Talkbubbles put a new—err—twist on the paperclip.

Office Pr0n… it’s all good.

Because I heart Demetri Martin and (sometimes) social networking, Martin’s Daily Show Trendspotting segment on Social Networking made me laugh:

via @courosa

UPDATE for Canadians and other Fine Foreigners: Above video might not work for you outside of the US, so here are is an alternative at MilkandCookies that might work. If there are other possibilities, let me know!

From Reuters:

“Iranian TV, quoting an unnamed source, said Neda was not shot by a bullet used by Iranian security forces. It said filming of the scene, and its swift broadcast to foreign media, suggested the incident was planned.”

Of course this is in part a cynical ploy by an increasingly desperate government, but it also points to a potentially significant misunderstanding of modern social media. There are many people (not just “over there”) who likewise find the fact that this young woman’s death was filmed and the speed with which it became a global phenomenon incomprehensible or unbelievable. It’s not unlike, but obviously much more serious than, the average cluelessness exhibited by many politicians and administrators of institutions across the cultural spectrum.

Just in case it’s not clear, I think the “postdigital” project is a worthy one. As I read it thus far, it’s recontextualizing the predictions made by, among others, digital nativists (I’m making words up left and right today) w/r/t an assumption of what is currently seen as a separate, digital problematic as a subsumed, integrated part of life. There’s obviously some (critical!) difference in considering when that will happen– some of the digital native enthusiasts appear to think it has already happened in a significant way– but the important work of considering what that means to be a teacher, a learner, a community member– a human being when this technological bubble we live in is no longer confined and divided, when it is no longer digital, but just is… well, that’s important stuff.

It’s also a risky activity, necessarily abstract, still in its earliest days of infancy and highly likely to be completely wrong. We just aren’t very good at these kinds of predictions which are about transformation rather than extrapolation. Recognizing that we are bound inside a cultural and technological frame unfortunately doesn’t provide a way to step outside it.

But this thinking and guessing and feinting and throwing out of ideas does need to be done and I admire Dave and others for tackling it and clearly striking a nerve right away. If this discussion and evolving philosophy is an avenue that can be used to shift the conversation from the machinery to the humanity, then things I’ve written and talked about here and in public for just the past month (not to mention for a long time before) should pretty convincingly attest to my support and sympathy. If it can provide a path so that people like Jen and I can stop talking past one another and get to the things that I know we agree on but can’t seem to find a settled place to engage with and enlarge upon, then consider me signed up and ready to make a donation.

Unfortunately, the only donation I have to give– my thoughts on what I’ve read so far– is wholly inadequate and causing more distress than good. It’s not what I want and the way I seem to be coming across doesn’t represent who I am or want to be.

Ian Truelove writes:

In the context of 52group postdigitalism [link added], dwelling on the digital – even to de-digitalise it, or liberated it from the constraints of binary – is a form of techno-lust. It is digital fetishism, even if it is played out in meat-space.

Through the first two-thirds of my college career, I loved this kind of statement. And I still love the language– there’s a kind of poetry in the language of criticism that evolved from pomo jousting that sadly isn’t perceived by as many readers as it should be. It’s a poetry that creates its own rules, infinite in its historical nutshell.

But the same words that can make music in one context become highly ambiguous and fuzzy in another. The beauty of these words and thinking (and I engage in them plenty) is that they can be endlessly justified.

Consider “dwelling.” What does it mean to “dwell” and why do I get the feeling that it will likely play out in what I suspect will be a meme for a while (the postdigital in this new context) as either whatever the writer wants it to be in the context of whatever current critical engagement emerges or the sole alternative to ignoring technology?

And consider the sudden conflation of binary code with binary constraint on actions, as if there is a productive connection between the former and the latter…. awesome isn’t it?

I’m not knocking it. I’m amused. And amusement isn’t a bad thing. Nor is the process of redefinition and the manufacturing of something new where nothing new yet exists. Sometimes that manufacture carves out a space where something new can emerge. But the first stages are always funny, where the words are beautiful but not much– or not much that is novel– is being said, and whether you find any of it believable or not depends wholly on intuition and a generous dollop of faith in the author(s)… which, incidentally, I do possess.

I’m still trying to gather my own thoughts about it—which goes some way to explaining why this, ostensibly about a paper is actually a tangent—but Dave Cormier and a mysterious posse have created a draft paper exploring a perennially important question: what’s next? Preparing for the Postdigital Era is an attempt to:

shift our thinking away from the simple digital/analogue distinction of technology towards a less divisive and more nuanced context for work; a human context that focuses on the essence of our work rather than the appearance.

I suspect that the ideas in this paper inspired @injenuity’s question for Howard Rheingold:

Ask him what ed tech folks and "integrators" are going to do for a living when technology is assumed and invisible.

I pushed back a little on this concept because it seems to me that “technology” never becomes assumed and invisible… specific instances of it do. So the question is either irrelevant—because there will never be an “after”—or the definition of “technology” needs to be narrowed. My relentless prodding (it’s my lot to be the skeptic, which nets a lot of conversation but very few friends) lead to Jen’s clarification that poses a much more interesting question:

Not questioning advancement of tech. Hoping for age when ppl are curious, engaged and aware to explore without help from specialists.

Setting aside that the term “specialist” doesn’t feel like a good fit with many of the “ed tech folks” and “integrators” I know (perhaps they should be excluded anyway since most of them would love to work themselves out of that particular job, not only to open the door for richer activities, but because they know as well as anyone that the changes which demand their services just keep on coming), I can’t think of a technology that hasn’t involved specialists when it was new… and the more active and participatory a technology is, the more valuable such specialists are. For a while, anyway.

The biggest question might be what happens in a “postdigital” age, but the more productive question is smaller: what happens in a post-current-technology age, when those few technologies and applications (literally and functionally) that survive have become common and commonly-understood enough that specialists aren’t needed (for that set of technologies at least)? To circle back to the reason Dave’s paper is important: nothing. Or at least nothing good. Not unless the actions and states of mind that allow one to be engaged and aware are actively and consciously promoted and reinforced. The lack of curiosity, engagement and awareness that typifies our environment (not just in the single sphere of education) has nothing to do with the complexity of technology. Quite the opposite: it’s reinforced by the affordances of that technology which make it easier than ever to satisfy our need for engagement with the equivalent of junk food.

By analogy: no one really disputes that modern agricultural methods and food production techniques, which have resulted in a greatly higher caloric availability to the average instinctually survival-minded human being, has resulted in an increase in those humans’ average weight. In some countries– like the US– obesity is commonly considered an epidemic and it’s clear from research over the past decade that, in fact, this increase in consumption is directly at odds with our natural instinct to live a longer life. For we lucky ones who live in this environment of plenty rather than scarcity, survival instinct– to eat what you can when you can because you can’t be sure when you will have the opportunity to eat as much (or at all) again– is, in fact, working against our survival.

This doesn’t make me a caloric determinist… in the end we are what we choose to eat. But the effect of the affordances of the technological apparatus that is our food industry does have an effect and it is decidedly not neutral (in any useful sense of the term). In the same way, while we can choose sustained engagement and deep attention, more and more we choose not to. The technology doesn’t make us that way, but the functional result isn’t much different than it would be if it did.

For the most part, people don’t exhibit a lack of curiosity because their natural curiosity is being thwarted by technology any more than they eat poorly because their desire to eat healthy is thwarted by difficulty in finding, obtaining or preparing healthy food.

Dave’s paper is, I think, going in the right direction, reframing the picture in terms of personal, authentic experience—and I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the details later—but it doesn’t go far enough in examining the same assumption that inquisitive activity and exploration are natural activities that informs Jen’s question and the damage that has resulted from those assumptions. If anything, I’d guess that biologically it’s the opposite, and culturally our institutions of education and the edifice of many families and peer groups don’t go very far in instantiation/facilitating that mindset when they don’t outright punish people who go in that direction.

NMC 2010 will be in Anaheim, hosted by USC. Why come to L.A. after being in idyllic Monterey? Three reasons:

1. In Monterey you could go whale watching, in L.A. you can go star-gazing… for Britney and Justin and…
2. In Monterey you get discounts for boating, in L.A. you will get discounts for Botox
3. In Monterey we have been fortunate to honor the man who invented the mouse, in L.A. we’ll honor “The Mouse”

[My reaction: wow wow wow wow wow. It’s really hard to write anything meaningful while in the presence of someone who has given so much, been the source of so many ideas, and whose vision has only been realized (so far) in the smallest part. I am so humbled and awed. The fact is, that with all the debate and frustration and excitement, Doug Engelbart’s vision gets to the core of what matters and why any of us should be engaged in education and technology, not for teaching and learning, not for entertainment and communication, but to make something better of the world and ourselves, to augment what humans are and find a way to what we can be.]

NMC Fellow Recognition for Innovation, Creativity and Learning

Introduced by Lev Gonick and with Kristina Hooper Woolsey.

In 1964 Doug Engelbart presented a demonstration of ideas that would influence technology for the next 45 years (and beyond), and bringing to the forefront the idea of human capability augmentation. Without what he did much of what this conference—and the NMC—is about would not be possible.

[I never tire of watching the video of “The Mother of All Demos”]

The turning point for Engelbart came when he sat and asked himself what he should focus on and the answer that came to him was: how can I maximize the effect of my work to help all mankind? “Since the beginning of human history we’ve been augmenting ourselves. How much difference does that make? Think of the invention of the plow and what it did. …Which brought me to the idea of augmenting the human intellect collectively.”

“There’s an unexplored frontier out there.”

“I think of the way technology will change the way we think and communicate… and I don’t mean we’ll communicate via email, but how our symbols and context will be wholly changed. … people keep saying we’re there now. And then later we’re there now. No, we aren’t there.”

Engelbart introduced the idea of “Network Improvement Communities” (NICS). It’s a value system… when the networks connect us there is a possibility to truly augment the human condition.

Kristina Woolsey: “It’s an evolution… the poor dolphin came on land and then went back to sea… it’s on-going. There’s a lot left to do. The mouse is great, for me particularly, but Doug has a much larger and more important idea. The mouse is one part, but remember even in the beginning there was another chording/stringing machine, and many more ideas of how we navigate and explore information. Even with something as simple as a mouse we have only a tiny piece of the big picture, that is one way of many to think about this space. … This isn’t about machines, but about the way cultures change. Some people are scared. And when you’re the one being changed… another thing we don’t talk about enough: linking. The ability to have specific and non-linear connections. That was a big deal… the fact that it isn’t seen as a big deal is itself a big deal! Doug gave us the platform to begin. It’s easy to think of media as a thing we do or share, but that’s not what Doug means and not what we should mean either… it’s what we say and who can say it and how we can share it.”

Larry Johnson: the last day of the annual conference is a time for reflection. It is a time to evaluate the values of the New Media Consortium.

At the core: NMC values experimentation. Every day.

There are so many extraordinary things going on that in a way the NMC Center of Excellence Award is a representation of the norm… but it is worthwhile to recognize some of the outstanding work. The award recognizes the very best of the institutions setting the standard for the work and values represented by the NMC.

Recipients of the 7th annual NMC Center of Excellence Awards are:

Abilene Christian University
“Recognized for their leadership in the use of mobile technologies across the institution.”

ACU Mobile Learning

Abilene Christian University had a vision of what could really happen with the embrace mobility and constant connection… beyond notifications, they asked: how can mobile technology transform our institutions and the teaching and learning within it?”

Inspired by the debut of the iPhone, ACU innovators gathered together and considered what it would mean if every student had a computer in their pocket? How can it be more than just putting devices in the students’ hands? ACU wanted to transform the model of interaction and engagement and become a leader in investigating the use and integration of mobile technologies.

Some functions in student and instructor testimonials: using MyACU for navigation of the new campus, use of FlipBook to share images and facilitate peer feedback, provided a way to fit more into limited teaching time by providing instant access to links and media being used. And it provided a regular way for students to participate and contribute.

“Because of the community and peers surrounding this award, this is kind of the MVP of technology and teaching awards.”

The Center for Digital Storytelling
“Recognized for their global role and leadership in advancing the art and practice of digital storytelling.”

The Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS)

Even the brief snippets of stories are powerful: stories of a mother dying of aids and trying to figure out what will happen to her children, adopted children learning about their parents, oral histories…

CDS workshops aren’t just about technical training and creation of a product… they are about teaching participants how to transform their lives through digital storytelling.

A CDS instructor working with Alaska and American Natives: “When they find out what it is, students want digital storytelling and they want it now. For them it’s a way to finally have a powerful voice.”

A testimonial from a student storyteller: “It was a place I could explore things I hadn’t been able to explore before… and I learned that I could create these things I’d seen but never though I’d be able to do myself.”

Joe Lambert: “People come in and start making stories right now. Creating a story isn’t like writing about it… it’s about getting into it. … When YouTube went big, we won. It was a recognition that stories were important and broadly could be shared. … We are claiming the right to produce what we are—as people—and reclaim some ownership of our life process.”

Joe Lambert: “To everyone who is in the room—and who hasn’t yet created a digital story—it is our mission to see that everyone is able to get their story out into the world.”

La Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
“Recognized for their leadership in the areas of open educational resources and technology.”

La Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

NMC’s global reach wouldn’t have happened without UOC’s help, particularly their offer to translate the Horizon Report into Spanish, opening that report up to a large part of the world formerly not served. Following that came Catalan, and others… which opened a floodgate of translations including Japanese recently and Chinese and German in the next few weeks.

UOC has 47,000 students around the world, including 27,000 in Catalonia. The name of the university originally meant we were open to the people… now it means that we are open to the world. This award confirms that they are on the right track with continuing to innovate in openness and user-centered design with students informing the conception, development and operation of their virtual campus environment.

(Note to self: check out details of their document creation model, using xml + transformation.)

The recent Open EdTech meeting brings together leaders from institutions and organizations from around the world to attempt to bridge the technological, political and pedagogical issues faced by educators and institutions around the world.

There isn’t much that’s formal about being a “featured blogger” for NMC, and I’m humbled at being in the company of Gardner and Leslie, but I know one thing for sure: I don’t represent NMC as an organization or it’s membership as a whole. I only represent myself, an NMC member. Given the diversity of the NMC membership in attendance here at the Summer Conference I’m not sure anyone could represent this whole group!

What I write here is purely my personal perspective. The only thing I can do is try to be honest and engaged, here and in the active Twitter stream.

The entirety of guidelines for my participation here is as follows:

“It’s not an expectation that you blog lavish praise for the sessions (we expect them to be great enough to speak for themselves); we just want to increase the amount of social media sharing of the event activities, and having some regular blogging is a piece of that strategy.”

I’ve appreciated the opportunity to contribute this year since I doubt I’ll be asked to do so again after this!