The title alone is worth the price of admission.

This fall I have been gripped by Vannevar Bush’s essay “As We Might Think” and by Doug Engelbart’s essays over at Bootstrap.Org. Reestablishing contact with Brian Lamb and Bryan Alexander (who led me to this essential chapter on Doug Engelbart from Howard Rheingold’s Tools for Thought–thanks a bunch, Bryan) and DePauw’s Dennis Trinkle (who introduced Bryan to Howard Rheingold–get the story here) has made all these thoughts accumulate even more intensity for me. Then I find “Life With Alacrity” and Christopher Allen’s very useful history of social software on his blog. The article generated many comments that take the discussion to an even higher level. Great stuff. Thanks to Charlie Lowe at cyberdash by way of Martha’s “The Fish Wrapper” for the links that led me there.

I know I recently blogged about how a network is not itself a mind, but with the kind of celerity this Internet enables it does sometimes seem that the thoughts are coming after me just as much as I’m pursuing them. I’m struck by how much I’d like to encourage this feeling in my students, too, and that I’ve often had it when I do my research and writing in Renaissance studies and film studies. It’s something like feeling the conversation cares about, even anticipates, my participation in it. A fragile, fleeting emotion that’s hard to sustain … but an important motivation for keeping up my end of the chat.

“What is truth? said Jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.”

Brian Lamb blogs about the Northern Voice weblog conference in Vancouver next February. Deadline for submissions: Nov. 15, 2004. The list of possible topics, like all good lists, is itself an education. I’m particularly intrigued by the notion of a 1-2 minute “lightning tool talk.” I’m hoping Brian can capture and share a couple of those talks on streaming video somewhere, somewhen. Or maybe I’ll see for myself whether the “moose is loose” (what a great conference logo, eh?):

Not too long ago I reported in these pages that I had quit the band. That was true. But way leads on to way, as the poet said. The band asked me back for a gig that was scheduled before I had announced my departure. I said yes. I had fun. Things went well. Now we’re playing again, though in the meantime one member left to pursue a different muse. So we’re down to a four-piece.

Last weekend we did a gig in a brewery for some military guys who had been promoted and were, by tradition, throwing a party for their friends and colleagues. The next afternoon we played for an after-wedding celebration held as a backyard barbeque. The brewery gig was fun but the sound was atrocious: it was like playing inside a large sewer pipe. I stuck to real simple bass lines because anything else turned to thick mud. The next day’s gig was more fun and we sounded much, much better. I was afraid that playing outside would mean we’d make no sound at all, but in fact what happened is that we could control the sound very precisely since we didn’t have to fight the reverb. Until the cops came and shut us down, we were having a great time.

For the morbidly curious, here’s a photo of the band, and the very first photo on Gardner Writes. Left to right: me (bass, vocals), Karen Young (lead vocals, percussion), David Sale (drums), Steve D’Andrea (guitar, vocals). I’m playing a ’72 Fender Jazz with active EMG pickups through a Gallien-Kreuger 200MB hooked up to a pretty much generic cabinet with a 15″ EV speaker. That’s a genuine coiled cord.

Blue Window at the Brewery 10/29/04

I’m watching the election returns on several stations–typical guy with a remote control, I know–but I’m interested to see that, even more than in 2000, there’s extensive use of computers on the sets. By that I mean interaction with computers that involves touching or writing on them, not just passive reception of stuff generated by computers that are essentially invisible.

Two examples. On CBS, one fellow had what looked like a large, touch-sensitive screen he could manipulate as he analyzed the data. He launched what looked like applications by touching a toolbar or icons on the screen. He also moved through large maps by touching them and sliding them along. He also zoomed in on maps by touching areas. The whole effect was rather like the “pre-crime” screens in Minority Report. The other example was on NBC, where Tom Russert did his “magic math” on a tablet computer with a wireless connection to a larger studio monitor. Tom Brokaw called attention to the fact that the magic math was being done “electronically” this year.

My thought is that it’s more dramatically effective to have someone visibly controlling or interacting with a computer on the set than it is simply to have slick computer graphics or displays. Somehow the human agency makes the process more compelling, as if the visible human intervention makes the information seem more purposeful.

I don’t think I’ll count Dan Rather’s pencil-on-the-monitor in this category, though perhaps it has its own homespun charm.

No, they’re not really illuminated in the original sense of “deluxe,” but holy cow I just learned that two of my favorite music writers, Alex Ross (whom I’ve enjoyed for years) and Sasha Frere-Jones (whom I’m just discovered), have blogs. Less sleep for me, but more music. What a windfall! And thanks to Brian and Bryan for leading me to del.icio.us, which led me to SF/J, which led me to Alex Ross (the man who led me to Radiohead).

Just a few more moments with Sasha F/J’s blog led me to this MP3 blog aggregator. I must turn my attention elsewhere now, but there’s something cool waiting to be opened tomorrow evening….

Big finds tonight. Now if only Steve Simels had a blog. If anyone out there knows Steve, please make him blog. I need more Steve Simels, right away please. I need the Simels Report, back again.

If there really is such a thing as “beginner’s mind,” I’m pretty sure I can lay claim to it in what I’m about to write. Caveat lector.

Brian Lamb’s latest piece on social software sparked an interesting little romp for me just now. I find the whole idea of social software extraordinarily compelling. Mind-sharing is a large part of what I’m devoted to as a college professor, when I do my own student work (research, conference presentations, writing) and when I do my teaching work. Social software seems to me to be a remarkable bootstrapping environment in which speed, serendipity, curiosity, and delight can mutually reinforce each other to an unprecedented degree.

This morning’s romp is a case in point. I read Brian’s piece, went to flickr.com to see the eclipse photos, clicked around in other photos that person had taken (the most recent of which were devoted to demonstrating that the initial eclipse picture hadn’t been faked–subject for another blog), and, seized by a sudden inspiration, decided to look at del.icio.us, a site where people can share their bookmarks/favorites. I noted as I went to this site for the first time that I expected to find something of interest there right away, just as I do when I browse certain sections of a library or bookstore (okay, nearly all of them, a subject for another blog). And I was not disappointed.

What I found there was a fascinating piece of fiction about the Semantic Web, a term I’ve heard but never really understood. I think I understand it now, and I’m struck by how the Microsoft vs. Google piece in Computerworld, and the comments on it, prepared me not only for Brian’s piece on social software but for a deeper understanding of a question I left for him there. (Key lesson for students: part of education is trying to find a deeper understanding of the question you just asked. A good question is itself an act of knowing, which is why good questions are crucial.)

In short, since I don’t have time to do much more than make a mess here, I wonder if the goal or dream of a Semantic Web rests on a misperception of meaning. Here’s how Paul Ford defines the theory of the Semantic Web:

But the basic, overarching idea with the Semweb was – and still is, really – to throw together so much syntax from so many people that there’s a chance to generate meaning out of it all.

When I think about the way in which networked computing serves to augment human intellect, I think of bootstrapping as Doug Engelbart describes it. That bootstrapping goes on in human beings, however. The Semantic Web and AI generally seem to me to envision some kind of machine bootstrapping (at a crude level, a metacomputer) that will generate meaning independent of human beings. I understand I’m not getting at this well, but I have a strong intuition that whatever it is we mean by real education will not occur without the strong, mindful, and urgent intervention of other cognitions, not just the traces of other cognitions. (I understand I’m talking about real presences here as if they exist and we can have some access to them–a subject for another blog.) The great potential of computers is that they can give cognitions access to the traces of other cognitions, including their own, in a uniquely frequent, fast, and powerful way. But I catch myself when I think that somehow the interconnected world consciousness is itself a mind. Upon further reflection, I don’t think so, any more than I think that consensual reality is necessarily the same as reality, or that consensual ethics is necessarily the same as moral philosophy or right and wrong. Maybe another way of putting it is that I don’t think that one can reason from is to ought, even if the value of is is equal to infinity and that infinity is perfectly indexed (or, to say the same thing, chaotic).

But “is” is crucial when it’s other human beings, so I’m not advocating a Cartesian swan-dive into the incommensurate power of the cogito resulting in a neglect of community. I’m just voicing a metaphysical concern, born at least in part of my consistent struggle to demonstrate what seems to me the real value of information technologies in teaching and learning.

Paul A. Strassman’s provocative little essay in the Oct. 4 Computerworld (registration may be required) insightfully compares Microsoft’s business model with Google’s. Here’s a sample:

Now a new Microsoft challenger is emerging on the horizon: Google. What makes Google different is that it follows innovative rules as it carves out a share of the IT business. Google’s emerging strategy may give us a clue as to who may be bidding for IT leadership in our uncertain industry by the end of this decade.

Microsoft’s power is based on selling customers software that becomes a sequence of increasingly sticky entanglements. Once you’ve installed Microsoft operating software on a desktop, laptop or cell phone, the steadily increasing inclusiveness of features will raise your costs for choosing any alternative. Google, on the other hand, relies on a generic browser to gain access to a rapidly growing menu of services.

For Microsoft, one might substitute Blackboard or WebCT or any of a number of course/learning management systems. What’s the T & L analogy to Google?

I know Rodney Brooks from his starring role in Errol Morris’s sublime Fast, Cheap & Out of Control. Today Brooks contributes an essay to MIT’s Technology Review on exponential growth in various aspects of IT. If this excerpt grabs you, you’ll want to read the whole thing (registration required):

If we go out a few more years, iPods and similar devices will be able to store massive numbers of movies, rather than the paltry one or two you can carry around today. In fact, 20 years from now, a teenager will probably be able to shuffle down the street with every movie ever made in a $400 iPod. There will be tremendous business opportunities in digitizing old television shows and films, and for developing technologies that will let users browse and search them all. And of course we’ll witness epic battles over content ownership and compensation.

I was fascinated today by a blog on the MIT Technology Review site. Turns out that 200 spammers generate 90% of the spam we get in the US. Looks like it’s easier to find the serpent in the garden than I had thought. Of course, finding the serpent is one thing; catching and disposing of him is quite another.

Here’s a direct link to the site the MIT blog points to: ROKSO.

It was such a pleasure spending some time with Brian at EDUCAUSE. Now it’s your turn. Do take a look at his “Abject Learning” blog, and also check out his charming and evocative reflections on his first time as a blogger. Mon sembable! Mon frere! But never a hypocrite lecteur. (Apologies to T.S. Eliot.)

He’s also teaching a very cool course on the history of text at UBC right now. I’m hoping that over time he will help me get into the progressive band Can. Many people I admire love Can, and I want to learn more and maybe even get hit in my soul. You never know.