The Ed Techie

Who are the reality instructors now?

Stephen Downes has a long, thoughtful piece on the implications of the financial crisis for society, entitled 'The Monkeysphere Ideology'. It's a 'make yourself a cup of coffee, sit down and read' post, in which he raises many issues. One of which is this:

"I read this headline in the New York Times: "In tough times, the humanities must justify their worth." Not business, which caused this mess, not media, which propagated the monkeysphere ideology, not accounting, law or political science, which participated by stumbling around each other in their haste to see who could be corrupted most quickly. No - humanities. And arts."

I had a similar feeling the other day when two chaps from a commercial company were bemoaning their experience in working with higher education. They complained of some 'pencil pushing idiot sitting in an office' who blocked their decisions, and claimed they were trying to 'drag education into the 20th century, let alone the 21st.'

Now I don't know the particular details of their situation, maybe their complaints are justified. But I've come across this attitude many times. The key feature is this: the commercial world is the holder of the absolute truth. I had often asked myself why this particular truth trumps all other truths. And the answer was, I guess, money.

People from the commercial sector who believe they have some truth to reveal to the misguided people in higher education see themselves very much in the role of what Saul Bellow terms 'Reality Instructors.' The reality instructor is referenced in the marvellous Herzog, ("Moses was irresistible to a man like Simkin who loved to pity and to poke fun at the same time. He was a Reality-Instructor. Many such. I bring them out") but the character is a constant theme in Bellow's novels. It is usually manifest in a male, street-wise character who delights in teaching the main, intellectual character some truths about the 'real world'. But it's worth pointing out that the main character is aware of this, enjoys it, and that these truths are rarely as valuable and as robust as the reality-instructor believes.

The reality that the commercial world wants to reveal to higher education is that of expediency, toughness, and hard work. And rather like Bellow's characters we have been rather accepting of this. But if the financial world represented the core of these realities, and that has been shown to be very unreal, then why should higher education feel obliged to listen anymore? Indeed, have the roles reversed? Instead of universities being told how to operate in a tough financial climate, maybe businesses should be coming to them and asking 'you have managed to maintain a viable business and role in society for hundreds of years. You have adapted without completing ruining your entire system, and, ahem, throwing the world into a deep crisis. How do you do it?'

Things from Twitter I'd like in real life

I'm sure someone's done this before, but was thinking the other day about the raft of 'online interaction is killing real interaction' type angst we've been having and wondered if we should look at it the other way, ie why real life isn't as good as online. Here are a few things I wish I could transfer from Twitter to real life:

Hashtags - how many times have you found yourself half way through a conversation with someone when you realise you are in fact talking about different things. It then becomes too embarrassing to admit your mistake, and you realise some of your previous responses may now look a bit odd. Hashtags would avoid this so at the end of your opening sentence you would set out the appropriate tag eg #conversationwehadlastweekaboutgardenfurniture

Block - oh yes, we'd all like to block. In a physical environment you can only do this by removing yourself, or asking the other person to shut up, neither of which is desirable or advisable at times. So, when some bloke in the pub is voicing his opinion on, say, asylum seekers, you can simply block, and carry on with your own conversation.

Direct messages as back channel - again, there are times when you would like to communicate directly with only one other person in the group. We try and do this in face to face situations by adopting contorted facial expressions, which can be misread or just missed. How much easier it would be to have direct messages? eg 'I disagree with what my father is saying here, but if I argued we'd be here all day.'

@replies only visible to followers - this is quite a subtle feature in Twitter. If I send a reply to someone, then even if you follow me you won't see it, unless you follow that person too. This allows some filtering of interests. For example, if I follow someone because they are a Spurs fan, then we can have a discussion about a game (eg how we were robbed by Man Utd at Wembley because of an iPod). If you follow me as an OU person, then it's unlikely you will follow the Spurs chap too, so you won't be bored by this. If you are a Spurs fan you might follow both of us, and so join in. In real life there are times when you want to have a conversation which might be dull to some, but feel restricted from doing so.

140 character limit - come on, we we all know people who would benefit from this restriction.

Celebrity twitter doesn't matter

In the UK in particular, Twitter has gone mainstream over the past few weeks. This has largely been due to Jonathan Ross (@wossy) and Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) both becoming keen users and discussing it on Ross's chat show. Radio 1's Chris Moyles (@obnoxious - oh, ok @chrisdjmoyles) has also been recruiting a new wave of followers. This meant every chat show, news station, newspaper and opinion writer has been talking about Twitter.

This means we've had a raft of pieces along the lines of 'I don't know why people would want to tell everyone what they had for lunch'. Sigh. Technology seems to be the only subject area where the journalist can display their ignorance as a kind of credential: 'You can trust my opinion because I have never tried this.' I would like to see the same principle applied to film reviews: 'I haven't seen The Reader, but....'

Anyway, that's as it's always been. Personally I've never got the whole celebrity thing, so them coming on to twitter doesn't bother me. Yes, I'm not even sure I like Stephen Fry particularly. Obviously there's nothing wrong with it, although I did briefly experience that feeling familiar to a teenager who has been following an indie band and finds they suddenly become popular. Just as print can give us Proust and OK magazine, so Twitter can handle a range of communication uses.

My beef with the celebritisation (that's not a word is it?) of Twitter is twofold: Firstly, I think if you're signing up for twitter to follow celebrities, you'll miss the point of it. A conversation with a celebrity is not a normal conversation. It is unequal, and this skews the conversation. But if that's what people want from their use of it, that's fine.

My second reservation relates more to the way the news, and society in general legitimises something. It doesn't matter if hundreds of thousands of people use something and find it useful, until a celebrity uses it, and this legitimises it. There is now something for journalists to hang their report off. This is just lazy as it means they don't have to actually investigate it - they can report around the subject.

A similar effect occurs with business - any technology is seen as frivolous until some 'gurus' start telling companies how they can make money from it. And then it becomes serious.

Here's the truth: YOU legitimise technology. Celebrities and business are a side-show.