In “The Classics in the Slums,” Jonathan Rose writes a fascinating essay about the power great books have to transform lives. He argues that Matthew Arnold was right: the best that has been said and thought can make lives better. That’s an argument contrary to most of the last thirty years or more of literary theory in the West, which insists that “great books” are a) great only for the ruling classes, principally rich men, and b) great for those ruling classes in large part because of the power of “great books” to spread white male hegemony and keep the marginalized safely on the circumference or perimeter.

Rose, whose 2001 The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (Yale UP) won the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History, understands that his argument will seem conservative to some readers. That’s perhaps one reason he emphasizes the radically transformative power of great art, and backs up his argument with evidence taken from his research into British working-class lives in the twentieth century:

Even more impressive is a 1940 survey of reading among pupils at nonacademic [British] high schools, where education terminated at age 14. This sample represented something less than the working-class norm: the best students had already been skimmed off and sent to academic secondary schools on scholarship. Those who remained behind were asked which books they had read over the past month, excluding required texts. Even in this below-average group, 62 percent of boys and 84 percent of girls had read some poetry: their favorites included Kipling, Longfellow, Masefield, Blake, Browning, Tennyson, and Wordsworth. Sixty-seven percent of girls and 31 percent of boys had read plays, often something by Shakespeare. All told, these students averaged six or seven books per month. Compare that with the recent NEA study Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, which found that in 2002, 43.4 percent of American adults had not read any books at all, other than those required for work or school. Only 12.1 percent had read any poetry, and only 3.6 percent any plays.

To hear Rose tell it, a passion for radical economic transformation can be awakened even by a Thomas Carlyle. Apparently it has something to do with an intellectual awakening that may lead to political action, but is not itself primarily a political action. His article is also a timely cautionary tale, warning against assuming too quickly what the poorly-educated laborer has inside his or her head.

Interestingly, a similar piece appeared today in the Washington Post: “The Great Books’ Greatest Lesson.”

No, not a teaching strategy, just another of those strange coincidences I’m seeing more and more frequently these days. Last night marked the shaky ascent of my first podcast. Today Technology Review blogs on podcasting.

Maybe coincidence favors the obsessive mind? (Apologies to Pasteur.) Or maybe this is my destiny.:)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.6MB)

Ton’s Interdependent Thoughts: Blogs as Personal Presence Portal Revisited: Interesting meditation on blogs and their discontents.

See also Elmine Wijnia’s “Understanding Weblogs: a communicative perspective”, which concludes that “weblogs do offer a platform for the ideal speech situation.”

Once again, ladies and germs, John Milton’s L’Allegro. I apologize for the duplicate feed. I’m testing the hacks I just applied to my base WP 1.2 installation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.6MB)

Here’s my first podcast: a reading of John Milton’s lyric L’Allegro (“the cheerful man”). I knew my first podcast had to be poetry, and I thought it ought to be Milton, and though it’s long (about eight minutes, and 3.7MB) and I’m sure I could do better after another ten takes or so, a pilot is a pilot and it’s time to stop apologizing and get on with it.

I figure my podcasts, like my blogs, will be all over the map. I’m aiming them at the segment of the market that self-identifies as “tolerant.” If Milton ain’t your bag, stay tuned: the next one is likely to be completely different.

Thanks to Rob Wall for checking in with encouragement and a timely WordPress mod in his comment on the preceding blog.

L’Allegro.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download ()

Word Press 1.2, the blogging script I’m using, doesn’t have direct support for the RSS 2.0 enclosure tag, so I’ve set up an account at Feedburner that promises to support podcasts. You’ll see the new fiery “feed” icon in my meta section, below right. Please use that link for your RSS reader’s subscription to my site, at least until you hear otherwise :). I’ll have a link to my first podcast a little later this evening.

The first Wiki site went live ten years ago. In 2004 the Wikipedia, the most famous Wiki in the world, grew to over a million articles and over 30,000 contributors. And Infoworld says this is the year of the enterprise wiki, as businesses everywhere are looking to wikis as information managers.

An interesting term for an interesting concept with interesting ramifications. Even its origins are interesting.

In “Tuning in to Technology’s Past” , an article in today’s Technology Review, Thomas Hughes defines “reverse salients” as “components in the system that have fallen behind or are out of phase with the others.” Why not call these “mistakes,” or “failures in planning,” or even what happens when castles in the air turn out–surprise–not to have a foundation? Because they’re sites for innovation, sometimes well after the initial idea or system has been put into practice. As Tom Standage explains,

As Edison’s electricity system expanded, for example, it became apparent that it could only supply electricity efficiently within a couple of kilometers of a generator. This reverse salient, identified by other inventors, led to the development of alternating-current distribution. Charting the development of technological systems, and spotting which parts are falling behind, can help innovators decide where to focus their efforts.

One challenging implication emerges for me: while it’s true that if you fail to plan you plan to fail, innovation should often go forward even if the plan seems incomplete. No plan can anticipate every exigency. And a great idea will always carry with it “reverse salients” that may kill it in its cradle–or may provide opportunities for innovation and even greater development than the initial vision anticipated. It’s an interesting way to look at risk, and an interesting way to think about how the past lies in wait for the future, or vice-versa.

A quick Google search turns up 1720 hits on “reverse salient.” One particularly interesting essay is called “Perpetual Uncertainty”. It’s short and rich and, unexpectedly, on the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

We’ll be looking at a small-scale pilot of our new University portal later this semester. I’ve long been excited about the arrival of our portal, in which the user can customize his or her graphic relation to local intranets and the Internet. The result is a set of channels, some chosen and some “pushed” to the user, that represents the larger worlds of connectivity each user inhabits, or wants to inhabit.

If ordinary desktop computing is unidimensional, and web browsing is two-dimensional, then portals are maybe two-and-a-half or three-dimensional. (Rough reasoning, but stick with me.) That’s progress, but it didn’t prepare me for Cyprien Lomas’s blog on Croquet. (Thanks for blogging on this, Cyprien.) One of the things that makes my job so rewarding is what just happened: I clicked on a link, read a blog, and suddenly I’ve found a deep, extensive project in which my wildest dreams have not only a timetable and a beta version but a complete FAQ that boldly articulates their conceptual basis.

A screenshot and caption from the Croquet site:

This view shows an educational ‘arena’ containing interactive resources. Molecular models with simulated physical properties can be made available to researchers, educators, and learners.

It’s love at first sight, and I can’t wait to see this Croquet thing in action.

Two brief excerpts from the Croquet FAQ:

Question: What is the Croquet Project?

Answer: The Croquet project is an effort to develop a new open source computer operating system built from the ground up to enable deep collaboration between teams of users. To do this, the project seeks to define and develop a system is focused on the simulation and communication of complex ideas. We call this “communication enhancement” – the direct extension of the abilities of humans to develop, understand, and describe even the most complex simulations. Croquet enables this communication by acting as the equivalent of a broadband conferencing system built on top of a 3D user interface and a peer-to-peer network architecture.

Question: What is the value of Croquet to higher education?

Answer: Croquet provides means for educators, researchers, and other learners to encounter one another and establish authenticable peer-to-peer interactivity and deep telepresence. Croquet’s architectural approach provides a secure framework for peer-to-peer rich media interaction between users. Researchers, educators, and learners are able to meet and discover one another within a common online knowledge space in which a rich set of peer- and community-based learning opportunities are possible. Croquet environments may also be used as a participatory theater for real-time demonstrations. For example, a chemistry professor may communicate directly with the members of his/her class through chat or voice over IP, load a three-dimensional molecular model into the scene, and then manipulate the model in real-time within the shared environment. The educator may choose to leave the model in the scene and restrict or control its access to others over the course of the semester and beyond. The professor may also create objects in the vicinity of the model that point to associated web-based learning objects. Additionally, the professor may choose to “publish” the object and associated materials to a larger audience by setting their viewing rights and positioning them within an appropriate locale of the shared environment.

To move beyond the current online learning environments for higher education implies a significant paradigm shift. Rather than limiting our vision to automating quiz grading and dispensing instructor powerpoint slides, we see Croquet as a first step toward a system designed for deep user collaboration, scalable realtime interaction, and authoring supported by a digital repository and an implicit content management system.

Most piquant bit of the site so far for me: the definition of a Croquet “mirror” as a portal that leads back into the space from which it originates. I like thinking about a mirror that way, in or out of Croquet.

I also find myself with that peculiar feeling that Brian and Bryan must already know a lot about Croquet, and that I must speak with them immediately.

Bring it on.

The annual International Consumer Electronics Show (or “CES,” as Doctor Evil might put it) is back for 2005: in Vegas, and in full swing tomorrow. Here’s a Washington Post “blog” (can a newspaper blog within the newspaper? am I being too strict? let’s not always see the same hands) called “Gadget Gab” that promises all the latest. As I find more CES blogs I’ll report back. CES is important as a bellwether of emerging technologies as they exist in the popular imagination, and thus an interesting source of inspiration/early warning for the sorts of electronic environments we should be aware of in our teaching and learning.

Plus, gosh, it’s fun.