I’m been meaning to blog about this topic for many weeks. I even tried to bring this passage into a staff meeting at one point, though in my advanced discombobulation at the time I couldn’t find the book, much less the passage. Now, however, on a rainy Labor Day, sitting in Boatwright Memorial Library room 321, I’m prepared.

The excerpt is from M. Mitchell Waldrop’s The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal (Penguin, 2001). Ernie recommended the book to me a long time ago. I’m very glad he did. The book is a masterpiece. It took me several weeks to read it all, not because of the book, which although sprawling and compendious is very readable indeed, but because my life was taking several sharp turns during the period. The association was fortuitous: whenever I think of this book or read it again (as I most assuredly will), I will also think of a time of tremendous change, excitement, confusion, and hope. Not a bad set of associations, that, and a liminal moment I will do well to remember.

I’ll be dipping into this book for blog topics often. So much of it delights and instructs me (Horace would be happy) that I’m spoiled for choice. Today, however, I want to quote two magic paragraphs that express some of my major aspirations these days. I may not hit Lick’s target–no shame in that, he was the visionary at the heart of what became the Internet, after all–but at least I can aim in the same direction.

Indeed, Lick was already honing the leadership style that he would use to such effect a decade later with the nationwide computer community. Call it rigorous laissez-faire. On the one hand, like his mentor Smitty Stevens, Lick expected his students to work very, very hard; he had nothing but contempt for laziness and no time to waste on sloppy work or sloppy thinking. Moreover, he insisted that his students master the tools of their craft, whether they be experimental technique or mathematical analysis. On the other hand, Lick almost never told his students what to do in the lab, figuring that it was far better to let them make their own mistakes and find their own way. And imagination, of course, was always welcome; the point here was to have fun.

The Licklider style wasn’t for everyone, and not everyone stayed. But for self-starters who had a clear sense of where they were going, it was heaven. Good people liked to be with Lick; he seemed to be surrounded by an atmosphere of ideas and excitement. “He communicated the feeling that you could understand any field you wanted to,” explains Jerry Elkind. “He loved gadgets and putting things together. He loved to apply information and new ideas. So any area of science was interesting to him; he pulled in ideas from all kinds of domains. And he was always looking for novel ways of challenging your understanding of the domain, by constructing problems or puzzles that would require insight into the theory to solve.”

Licklider wasn’t perfect. He had his share of foibles, dropped balls, and oversights. By the mid-70’s, his thinking had ossified a bit, to the point that he could no longer see his way to supporting Doug Engelbart’s work on augmentation. (To be fair, Engelbart’s lab was not making as strong a case for itself at that time as it had just five years earlier. Still.) All of that said, Licklider dreamed big, and with great intelligence and deep delight he changed the world.

J.C.R. Licklider died on June 26, 1990. He lived to see the accomplishment of much he had worked for. Though he did not see the first explosion of the Internet as a public medium, he knew it was coming, and that he had helped to bring it about. He is a teacher, a thinker, and a leader I wish I could have met–and, after all, one from whom I have learned a great deal, even before I knew who he was.

That’s how teaching and learning go, sometimes.

“[S]o temper all things that the strong may still have something to long after, and the weak may not draw back in alarm.” It’s from a different context–some of you may recognize it–but it works well for the vocation of teaching, too.

Yesterday Google Book Search took its digitization project one step farther, allowing readers to download and print PDF versions of books in the public domain. Computerworld plays up the copyright questions and the ability to print, while Google’s book blog positions the initiative as a way to build a library of classic titles–and some obscurities as well. There’s also an interesting suggestion of mobility in Google’s typically low-key link to the new service: the tagline on the search page reads, “Take Shakespeare with you.”

I took a look at Flatland, digitized from Oxford’s Bodleian library. On the Google site, the book appears in a window flanked by a search box and four “buy this book” links. An “About this book” link takes me to a screen with brief bibilographic information, along with links to “related information,” meaning Google searches for information about the book. These searches are pre-constructed for some precision: 17 links to “other web pages related to Flatland by A. Square” (search field: “Flatland, by A. Square”  “Edwin Abbott Abbott”) and 133 links to “web reviews” of the book (search field: review “Flatland, by A. Square”). There’s an algorithm here, of course, and no one should rely on Google to construct intelligent searches for them, but I admire the way Google has tried to point readers in fruitful directions as they explore these books.

The scan of Flatland is clean and quite readable. For those who can tolerate reading from a screen, reading it online works pretty well. Printing out pages on a laser printer reveals more of the usual difficulties with contrast and blurring of letters, but the copy is still quite clean and in my view would be eminently usable for general reading and for use in the classroom.

Would I rather hold a printed volume in my hand and read from it? Certainly. I’ve given up dogearing pages long ago, but I still scribble in the margins, and I still thrill to the sight of book spines ranging across a handsome set of shelves. That said, I’m also mightily intrigued by the flexibility, ease of access, and cost savings represented by Google’s “classic downloads.” I’m also interested in the possibilities of sharing annotations. Imagine a library of these downloads with marginal notations by a) scholars b) general readers c) a classroom of students. Being able to share (indeed, publish) those annotations might also encourage students to be more diligent in their reading, so that they actually do mark the pages (electronically) and leave a trail of their own cognition as they move through a text.

Group annotations? Many possibilities there as well.

Take Shakespeare with you. Take Shakespeare class with you. Take the communal mental activity of many readers with you. Access and share the traces of your own engagement with other engaged readers.

This could be interesting.

UPDATE: Downloaded PDF books begin with a couple of interesting pages from Google regarding usage, copyright, and so forth. I’m most interested in the general description that begins these pages, in words that, for better or worse, carefully express an ethos that will be familiar to most academics. I note that marginalia also figure in Google’s thought, with a little Indiana Jones twist.

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world’s books discoverable online.

Another fascinating IT Conversations podcast on the way in today, this time featuring Bunker Roy, the founder of India’s “Barefoot College.”

“Barefoot College” cares not a whit for “paper credentials,” as Bunker Roy emphasizes repeatedly throughout the presentation. (And a very moving presentation it is.) Credentials, that is, demonstrations of trustworthiness, come from skills learned in the villages themselves, skills that are of much greater importance than any number of consultations from diploma’d suits. Bunker Roy’s work is inclusive, tireless, and prodigious, but he does reserve the right to be contemptuous of “paper credentials,” one of the few objects of scorn in his fiercely optimistic worldview.

In the Q&A that follows the presentation, two of Bunker Roy’s co-presenters remonstrate with him a bit, trying to argue a less dismissive line toward formal education and the credentials it grants. Bunker Roy will have none of it. Despite my admiration for Roy’s work and his passionate devotion to his people, I too grew a little restive at his dismissiveness. As the conversation went on, however, I heard Roy name what I believe to be the foundation of his antipathy: he won’t allow folks with “paper credentials” into the Barefoot College because they are not humble. Furthermore, he believes the very process of granting credentials through a system of formal education leads to a loss of humility, and thus to a loss of real effectiveness in situations of acute, systemic need.

Roy’s co-panelists argued that formal education has real value. I agree with them, of course, but I’m also haunted by the way the co-panelists did not speak to Roy’s point about the lack of humility that an education can generate.

My own view is that true education, real school, demands humility and should strengthen it as well. It’s humbling, and occasionally humiliating, to work to learn. Perhaps the memory of that awkwardness motivates educated folks to put the experience behind them. I wonder how often I’ve recoiled from my own humbling memories of just-not-yet-getting-it. (And that experience of not-yet-getting-it is where real education occurs, of course.) I think most of all of the great Clifford D. Simak short story called “Immigrant,” the most powerful parable of education I know, in which humility becomes an acquisition so painful–but I can’t say more without spoiling the story, which I urge you to read right away.

I think too of how hard it is to peel back some students’ bravado and bluffing, to help them find the humility they need, not before the mighty teacher, but before the weary, mighty civilization that they are now preparing to help build (and repair). Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s humility before the task, more than anything, that qualifies one for the task. Confident, determined, but humbled to be afforded the opportunity to help build a better world, one course of study at a time.

And also, perhaps, grateful.

School’s in session. Welcome back, everyone.

I did listen to a little Genesis on the way to work today (“Supper’s Ready” just gets better and better), but most of my time was taken up with a very stirring ITConversations/Open Source Conversations podcast featuring Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. Given the speed with which the Web has developed, it shouldn’t surprise me to hear pioneers of the first generation who are still young, vital, and moving forward–but it always does.

Andresson’s take on changes in programming, on the ways in which Moore’s Law will affect an ever-more-pervasive online culture, and on the resources available to talented human beings worldwide is both fascinating and inspiring. And as always, my mind moves toward considering the ramifications for education. When our children have access not only to most of the world’s knowledge but also–and crucially–open and welcoming communities of practice, why will they choose to go to school?

I have some answers to that question, of course, and I don’t think they’re all merely about keeping myself employed, either. It’s my hope that open knowledge and pervasive, inspiring communities of practice will help education find its way to becoming a community of consideration, a meta-place that provides compelling opportunities for innovation, re-invention, and deliberation.

A skunk works for civilization.

I’ve just upgraded from WP 1.5.2 to WP 2.0.4. About time. Still some tweaking to do, but a brand-new interface and some fun new functionality.

Last week Kevin Creamer, Liaison Coordinator for the University of Richmond’s Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, sat me down for a quick chat about information technologies in education. As you’ll hear in this podcast, Kevin was interested in some of the larger thinking behind my enthusiasm for particular technologies such as blogs and wikis. His questions afforded me some room to roam, and I also tried to give some shout-outs to a couple of folks who’ve helped me think about these topics over the years.

Twenty-five minutes of mulling, then, and if any of it keeps the conversation going, I’ll be happy. You can listen to the podcast here, or right-click/click-and-hold to download it. Gardner Writes is also on iTunes in the podcast directory. Someday soon I’ll upgrade my WP install here and put in PodPress (or equivalent). Soon.

More podcasts on the way: I need to finish up the Donne A Day series with the remainder of my students’ work (I’m woefully behind, and my apologies to them), and then begin another series of podcasts of Renaissance literature in English. Right now I’m trying to decide whether to read a series of essays by Montaigne (the Florio translation) or Bacon. If you have strong feelings either way, let me know.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (11.0MB)

Some folks resist the “2.0” tag (or heuristic, as I’ve started to argue), for good reason. That said, great resources continue to emerge from Tim O’Reilly’s meme. Case in point: a terrific podcast on Identity 2.0 from IT Conversations. I wish the visuals were available. To judge from the crowd’s reaction, they must have been a hoot.

Listening to the podcast, I’m struck by how close to a kind of “applied philosophy” these questions are. The question of identity–its nature, extension into the world of alterity, performative vs. essential aspects, and so forth–is ongoing, difficult, and engages many areas of human inquiry, from epistemology to business to law to human rights. How interesting it would be to explore a multidisciplinary combination of communications/rhetoric/philosophy/social science/computer science/add-your-discipline-here courses that could explore such questions. High-speed networked computing, online life, social computing: it’s all civilization, scaled-up and sped-up with a long tail and a slew of acceleration effects, and higher ed’s traditional means of studying, preserving, and innovating within civilization should, with some imagination, be able to get at these vital concerns with exhilarating research and conversation. Most importantly, the new context for these concerns could propel us past some stale parts of the conversation and into fresh areas that could perhaps benefit more sectors of society.

Many institutions already elicit such research and conversation, of course. My question: how long before we find a way to see what’s hidden in plain sight: that such research and conversation should be at the heart of a liberal arts education, indeed that they are another way of thinking about the entire tradition of inquiry within the liberal arts?

Funny how the small moments stick with you.

At one of the SAC sessions yesterday, a speaker reminded us that “hope is not a strategy.” It’s a good reminder that points to the need for careful planning and deliberate choices. I’ve never seen a pie in the sky myself (where did that image come from, I wonder), but I’m pretty confident that effective leaders should not be shading their eyes and scanning the heavens for dessert.

And yet.

Later in the day, a group considered the promise of an emerging technology. That promise seems enormous, but there are many rivers to cross to get to fulfilment. As we wrestled with the need for demonstrable functionality now, one participant spoke up and said, “hope may not be a strategy, but grounded belief is.” To which another person replied, “yes, and all strategy is grounded belief.”

Amen to that.

Reasonably charming setting.

Thus ends day two of my first Seminar in Academic Computing. There’s an interesting stillness to this conference. The numbers are relatively small, and the sessions are intense but often quite informal. It really does feel like a seminar. I even had homework, of sorts: yesterday I presented on Net Gen Learners with two very distinguished panelists, Joel Hartman and Chuck Dziuban of the University of Central Florida. Plenty of good energy in the room, and some very thoughtful Q&A. It didn’t hurt that the day began with a plenary address by Vint Cerf, Internet Evangelist for Google. I got a double dose of Vint yesterday: once in the very fine and astonishingly deep plenary, and then again late in the evening as I continued my reading in Mitchell Waldrop’s epochal The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution that Made Computing Personal. (Thanks to Ernie for recommending this book to me. It’s extraordinary.) Vint’s one of what we may remember as the Greatest IT Generation, those who took a dream and made it real through brilliance, perseverance, and stubborn naivete. To hear Vint continue to hold forth on everything from the limits of TCP/IP to ICANN to his plans for the interplanetary network was a great honor and a joy.

After my panel, I could relax a bit more and take in the surroundings, both topographically and intellectually. I’ve been to deep and informative sessions on Net Neutrality (support it!), Sakai, Directors’ insomina (and what to do about it), and grants from the Mellon Foundation. I’ve learned a ton in mealtime conversations, and deepened my relationship with some dear colleagues (you know who you are). I continue to be amazed by how smart, creative, playful, and committed my IT colleagues are.

I’m also amazed by how many English majors end up in this space, including Randy Bass from Georgetown, who delivered this morning’s plenary on “Recognizing the Visible Evidence of Invisible Learning.” I blush to admit I hadn’t known much, if anything about Randy’s work before this seminar. My loss. Randy’s hard at work in many areas, including the Visible Knowledge Project, and his address today resonated very deeply with me on many levels. I’ll be making up for lost time with Randy’s work in the weeks ahead.

After all the sessions this evening, I went into Aspen with a couple of superb colleagues, friends, and mentors. More great conversation ensued. Setting, food, drink, friendship, and a passionate commitment to real school. One could do far worse.

I am grateful.