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

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.