Social Fluency and Improvisation
I want to point readers to Dave Pollard’s wonderful post (and not just because it expands on an idea of mine). My original graphic was designed to illustrate the concept of Information Fluency to a statewide group of information technology educators. Dave has taken the idea in a really interesting direction. I’m excited about the idea of social fluency and particularly the concept, in that context, of improvisation. It’s a much richer idea that includes the skills I normally refer to as representing “agility.”
I’m facing a few tight deadlines and don’t have time to give this the attention it deserves until next week. But I’m excited by the ideas that are coming together here about performance, self, and participation. Over the last few weeks, a variety of discussions of networks and groups, resonance, fluency, collective and connectives, and now social fluency and improvisation have given me many new pieces for a new region of the vast jigsaw puzzle that is my global conception, my personal theory of everything… and even a fleeting glimpse of how they might fit together.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:26 pm
[...] Desarrollo económico responsable wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptMy original graphic was designed to illustrate the concept of Information Fluency to a statewide group of information technology educators. … ave given me many new pieces for a new region of the vast jigsaw puzzle that is my global conception, my personal theory of everything…… [...]
March 1st, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Hmm. Not sure how I feel about the idea of (or term) social fluency. Feels a little like Greek life on a college campus. Besides, the interpersonal aspects I prize include both fluency and friction for both flow and traction.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Well, we can’t agree on everything. Your idea that it feels like “Greek life on a college campus” only highlights, to me, the artificially enhanced nature of social roles and actions in those artificial groups– but it doesn’t change the fact that we still operate in particular social contexts as part of networked social groups and can benefit from understanding our performance… for better or for worse.
I don’t see how the concept of fluency negates the idea of friction (or resistance). Seems rather binary to me. If anything, I think the concept relies upon friction, resistance, and the recognition of the individual (which is something I’ve been thinking and talking a lot about lately given the constant focus on groups, networks and collectives).
I’m not necessarily prepared to start applying the idea of social fluency in a generalized sense… I’m thinking specifically of the way it opens up the concept of information fluency in an important way that seems appropriate when talking about learning networks, for example. I’m particularly enamored of the idea of improvisation in this context, for educators and students. It’s something that I sense you value based on reading your blog writeups of your teaching and students.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:50 pm
A shorter response might be that I am fond of finding new metaphors and analogues for considering how I am in my various worlds and how I operate there. Without discounting other modes (such as the quite divergent posture of deliberate composition), the idea of being capable of improvisation within a particular sphere, is an ideal I seek.
March 1st, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Well, there we’re in perfect agreement (with only useful friction for traction as we move forward): improvisation is a splendid mix of many hours of practice and the emergence of what happens in the moment.
You’re probably right about the binary character of my response. Sometimes binaries matter–some kinds of commitments and faiths are rightly binary–but too often they eliminate vital nuances.
There’s a bit in “I’m One,” a song on Side Two of Quadrophenia, that will probably communicate my (perhaps unwarranted) uneasiness with the term “social fluency”:
I’ve got a Gibson without a case
But I can’t get that even, tanned look on my face.
Ill-fitting clothes, and I blend in the crowd,
Fingers so clumsy, voice too loud.
But I’m one
March 1st, 2008 at 8:18 pm
OK, I think I understand now that almost all my concerns center on the word “social.” On my way to bed, I did a quick thought-experiment and tried some word-substitutions. The first one that came to mind was “pedagogy-fluency,” sparking off the idea of improvisation (which I seem to be doing a LOT of these days as I teach–more than usual, for sure), and suddenly I felt the “click” in my head. Now clearly “social” resonates differently for the two of us, and that’s going to take some imagination on my part to tune myself to compensate for, but the “click” moment (interestingly related to the “blink” moment) demonstrates deep possibilities for me and that diagram. “Two-step Side-step,” as Murry Wilson once wrote….
April 12th, 2008 at 3:21 am
[...] – Social Fluency and Improvisation – Mainly useful for the excellent diagram at the beginning of the post. It’s a Venn diagram [...]