I just read an excellent blog entry from Paul Angiolillo at Technology Review that compellingly demonstrates the need for hybridity in technology. Too often I find either nostalgia for older ways that, to be fair, were sometimes abandoned too quickly, or pedal-to-the-metal futurism that scorns anything pre-1999. The truth about technology, like most human truths, is much more complex, interesting, and provocative, and Paul’s blog entry today is a fine example of deep and precise thinking on this topic. More, please!

Teaser for Andy: Boston cops on technology-enhanced bikes.

The title demonstrates a false dichotomy, one right up there with books vs. e-text and dozens of others in this stage of the information age. One can fall off an elephant on both sides, after all.

The specific inspiration for the title comes from a Chronicle Wired Campus blog entry linking to an essay by Robert Johnson, CIO of Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Johnson makes a good case that removing books from a library in favor of e-texts and social spaces is a shortsighted strategy. But then he falls off the elephant on the other side by insisting that the screen experience cannot in any way rival the print experience, which is one of great involvement, physical comfort, life-changing depth, and so forth. After awhile, I feel as if I’m watching a Maxwell House commercial, and anyone who knows me knows that I too love books with a mighty love.

But of course I love computers too. Funny how that works. Here I am writing and reading online. Not too long ago I was gently turning the pages of 16th- and 17th-century books in the Duke Humfrey’s Library at Oxford’s Bodleian library. I find both experiences compelling and valuable. I bet I’m not alone. Perhaps this is the issue, or the divide: there are those who have found compelling textual experiences online, and those who have not. My hunch is that Johnson is looking at online reading/writing through the wrong generic lens. It’s the difference between curling up with a novel and reading a blog. Both use writing, and both can be extraordinary, even transformative experiences.

The Chronicle’s blog entry features a long comment from Dartmouth’s Malcolm Brown that offers a very reasonable middle ground. Well worth reading, especially if one wants to stay on the elephant.

Not the kind from Quadrophenia, the kind I spent time on this summer and last spring, when I had time to spend on modding the blog. I needed to upgrade to WP 1.5.2 for a) security reasons and b) to install Spam Karma (following CogDog’s example).

Now I’ll need to a) remember all the mods and b) find time to tinker. But tinkering is fun, so all is not lost. (How else to approach the jigsaw puzzle of life, he asked portentously?)

EDIT: I restored the old version; couldn’t stand the plain space any longer. Now to discover how to do the 1.5.2 upgrade without killing the mods, if that’s possible.

EDITEDIT: Back to the new version. Comment spam was just too much. I’m slowly tweaking my way back to where I was.

Joan Vinall-Cox at WebToolsforLearners links to a very interesting essay in the University of Toronto magazine: “The Infinite Library.” Joan’s blog entry sums the piece up very well. My postcript is this little pull quote:

As UTL boosts its technological capabilities, Moore [Carole Moore, the chief librarian] likens the direction that the library is heading to a much earlier forebear – a medieval library. These institutions of the Middle Ages were not only book storehouses but places where manuscripts were rewritten and information was combined and republished in new ways, she says.

That’s a remix culture I can get behind. It’s also a little vindication for my oft-stated position that the online revolution reveals to us truths that have been hidden in plain sight for a long time.

Back from a reunion where I danced for hours with a perfect partner … clearing the decks and unpacking to watch more of disc two of the Dylan documentary … things about to come clear again. About to again. Why do you sing? Anything special to express? Will you suck your glasses? Donne would push farther, and so would Dylan. Donne pushed farther, and so did Dylan. Still pushing. What’s there when the fog clears? Anybody around to show it to? John? Bob? Joni? Brian? Johanna?

I haven’t checked these out yet, but the concept looks pretty interesting: an entire site devoted to screencasts, with the first set devoted to podcasting. I hope their bandwidth holds out. I also note with interest that you can subscribe to the feed via iTunes. Nifty.

Via Podcasting News.

Library Thing?

iTunes shared playlists for books, sort of. Or, given the tagging, a kind of bibliophile del.icio.us. Intriguing. Unfortunately, the world seems to agree: I get a raft of mySQL errors when I try to go past the blog and static pages to look at real user book catalogs, and I suspect bandwidth problems are also cropping up. I hope site developer Tim Spalding sorts the problem out soon so that he can keep moving toward his dream of reclining all day on a pile of gold.

Even with the system down, there’s a lot to learn here. For example, I didn’t know about the Library of Congress Z39.50 gateway. In the no-surprise department, at least one user reports a great deal of pleasure comes from simply entering the names and authors of books in your personal library. For some of us, that pleasure center is quite well-developed.

Thanks to audium for the link.

The mission statement:

The purpose of the Wikiversity project, which will ultimately reside at www.wikiversity.org, is to build an electronic institution of learning that will be used to test the limits of the wiki model both for developing electronic learning resources as well as for teaching and for conducting research and publishing results (within a policy framework developed by the community).

The goals can be described as follows:

* E-teaching materials. The development and cataloging of tests, teaching materials that go beyond the scope of Wikibooks such as slides and videos, complete courses, and more. All this information must be presented from a neutral point of view and represent the current state of scientific research. Wikibooks will be used as a partner project where appropriate.
* E-learning. A framework within members of the community can actually take courses online
* For more info on what Wikiversity is, please check its About page.

What can I say? “Interesting” seems far too weak a comment.

Good summary via Technology Review of rich web, map, podcast, and blog coverage of Hurricane Rita. Small pieces loosely joined means that resourceful hybrids can develop very quickly. Multiple transmit/receive nodes of information, routing around damaged parts, using redundancy for greater error tolerance … familiar design principles here.

Tom McHale’s article in Techlearning helpfully summarizes competing positions on Generation M (“media”), including recent work that suggests multitasking may not be an illusion after all. He also quotes one Generation M student on the usefulness of books: “I find that looking in a book first for research projects gives you more of a broad basis to start with,” says Liz Derr.

It’s refreshing that McHale avoids the typical all-or-nothing arguments about education and culture in which information technologies are either the answer or the devil. By the end, however, it’s clear that information technologies can be an answer, and a very powerful one at that. Meredith Fear, the “digital native” of the title, says of her Internet use for a research assignment that “[w]hat I make of it is entirely dependent on me and the effort I’m willing to put into it…. It’s a much, much more specialized and detailed level of thinking than I’ve been exposed to in any of the classes the school provides.”

Perhaps that specialized and detailed thinking could be done without information technologies. My own experience suggests it can be, and has been. The larger point, though, is that such thinking ought to be the rule in school and isn’t, and that information technologies allow digital natives access to the potential of real school no matter what obstacles the institution called “school” plants in their way.