digital digs

spread the wealth; build the wealth

Two interesting reports, both of which I came to through the Creative Class blog, that connect well with our current political discourse. Of course both candidates are promising everyone in America above-average incomes, b/c they believe, quite rightly, that Americans can't handle the truth and are quite happy to slay the messenger. But I digress.

A new UN Report (reported here in the Vancouver Sun) indicates that "Major U.S. cities including New York, Washington, Atlanta and New Orleans have levels of economic inequality that rival cities in Africa." No, the poor in the US obviously aren't as poor as the poor in Africa. But the difference between the poor and the wealthy is as wide. That jives with this OCED report (from AP) that also reports on inequality. This report notes that social mobility is lowest in countries with high inequality such as the United States, United Kingdom, and Italy. Richard Florida has noted that this kind of inequality seems common in US cities where the creative economy is taking off.

creativity, education, and catastrophe

In this keynote at Handheld Learning 2008 in London, David Puttnam addresses some of the institutional-structural challenges that face technology and education.

Puttnam's big picture is useful, even if somewhat familiar to those of us already in the choir. Recently, there was a thread on the Writing Program Admins list about what it would mean to envision FYC as a "born-digital" enterprise. That is, what would FYC look like if we thought of it as digital?

Clearly FYC is not and cannot be born-digital; it will have to be an immigrant. That said, I think the question must go beyond the traditional mechanism of what the individual instructor does in his/her classroom. What Puttnam points out is that the kind of shift we are looking at requires collaboration between business and education. We can build whole new technologies and applications to pursue digital composition, but we can't do that on an individual level. Despite that, this also may not function best through a top-down, institutional strategy. Large-scale collaboration of teachers, researchers, programmers, designers, students and others is also necessary. But I don't think that we can continue to foreground the atavism of the traditional classroom. We need to recognize what is truly valuable about FTF and integrate it into wherever we are going.

Puttnam also moves into a discussion of Ken Robinson and the issue of creativity. This is key as well. Because technological-educational reform isn't really about getting technology to help us better achieve the goals we have established. Instead it's about gaining a better understanding of creativity (including, but also beyond traditional artistic notions), understanding the role of emerging technology in how creativity will be developed and communicated, and building pedagogy from there.

10 seconds of exigency

So I'm loading groceries into my car this afternoon, and this senior citizen pulls his car up behind me and rolls down his window. He eyes the Obama sticker on the back of my car and says something like, "You know your man Obama has ties to terrorists. Maybe you should think that over." I just blew him off, told him to feel free to think whatever he wanted. After all, am I going to get into some political dialogue and/or argument with some old man in a parking lot?

I don't think so.

But I'm curious about the motivation. We've all seen bumper stickers and shirts with various slogans that we might take issue with. How many times have you felt the need to say something? What's going on in the mind there? Does the guy think he's honestly going to change my mind this way? If so, did he consider what might be the best argument he could offer with his ten seconds? Not that it would have mattered anyway.

Of course I don't think purpose was on his mind. This is just verbal diarrhea, a need to express some frustration at a worldview he can't understand.

vitalism and virtuality

Melvyn Bragg's latest BBC podcast addresses the issue of vitalism. As you might now, vitalism is the central issue of Byron Hawk's excellent Counter-History of Composition. There are some important connections between the concept of vitalism and theories of composition. As Byron fundamentally argues, "the problem urround vitalism in rhetoric and composition is that the discipline has selected one definition, equating it with romantic genius and individual expression, excluded vitalism from the discourse of the field based on this definition, and thus covered over the possibility of seeing what vitalism has become" (122).

So in Bragg's roundtable conversation, vitalism is situated in conflict with mechanistic/materialistic theories, which emerge as natural philosophy develops into science (with Descartes, Newton, and so on). The conflict really comes to life (excuse the pun) around the question of electricity (Bragg begins his talk with a reference to Frankenstein). Vitalism goes back to Aristotle and then becomes embricated in Roman Catholic doctrine until the appearance of scientific method. Vitalism does not simply disappear however (Byron goes into some great detail about this).

In thinking about this binary, one can perhaps see the reaction of hard-line Marxists to Deleuze and Guattari. D/G build upon this vitalist tradition through Nietzsche, Bergson, and many others. Marxism, on the other hand, is a mechanistic-materialist critical method, at least in the hands of many red theory folks. So the "ludic" quality of D/G is an extension of these vitalist principles. It is a similar theoretical perspective that informs the cultural studies-inflected post-process movement in composition, which, as Byron argues above, establishes vitalism as expressivism.

Importantly though, one can potentially view the process movement in a related way. If we see process as a mechanistic/materialist theory, as a means to make (the study of) written composition scientific and to demystify writing practices, then certainly that would fit into the discourse of the Bragg podcast. Vitalism still remains "expressivist" and attached to the molar conception of the individual. In this regard it remains attached a more religious or at least traditionally humanist notion of vitalism as spirt/soul.

My thinking about virtuality has run along resonant lines with Byron's study of vitalism and perhaps indicates the rich, iterative quality of Deleuze's work. Virtuality articulates a minor philosophical approach to materiality, an alternate conception of composition fueled by non-deterministic mechanisms (assemblages if you prefer). Either way, in this philosophical work, there is a particular development of vitalism that moves away from religious notions of spirit or divinity (as one of Bragg's contributors notes, one could see "intelligent design" as one contemporary instantiation of vitalism, though obviously quite different from Deleuze!). Instead it is a vitalism that, ironically, comes up through technological development: computers and information theory play important parts in the articulation of the theories of complexity that in some ways redraw this distinction between the mechanistic and the vital. Certainly such distinctions are not possible in D/G.

Anyway, the Bragg podcast is certainly worth a listen. Needless to say (but said anyway), Byron's book is worth reading. Here is an opportunity to think expansively about the possibilities of composition, to recognize that thought necessarily exists beyond the social just as writing exists beyond philosophy but that such a recognition does not require a return to the humanist individual but rather a step toward greater complexity.

a pedagogy of planned emergence

Below Steven Johnson talks about emergence at TED in a presentation made in 2003 but made available on the TED site this month. His discussion touches on a number of things that were quite new in 2003--Technorati, the long tail--but are now familiar stuff. What's particularly interesting to me, however, is his approach toward emergence that looks at what might be termed a kind of human-scale feedback loop in emergent information systems.

What do I mean by that? Well Johnson starts by talking about city neighborhoods and asks, rhetorically, who plans a neighborhood? Traditionally the answer is that no one does, that neighborhoods emerge organically, and that attempts to simulate neighborhoods through planning often end up quite comic, as disneyfied versions of themselves. The organization of the web is likewise an organic process. For the most part, Google search ranks and the long tail linking/popularity pattern are not planned. Johnson ends his talk discussing Dave Sifry's efforts to shift the system somewhat and since then we have seen any number of attempts to game these search algorithms for monetary or political purposes.

the pro-american world vs. purple states

You've probably read about Palin's remarks about the "pro-American" parts of the US. Of course she tried to clarify that statement, but everyone knows what she's talking about. And while I would use the term "pro-American," we can all recognize the serious ideological divides in our nation. The Republicans are playing divisive politics right now with comments like this and McCain's accusation that Obama is playing at "class warfare." I recognize the strategy; it's an effort to energize the conservative base. Meanwhile the Obama and Biden have been sticking more to the idea of everyone coming together, something we've since since 2004 from Obama. I recognize that strategy too. And I think both sides believe in the claims that lie behind those strategies. I wish I could believe that we could come together. My skepticism regarding that possibility is one of any number of reasons why I wouldn't make a good president.

If you look at the polling, you will see nothing surprising. Across most of the South and the Plains, the Reps have double-digit leads. The Dems have similar leads in the NorthEast, the West coast, and across most of the Mid-West. So are these really different ideological universes? The opposing view has been this idea of "purple states" (purple state maps),  that the mixture of left and right in America is more pronounced than what the red-blue state story would tell. I guess that depends on your viewpoint. Even if you live in the country in a deeply red state, say 2/3 McCain, one of your neighbors is voting Democrat. But is that person voting Obama because they share ideological perspectives with the majority of urbanites? Or you can switch it around, does the Manhattanite voting Republican share an ideology with the rural Texan? I would think not.

So the patriotism line is a rallying call for a particular ideology of course that claims to celebrate the American individual (as long as those individuals think like me: if not then they hate America and are terrorists). On Larry King last night some conservative talking head called Obama a Marxist. King asked if that meant that Republicans were fascists. Of course not was the reply, b/c Republicanism is about the individual. This was the obvious retort but King didn't go there.

Now I don't expect or desire to live in a country were everyone share the same ideology. There have likely only been a few short periods when Americans came together like that: Pearl Harbor, 9/11, etc. But then soon afterward we were divisive again.

But most importantly, we shouldn't imagine that democracy is a rational process. If you have a preference for McDonalds over BK or Coke over Pepsi or Bud over Miller, are these rational choices? Or would it be more accurate to say that they are affective responses? That one feels better. If you thought that the election of Bush in 2004 was irrational, if Obama gets elected this time around, do you think it will be b/c Americans suddenly became rational? And you can flip that around if you are coming from the other political perspective. What % of American voters do you think can give a reasonable accounting of the candidate's policies and offer a logically functional argument for why they prefer one over the other?

You know it can't be more than 10% or so. Besides even the experts can't say with much certainty what, if anything, will work to fix our economic and political woes. So how can anyone make a rational choice between plans? No, the election has to be pure ideology and affect. And I absolutely do not mean to suggest that we should abandon the democratic process! I just mean that we can't expect the process to be rational.

politics, advertising, and the 24/7 news cycle

Campbell Brown, one of CNN's anchors, offers the following observation: McCain and Obama will spend $30M between now and election day on advertising. If they really cared about Americans then shouldn't they be donating that money to feed the hungry or something?

And I wonder what kind of cynical political hash would be made of such a move? But more to the point, this self-righteous contention conveniently overlooks the complicity of CNN, other news networks, and the rest of the media (new and old) who feed off of all this garbage. Like many, I've been following the news more closely of late, partly because the election and partly because of our economic situation. How many times do they come on and say "Americans don't care about Bill Ayers or Joe the Plumber"? And then the next sentence is a story about this kind of negative campaigning. Negative campaigning gets most of the attention.

Who is so obtuse as to not see this formula. Here's 30 minutes about negative campaigning and people's reactions and some polling data (as if an election were a horse race). Then we hear voters say, "I don't know enough details about the candidates' economic plan." Well how 'bout we spend those 30 minutes of news time doing some actual reporting and investigating?

web identity project

Students in my Writing in the Digital Age professional writing course recently completed a web identity program (assignment). I don't often write about class assignments, but this one went off pretty well so I thought I'd share.

Basically the idea is that most of my students have a fairly limited experience with creating online identities. They are on Facebook or maybe MySpace. That's about it. They have some awareness of the potential danger of putting things up in Facebook that might come back to haunt them later. But at the same time social networking is an integral part of their lives. It's not something extra that they can just cut off. They should not be expected to edit their lives to meet some presumed set of standards by which they might someday be judged. At least I don't think they should.

At the same time, you don't want to make a complete public idiot out of yourself.

I think one of the ways we will balance this in the future is by developing professional web identities that complement our social web identities. The purpose of this assignment was for students to go out there and see what different types of social media they could find, try them out, and report back. They looked at two per week for four weeks and then had to pick one they thought would be a good place to develop a professional identity.

They looked at the microblogging sites, various social networks, media sharing sites, social bookmarking, and so on. Most of them locked on to sites like Ryze and LinkedIn as places to build professional identities. But we also talked about how one could build a professional identity through blogging or maintain professional relationships through twitter and so on. The students got introduced to a wide range of things about which they had no idea and really gave some thought to the notion of having a professional identity.

I'm not sure if the assignment will spark an immediate change in their behaviors, but that's not the point. The point was for students to experience some of the variety of social media out there and think about social media as a tool for managing/producing social identity.

Anyway, I'm quite certain I'm not alone in running assignments like this, so let me know what you think.

Teaching composition in a new economic era

Most people I meet like to say that their industry is recession-proof. I hope they are right. This would seem to make sense in higher education, or at least some sectors of higher education. When people lose their jobs or the job market is bad, they return to college or stay in college. I know this was a factor in my own decision to go to graduate school in the early 90s. At the local community college where my wife teaches FYC, the student population is exploding. Of course this assumes that students can get loans to go to school, and at some point one imagines the affordability issue tips the scales away from college or at least away from certain colleges.

One thing we can say about FYC I believe is that it is relatively cheap. The main cost has to do with class size. In better economic times the small FYC classes lower the overall class sizes at a college, and it's probably the cheapest, effective way to do so. That always looks good in a US News and World Report ranking kind of way. Also, if a college staffs these classes with graduate students and/or contingent faculty, then the delivery costs are also pretty low per student. Given that humanities faculty come comparatively cheap, even on the tenure-track, even having full professors in English teaching composition is not an unreasonable expense in comparison to business or engineering faculty for example. Students have to be sitting somewhere earning credits; from a strictly fiscal viewpoint, it would make sense to reduce the per credit costs as much as you can. In fact FYC is so inexpensive, that everyone seems to want to get in on the business with AP credit, online courses, and so on. Of course things aren't that simple. It's easier to cut contingent faculty than tenure track faculty. A college invests less in contingent faculty, and they are, at least in the institution's eyes, easier to replace if the need arises in the future.

Understanding money and debt

I won't pretend to be an expert in economics but here is a fairly straightforward, if lengthy, video about the evolution of money and the concept of debt. Toward the end the video gets less historical/documentary and more polemic, but it is also prescient, since this was uploaded Feb 2007.

Let me know what you think.