It’s a Blurry Sort of Thing

Adrian Miles

Nicola has a good summary of some of the differences discussed in the symposium. This will no doubt continue, but I really don’t think changing a style on a blog is network literacy, to me that’s like saying knowing how to turn a page in a book makes you print literate, or changing a car tyre means you are mechanically adept. It is much, much, thicker than this, as the example of print literacy I think actually shows. It so deeply naturalised for us that to make it seem odd seems, well odd, but it is a recent invention, it was as revolutionary in its time as the internet is now, and there was nothing natural or inevitable about it.

Reckon there’s a few more rounds left in this one.

Nelson

Adrian Miles

Ted Nelson is a prodigious computing talent, we’ll probably talk more about him when the time comes, but Stefan’s connection to Burroughs is very relevant. Not sure they knew each other, but Nelson would certainly know of Burrough’s writing and both are very strong connections to San Fran counter culture politics. Mia is impressed by Nelson’s prescience. You should be. He’s still arguing that the Web is broken and the wrong idea. Kiralee is less sure, though in relation to libraries, they’re no longer book centred (that happened about 15 years ago), I don’t think the degree is even called librarianship or similar anymore, (found one, but has to be done with ‘corporate information management’), and while books on paper remain a declining delivery format, no one, and I mean no one (aside from artists) uses anything but electronic media to write, edit, design and print a book. The only time it isn’t digital is at the end. Xanadu and yes, not so very long ago the Internet was only science fiction. Carli makes a nice connection between Ted Nelson and Doug Englebart (they were friends, and Nelson’s eulogy for Englebart is justly famous), and yes, there is a deep passion to make things better here. Ellen on Clouds, Olivia Newton John (yes there’s a connection), and what could have been. Louisa is also impressed, and yes, the idea of neural nets was present to Nelson in his conception of hypertext (a term he invented – along with thinkertoy, intertwingled, transclusion). Cassandra meanwhile discovers the joy of intertwingle (as I said in the symposium on network literacy, things don’t live in boxes, it’s all just soupy stuff that some temporary patterns are made in), and the possibilities and strange difference that hypertext could really offer (if only we stopped trying to make it like books).

It’s And all the Way Down

Adrian Miles

We rarely say what we mean (it’s a condition of language). So a quick riff post symposium.

Print and network and digital literacy, not rivals, not anything. It is not this literacy or that one but and, and, and, and. They are not rivals in themselves but they are if we make them. So English teachers might struggle with networks replacing books, or grammarians might struggle with LOL, and people in science, who publish a lot of research, will never (ever) write a book, and don’t care if what they do write is on paper or not. Start thinking not in terms of this or that but and this, and this, and this, and this. Not because of the network, but this is probably more like the way you are in the world (I’m a husband and a brother and a son and a father and a student and a teacher and an employee and an employer and a cyclist and a person interested in birds and a blogger and…)

Thinking Notes

Adrian Miles

A list of print literacy things to begin the symposium upon.

  1. we know what a book is
  2. what a page is (that it has two sides)
  3. what page numbers are
  4. how to use page numbers
  5. how to read
  6. how to write
  7. more or less how a book is made
  8. where to go to find a book
  9. that you can buy them
  10. borrow them
  11. steal them
  12. that to buy one you might go to a bookstore
  13. to borrow one you might go to a friend
  14. or to a strange institution called a library
  15. which stores books to lend them out
  16. (which let’s face it is an elegantly odd idea)
  17. and that the people there are called ‘librarians’
  18. and it is a bit like a church as (well, it’s changing) but food and drink is apparently bad, and you are meant to whisper
  19. that there is a taxonomy that lets you ‘look up’ books them find them on their shelves
  20. you know the social etiquette involved in borrowing a book from a library (it isn’t supposed to be written in or on, that it ought to be returned by the due date, that there could be some sort of punishment for not following either of these two rules)
  21. that people write them
  22. that these people are called authors
  23. (and we mistakenly think, in one of those odd human centric moments we’re famous for, that authors create books but it is obviously the other way round — think about it)
  24. how to use a table of contents
  25. an index
  26. page headers
  27. page footers
  28. what a cover is and what it is for
  29. that there is fiction and nonfiction
  30. that there are many genres of fiction
  31. that there are dictionaries, encyclopaedias, manuals, reference books
  32. we more or less know how to go about writing a book (whether it is any good or not is a very different question)
  33. how to fix a broken page
  34. where a broken page fits
  35. how to fix a cover
  36. what a title page is
  37. how to cope with an unreliable narrator
  38. how to cope with direct narrative address
  39. how to read silently
  40. that stories think they can tell you what is happening inside someone’s head
  41. except that someone (sometimes) is pretend
  42. that they are often pretend

With books we developed intimate reading. Also mass literacy. Those together encouraged the rise of the modern ‘psychological’ novel. The technology very strongly affects these things, particularly when we recognise the writing is a technology….

More Law Things

Adrian Miles

My favourite copyright issue of the moment is the legal case between Wikimedia and a photographer about a selfie taken by a crested black macaque monkey. Wikimedia says copyright resides with the maker, in this case the monkey, the professional photographer (who owned the camera). There’s a good legal discussion here. Ashleigh meanwhile notes that this is a big area, and (I’d add as several political candidates have just found out) what you say online stays, and if it isn’t nice it will come back to you. In tis case it is a football club sponsor – someone who once upon a time a club would bow to. Monique on having her stuff stolen online (so yes you might think it a hassle, but it protects you).

Seonaid learns that if you repeat something defamatory then thats defamation too. Yes, it is all about publication. Me saying something to you that is defamatory about Bill is not defamation, but as soon as someone else hears, reads, knows about it, and knows who we’re talking about, then the private conversation is no more. And as we all know, if you want a private conversation you don’t publish it anywhere online… Evelyn has a nice think-out-loud post about ideas, and how you can’t ‘own’ them. No you can’t, and in relation to legal stuff you can’t copyright an idea, you can legally protect how you do something (that is patent law), the things you make (copyright), but not the ideas themselves. Mia muses about the differences between copying and embedding. These are good questions as the difference between copying and embedding is important. When you embed the media is coming from where it lives, and if people let or allow embedding there is an implicit permission that you can. This is very different to making your own copy of the work and putting it somewhere else, and is one of the technical things of the Web that we no longer even notice.

Laura has a blog scenario. No, Bob isn’t in trouble. Research, criticism, opinion are all fine. Even posting something mildly offensive is ok online as you have to go and find it to see it. The issues about offensive behaviour I described are more to do with school, work, and so on, where you don’t have the opportunity to just not go and look at it.

Weavings

Adrian Miles

Monique thinking about RSS, weaving, giving, taking, and what network literacy might be. Amy on the social aspects of network literacy. Nethaniel also picks up the social parts of network literacy, which is interesting, perhaps because for me that’s a given and what isn’t visible is how the technology enables, or even drives, this? Seonaid likes the participatory nature of network literacy, and Samuel has two key takeaways. Louisa wonders about what might be list from the analogue world, and marvels at the new wonders of the networked thing we have.

Loops, Learning, The Whole Damn Mess

Adrian Miles

Antoine uses the example of a recent social advocacy campaign to illustrate single and double loop learning and mental maps. Amy enjoyed it but wonders why. One answer is that heritage media is stuck in single loop responses to the internet, so they rely on repeating the same things, laws, ideas, over and over again, as a response to something new. It is clear this old way isn’t working, so the double loop reply would be to…? (And no, not to keep doing more of the same.) Ditto with how many of you will approach computers etc. Do something, it doesn’t work, repeat. The trick is to realise it isn’t working and the problem isn’t the button, machine, whatever, but the higher level system you’re using to understand this… Change that first.

Meandering Essays

Adrian Miles

Callum likes the Graham reading to the point of how he was taught not to meander. (As the symposium should show, we celebrate the meander). Rebecca seems to have had a very brave and very good teacher in Year 12 (the exception rather than the rule). As humanities students essays are our thing, it is our main language, the joy is in doing them properly, and not in that TEEL preplanned TV dinner fast food bullshit way. Laura speculates about essays, high school, and enjoying writing. For me this is the heart of the matter. As a humanities academic writing is my laboratory, where I do my thinking. It is not where I report on what I have discovered somewhere else but writing is the very place where the discovering happens. So I want my writing to have this spirit of insecure wonderment. You still argue a position, or positions, you still need evidence, but you learn how to let the ideas talk back at you instead of making them fit something prearranged. It’s the difference between very formal classical music and jazz. Both have their place, but if you want to ‘think’ musically, you play jazz (or write symphonic scores). This is a great post which is sort of about network literacy but is as much about the essayistic. Felicia has a well considered post about how she is good at essays, they work for her, but blogs do too. This is good because if you’re a good writer then blogs aren’t that big a step, on the other hand if you really like preplanned structure and your writing is more a reporting, then blogs can be very intimidating (and I’d argue you’re a great report writer, but not a good writer). Blogs let you find a voice, and a good essay should have your voice too.

Essays

Adrian Miles

Mia is surprised to realise the ‘essay’ is not really what was taught. Next step? Blogs are a great place to learn how to write to figure things out. Writing is a thinking, not a reporting, well it ought to be, certainly for education in the humanities. George found the reading resonated, and that the model taught in high school (and we have to admit, celebrated in universities) is broken. Kiralee also enjoys the Graham reading, yes explore ideas, but also realise that many of your university teachers are stuck in what I’d call single loop learning – you might write a great essay really testing ideas, only to be dealt the infamous “but you didn’t answer the question” hand of death. So tread cautiously, but in network media, we expect, welcome, celebrate smart writing. The role of a good question is to do that, not close thought down.

Dominic realises that he might, could, maybe, let go of so much planning. Again, think about how blogging is great practice for this.