Name That Squirrel

I've been checking out the potential names for Powell's Books' squirrel. Pretty good suggestions. The original post (with background story) and potential names is here. It's a nice departure from holiday wackiness.

WebTools4U2Use is Cool (but this title is not)

A lot of my projects at hand are focused on information literacy, and have consequently brought me to a lot of Library 2.0 resources. Here's one that I think is particularly useful. It is a wiki intended to "provide information about some of the new web-based tools (Web 2.0) and how they can be used and are being used by school library media specialists and their students and teachers." I think it is really useful. The link is above and HERE too.

Ah, The Serendipity of New Literacy

The Boston Globe published a piece this week that profiled a study whose findings assert that "the boom in online research may actually have a "narrowing" effect on scholarship". The article can be accessed here. This seems like a pretty broad claim and, from my reading of the article, the study does not necessarily differentiate between research practices, expectation, and trends within different disciplines. One central point in the article was that serendipity had been extricated from the research process.

Granted, I'm partial given my ties to an Information and Library Science School, but I do also teach in an English Department. One of the benefits, or curses, of my status as disciplinary interloper is that I'm on varied listservs. A recent post on one of my "English" listservs was the following:

Libraries are also making serendipity difficult. They do this with online catalogues
which make the casual viewing of records more difficult. They do this by returning to
sequestered stacks where books are retrieved by electronic means and not open to random
browsing. *serendipity: an "inefficient search strategy" according to a reference librarian I spoke to in 1982. I had just mentioned that I recommended that my students find an area of the open stacks where books about their research topic had been found and begin reading
indexes in books nearby for related terms.

I just can't get behind this sentiment, although a lot of other subscribers to the listserv could. My first reaction was that "Oh, this is disappointing but not surprising." Then I thought, "Hey, this is a certain sign that something is truly at stake." So, seriously, what value is serendipity as nostalgically constructed? Certainly there is technological serendipity which, of course, requires literacy in navigating emergent structures and repositories of information (e.g., digital libraries). Could it be that this post to the listserv is not a lament of lost serendipity, but a lament of lost or irrelevant literacy instead? Seems like it.

CODA

maybe a more accurate post on the listserv could've been (courtesy REM)

Storm into the boardroom of the conquering elite.
Did you recognize the madman who is shouting in the streets?
Destroy the things that I don't understand
Destroy the things that I don't understand.

Technology as Magic

This Daily Show piece reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke's three "laws" of prediction (namely #3):

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Magic indeed...check it out.

Google Reader Re-re-articulates Literacy

Google Reader now translates most any blog in most any language. Here's a story on TechCrunch about it. Critics are remarking that the translation is pretty tight...folks are impressed.

I'm struck by this and what implications it will have for notions and practices of literacy. It's early on in the game, but without necessity what will be the motivation and utility of mastery of non-native languages? Obviously, I am not going to argue that such projects and literacies will become non-essential and a mere boutique fancy. However, with any technological advancement like this, the notion of what makes one "literate" (technically and philosophically) does shift a bit.

One recent parallel might be that of GPS usage and literacy compared to old school expertise in cartography (of course GOOG is a key player here too). An argument could be made that such impressive technological developments and dissemination actually encourage literacy, albeit not literacy as it was conceived pre-technological breakthrough. If this is indeed the case, then the pressing analysis is whether or not such flattening, opening up, and general accessibility to "knowledge" and "literacy" is happening in a way that empowers and enables versus negatively reinscribes...does this techno-utopian emergence mean a new paradigm of possibility?

At least for the moment, it seems much more exciting than sitting through those semesters of German class. Hmm, maybe that's the point. Wait, is that good or bad?

This video has been around for awhile, but it's still worth a (re)view. Richard Miller's imagining of the "New Humanities" hinges on the commitment that the real function of the humanities is to foster incisive creativity across disciplinary space...creativity that addresses the textures (and textualities) of our everyday life. Too many times humanities departments fail to do this and, in my opinion, ensure their accelerated path toward irrelevance. I like his exposition particularly because he insists on disciplinary heteroglosia shot through multimedia composition. Creative social practices anyone?

Library Usage is Up

Library usage is on the rise...check out this KIRO 7 video at Seattle Public Library.

Now, Google's Good for Granny

As I was surfing the web this a.m. I ran across a story about a recent study at the University of California, Los Angeles. The study set out to measure brain activity of older adults as they search the Web. The findings were interesting and operate as a nice antagonism to Nicholas Carr's "Is Google Making Us Stupid" published last summer in The Atlantic. The link to CNN's coverage of this study is here.

The study was paid for by the Parvin Foundation and was published by Gary Small and Susan Bookheimer, both UCLA professors, and Teena Moody, a senior research associate at UCLA's Semel Institute. The paper was published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

But I really was drawn to this piece, which I've only skimmed, because it seems to touch on how new practices of literacies do enable, sustain, and maybe even sharpen minds of all ages. Often the popular press argues for the legitimacy of digital natives' critical thinking skills that stem from gaming or the like, as well as how the same digital natives have their own (new) "texts" and attendant literacies. What I hope we'll start to see is that these are new times for everyone and not just young whipper-snappers.

Facebook, Safety Schools, and Victorianism over Literacy

Ok, here's a hard sell. TechDirt recently ran a story, " Rejected From College Because of Your Facebook Profile", in which anecdotal evidence shows what has been rumored for much time...that admissions folks gander more than occasionally at applicants' online social network profiles. The author, Mike Masnick, gives a pretty fair accounting though ultimately concludes that applicants shouldn't expect their profiles to exist in a vacuum and that as much as applicants strive to "put their best foot forward" they should include their Facebook profiles in such efforts.

Yeah, yeah, yeah...I think most individuals get this. Sure, there will be those that claim this is out of bounds and not appropriate use of admissions staff time. That aside, I'd like to argue that such snooping and censure is simply out of step with with what we need to be critical of in our cyberculture present and future. If our young digital native scholars are as much the person they represent and broadcast on Facebook, then why don't we scrutinize things like the literacy skills that go into (or don't) Facebook representation. If we take this line of critique, even the current gawk and lament gang has a "way in"...they could lambaste applicants who are unaware of the rhetorical context within which they exist. Basically the same path currently taken, but without the tacit Victorianism that's at work currently (the Victorianism that suggests "we know you do these sordid things we just don't want to see them).

I'd like to see an acknowledgement of the spaces and identities that young people (and old people too) create. If we can remark on those spaces versus merely trying to censure (and censor) OSN users, then we can get into a realistic and progressive discussion/development of ethics...online and otherwise. Then an actual (and virtual) conversation over creativity, stupidity, reinscription, and possibility can take place.

Banned Books Week September 27–October 4, 2008

This week is ALA's Banned Books Week and it's pretty exciting on a lot of fronts. Hopefully everyone can locate and attend an event in your area.

Maybe because I'm around a lot of young people and academics, and I take such open mindedness and progressivism for granted, but at first thought I was rather blase about this year's celebration of Banned Books. What I mean here is that I was looking forward to it but thought that "Hey, we've all moved past this crazy McCarthy-esque fear of change and critique and difference". I thought that maybe these books could be celebrated on a literary level and, while they're always already political, I could let political and cultural critique reside in the background. But, alas and alack, the blogosphere delivers.

One of my favorite bloggers, Jessamyn West, posted an exposition that touches on Sarah Palin's purported inclination to stricture thought via banning books at her local library. Of course, there's a lot out there about this now. The usual suspects materialize. Bogus banned books lists appear. Conservative bloggers, like Michelle Malkin, chime in. The next thing I know we've got another brouhaha that would make McCarthy proud. This is some parade yesiree Bob.

I really hope this is an opportunity to consider why certain individuals and groups are so resistant to the type of consideration and critique that banned books (or any other type "text") can offer. What is really at stake when someone wants to ban a book? Is it really "values" or is it something more sinister like a fear of losing power or questioning of identity? Is the fear that operationalizes to ban these books a misguided internal fear of introspection and courage to engage the promise of the unknown?

Maybe we'll all figure it out this week. Regardless, here we go again.

iConference 2009

The following may be of interest to many of you out there.

The Fourth Annual
iConference 2009
February 8-11, 2009
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
iSociety: Research, Education, Engagement


CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
The Fourth Annual iSchools Conference brings together scholars and
professionals who come from diverse backgrounds and share interests in
working at the nexus of people, information, and technology. With invited
speakers, paper sessions, a poster session, roundtables, "wildcard"
sessions and ample opportunities for conversations and connections, the
conference celebrates and engages our multidisciplinary efforts to
understand the scholarly, educational and engagement dimensions of the
iSchool movement.

This Call for Participation solicits contributions that reflect on the core
activities of the iSchools community as we move more fully into the
iSociety. These would include reflections on: research topics, practices,
methods and epistemologies appropriate to an iSchool; educational practices
in iSchools; and engagement between the iSchools and wider constituencies
both in the United States and abroad.

*e-inclusion in the iSociety: addressing under represented groups among
iDesigners as well as iConsumers (e.g., women, children and youth, the
aging, people with disabilities, racial and ethnic minorities, immigrant
communities, non-Western cultures)
*Becoming a "green" iSchool
*What is "engagement" in a research institution?
*The influence of globalization on the nature and scope of iSchools?
research, education and engagement
*Information infrastructure development in the home, in organizations,
in communities, in society, globally
*Cultural information systems; e.g., multilingual information systems,
information systems for memory institutions or for indigenous and ethnic
communities
*Preserving digital information and ensuring information quality,
security and privacy
*Information management; e.g., personal information management, life
cycle management of information, digital asset management
*Information organization; e.g., ontological modeling, the Semantic Web,
social bookmarking
*Information policy, ethics and law; e.g., remembering and forgetting in
the digital age

SUBMISSION TYPES

Papers
------
Contributed papers presenting original research, design products,
theoretical developments, educational applications and engagement
implications related to one or more of the conference themes will be
considered. Papers should be 5-8 pages in length and suitable for
publication in scholarly or professional journals. Papers will be refereed
in a double blind process. Contributed papers may be submitted
individually, or up to three may be grouped by theme for a single session
(provided the paper authors represent different institutional
affiliations); the latter is encouraged. Please remove all identifying
author information. The electronic system will ask for a separate
submission that identifies the authors, the title of the paper, and
theme(s) the paper addresses. Accepted papers will be placed in an online
repository.

Posters
-------
Contributed posters presenting new and promising work or preliminary
results of research, design or educational projects related to one of more
of the conference themes will also be considered in a separate category.
Especially welcome are posters contributed by students. Abstracts of
800-1500 words will be refereed in a double blind process. Please remove
all identifying author information. The electronic system will ask for a
separate submission that identifies the authors, the title of the poster,
and theme(s) the poster addresses. The title of the poster should be on the
abstract. Accepted poster abstracts will be placed in an online repository.

Roundtable Discussions
----------------------
Roundtable discussions will permit small group discussion of such topics as
theory, research methods, core curricula, programmatic requirements, and
mentoring, particularly as they relate to the conference themes.
Roundtables will be open to all interested conference participants. Those
wishing to host a discussion should use the electronic system at the link
above (insert link here) to submit a statement of interest of 800-1000
words stating research and development interests in the area, a set of
questions that the roundtable leaders will use to facilitate the
discussion, and indicating the names and affiliations of roundtable
leaders. Proposals are encouraged to include diverse perspectives on the
topic of interest.

Wildcard Sessions
-----------------
This is the opportunity to step "out of the box" and propose a very
different type of session?debate, research critique, fishbowl, etc. The
session should be 1-1½ hours in length and relevant to the conference
themes. Description of the goals, topic, format, participants, and
organizer of the session should be provided in an abstract of 800-1500
words, exclusive of supporting images, tables, and references. Be sure to
identify your abstract as a wildcard proposal. All named participants
should have already agreed to participate.


INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS

Formatting
----------
Please use the official ACM Proceedings Format, available at
http://www.acm.org/chapters/policy/toolkit/template.html, for all
submissions.

Deadlines
---------
The deadline for submission of complete papers, abstracts for posters,
roundtable discussions, and wildcard sessions is Sunday, November 30, 2008.
Authors will be notified of review decisions by Monday, December 22, 2008.
Instructions will be provided for final submission upon acceptance.

Submissions
-----------
All submissions should be made at: https://www.ischools.org/conftool/

If you had a login in the iConference system last year, please use the same
login. If you have forgotten your password, the system can send it to you
as long as your email address has not changed since last year. If you have
changed email addresses, please contact iconference@ischools.org for
assistance.

Review Criteria
---------------
Especially welcome are submissions that exhibit any of the following
characteristics:
*Addresses the theoretical, methodological, epistemological and / or
topical dimensions appropriate to an iSchool
*Addresses educational and / or pedagogical themes appropriate to an
iSchool
*Addresses ways in which scholarly work and educational activities can
connect to constituencies beyond the iSchool community
*Exemplifies multi- (or inter- or cross-) disciplinarity in:
participants; graduate or undergraduate education; literatures used;
research methods employed: theorizing; publishing; or engagement
*Develops intellectual geographies in which attendees can learn about
intellectual domains not their own but part of the multi-disciplinary
iSchool space.

In addition to relevance to the conference focus and themes, submissions
will be judged on such criteria as quality of content, significance for
theory, education or engagement, originality and level of innovativeness,
and quality of presentation.

Web of Science v. Google Scholar

I recently embarked upon the characteristically academic task of doing a citation analysis on a few articles I’m using for a research project. Google Scholar and ISI’s Web of Science were the two search engines/databases that I used. Of course, I’ve got some thoughts here…especially as libraries are concerned.

I was particularly struck by the stark differences in results that Google Scholar yielded and the results found when using ISI’s Web of Science. At first glance this may seem like stating the obvious, however this experience with citation analysis crystallized a point that I have been ruminating upon for awhile. Libraries are not disappearing, nor are librarians. They still matter, though they matter differently, and the key features of libraries exist as facilitation to access information and the expertise to curate and consult.

Without the radical juxtaposition of this citation analysis it would be easy to believe that Google results are significant enough and that using a library database is cumbersome and ends with results of similar utility (granted, this belief is largely bound up in perceived ease of usability with the respective databases). Being able to examine the different results and then assess the appropriateness of the sets to academic research sharply delineated the difference between a “social” search engine like Google and an “academic” search database like Web of Science. Of note, there was no overlap in my results and Google yielded two international documents as well as unpublished papers (with no citations to them) available only on faculty websites. ISI’s Web of Science yielded peer-reviewed journal articles with significant citations to each article. I continued to discover that my original article characterized an instance of a citation network whose impact and research context included both peer-reviewed published articles and unpublished scholarly work. In fact, the most recent reference was unpublished with no citations to it. This observation that both searches yield different results supports a potential argument for using Web of Science and Google Scholar in a complementary fashion, just as it supports a claim for criticality when evaluating the results.

Unfortunately, it seems that most searchers, and even researchers, can find themselves viewing these two products as nearly interchangeable. As a caveat though, my particular example might not be typical of the majority of searches when using Google Scholar and Web Science. Even so, the fact that my original article has influence and impact on a wide variety of scholarship and response shows that these tools work best when used in a complementary fashion and with clearly defined research questions. It makes sense to have an awareness of context and what one is looking for, and to consider this when using various search strategies (i.e., subject search, article/citation search and analysis), just as it is rewarding to have a “literacy” about the information tools at one’s disposal.

Whining About AAPL's Hegemony

Jim Goldman, of CNBC, has a recent post where he takes former Fake Steve Jobs blogger, Dan Lyons, to task. The piece is here. In short, Lyons claims that Apple has become increasingly hegemonic in its own right, no longer the upstart (jeesh, I guess I can't use "maverick" now). Lyons even makes the stale way-past played out comparison of Apple as Microsoft.

On a side note, such rhetorical maneuvers are so tired and preposterous. It's kind of like when someone is "describing" a band and they say: "Oh, they're alternative/folk-punk/emo/whatever and they sound like REM/The Deadly Syndrome/Bright Eyes/blah". Or, do you ever get tired of the claims when basketball season rolls around and there's that guy who always says that so-and-so is the next Jordan. Even if band, ballers, companies are similar or analogous to other earlier instances and contexts, is this really the best and most incisive way to describe commonalities? Maybe, as a Compositionist, I'm making too much of this.

But my "real" point here is, or at least it starting off being, that I like Goldman's dis of Lyons' claim that big Apple is really big bad Apple. I've been around long enough now that this pattern bores me. Once a company or individual or group emerges with fresh, radical, anti-hegemonic products or practices folks love it. The more folks love and embrace said products or practices the more hegemonic the entity becomes. Eventually, such products or practices become the norm...then the entity may even become "the man" as it were. Really? It's gotta be more complex than this.

So, is this a function of the populous truly investing in progress and change or is it mere boutique enthusiasm for the next big thing, merely for the sake of the next big thing (so truly American)? Another possibility is that such laments actually stymy a sincere conversation about the vices and virtues of an Apple or Microsoft. It creates a discursive space dedicated to the back and forth between journalists and faux pundits, resulting only in achievement of cheap identity work for the rhetors making the same old arguments.

Rant over, thanks for reading, I'm going to go grab some Dunkin Donuts' coffee before they become the next Starbucks.

Brickt, Bricked, Broken: Music Management and Socialization

Last week my vintage 20GB iPod bricked...died, dead, for good. As much of a techno-enthusiast as
I am, lusting after the newest in small tech, I continued to use this older version of the iPod even though I have a newer model. Maybe it was because it was the first iPod I owned, or that it worked fine for what I needed, or maybe I was just proving that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds". Regardless, my 20 GB is done.

Maybe fortuitously Apple announced that it will be unveiling upgraded iPods next week (9/9/08 to be exact). I have been seriously considering becoming current, or au courant, even.

But I digress, since my iPod bricked I have been riding around listening to CDs (instead of uploading my library to the newer iPod). This experience has proven to be a really weird meditation of sorts. I have become accustomed to certain characteristics of portability and management when it comes to music. This is stating the obvious to most (and prior to actually driving and listening to CDs such a comment would've seemed inane to me as well). I'm so privileged that I can use the word anachronism to describe this...kinda like Douglas Coupland used to talk about trust-funders faux dropping out and working as a sort of boutique slumming at McDonalds (see Generation X circa 1992).

My round-a-bout point to all this is: beyond mere socialization how many of us have any real vision for what we want to do with our music? Yes, I know there's a lot out there about DRM and exchange of mp3s and accolades for not being beholden to the album format. But what I'm asking is what do you want from your music in grandiose terms? How do you know? Is it from seeing live shows (assuming people still do that)? Is it from being really solid at online music exchange or consumption? Is it from roller skating with a ghetto blaster around your local suburban mall...wait, I bet you can't do that. What socializes us to music use and approach versus what socializes us to music appreciation and experience? Are we losing something here? At what point do the old practices seems weird, anachronistic, or even unfruitful?

It's possible to pose such questions due to our accelerated information culture that's buttressed by better and better technologies. I'm still hoping my philosophy for this materializes before September 9th. Gotta go change out some CDs.

Just a Little Taste of the Bass 4U

ok, jeesh...how do i do this. i've got divergent interests.

the first is props for the society of american archivists' annual meeting. it's going on now...link here. as derrida says (and this is HUGE):

...the concept of the archive must inevitably carry in itself, as does every concept, an unknowable weight. The presupposition of this weight also takes on the figures of "repression" and "suppression," even if it cannot necessarily be reduced to these. This double presupposition leaves an imprint. It inscribes an impression in language and in discourse. The unknowable weight that imprints itself thus does not weigh only as a negative charge. It involves the history of the concept, it inflects archive desire or fever, their opening on the future, their dependency with respect to what will come, in short, all that ties knowledge and memory to the promise.

always already politics in naming and organizing.

here's where it gets weird, different, or better. i was cleaning out my "old" study and came across some old Bukowski that i used to use in classes i taught at a community college during and right after my M.A.

as i remember it, my pedagogy might have been better then. it certainly was unbridled. here's an old handout.

the people are weary, unhappy, frustrated, the people are
bitter and vengeful, the people are deluded and fearful, the
people are angry and uninventive
and I drive among them on the freeway and they project
what is left of themselves in their manner of driving-
some more hateful, more thwarted than others-
some don't like to be passed, some attempt to keep others
from passing
-some attempt to block lane changes
-some hate cars of a newer, more expensive model
-others in these cars hate the older cars.

the freeway is a circus of cheap and petty emotions, it's
humanity on the move, most of them coming from someplace
they
hated and going to another they hate just as much or
more.
the freeways are a lesson in what we have become and
most of the crashes and deaths are the collision
of incomplete beings, of pitiful and demented
lives.

when I drive the freeways I see the soul of humanity of
my city and it's ugly, ugly, ugly: the living have choked the
heart
away.


um, er, yeah.

Kindle to Target Colleges

Well, classes have started and young scholars are scurrying about. Part of their scurrying involves trips to the bookstore to drop cash (or plastic) on textbooks. Like everyone else, I've heard students complaining about the cost and weight of many of their texts; fortunately, they haven't complained outright with regard to my singular required text (all other readings are available free-o-charge digitally).

These laments are part of the reason that I think it's pretty cool that Amazon intends to market a version of its Kindle to colleges and universities. I read about this on TechCrunch...the link is here.

I am sure that opposition to this will take many forms ranging from fear of Amazon's hegemony (because traditional purveyors of textbooks aren't hegemomic in their own right) to "oh my gosh Student Stores has gone/will go out of business!" to complaints that nothing beats the feel and experience of a "real" book. To all of these detractors, I would posit that what matters most is the engagement with the content we call text regardless of its form.

That said, the change in form is pretty impressive and if readers prefer it, good. I'm the last person who'd want bookstores or libraries to disappear, however I don't think they will even if every young scholar has a Kindle in hand. These institutions will endure because, at their heart, they are communities of practice. They'll endure even if the tools that enable that practice change.

What I'd like to focus on with the possible impact of Kindle on college campuses is how user practice and expectation might change. I'm also curious about how access might benefit users of all types and how users might be able to do more with (inter)textuality. In short, I'd like to take the ethics we use to critique Kindle's potential entry and use those ethics to direct Kindle's entry toward the utopias we keep pining for.

Newspapers as Social Networks

I get the Seattle Times news feed in my reader...it's a good "paper" and it makes me feel connected to the Emerald City. Several days ago Brier Dudley crafted a piece entitled "Newspapers as Social Networks" where his central thesis seemed to revolve around an adamant claim that newspapers (and "traditional" news sources like NPR) still matter and that they can be construed as social networks. This seems right-headed and I buy in, but I can see how folks might now assume the term social network to mean what used to be referred to as online social network (OSN). This is, of course, fair play since language leaks, changes, and morphs in response to shifting contexts and paradigms. Web 2.0 has certainly fostered many shifting contexts and practices...realities do look differently these days.

In reading Dudley's piece, namely where to responds to Mark Anderson's tacit claim that newspapers are dead, I could not help but think of the video Googlezon EPIC 2014.

The faux documentary profiles the demise of print media and the acceleration of web-enabled hyper-consumption. Check it out.

While form has certainly changed (i.e., print) the utility of content has not. Analysis and information that comes from content is still valued and sought after, maybe now it's just in digital form. Who authors such analysis has changed too. Sure Web 2.0 allows unlimited authors, some dopes and some well-qualified pundits, but the best analysis does still matter. This assumption is akin to the claim that Google is making us "stoopid" (see previous post); and, it assumes that when authorship was a function of power and access and print was the dominant medium that people were enlightened and ever-critical. Now that the form has changed and there's more content all of a sudden everyone's confused, lazy, and more doltish than ever. That's a tough sell for me.

My take on Dudley's reminder that newspapers still matter, though they matter differently, is buttressed by a belief that "reading" as a discursive practice still happens and the communities that do this are increasing (not decreasing). I guess, I'm arguing that "reading" matters and its definition (like that of social network) changes too. Indeed, it should also be noted that merely "reading" is not a cure-all for ignorance or unenlightenment; critical engagement with any text happens beyond mere deployment of a technical literacy act. I hope and believe that people do want incisive commentary and useful information, they just forage differently for it. The social network is still there, it's not new--just sustained by a digital form now...one that requires new acts and practices of reading, and of community.

Damn the Canon

It seems like a month of Sundays since I've blogged...syllabi, research, and baby created the perfect storm that pulled me away. But, alas and alack.

So, to that end...those last two sentences are what I love about blogs...the context and constructedness of the reading and writing that happens there. The discourse can be hokey (see above), high brow, insightful, or inane. The geographical texture is just amazing and, being a Compositionist, I'm grateful for it because I'm allowed a ton of latitude and unfettered reflexivity that other spaces don't provide.

All of this sentimentality plays in to the debate that happened recently when Clay Shirkey "dissed Tolstoy". My pal Mike Brown turned me on to this melee. Check it out at:

http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge251.html#rc

The story is about halfway down the page and includes many responses worth a skim through.

What I like about the debate is that it's an old one and I'm hoping that Shirkey's point gets examined to the degree that it deserves. Broadly speaking, he is right to claim that no one reads Tolstoy and the like AND that new practices of "reading" as well as the "texts" that get "read" are not novels or contingent upon historical notions of logocentrism. If he is fetishizing the web, "The Wire", and whatever else the same way that Tolstoy gets fetishized by self-deluded professors of literature, then shame on Shirkey. However, I don't think that 's his game. I hope he's not bound up in the the same teleology that canonists are...my take is that Shirkey's simply stating that this is the space that's been authored. Like it or not, it is what it is...it's the use(s) of literacy that the populous has authored. Vulgar Marxists be damned.

As we embark on consideration of this proposition, let's first ask ourselves: if Shirkey is correct then who has to give up power (lit profs) and who obtains access (teenagers)? My take, pretty cool possibilities...back to the syllabi.

Post-BotCamp Impressions

It's the day after BotCamp and I am slowly unpacking the experience. The impressions that seem to last at the fore revolve around the importance of what I'm terming as "the experiential". Basically this is a reference to kinesthetic learning, or learning by doing and interacting with actual objects and artifacts. Please (re)read my previous post and linkage to BotCamp if you need to...it's a quick skim through.

What's huge for me as I comb through my ethnographic notes is the impact that BotCamp participants felt from walking through the woods and handling plants, leaves, and trees. All of the technology enhanced curriculum we designed really facilitated access to vast amounts of information (which was the point), but the exhilaration and learning seemed to stem (no pun intended) from actual material relations.

Too much of our curriculum seems to fetishize technology, simulation, and "the virtual". Not that technology, simulation, new media, etc. doesn't have a pretty huge role in pedagogy and in life...it does. However, materiality still matters. Ideological and social iterations that are massively distributed through virtual relations and networks ultimately play out in the physical...there is no way around that.

But...the only way to realistically synthesize technology and its attendant virtual and/or hyperreal worlds is to argue for an adamant resistance to dualisms (dualisms that ultimately result in an equation where technology/simulation supplants material interaction). In a sense I'm thinking of a sort of reanimation of Donna Haraway's cyborg theory.

To that end, we are already cyborg to the degree that our technological tools have "presence", we depend on them, and they mediate our reality. Importantly though, our technological tools do not replace our reality. Techno-utopians often fail to accommodate for this and techo-dystopians amplify it a bit too much (or at least I hope they do). Plus, technology is not merely deterministic. There is no way, I mean no way, to control how individuals and groups will make do with technology once it's available and subject to users' competencies and resources (e.g., time and money). A flexible pedagogy and practice is the only way to accomodate this. Back to the notes...more soon...

Check Out The September Project

Fall is just around the corner and I'm starting to think about all the great things my favorite season brings. One event that I've followed for the past few years has been The September Project. I've lifted the description from the website...it's below...get involved if you can.

Welcome to the 5th annual September Project! The September Project is a grassroots effort to encourage events about freedom and democracy in all libraries in all countries during the month of September. September Project events are free and organized locally.

In 2004, we began the September Project to break the silence following September 11, and to invite all people into libraries to consider topics of patriotism, democracy, and citizenship. Initially, events focused on September 11 and largely took place on September 11. As the project evolved, events spread throughout the month of September and focused on issues of freedom and democracy.

To date, public, academic, school, government, and special libraries around the world have organized September Project book displays, community book readings, childrens’ art projects, film screenings, theatrical performances, civic deliberations, voter registrations, murals, panel discussions, and so much more. What will this year bring?