I often quote Jon Udell’s principle of the “conservation of keystrokes,” so I was pleased to see his particularly acute and insightful blog post on the principle behind the principle. As is often the case with Jon’s writing, I found my mind moving to one of JSB’s “adjacencies” as I read along, triggered by the anecdote of how folks didn’t “get” Lotus Notes. The telephony demo story is perfect, and points to what I’m thinking is the real difficulty here with understanding the principle behind the principle: the imagination.

Presenting the telephony demo on a stage is as heroic in its way as trying to represent four-dimensional space on a piece of paper. You really are about two dimensions down. So when I talk to my colleagues about narration, curation, and sharing–or to use Jon’s words,  discover, share and reuse (the trio that I hope we can train digital citizens to grok by emphasizing narration, curation, and sharing in the curriculum)–I’m really trying to suggest multiple dimensions that simply aren’t visible, except by a leap of the imagination, through the suggestive abstractions I use in the demo. I call them “suggestive abstractions,” but of course they look to me like case studies, because I’ve actually seen them work, because I participate daily in those modes of communication, and because I know other teachers/writers/artists etc. who have also had these experiences. Yet these real-life examples, testimonials, and so forth that are not only real to me but indeed hyper-real (multiple puns intended) end up not answering the question “why would you want to do that?” And they don’t answer that question because the way I imagine what *that* is ends up diverging in some fairly stark ways from the way my audience imagines what *that* is (let’s say for brevity’s sake that we both call *that* “education,” or more accurately perhaps, “school”). I demonstrate the uses of blogs in the classroom, or urge student work be showcased on YouTube, or whatever, and it’s like demonstrating telephony on a stage. Folks see it, and understand it, but they don’t understand the dimensions that make it compelling, because those dimensions cannot be revealed to witnesses examining a process on a stage.

But there’s the (meta) rub. I’ve had the experience I’ve had with these tools and online writing spaces because my imagination led me to those experiences. A long time ago, I could intuit what they were about. When I began reading Engelbart, et al., I found sublime and complex articulations of that intuition, and I’ve had an amazing intellectual journey since then. But the intuition came first. Lately I’ve been re-reading some of the science fiction I read as a kid. (Brain Wave is the latest: horribly dated in some respects, but in others an eerie parable of mental amplification that has strong resonances with our current situation.) Is that where it came from? Or did the intuitions lead me to science fiction? Who knows? The real question is whether that intuition can be awakened or strengthened in others. I believe it can. But only the imagination can lead there and beyond. Otherwise, it’s just tool adoption, with the predicable backlashes and ineffectualities.

Then the question becomes how to build, inspire, provoke, or otherwise empower the digital imagination. It’s a question of meaning, in some respects, like the move from signs to words and their semantic potential. It’s also, I think, a matter of watching other intellectuals try to work through these questions as they imagined the digital age to come. That’s a big reason why I’m excited about the New Media Faculty Development seminar that the Baylor Academy for Teaching and Learning facilitated last spring, a project we’re repeating this fall (more on this soon). We didn’t do it by ourselves: we had enormous help from Alan Levine and the New Media Consortium, and we had thoughtful, serious, and open participants from several sectors of Baylor University, including the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core. There were many happy convergences. But it all had to do with the imagination.

Most people in the seminar have told me that it was enjoyable and meaningful for them. It may not have worked for everyone, but for one example of where it did (I know there are others), this seminar participant’s reflections suggest that our readings and conversations did help to awaken and strengthen the digital imagination, and that there is a layer beneath–or above–what Jon calls the “tech churn,” a layer that may help us see the four-dimensional (or n-dimensional) worlds that are implicit, and for some of us lived and inspiring realities, in the line drawings of a network.