dialog thinking. I need to catch the wave. I’m trying. Stay tuned!

I approached Engelbart’s article with some trepidation. Reading about the conceptual framework underlying the mouse, the window, the word processor, text/graphic displays, and who knows what else in one article seemed a bit daunting. Fortunately, I had nothing to fear. Several paragraphs into it and I was hooked. Optimism permeates his lucid prose, and I am so impressed with his willingness to take the risk of writing a scientific report in several styles to engage the reader and communicate intricate concepts more clearly.

Engelbart embraces Vannevar Bush’s desire to let machines do mundane tasks of manipulation faster and more conveniently, enabling people to move beyond lower-level processes to higher-order thinking. However, progressing from manipulating files to symbolic thinking is not as effortless as Engelbart and Bush imply, regardless of the sophistication of a Memex-type machine. In fact, my foray into the digital medium from the early years of computers to the Web has been hampered by the devices themselves. Each device is accompanied by its own learning curve, and unless I use a new one intensely from the outset (seldom the case), I get mired in relearning vocabulary and operating instructions. Furthermore, the rapid introduction of new devices leaves me perpetually falling farther behind. I spend most of my time learning about hardware and software rather than applying their prowess to augment my intellect.

Engelbart’s description of his hand-operated, edge-notched card system provides a perfect illustration of my tendency to get bogged down in quagmire of lower-order processes. In the 1970s, I invested far too much money, time, and effort in using such a system to develop a personalized cataloging system for my library of books, reports, and photocopied articles. I quickly grasp the notion of indexing and sorting based on substructures of categories. I immersed myself in creating a notebook of relational database symbols and linkages. And I fantasized about the elegant data retrieval possibilities as I notched each card with far too many options.

Actually, conceptualizing and notching were the easy parts. Engelbart makes needle sorting sound as effortless as typing. Not so! I never mastered the art of using those long needles. Too many notches, I suppose. Also, I had lots of cards and poor manual dexterity. The result was a system too cumbersome to be practical. Just about that time, early versions of the PC appeared. One demonstration of a computer-based augmentation system, and I knew my edge-notched card system was history. I berated myself for a long time for over investing in the siren call of this mechanical system that apparently worked so well for others.

I won’t bore anyone reading this blog with further examples of my attempts to learn more user-friendly programming languages so I could make the computer my servant, only to have a newer, more powerful model appear. Pursuing the elusive goal of harnessing the digital medium in its various forms to augment my intellect has left me weary of trying yet once again to move beyond manipulation to symbolic interaction. Yet in the second week of the New Media Seminar I am finding myself being rejuvenated for the quest. I would never have expected that the pathway to engagement would lead me to excise ghosts of the past, especially a hand-operated, edge-notched card system!

This is my first blog entry ever. Frankly, if it wasn’t an assignment for the Awakening the Digital Imagination Seminar, I wouldn’t be writing it. But that’s why I am in the seminar – to be stretched! As I begin, I am surprised to feel vulnerable in a way that I don’t when writing for print media. Perhaps the feeling is due to the subject matter or that Gardner Campbell did not place any constraints on the assignment. Also, this type of writing seems to be tugging at me to express not only what I think about the digital medium but also how I feel as I wade into the swirling abyss of cyberspace. It’s not that I am unfamiliar with the Web. I mine its riches for work and leisure; and some of my publications and research are out there. But it’s only a tool. I don’t use it for social networking, playing games, leaving comments at sites, or Twittering (at least not yet). In Janet Murray’s terms, I rely on the computer’s encyclopedic and procedural qualities but have not been captivated by its spatial and participatory qualities (Wardrip-Fruin &Monfort, 2003).

One week into the seminar I am realizing that my original goal for the seminar – learning frameworks for evaluating trends in the digital medium – is too academic, too safe. I need to be willing to engage the medium in a more personal way, like writing this blog and Twittering, and risk being changed by the experience. I need to be a participant, a contributor however miniscule to the global dialog rather than merely an observer and recipient.

Just as I am attempting a more personal experience with the digital medium, the world witnessed its awesome power in dramatic fashion. A statement by a fringe pastor in Florida about his intention to burn copies of the Koran ignited a global firestorm of protest that commanded the attention and response of world leaders. With this episode echoing in my mind, I read today, on the anniversary of 9/11, Vannevar Bush’s “How We May Think” (Wardrip-Fruin &Monfort, 2003). He describes how technology can provide us with the opportunity “to encompass the great record [of knowledge] and to grow in the wisdom of race experience” (p.47). This week we saw the digital medium used not as a tool to facilitate global conversation leading to enlightenment and mutual understanding but as a weapon “to throw masses of people against one another …” (p.47) with stunning swiftness and tragic consequences.

I am dismayed by the hyper reaction to the pastor’s statement and frustrated with the digital medium that enabled the overexposure. The reactionary part of me wants to turn my back on the whole messy, chaotic world of cyberspace. Then I reflected on the context in which Bush wrote this article in 1945. The world had just witnessed the single most devastating instance of one nation using a technological invention, the atomic bomb, against another. Yet, he concluded his article with the statement that “… in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome” (p. 47). What is even more astounding about his optimism is that Bush’s own efforts contributed directly to the development of this weapon of mass destruction.

I am humbled and inspired by Bush’s courage to envision the benefits of and remain engaged in developing the digital medium in spite of the very real possibility that “[Man] may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good” (p. 47). I will try my best to use this Awakening the Digital Imagination Seminar as an impetus to embrace the best the digital medium has to offer and use it to further God’s Kingdom in my sphere of work.