I learned many fascinating things today, both on my way to Ferrum College and after my arrival there. I’m at Ferrum to deliver the keynote address for the 2005 Virginia Humanities Conference. My topic is “Tools For Thought: The Humanities In The Age Of Technology,” and my shameless crib from Howard Rheingold’s life-changing work was meant to invoke his spirit, and the spirit of the thinkers he chronicles, as I composed and then delivered my address.

So what did I learn? On the drive down, I learned that Gordon Bell is working on a lifetime personal archive portfolio project that is nothing less than Vannevar Bush’s Memex realized. I learned about Virtual Leader and lessons learned from creating educational simulations. (More to come on that one, since I have found a fellow traveler in the “don’t make the interface transparent” journey I’ve been on for some time.) I learned about NeoNet, a new peer-to-peer technology, and I learned that The Grey Album, probably the most famous mashup to date, was done in two weeks using a cracked Sound Forge Acid download. (Danger Mouse later popped for the legit purchase.) At Ferrum, I learned of Martin Heidegger’s essay on “The Question of Technology,” which I blush beet-red to admit I had not read, but which I am delighted to know about now. Heidegger’s remarks are eerily apt for what I want to say tomorrow, and I’m greatly indebted to Radford University’s Kim Kipling for the citation. The lovely Internet allowed me to become slightly more educated in this area this evening. I will speak under correction tomorrow, as always, but if I understand what Heidegger meant I am more convinced than ever that computer-mediated-communications over the Internet can be profoundly poetic, considered as a emerging whole.

I also learned that the Latin word “copia,” meaning plenty, branches into another meaning by the Middle Ages: transcript. The OED speculates that Latin phrases granting freedom to read or write helped this latter meaning emerge, but I’m haunted this evening by the realization that the God’s plenty provided by our sophisticated tools for thought is etymologically linked to the idea of proliferating exact reproductions.

I apologize for the lack of links in this blog entry. It’s late and I need to sleep, and I’m on my brother’s dialup connection at his apartment in Salem. On the other hand, I grew up in Salem, and I drove by Ferrum regularly on my way to Wake Forest University as an undergraduate there. I love this section of Virginia very deeply and feel both alienated from it and strongly drawn to it, mostly the latter.

Tomorrow right after the address I drive back north to attend a former student’s wedding. A happy day, if the winds are favorable.