EDITED VERSION FOLLOWS: changes made several hours later after much thought and further revelations.

When I first saw Jon Udell’s latest Infoworld weblog, I rubbed my eyes to make sure I was seeing straight: what he writes is so close to what I’ve been thinking and (intermittently) blogging about over the last few months that I thought I was seeing incontrovertible proof of telepathy. The new weblog leads to a recent Udell piece on the O’Reilly Network that fleshes out the argument in more detail. In both instances, Udell has synthesized and articulated matters of the highest importance for everyone in higher education–let’s make that for everyone in education, period, which would be, oh, everyone.

To take Udell’s analysis even further, two pieces need developing (thank goodness there’s still some work left for the rest of us!), both of them to my mind crucial elements of any comprehensive communication paradigm. One is metaphor. (I’m including analogy as a subset of metaphor.) I’d argue that the synaptic gap enacted by metaphor–and the leap-bridge enacted by understanding metaphor–is a vital part of the “getting it” Udell describes. There’s more here than the typical constructivist educational model can offer, in my view. Scaffolding is important, but new understanding must always be in terms of something already understood, and at some point that paradox yields metaphor. The other crucial element that needs developing is aesthetics. In fact, I’d call aesthetics the elephant in the room here. Ideas of elegance, even of beauty are implicit in Udell’s own prose: lovely parallelism, exquisitely timed syntax and punctuation, compelling paragraphing. Elegance is implicit in the idea of “iterative refinement,” too, just as it is in the kind of Occam’s Razor satisfaction inherent in a well-made solution to a logical problem. I suppose I’m reaching for another concept here, however, one that goes farther than precision and problem-solving. I’m looking for the elation that conveys joy, hope in living, and a moment’s respite from a broken world. I’m thinking about music, maybe even the music of the spheres. If engineering, engineering on the scale of the sublime. I don’t think of this quality as separate from precision or persuasiveness, but it’s more than just those things. (I don’t mean by “just” to downplay their critical role, either.)

All of that said, both of these Udell pieces are absolutely essential reading. Every time I read Udell’s work, I get my “favorite author” rush: you know, the kind where you think to yourself, “I must hunt up and read everything this person has written, and then read it again.” Cool. We must get this man to come speak at an EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative session. Note to self: invite this man to campus! Second note to self: make sure Udell meets Katherine Blake Yancey, whose recent CCC article on “Composition in a New Key” is also right on point in this regard. I wish Yancey’s article were online; I have the link-to urge and feel frustrated that I can’t.

Convergence. Synchronicity. To quote Yancey, “we have a moment.” Yes we do.

FURTHER EDIT: I’ve just discovered another reason for the convergence: Udell had actually read, discussed, and linked to the blog where I had initially discussed and linked back to his blog and podcast. Without a trackback, I couldn’t see that he had done so. In effect, I had been part of a conversation without knowing it. I’m used to that in the scholarly world, but the scale and pace are quite different in that world. The other wrinkle is that I need to be more diligent about tracking down all of Udell’s various writing outlets. He’s a prolific thinker and writer. Perhaps I should start thinking in terms of the Udellosphere. Favorite pull quote of the moment:

It’s exciting to live in a time when technical and cultural forces converge on a new synthesis of old themes. For networks of rich media, that time is now.

Amen, brother.

Technology Review blogger Wade Roush notes two new high-profile articles on blogging and podcasting. One is a Business Week cover story, the other a feisty essay on podcasting by Forbes.com’s Sam Whitmore. I’m not surprised to see a blogger celebrate the disruptive power of these new media, but when Business Week and Forbes register their strong agreement with this thesis, I feel the lines being redrawn once again.

Mainstream media analyzing their own disruption. Business Week starting its own blog, and announcing it in an article that’s a peculiar simulacrum of a blog, one that strikes me as a hand-holding exercise in executive desensitization. A Forbes columnist whose podcast is called “Closet Deadhead,” and whose efforts to license the music he podcasts reveal just how slow the copyright holders are to formulate policies in this area.

Interesting times. Feed your head indeed.

What a great title for a book about personal computers. I’m envious.

Computerworld‘s April 25 issue reports on John Markoff’s new book, What the Dormouse Said…. How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry. Kathleen Melymuka’s interview is brief, but Markoff’s answers are fascinating, and there’s an excerpt from the book following the interview. It’s a bold thesis, even sensational in some of its ramifications. I imagine the book will inspire fear and loathing in a good many readers (and perhaps keen interest in a good many others). One thing, though, is clear (yet once more): computers are indeed a new medium, one intimately devoted to the augmentation of the human intellect–and, by extension, if we have the hearts and imaginations and strength for it, the augmentation of human community. That’s a legacy no one should be reluctant to own.

I’ll read the book as soon as term is done. It’ll be interesting to see if the book lives up to the promise of the interview and the excerpt. Lots of tabloid-fodder possibilities; I hope Markoff avoids them, and avoids demagoguery too.

*Actually, the Dormouse never said “feed your head.” That was Grace Slick’s rewriting–remix?–of Lewis Carroll’s account of the Mad Hatter’s and March Hare’s tea party.

And that’s the way it is, or will be: Adam Curry and the Lascivious Biddies are featured in this CBS News Video story about podcasting. It’s a buzz-hype-lifestyle piece, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. I’m especially cheered to see that the LB’s sales have spiked on the strength of Curry’s Daily Source Code podcasts. Given the publicity and the first hints of sales action, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some serious venture capital flow into podcasting soon. (In Curry’s case, it probably already has.) For right now, however, we’re all still present at the early days of this brave new world, before the big money gets involved. Podcast now!

Mac enthusiasts will be happy to see that Adam’s using his T-Book in the story, not his new Tablet PC.

Well, sort of … the Chronicle’s blog isn’t much more at this point than a headline-gathering service: valuable, but not very exciting. A bigger problem, though, is that the bloggers are not identified. The anonymity suggests there’s little chance of finding interesting voices on this site. Thankfully, one can leave comments and do trackbacks, so they haven’t shut the interactivity off. Their latest blog, for example, points to a newspaper article on how email and electronic workplace interruptions generally lower IQ. (Never mind that suddenly IQ seems a noncontroversial measure of performance.) One reader has already gone beyond the silliness to ask for a copy of the original research. Hurray for scholars!

A more thoughtful analysis of the story may be found (where else) in a blog, here. Unfortunately, no comments or trackbacks on this site. Pity.

IT Conversations continues to hit ’em out of the park. One of my latest favorites is a conference presentation by Clay Shirky called “Ontology is Overrated.” Shirky’s opposed to top-down ontologies that decide what categories make sense, then divide the information, at times arbitrarily, into those categories. Instead, he argues that semantics emerge from the user, not from the machine or the network or the founders of information repositories. He has many mocking things to say about a range of sites, from Yahoo to the Library of Congress, and while his constant interjections of “right?” get very wearying, there’s much truth and intelligence in what he has to say. I was particularly struck by his assertion that we lose “signal” (his word for meaningful information) if we collapse apparently synonymous categories into one master category. His example of “cinema”/”film” and “movies” was persuasive and very funny.

On the other hand, his talk supported a philosophically naive idea I’ve blogged about before: the notion that questions of epistemology and ontology are irrelevant on the Internet because majority rules when it comes to deciding on questions of meaning. The way Shirky puts it, there are two possibilities: either the world makes sense, or we make sense of the world. The Internet decisively proves the latter, according to Shirky. In philosophical terms, though Shirky doesn’t use these words, pragmatism wins.

I have two primary difficulties with Shirky’s dichotomy. One is that I don’t believe anyone would try to make sense of the world if they didn’t, on some level, believe that the world made sense, i.e., that they weren’t simply imposing meaning on it. Another is that it’s hard to see how any ethical system other than “might makes right” can be built on Shirky’s argument.

It’s interesting to see how the speed and pervasiveness of the Internet seem to generate meaning automatically by what appears to be a radical democracy. I find the Internet breathtaking, too, but I think it’s sentimental and dangerous to think that networked computing will give us a world in which, to quote Alexander Pope, “everything that is, is right.”

… but it’s a lovely blaze. In fact, it’s UMW Instructional Technology Specialist Andy Rush’s new Media Blog.

The possibilities here are wonderful to contemplate. The Flash AS front end embeds a “player” on the blog site itself, while the audio feeds are available for podcast. (Andy’s still working on doing the same for the video files–the technical explanations are on the blog.) The experience changes subtly with the controllers embedded this way. And with the combination of Flash and RSS, one has the best of both worlds: good functionality on the site, and an easy subscription service off the site.

Roll credits, cue applause.

Andy, take a bow!

There’s a really interesting blog by Wade Roush on the Technology Review site today. The entry concerns a Wall Street Journal article speculating that cell phones will eventually take over the portable music market. I haven’t read the WSJ piece yet, but the argument seems to be that cell phones are the killer apps that will become the convergence sites for all portable media applications. Roush’s piece is a persuasive rejoinder, especially for its reminders of how difficult (and perhaps counterproductive) it will be to achieve that kind of convergence in any one portable device. Looks like I should keep my utility belt handy for the foreseeable future.

Lawrence Lessig of the Stanford University School of Law (and board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation) and Jeff Tweedy of the rock band Wilco shared a dais last Thursday at the NY Public Library, where they spoke on issues of peer-to-peer file sharing, intellectual property, and copyright. This NY Times story by David Carr reports on the event (registration required). Carr terms Lessig “one of the philosopher kings of Internet law” and calls Tweedy “the crown prince of indie music.” (Is there somewhere we can write to second the nominations?)

Lessig blogs about his dissatisfaction with the NY Times article, saying that it perpetuates a false dichotomy between “supporting piracy” and “opposing piracy.” I understand Lessig’s frustration, though I also think it’s a bit of a stretch to expect a nuanced, reflective essay from a newspaper’s coverage of a public event involving a rock star. I’m also not sure that Lessig’s notion of “remix culture,” one that I find very compelling, can avoid charges of piracy if that idea includes not only fair use but the ability to morph original creations by digital manipulation and resell them for a profit on the open market. Everyone cites The Grey Album as the poster child of remix culture, but even with much-needed reforms in copyright law and a thorough reworking of the DMCA, or even its elimination altogether, do we really think artists should be forced to let anyone with a PC and a sound card (and, as Danger Mouse admitted, a bootleg copy of Sound Forge Acid) take the music they’ve crafted over a lifetime of devotion to their art and treat it merely as raw material for a “remix”?

I’m still thinking over all these issues, as is Lessig (just one of the reasons I admire his work). In a blog yesterday he asks, “is there a way to protect the legitimate IP interests of the copyright holders, without polluting remix culture?”

Apparently an archived webcast of the NYPL event will be available at some point.

I’m sure I’m one of the last people in the blogosphere to discover this site, but just in case I’m really only the next to last, I’ll pass along this link to a remarkable section on the the Edward Tufte site called “Ask E. T.” Tufte is the author of the classic The Visual Display of Quantitative Information as well as the enormously entertaining (and a little reductive) pamphlet on “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint.” Tufte’s website has gotten a lot richer than it was two or three years ago when I last visited. At “Ask E. T.,” Tufte runs a rather unusual discussion forum:

At this moderated forum, I will answer questions dealing with information design. Others can then extend the discussion. I will try to answer questions that have general interest or where I have something to say. Not all questions will be answered, usually because I don’t know the answer.

*** = 3-star threads

Best, E.T.

And yes, Virginia, there’s even an RSS feed. Also, why am I not surprised to see such tight conceptual connections on this site between Tufte and Richard Feynman?