The Ed Techie

The Zittrain manifesto

Following on from my last post, here are some of my thoughts on Jonathan Zittrain's The Future of the Internet.

For those of you who haven't read it Zittrain sets out the argument that the key to the internet's success is what he terms 'generativity'. The PC and the internet are both largely open systems which can be built upon without recourse to the 'owners' of the system. He defines generativity as "a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences".

He argues that this generativity is under threat from two possible forms of attack:

1. An internet 9/11 - a cyber terrorist attack that has such dramatic impact, that like the attacks on 9/11 it leads to a serious crackdown on civil liberties.
2. Glacial decline - the gradual aggregation of problems such as spam, bots, viruses, etc lead people to sacrifice the freedom of a generative system for a more secure, controlled one.

Zittrain sets out the idea of the 'tethered appliance'. This is a device which regularly links back to the manufacture to receive updates. The iPhone/iPod is an obvious example. This is great for receiving updates but it has a number of downsides. Perhaps most significant of these is what Zittrain calls 'perfect enforcement'. Because of the manner in which digital enforcement works it means that companies can retrospectively enforce changes - any illegal copies can be deleted, user activity can be reported, behaviour can be curtailed.

There was a 'straight out of Zittrain' example of this last week when Amazon removed copies of Animal Farm from people's Kindles without their permission (although they did refund the money) over a dispute over ownership. Although Amazon have vowed not to do it again, I'd be surprised if this holds, since now that publishers know that it is possible, they may seek injunctions to ensure it happens whether Amazon like it or not. If you add in the legal systems misunderstanding of the digital world, plus the possibility of governmental influence and you'll soon see Zittrain's point.

Having said that there are a couple of areas where I think Zittrain overstates the coming netapocalypse.

Firstly, like many such prophecies of doom it rather assumes people are helpess before it. Having experienced the generative net people will soon feel restricted by a limited version.

Secondly, maybe the generative/non-generative net isn't a dichotomy. It could be a continuum of generativity - for example, although the iPhone has a filter for applications (Apple decide what is in or out), there is an element of generativity about the opening up of the app store to developers. There are apps that were unpredicted, (part of his definition), but it isn't unfiltered (so fails his definition).

Thirdly, people can possess both tethered and generative devices - I might be happy for my phone to be tethered, but Zittrain's argument rather suggests we only have one device. Given the cost of laptops now one could argue that the Asus running a Linux OS means that we have never been as generative as we are now. It is thus possible (indeed probable) that many people possess both types of devices, and that's still a recipe for a generative net.

Lastly, he is rather dismissive of the move to the cloud and web 2.0, as this gives control back to the owners of the systems (eg Google). While there is some truth in this, I think that as with the argument about VLEs vs PLEs, you could see distribution as its own protection. With multiple sites competing around the same service you can easily, and without cost, host in multiple places. If any site then exhibits non-generative behaviour you can switch to another one.

Having said all this, if you haven't read the book, I recommend it highly. What Zittrain sets out is a thoughtful analysis of the manner in which the the structure of the net (and the PC) have helped shape the behaviour we see, and cherish, on it. Most importantly he makes us realise that we shouldn't take this for granted - if it were being designed now to specifically achieve what it has, then business and governments would put in controls we'd never overcome. It once again makes you shake your head in wonder at what a fantastic achievement the net as we know it really is.

Reading club as course model?

As John has already mentioned, a couple of weeks ago I worked with him and Doug on a kind of online reading club experiment. This came out of some research money our Centre for Professional Development obtained for examining different ways in which higher education could support professional development.

At the OU we have an occasional book club group, where influential books are taken by an academic and in an extended session we explore these. John has done Benkler's Wealth of Networks, Zittrain's The Future of the Internet and I've done Everything is Miscellaneous. So the idea was to attempt this online, a sort of 'extended reading club' where we take difficult, and significant works, and both explain them and add to the discussion.

There were three sessions which were run in Elluminate with a small group of attendees. Because it was part of a project, they weren't open, but it strikes me this is a possible model that can combine some of a university's need to actually take fees, and also fulfill on its openness remit: The actual, live sessions are small, with fee paying students who get to interact, have support, certificate of attendance etc. The sessions are then recorded and made open to everyone. I wonder if this 'book club' model would work on a larger scale as an alternative to the conventional course?

The sessions worked well I think (I'm not evaluating them, so only going on my perspective as the presenter for one session). We had good discussions, plenty of questions and the 'students' ('readers?') went away I think with a deeper understanding of the book in question and the issues around the internet structure, privacy, security, control, etc. You could imagine augmenting the book club model with a wide range of university and other resources on these topics also, so you have the book at the hub of a range of topics which people can explore as they see fit.

I'll put some thoughts about the book in another post.

Bridging the gap - book chapter

A while ago, I wrote a chapter with James Dalziel on bridging the gap between web 2.0 and higher education. It was published in the Handbook of Research on Social Software and Developing Community Ontologies, edited by Stylianos Hatzipanagos, & Steven Warburton, and published by IGI. There are some good chapters in this book, so it's definitely worth a read (despite the rather uninspiring title). I've had news that they are using it again in another book: E-Collaboration: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications.

I wrote most of the chapter at the end of 2007, so it already feels a bit outdated, but I forgot to put the PDF up here earlier in the year, and I know some of you like those proper references so here it is. (I think I am breaking all sort of copyright law in publishing it, but am I bovvered?)

The demise of should

This is a difficult post to write, I'm trying to think some stuff through, so if it comes across like I'm a cross between Andrew Keen and Baroness Greenfield, then assume this is because I haven't articulated myself well, and not because I am such a hybrid of bad science and curmudgeon. (If I did I might look something like this:)

 

(Andrew Keen and Baroness Greenfield morph photo via morphthing)

In general, you will know that I think the internet is GOOD THING. I like it. I spend a lot of time there. If I could drink beer with it, I would. But one should consider that even good things are rarely all good. There are downsides to most things.

One of the downsides it seems to me about the net is the commonly quoted echo chamber effect. That is, we spend time with like minded people, and not listening to different voices. I don't buy this completely, stuff comes across my screen everyday that I didn't know, that challenges me, etc. But what I think the net does do is legitimise everything. In general this has been a good force too - people no longer feel isolated because they are different, they can find others like them. Of course, this can be negative, if you are a rabid racist, you don't have to suffer being told you are wrong by everyone, you can find other nutters online who will share your view.

We probably have an echo chamber continuum that goes something like:

• Wilful ignorance - these are people who know they are wrong, or at odds with society and deliberately seek out others of a like mind: Creationists, racists, conspiracy theorists, people who think Dan Brown is a good writer. That sort of thing. The point is you have to go out of your way to find similar viewpoints.
• Accidental ignorance - people who labour under a misapprehension, because their community, network or peers also possess it, or it is a subject they simply don't come across.
• Lazy tastes - people who are generally aware they could move beyond their comfort zones, but don't.
• Occasional venturers - this is probably most of us, we do occasionally stretch our beliefs or tastes, but also we enjoy the stuff we know and like.
• Radical explorers - those who always seek different ideas, and tastes.

My point is not about the first or even second of these categories, but more about the middle - we have seen the demise of any sense of compulsion or quality. There is no more 'should' anymore. Everything is okay. Again, this is largely beneficial to people and society. There is no pressure to say, get married because you feel you 'should' (or live a conventional lifestyle). Saying goodbye to should is one of the great social forces of the 21st century.

But as we wave goodbye to it, we should also ponder what we lose by its demise. The loss of any sense of artistic quality is one aspect which I will miss. The notion of 'quality' in any artistic endeavour took a serious blow with postmodern relativism - everything was valid as an artform. And, again, this has been positive - I like that I don't have to hide my penchant for horror movies and can engage in pretentious discussions about the merits of various 1980s trashy movies with Jim Groom.

But I was always aware that there was more, that one 'should' try and read classics. It was 'should' that led me to Joseph Conrad and Flaubert. Should suggested I try listening to jazz. And should sat me down and made me watch  Nouvelle Vague cinema. All of these have been good things and have pushed my appreciation of cinema, literature and music across genres: that is, I have become a better reader of all novels because I have read Flaubert; and I enjoy Japanese horror because I learnt from French cinema, and so on.

My feeling is that what started with postmodernism has been exacerbated by the net. People's current tastes are always legitimised and there is no compulsion to go further. Thus we have a society that thinks Harry Potter is literature. It's not - maybe (and I am really stretching my maybes here) it's okay as a read, but there is more. And there is more to cinema than comic book adaptations. So, while we might cheer the demise of should in general, we should perhaps mourn the passing of it with regards to society's artistic sensibilities.

But all this is just a vague feeling I have, maybe there's nothing to it.

What I talk about when I talk about running

I read Murakami's reflection on running recently (he pinched the title from the first chapter of my VLE book - oh, okay, we both pinched it from Raymond Carver, but I got there first), and it caused me to consider why I run. I started running regularly about four years ago (it's my runiversary!). Before I launch into a meditation on running here are a few facts:

1. I am patently not very good at it. There are people who discover running and a talent is unearthed, they are effortlessly clocking sub-3 hour marathons and a slow training run is faster than I can ever manage. I am not one of these. At my peak I managed a 48 minute 10K. I guess if I trained really hard and changed diet, got a personal trainer I could bring this down, but I am never going to be a 40 minute 10ker, let alone a 30 minute one. Some people start up and within a couple of months are clocking 40 minutes. I am at very best average ie I come in the middle of the pack of a race (although see next point).
2. I am getting worse at it. I used to be an 8 minute miler, but my pace has slipped to around 9 minutes and despite my best efforts I seem unable to reclaim the glory of the first year or so. This could be related to age, or putting on a bit of weight, but I think it's more down to being willing to push myself harder when I was starting out.
3. I frequently don't want to do it and don't enjoy it. I drag myself out and have a miserable, below-par run.

So why do I run? I have rarely gone a week without a run in the past four years, usually run about 4-5 times a week and have taken part in countless (oh, okay, 13) races that I have no chance of doing well in. Let's put aside issues of staying reasonably healthy and weight (which are factors, but probably not my prime motivation). As Murakami says of his writing, he doesn't really compose much while running. I am the same, I could argue that I think through problems, but while I do occasionally, often I don't think of much beyond 'I'm not enjoying this run much.' Having said that, it does give you some clear space and maybe that not thinking of much at all enables you to be focused at other times. I do semi-compose blog posts (hell, even tweets) while running so it has helped with that.

The god things about running? There is something about the nature of the data in running that appeals to me. It's about miles run, pace per mile, top speed, long distance speed, etc. I also like its simplicity (being a simple person at heart), but this very simplicity provides a multitude of ways of approaching it (kind of like Twitter). You can concentrate on a race, different distances, pace, hills, etc. This year, although my pace is rubbish, I am aiming to run 1000 miles over the course of the year. It's not an amazing amount, but it requires a steady approach, and changes the psychology of my running. I am fond of running on holiday and some of my most memorable runs have been in Cornwall, Antigua, Italy and Australia.

But all these are bonuses: the main reason I run is something I've been thinking about a lot lately with regards to online activity - namely, identity. Although I'm not a good runner, I do it regularly enough to feel confident in classifying myself as a runner. In running terms I am a mild underpronator, 8-9 minute miler, half-marathon runner. And that classification matters.

And so on to the inevitable connection with education. Actually I don't think the link is as arduous to make as I sometimes manage - running is a lot like learning. You don't have to be the best in a subject, you 'compete' against yourself, you find different strategies, you need different motivations, and we define ourselves by what we express a preference for. And the analogy holds true if we consider formal and informal learning. I don't belong to a running club and I mainly engage in informal learning. But for the sake of motivation and the experience I like to take part in formal events, ie races, and occasionally I might want to have my learning formally recognised. The two can exist quite happily and to each other's mutual benefit in running, so why not in education?

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?'

Shiny show 2

Following on from the hugely irrelevant Shiny Show 1, I bring the next instalment, where I look at any new technologies that have crossed my path and evaluate them from an educational perspective. The usual proviso that some of these may not be that new, it's just when I get to them.

Odadeo - a social network site for dads. It is built around the concept of 'pledges', eg 'I pledge to be more patient', or 'I pledge to take my daughter to see High School bloody Musical 3'. You can then 'pip' your pledges when you do something towards them. You can share pledges and there is a 'Dadsdaq' which shows your progress. I like the way it gets you to define yourself according to various labels (you can invent your own tags), and then find others in those groupings. My concern was that it would be populated by either a) angry Fathers for Justice types or b) American dads who kept crying every ten minutes and hugging each other. But it's not, and is quite a fun place. If you're a dad, check it out.
What's more interesting for me though is if you replaced pledge with 'learning pledge' you've suddenly got the makings of a good learning social network site.
Shiny score - 4/5 Educational score - 2/5

PostRank - I covered this in detail in my previous post, but want to include it for a shiny award too. They get a shiny for their widget alone, see the left hand column on my blog. I think this way of measuring engagement with content is something we need to explore as educators (to help students) and under the digital scholarship banner, as a means of demonstrating the type of response and value there is to your online output.
Shiny score - 3/5 Educational score - 4/5

Shelfari - a social network for book readers. It takes the bookshelf idea from Facebook a little further, so you add books from an extensive database to your 'bookshelf' (I've added a couple to mine as illustration). This can be shared with others, and you can join groups, meet authors, etc. It's well done, and books are a subject people are passionate enough about to make a network viable. Books are sufficiently rich social objects to foster community.
From an educational perspective, like with Odadeo, you could see this being adapted to work around subject areas, or rather the user's bookshelf being imported into a learning environment so that they can join groups around other text books. Because you can tag books, it also adds to resource discovery for learners.
Shiny score - 4/5 Educational score - 4/5

Debategraph - takes the concept mapping idea and wikifies it. It looks nice, and being able to share maps and argument structures clearly has educational potential, but I found it difficult to use. Like a lot of concept mapping tools, it has a range of terminology (for example all the different nodes and types of links), that produce a high threshold to entry. They need to simplify I think, at least on the first play, so you can quickly bash together a mind map, without needing to take a course in mind map theory first. This is in competition rather with the Open University's own Cohere. There is definitely something in this shared maps for education, you can imagine them being legitimate forms of output, or group process, but the software isn't quite there yet.
Shiny score - 3/5 Educational score - 4/5

That's it for now folks, and remember - keep it shiny.

The weirdness of copyright

I've written a chapter for a book with James Dalziel and we are asked to sign a copyright form. Now, I usually just sign these, but I've been getting fussy about this stuff recently. So, I actually read this one, and when you analyse it, there are a number of really draconian measures in there. If you look at it rationally you think 'no-one would invent a system like this now'. To be fair, they have said we can publish the chapter online if we ask permission, and this copyright form is fairly standard. But I think it's an interesting exercise to go through it.

"Author(s) agrees to, and does hereby assign all rights, title and interest, including copyrights, in and to the manuscript to Publisher. The author retains the rights to any intellectual property developed by the author and included in the manuscript including, without limitation, any models, theories, or conclusions formulated by the author. While the author may use any and all thoughts and research results developed or accumulated while working on a manuscript, and may rewrite, update, and re-title them for use in other publications, the author CANNOT use the verbatim text of the manuscript or any part thereof that has been copyrighted"

I love the 'author may use any thoughts' line - it's nice of them to let the author keep their thoughts I guess. But the key assumption we don't question here is that they own the chapter - you have written, edited, formatted it, but have surrendered all rights to it. This is particularly odd when you consider the next point:

"Author(s) understand that no royalties or remuneration will be paid by the Publisher to the author for the above named submitted manuscript. Further, Author(s) acknowledge the manuscript is being provided on a volunteer basis for the professional recognition obtained by the publication."

So, we do all the work, you keep all the money. Woohoo! Good job we like that professional recognition so much.

"The Author(s) will indemnify and defend Publisher against any claim, demand or recovery against Publisher by reason of any violation of any proprietary right or copyright, or because of any libelous or scandalous matter contained in the Manuscript."

And we have to carry all the risk as well.

"The Author(s) agrees that until the publication of the manuscript Author(s) will not agree to publish, or furnish to any other publisher, any work on the same subject that will infringe upon or adversely affect the sale of the manuscript. Furthermore, author(s) cannot post the contents of the article on any personal website or other sites, or distribute the work to others in either electronic or print forms."

I mean, seriously, come on. They have said that actually we can, as long as we seek permission. What I would like to know is if I put something online and it increases the sales of the book, do I get a cut then?

"Contributing authors will not receive complimentary copies of the handbook; however, publisher will provide contributors to the handbook with a copy of their published manuscript along with a copy of the cover page of the publication. In addition, Publisher will provide each contributor to the handbook a 40% discount offer if they decide to purchase the handbook."

I can buy a copy of my own work at reduced cost!

"The Publisher may permit others to publish, broadcast, make recordings or mechanical renditions, publish book club and micro-film editions, make translations, and other electronic versions, show by motion pictures or television, syndicate, quote, and otherwise utilize this work, and material based on this work."

Now, granted that Edtechie The Movie isn't coming to a cinema near you any time soon, but the control still resides with the publisher. As the author I would have no say in how it is later used. When you publish online you accept this to a degree, but at least a CC licence allows me to specify that it is share-alike, or non-commercial, so gives me some element of control.

Now compare this with, say, keeping a blog:

• I can still get the professional recognition,
• I still do the work, but I can style it and edit it the way I want
• If there were any money to be made, I would make it
• It potentially reaches a wider audience
• No-one will sue me if I put it in two places or reuse it
• It is free to the reader
• I own it

Hmm, wonder which one academia should choose...

Here comes everything

I've been reading Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody. In it he argues that organisations have costs that means they struggle to compete with masses because the masses can afford to have lots of failures, because the cost of failure is low, and the ease of organising is now drastically reduced. I made a similar argument in the Future of Content, by using natural selection as an analogy. Natural selection can afford to make lots of mistakes because it has thousands of individuals and millions of years to experiment over. An individual designer cannot afford to have so many dead-ends. But when it comes to producing complexity, this massively distributed process wins.

Shirky's argument is that social communication tools have lowered the threshold for organising. He gives an example of organising photos from an event - previously this would have required someone to organise it, to get in touch with all possible photographers, to collect and publish their photos. Now all that's required is that people stick them up on Flickr, and use a tag, independently of each other. The cost of organisation has collapsed overnight.

Things such as eduglu, sociallearn, loosely coupled teaching apps, and PLEs have been much on mind recently, so when reading Shirky's book I thought some of the same arguments he makes for organising people could be made for technologies. The 'cost' of organising, or integrating, applications used to be high, but through approaches such as widgets, RSS, web services, etc this cost has drastically reduced.

To make my point here are a couple of Shirky quotes which I'll then rephrase for technologies.

"By making it easier for groups to self-assemble and for individuals to contribute to group effort without requiring formal management, these tools have radically altered the old limits on the size, sophistication, and scope of unsupervised effort"

becomes:

"By making it easier for tools to (self) assemble and for applications to contribute to the environment without requiring integration, these approaches have radically altered the old limits on the size, sophistication, and scope of any individual to create their own environment"

And this Shirky statement:

"because the minimum costs of being an organisation in the first place are relatively high, certain activities may have some value but not enough to make them worth pursuing in any organised way. New social tools are altering this equation by lowering the costs of coordinating group action."

Can be recast as:

"because the minimum costs of being an integrated environment in the first place are relatively high, certain applications may have some value but not enough to make them worth pursuing in any organised way. New data techniques are altering this equation by lowering the costs of integrating all applications."

So, it isn't a case of here comes everybody but here comes everything. What's an educational tools? Whatever you want it to be.

Everything is Miscellaneous workshop

I did a session at the OU yesterday on Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous. Below is the slidecast. The audio is a bit quiet, I know I should redo it, but time presses on, so apologies if you have to turn it up loud.

| View | Upload your own