I’m glad that something I posted was worth a mention in OLDaily. I once asked Stephen if I was on some kind of blacklist since nothing I posted– regardless of the amount of comment or discussion it received, even among those Stephen constantly links to– ever merited even an oblique mention. It’s ironic that my post in reaction to some irritating timing of discussion was anointed, as it’s one of the most narrow in scope and response of any I’ve written about open content or open education.

So, I’m glad Stephen Downes isn’t completely Chris-Lott-Tone-Deaf… It’s just unfortunate that he is interpreting what I wrote in such a strange way. If I’m wrong in something that I said– and I might well be– that isn’t being demonstrated by Stephen forwarding other, related propositions with which I agree (both explicitly and implicitly in the very article he is pointing to). The only thing I actually said that Stephen even alludes to is my difference with Leigh Blackall’s post maintaining that there’s already enough open content. If Stephen believes that– and it seems unlikely or else he wouldn’t, like me, continue sharing his own materials and presentations and ideas– then we’ll have to agree to disagree. But it doesn’t mean I don’t agree with the more important part of Leigh Blackall’s post, or that of my friend Brian Lamb, who I couldn’t respect more!

The sequence of events was essentially something like this:

1. I posted that I was happy that we finally got some traction on moving our organization and faculty toward a more open posture… noting that sharing content in the form of curriculum materials is one step, as OCWC membership is one small part of what we are trying to achieve.
2. A series of posts and Twitters regarding the “boring” nature of “just sharing content” appeared on my screen, some proposing that there was much more to be done.
3. I responded, admitting that the timing was vexing, and agreed that there was much more to be done but that content was still important and that OCWC was one of the good guys in this area where we all benefit from working together.

That’s it. If Stephen or anyone else has something to demonstrate about the rightness or wrongness of anything I write here or anywhere else, I welcome it. But pronouncements that I am wrong, couched in an assertion of apparent opposition with concepts I agree with (!) and that are actually not oppositional at all, are just sloppy reading.

And it’s ironic that Stephen falls right into the No True Scotsman line of reasoning that I explicitly disavow. Sharing content is real open education, just as sharing process, collaborative teaching, and open classes are real open education. I have no feelings about “the OER movement” that I am supposedly defending because it isn’t a monolith. As I’ve said before, if there is a specific movement or organization known as OER, I am not aware of it. I use the term as a blanket label for the matter that we are sharing. I was responding to a number of specific posts on a specific topic and I tried to be as clear as I could in linking to those posts where possible and stating what I perceived them to be saying explicitly or implicitly. Nor would I characterize anyone taking part in the discussion– that I noticed anyway– as being critics of open education.

As I commented there:

The most wrong thing here is your interpretation of my article as being about something much more than it is. There are only two narrow “defenses” involved: the importance of continuing to share content and the help that the OCWC has been in facilitating that activity. I don’t work for a big university, we don’t have a sponsor, sharing through the OCWC is just one aspect of our engagement, and as I made clear– if you’d read the article(s) and what it says rather than reading what you want to be there– I agree with you that the open education movement is about much more than just sharing content. My post was a reaction to a very narrow set of circumstances, primarily not wanting the importance of useful sharing to get lost in the rhetoric being volleyed about to promote those further aspects of open edication, such as sharing process, context, and activities.

The comments on my post regarding Adam Kirsch’s essay have been quite interesting. It’s clear that I didn’t convey my point particularly well and that some responded without reading Kirsch’s whole piece, relying instead on my clippings. Those that did read the whole piece found other things to disagree about! I want to look more closely at a few aspects of the discussion. First: the bugaboo of recognition.

It’s a mistake to read Kirsch’s essay as positing that recognition is the sole motivation of writers. If anything, he partly makes a case for the opposite, recognizing that Gessen’s book and blog were problematic precisely because they spoke solely to a desire for recognition rather than a desire to make great art. But Kirsch rightly notes, also, that recognition is part of the reason that people publish. Does anyone who publishes– whether on a blog or with a small press or with a mainstream publishing house– maintain otherwise? If so, why publish at all? And if so, why not publish anonymously so as to remove the constant cultural tendency to consider the author?

Recognition is at the heart of attention. I agree, as does Kirsch, that writing solely for recognition is a problem. But it’s not just an important motivation for publishing, it is important in another way. Recognition matters because it’s a necessary ingredient for some proposed new (or newly evolving) art forms, such as Elizabeth Adams’ proposal regarding a new kind of essay. Adams, who objected strongly to Kirsch’s talk of recognition proposes that:

“…essays on blogs are actually evolving into something new, precisely because the medium invites give-and-take with readers instead of the open-and-shut exposition of a theme that is the essay’s traditional form.”

Where does that give and take come from if not from readers? Attentive readers come, in part from recognition and at the same time they are providing recognition. Recognition and attention are aspects of the same phenomenon. This phenomenon is one that all writers who publish are promoting: the apprehension of their work by another. In fact, writers who publish don’t just want apprehension, we want engagement. And we hope for a manifestation of that engagement, particularly if new participatory forms of writing are going to emerge.

Even if we don’t buy (or have yet to see) the evolution in practice that Adams talks about– which is fodder for a completely different post– attention and recognition remain symbiotic partners. Some writers, myself included for a long time, had an almost allergic reaction to the term. “We write because we have to,” we cry. And we do. But it’s likely that we have various motivations for writing, not just one, and even if recognition isn’t part of the motivations for creation, with publishing it almost certainly is. We publish to communicate in some way, and communication involves attention, which necessarily is and creates recognition. I don’t believe it’s philosophically coherent to maintain that we aren’t interested in recognition while at the same time publishing, linking to our blogs in our signatures, linking to our publications (online and off), and promoting a new era of participation and the benefits of that era to education, artistic forms, etc.

Of course I recognize the old argument chestnuts have some– and sometimes complete– validity: the problem of writing primarily (there is no “sole” motivator) for recognition and the negative connotation that is attributed to the term “recognition” (as opposed to attention). But I think it’s important to consider the issue, not as a motivator for one’s writing, but in recognition (ha ha) of the fact that recognition and attention is a phenomenon that is itself undergoing significant change… which was one of the reasons I recommended that Kirsch read Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody, which in part recontextualizes certain formulations of attention and recognition, such as celebrity.

In retrospect I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s still amusing that the discussion of recognition and artistry took over when I found that the least interesting aspect of two thoughts spurred by Kirsch’s piece: writers and social networks; future forms and artistry in the age of the collective.

[photo by midorionna]

I can’t decide if Adam Kirsch really, really gets it or if he’s so wrong that he’s almost bent back around to right, wormhole fashion. The whole essay on writer’s aspiration, fame, and the age of blogs and the Internet is worth a read, but here’s a taste that made me think:

The Internet has democratized the means of self-expression, but it has not democratized the rewards of self-expression. Now everyone can assert a claim to recognition—in a blog, tumblr, Facebook status update. But the amount of recognition available in the world is inexorably shrinking, since each passing generation leaves behind more writers with a claim on our memory. That is why the fight for recognition is so fierce and so personal.

Yet the bloggers who were so indignant at Gessen’s attempt to engross more than his share of recognition did not direct their indignation at literature itself. They did not want to dismantle the prestige of “being a writer,” but to claim it for themselves; they did not want to end the economy of scarcity but to move individually from the camp of the have-nots to the camp of the haves. In this they are like the snobbish narrator in Proust, whose fascination with aristocratic titles reached its height at just the historical moment when titles became completely meaningless. They are not revolutionaries but social climbers.

If that is the case, then the best strategy for writers in the age of the Internet may be to ignore the Internet and look down on it. If print is a luxury, make it a rare and exclusive one; if literature is antidemocratic, revel in its injustice. Make sure that the reward of recognition goes to the most beautiful and difficult writing, not to the loudest and neediest. Above all, do not start a blog, for the non-writers who wish they were writers will only despise you for choosing to meet them on their own ground. As one of the commenting voices on Gessen’s blog put it: “get off the Internet as soon as you possibly can. Every second you stay online…another 18-28 year old (that coveted demographic!) loses all respect for you.”

Kirsch definitely needs to read Here Comes Everybody which would provide further– and more insightful perspective– in the idea of celebrity and ego in the era of social media and networks. There’s both irony and revelation in the fact that Kirsch’s piece is fully available online, certainly managed by some kind of content management system… how is it different from a blog again (outside of a very narrow conception of blogging and an unseemly devotion to technological determinism)? Perhaps only really in expectation and execution– Kirsch himself clearly has a readership in mind that he feels bound to and, judging from this article, no plans to respond to even the keenest comments whose tenor and substance themselves belie his assertions.

That being said, the question of why we write and who we write for is never far from my mind, as is our place at the controls of the great participatory machine. I’m both suspicious of those who maintain that desire for recognition– or even readership– doesn’t play into the nature of their creation and cognizant that new intellectual and social currency is being coined for a multitude of new realms. I largely agree with Henry Gould, a fine poet, who asks in the comments:

… but is the desire for recognition really the essential motivation underlying art and poetry?

Major writers have certainly pointed in that direction. “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes). “Fame is the spur…” (Milton). But my guess is that even these exalted figures were voicing their views, not while at the pitch of creative composition, but in a moment of analytical distance & fatalism.

And then goes on to answer himself:

No one will deny that fame & fortune (along with anonymity & failure) are fickle, illusory, and at the same time pervasive social factors; but this state of affairs does not mean one must accept Fame’s (& Adam Kirsch’s) seductive argument, that Fame is the actual SOURCE of artistic making.

My primary quibble being the repeated insinuation that there is “a” (single or essential) motivation or source for artistic making. Where Kirsch sees bloggers as hungering for recognition, it seems as likely to me that many publish their without any real hope or thought of gaining readers precisely because the field is so large that they expect to be swallowed up. But as I believe all writers recognize, there is something important about writing “out” that differs from private journalling and letters tucked away unsent… even if there is no expected or desired reader at all.

Generalization is always dangerous, but rarely more intensely so than in talking about a group as diverse and widespread as “blogs” and “bloggers.” Perhaps writers do and don’t want recognition, do and don’t think of their readers… and maybe this is true of all writers, bloggers included. But at the same time, while I believe we are (or should be) in control of the technology, it undeniably takes effort and creates an interactive context that places deep and different demands on the finite resource of our creative concentration. Given this, perhaps those who posit less engagement for better writing are correct, just for the wrong reasons.

Kirsch’s final paragraph tickled me, veering off as it does into prose poetry:

So too with the virtual mind of the inconceivable future. When it looks for traces of us, it will not turn to novels or poems, but to e-mails, blogs, and Facebook pages. Mind will treasure these evidences of its own past, and devote all its infinite resources to interpreting them. And because it is infinite, it will have more than enough attention to give to each of our lives. Even the least articulate of us will become the focus of a kind of ancestor cult, subject to the devoted meditation of innumerable intelligences. The first will be made last, and the last first. At last, the scarcity of recognition will give way to the plenitude that has always been the mark of the messianic age. If only we could be certain that this was the future we had in store, no poet would ever have to write another line.

[image by BarryDahl]

I’ve gone from a hate-hate to a love-hate relationship with Apple over the last few years, but it can’t be a positive characteristic of my Apple Appreciation that as soon as I saw the title of Barry Dahl’s recent blog post I had a good idea what he was going to say and that I was going to agree (for the most part). I know that for Apple lovers the Borgish lock-in is like being sentenced to life with your dream lover. But that’s also known as “marriage” and those lovers become ex-lovers, and then all you can do is run away taking almost nothing with you.