From Tom Yager, who writes “Ahead of the Curve” for InfoWorld :

Technology workers who don’t see themselves as passionate, creative professionals, and who lack commitment to their work, will inevitably occupy the lower strata of the future job market. My new corollary to that is that all working people are consumers even on company time. We need to feel impressed and inspired by the tools and materials we’re given.

Words to live by.

I’m not sure I agree with the way Yager goes on to distinguish interfaces that exist for the computer’s benefit vs. those that exist for the user’s benefit, but that’s a thought for another post. For now, it’s enough to think that work in information technologies should be a vocation, that is, a calling, not just a job. This is a place where information technologies, teaching, and learning must meet. I’d also argue that it’s something a liberal arts university is uniquely suited to demonstrate, and to help students understand.

I’m also beginning to look to medicine for analogies with this work we do with teaching and learning technologies. There’s a great New Yorker piece from a couple of weeks ago I need to write about soon. Metrics, inspiration, creativity, ministry, assessment, accountability, synthesis, innovation. Can we make a meal out of all those ingredients?

Bryan Alexander has begun Dracula Blogged, an exercise in serial publication in which Bryan will enter text from Dracula on the novel’s own timetable, along with his reflections and notes on these entries. I anticipate some Gothic heroics in Bryan’s new project and eagerly await the first installment.

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.