abject learning

My favorite new media theorist was better known for his work on a piano keyboard. Here’s something he wrote more than forty years ago:

One of the certain effects of the electronic age is that it will forever change the values that we attach to art. In fact, the vocabulary of aesthetic criteria that has been developed since the Renaissance is mostly concerned with terms that are proving to have little validity for the examination of electronic culture. I refer to such terms as “imitation,” “invention,” and, above all, “originality,” which in recent times have implicitly conveyed varying degrees of approval or censure, in accordance with the peculiarly distorted sense of historical progression that our age has accepted, but which are no longer capable of conveying the precise analytical concepts they once represented.

Electronic transmission has already inspired a new concept of multiple-authorship responsibility in which the specific concepts of the composer, the performer, and, indeed, the consumer overlap. …It will not, it seems to me, be very much longer before a more self-assertive streak is detected in the listeners participation, before, to give but one example, “do-it-yourself” tape editing is the prerogative of every reasonably conscientious consumer of recorded music (the Hausmusik activity of the future, perhaps!). And I would be most surprised if the consumer involvement were to terminate at that level. In fact, implicit in electronic culture is an acceptance of the idea of multilevel participation in the creative process.

— From “Strauss and the Electronic Future,” 1964

He gets it better than a lot of people today who owe their livings to electronic culture.

Ever since I saw him venture out on an Ohio winter’s night in sandals and shirtsleeves without a shiver I’ve suspected David Wiley had some kind of superhuman constitution. Add another tale to the legend — yesterday he gave a closing afternoon keynote in Baton Rouge, flew north and west across the continent through the night (of course flights were delayed), and delivered a killer morning address here in Vancouver at an hour I found painfully early without any travel at all.

But I was there with time to spare. Though I am a regular at the Open Education Conference, David has not given talks at these events (occasionally he co-presents a tool demo or something). I’m pretty sure this was my first chance to hear him really dig in since he visited UBC more than four years ago.

Even cooler, although he tossed off a couple tried and true riffs like the polo parable this talk was “freshly squeezed” new material… 160 slides delivered in about 30 minutes, stressing the value of learning from the web, not just with it, and the absolute importance of openness to pretty much everything we as educators want to do.

The full audio is here (36:41 17MB MP3) and will reward a listen. If you are pressed for time, I extracted a few segments that I thought were especially provocative (each MP3 about 1MB):

* Simple wins (1:53)
* Openness is the future (1:47)
* E-learning was great 12 years ago (2:18)

Thanks to David for permission to post, and Brandon Muramatsu for giving me his file when my own recorder shut itself down after 12 mins. The files are licensed CC Attribution.

David showed the smarts and humour I expected, but the thing that struck me most about his presentation was his natural sense of narrative, how the pieces cohered into a real story, building on one another. As he shifted from theme to theme, he punctuated by sharing the following lines from the Shaker song Simple Gifts, one at a time, illustrating the values of simplicity, openness, and humility:

‘Tis the gift to be simple,
’tis the gift to be free,
’tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,

I’m not sure whether it was restraint or thematic unity that kept him from citing the couplet that follows in the same verse:

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
It will be in the valley of love and delight.

I can only hope so.

Believe it or not, I try to restrict my commentary on American political matters on this weblog. Anyone who knows me is aware what a monumental struggle it is to show such restraint. I’m going to bust out here.

Once again, internet radio is near death. Execution day is set for May 15. The Copyright Royalty Board (unelected, appointed with the usual care for the public interest we’ve seen elsewhere) has more than tripled the royalty rates for webcasters. David Byrne has written a good background piece.

I’m not an American citizen, so I can’t sign a petition or pester elected officials as a constituent. Maybe you, or better yet a few of you, would consider doing so on my behalf.

All you have to do is compare the present state of internet radio with what you’ll find on the analog dial to get a sense of what SoundExchange (a front organization set up by big record companies) will deliver to us if it has its way. This is a fundamental battle for the right of individuals and small groups to have an expressive voice in our larger culture.

…or at least this sordid open content pusher can only hope. The first taste is free. And if we do it right, you can continue to feed your info-addiction without coughing up money as well.

We presented our session on distributed content networks a couple hours ago. As usual, I have no sense of how it went over. The attendees refrained from pelting us with rocks and garbage, but didn’t seem all that into it either. Maybe I came on too strong, maybe they were tired from a long day of presentations… And not one person defaced our presentation wiki, even though I more or less begged someone to do so.

Audio here (57:38, 26MB MP3)

Tomorrow, David Wiley kicks off the day.

My colleague Novak Rogic and I are presenting at the BCNet conference tomorrow on our shared obsession, which though it lacks a snazzy catchphrase essentially comes down to a distributed publishing model. Content is created in whatever environment the author feels most comfortable with — so long as it generates full RSS feeds. Content is then syndicated, maybe remixed with other feeds, and then republished wherever the readers are, in as many places as is desirable.

This miniscreencast is something of an experiment in content development in itself. From the idea, to the planning, to the recording, to the writing of this blog post, the total time investment was something like twenty minutes. Rather than wait for the perfect time to materialize, I decided to just bash the sucker out. During recording, I had a firm time limit enforced by an impending appointment, which may account for the frantic tone. I hope the result isn’t incoherent. Novak and I definitely share a vision, but our record at getting others on the electric kool-aid syndication bus isn’t as successful as I’d like. Maybe we are just tripping in a self-reinforcing collaborative hallucination. That’s usually my kind of party, and I’ll wig out on it indefinitely unless an intervention happens.

Click To Play

Original .mov file (9MB)

I took a red-eye flight home last night, touching down in Vancouver about 11PM local time, assuming I had missed the Canucks‘ first playoff game in three years. When I emerged from the baggage area and saw the clumps of anxious fans huddled around TVs at the airport bar, my heart began racing with joy, as I knew instantly it could mean only one thing — a sudden death overtime marathon. It was near the end of the second OT period at that point, and when the taxi got me home the third OT was half done…

Context for non-fans: hockey is divided into twenty minute periods, three of which make up a regulation game. In the regular season, tied games are decided with a five minute OT, followed by a shootout if necessary, but in the playoffs the teams play full 20 minute periods until someone scores, no matter how long it takes. It’s rare for play to go more than one or two extra periods — after all, it only takes one goal to end it all, and as players tire out it’s only natural that fatigue will eventually cause a breakdown that ends with a puck in the back of the net.

It seems like every year there’s at least one playoff game that turns into a marathon, and I love these games. It takes me back to being a kid, when my Dad would extend bedtime indefinitely for extended play, stretching my nights well into forbidden territory. So no matter who’s playing, I almost always find myself sticking these games out to the bitter end — and it is unimaginably bitter for the losing side. The appeal is certainly not the quality of the play, as the exhaustion factor and every player’s fear of being the goat leads to a slow and very conservative style of play. The longer the game goes, the higher the stakes, and the more devastating it is to be on the losing end. I find the drama irresistible.

And here was a marathon game involving my own team. After the third overtime period finished (the game now doubled in length), I took the dog for a walk, and there was no shortage of television lights flickering in otherwise darkened houses, well past midnight. There was no snow on the ground, but the scene felt very Canadian.

Henrik Sedin, one of the Canucks hot Swedish twins finally ended it all after 78 minutes of overtime play, 138 minutes total (that’s playing time, the actual duration was nearly six hours). That makes it the longest game in Canucks’ history, and the sixth longest game in the NHL’s 90 year history. (Of course, Wikipedia has it slotted in already.)

“Bobby Lu” made 72 saves in his first career playoff game, only one short of the NHL record. And though I am, like most Canuck fans, prepared to bear Roberto Luongo’s children, I have to say I’m glad that Kelly Hrudey’s name is still on the books — I wasn’t much of a fan when he played, but he’s won me over as a goofy but amiable and perceptive analyst on CBC’s broadcasts.

As a kid I remember reading and rereading Stan Fischler’s story about the longest game ever played, when the Detroit Red Wings beat the Montreal Maroons 1-0 in the 1936 playoffs, with more than 176 minutes of play ending at 2:25 AM. The winner was scored by Motter “Mud” Bruneteau, a rookie player who had been nailed to the bench most of the night, and was therefore relatively fresh when finally put into the game. This was in the era before Zambonis, so the ice was a total mess for most of the OT, contributing to the length. With better ice today it’s unlikely that record will ever be broken, though last night I was beginning to wonder…

…and you know what? I don’t either. Especially this week. But I did some of it anyway. Partly because it’s a form of procrastination that I don’t feel so guilty about. But mostly because I can write an ill-formed rumination on some stuff that is confusing the hell out of me, and it prompts responses like this one from Dr. Glu. As the A-Listers say, read the whole thing, but man, I can’t resist excerpting the conclusion:

It seems to me that the next layer of thought in this whole shebang will have to account for connectivity, barriers, inhibition, and instant access as multidimensional, dynamic, and dynamically related (and necessary) ingredients of a complex model of cognition and education.

So when people ask me, “how do you find the time to blog?” I often as not respond with something like, “it’s not a question of finding time, it’s a question of survival.”

Which absolutely nobody gets. But I keep saying it anyway. I’ll acknowledge I have plenty of room for improving my job performance.

O.K., not everybody can use this, but it’s important. Dr. Alexander has started up that Airport Restaurant Wiki he floated in a previous post. People who spend too much time in airports know that good eats can restore the will to live at vulnerable moments.

I don’t think we can use that Portuguese place as a benchmark, but if the food is decent, and the experience better than soul-crushing, add it in. (You have to ask Bryan for the password).

The poor fellow is presently stuck in Boston airport. I recall there is a pub (kind of open-space concept, near a gate) that served up a good bowl of chowder when I sorely needed it. If only there was a wiki back then I could have added it to with more specific information! If you know Boston airport, and can help a good man out, why not Twitter him?

In any event, if you travel a lot, spread the word…

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Upside Down World, originally uploaded by Cesar R..

So I was intuitively, or perhaps temperamentally, on the side of Stephen and Darren when it came to Twitter, but reading posts by so many other friends, especially Bryan’s, I felt I needed to try it for myself. So far, I’m surprised how much I dig the feeling… kind of a hybrid between IM, goofy fun micro-blogposting, and a discussion board in which I decide who to follow. We’ll see if the distraction factor overrides other considerations, but so far it’s been a gas.

So via my Twitter feed, I learn that Chris has just posted on something I’d never heard of before (quoting entire short post, hoping he’ll stretch notion of fair use for me):

OK, let me see if I get this– a Tumblog (the kind of thing easily created with the very-hip-right-now Tumblr service) is essentially a kind of online commonplace book for people with short attention spans?

Seriously: a regular “old” blog for regular posts with text and commentary, a Tumblog for cool stuff sans comments and text, a social bookmark service like del.icio.us for linklogging, and Twitter for micro/nano blogging with 140 characters of text or less?

Is it any surprise that even tech-savvy folks are starting to feel stretched thin?

And I had the same first reaction. I groaned when I read his post. But when I followed the links, and saw a few Tumblogs (hate the term, but I usually hate every new Web 2.0 word at first) I found I kind of enjoyed them — they felt like groovier, stripped-down blogs, reminded me of the early days — which for me is the distant year 2001.

Then this morning our regular departmental meeting was unexpectedly canceled (an emergency preparedness expert might have had some kind of emergency and wasn’t prepared), and I found myself at a table with a few free moments with our young tech staff, who I don’t spend nearly enough time talking with. As it happens, Joe was playing with his Tumblr site — I hadn’t realised how easy it was to splice in content from his blog, his Flickr feed (he has it set so only items tagged with “tumblr” go through), his Twitter feed, and his Last.FM feed of events he’s attending (see you at the LCD Soundsystem show dude – woo-hoo!). He could also have integrated his 30 Boxes calendar, but decided against it for privacy reasons.

Joe describes his Tumblr site as “like SuprGlu except I can update it with quick posts too.” The interface for posting to Tumblr is very fast, very simple, and quite elegant. Suddenly I began to get it. Suddenly my old blog started to feel as clunky, creaky and tired as I do much of the time. Suddenly my head began to spin…