speculative

News from Outside

Adrian Miles

Valerie Keller on change, and organisations. Why is this relevant? Some of you will begin your own companies, and you need to understand this. Most of you will work in other companies, and while you might start at the bottom most will rise quickly. Change, how to manage it but also do it successfully, is the currency that will let you survive. As we’ve said, change is the one constant. Given that, we end up with two groups. Or three. Those who notice the change afterwards, then try to catch up. Those who notice the change then think it doesn’t matter (and then it’s too late – once upon a time the Saturday Age newspaper was phone book thick – oh, bad example because, um, Sensis, the directory business in Telstra that once made millions from the Yellow Pages, well, they’re kinda in trouble too – anyway the Age was phone book thick, it was full of classified ads, in Melbourne if you were looking for a house to rent, buy, a car, pets, old furniture, factory equipment, the Saturday Age was to the go to paper, it was literally described as “Fairfax’s rivers of gold”, and made so much money they could afford high quality journalism and made them the flagship newspaper in Australia, they ignored the rise of the internet until they had lost pretty much all of their classified advertising, been on the back foot ever since), and those who initiate the change. We want you to be in that first group.

Then hot on its heels a story about Evan Williams (Blogger, Twitter, and now Medium) and how Medium – which is doing amazing things – is a company with no managers. Read it, deep double loop learning. This IS the model of this subject. Not that there is no senior teacher, or perfectly mapped out curriculum, but who you are as people and what you become is more important than any naff content of the subject. Learning and beginning to create knowledge (which is already happening via the blogs) is the first big change that the network enables. You are already doing it, and in a rather odd way (a nice odd way is what I mean), many of you haven’t realised it yet…

Speculative, (More)

Adrian Miles

Daniel has some excellent notes about speculative writing, and the idea of the invitation that speculative writing makes of you. And from a week ago Sharon has notes, Chantelle thinks model II is about coming up with own ideas (it is, but more importantly it is seeing your assumptions that inform your ideas in the first place), and Olivia works out that the reading is not about networked media but ideas to learn throughout your education (and your education does not begin when you finish university, and from my point of view I think your education beyond being told how to answer the essay question on a VCE exam that has incredibly strict assessment parameters is just beginning). Olivia reads my essay on blogs and media education, and note, she started a blog already and that let to internships. Notice the order there which I’ve talked about twice now. You do, they come. This is the reverse of industrial media where you try to get in their door way first. You have enormous capacity and agency to show your abilities now, and they will come to you, not the other way round. Get on, or watch the bus fly past.

Speculating

Adrian Miles

Louisa found the idea of ‘speculating‘ to resonate. First response, dumbfoundedness. Then use yoga as an example in terms of how it started and then speculating about its changes, and by implication future changes.

William uses my speculative writing, and thinks:

Though really we could be moving in any direction; forward, preferably, but also backward, sidewards, or if we have a really bad semester, down. But we’re always moving, and that’s what counts

Works for me. Movement, flow. The internet is an enormous system that is

  • not still
  • about the movement of (information, knowledge, data, media)
  • it is the movement and exchange of this that creates the web
  • and its ‘maps’

Imagine a cinema. It is still and things come to it. Imagine your blog. Where is it? And when I view it, it (literally), comes to me.

On the other hand he suggests this could describe any subject. Maybe, though control systems in engineering? No. Control systems require closed feedback loops, the internet, in that language, has some feedback loops, but this isn’t fundamental, and it is open, not closed.

Chantelle expects things to be blown around a bit, and yes, I think the way to think about this is that we are the boat, or on the boat. It is a boat awash, surrounded, bobbing there. But as William notes, over there is as good as over here. So direction becomes, well, interesting.

I like Arthur’s observation that some will want to float about, others row furiously (my question though is where to?), but generally we are to, well, learn what it is to be in this flow, on this swell of ocean, as it is. Without insisting it be other. As Edward observes “we just have to adapt to the current and go where we want to”, to which I’d add, and to go where it also takes us.

Victoria, pessimistically, finds the boat metaphor unhelpful. Perhaps don’t treat it as a metaphor, instead it is the subject. So, if your boat sinks, what do you need to know to not drown? That is one of the things that this subject and the others in the digital stream are about. Again, not specific content (I can tell you that you need to swim but that is learning how to swim is it?)