Category: ED 654

Where are you now?

I refer to my Yawp post which I began concerning the work done by David White, & Alison Le Cornu on Visitors and Residents in online engagement. As well my Make and Share SoundCloud “podcasts.”

Initial Ruminations on Digital Citizenship

Digital Citizenship Redux

Thank you, Chris, for not needing me to duplicate work.

I think the Initial Ruminations on Digital Citizenship “podcast” is closest to the assignment as given. I will have to contest a bit that imagining that we start from whole cloth on any topic is a little simplistic.  So, I do not apologize for citing my sources.

Your Choice Assignments: Think About Your Thinking

  • Think About Your Thinking 

Online Self/Embodied Self

In crafting the audio for the Make and Share, I fell into this manner of speaking. I like it markedly better than the real/virtual phrasing of our divided experience. We seem to forget that our night time dreaming is real too, for one example, even if it is fantastical. I had not fully articulated the idea previously despite Skip’s assignments on web presence, but I am intrigued by the notion that we have an avatar online it is faceted by our sites of participation and yet is cumulative. In truth, it is similar to stories we tell about our embodied selves, lawyer, Mother, etc.. However, it is more abstracted. I think I mean by this Schumacher’s criticism/observation that a face-to-face conversation was meaningfully different from a phone call. I think his point was two-fold that we have evolved and made ourselves human in part because of our face-to-face conversations. Only of late has our communication technology become so sophisticated that we can lose track of it. Schumacher felt that rather than taking it for granted, and worse assuming an artificial posture at the outset of our inquiry we, to more precisely engage in our investigations, instead needed to inhabit our bodies first. Unfortunately, this abstracted avatar can be taken for granted too, as well its fictive origin, and we can become seduced by our participation in a representation of an altogether different event. Chris, you raise an interesting issue and that is our cyborg enhancement of our embodiments, or more subtle is our organic improvement of our embodiments. We have a long history of augmentation for beauty and this likely will continue.  Certainly, one category of this is therapeutic. But, we are on the verge of augmentation for performance both cyborg and organic and that likely will call our notions of fundamental embodiment and being deeply into question.

 

Your Choice Assignments: Search & Research

Technological Somnambulism

Definition:

Langdon Winner seems to develop a McLuhanian concern about the value-free quality of tools; he as well questions technological determinism. Versions of determinism as defined in Wikipedia:

Hard determinists would view technology as developing independently from social concerns. They would say that technology creates a set of powerful forces acting to regulate our social activity and its meaning. According to this view of determinism, we organize ourselves to meet the needs of technology and the outcome of this organization is beyond our control or we do not have the freedom to make a choice regarding the outcome (autonomous technology)….

Soft determinism, as the name suggests, is a more passive view of the way technology interacts with socio-political situations. Soft determinists still subscribe to the fact that technology is the guiding force in our evolution, but would maintain that we have a chance to make decisions regarding the outcomes of a situation. This is not to say that free will exists, but that the possibility for us to roll the dice and see what the outcome exists….

“For the interesting puzzle in our times is that we so willingly sleepwalk through the process of reconstituting the conditions of human existence” (107). Winner offers several reasons that we take our technology for granted. One is the “tool” metaphor that we employ in speaking and thinking about technology.  We pick it up and use it and put it down.  Second is the disconnection between making and consuming technology.  Third, is the illusion that technology creates new worlds in which we inhabit. The second is fascinating and particularly right with our new seduction and fascination with communications technology. The internet and my cell phone are tools beyond my keen.  Whereas, I have used a forge to make a simple but useful pot hanger for cooking with a dutch oven suspended above a fire.  I have knapped stone to craft a quick and dirty serrated knife. Turning back to the first the moral argument we attach to our technologies divorces them from any implicit ethical values, rather we say, this knife can be used well to cut bread or used poorly to harm a person.  We rarely think beyond that statement.

 From this point of view, the important question about technology becomes, As we “make things work,” what kind of world are we making? This suggests that we pay attention not only to the making of physical instruments and processes, although that certainly remains important, but also to the production of psychological, social, and political conditions as a part of any significant technical change. Are we going to design and build circumstances that enlarge possibility for growth in human freedom, sociability, intelligence, creativity, and self-government? Or are we heading an altogether different direction?(112)

So, for me, “technological somnambulism” represents the negative phrasing of the positive values entailed in notions of “appropriate technology” or perhaps said better is that taken together we can probably make better choices about our technological adoptions and applications. Wikipedia offers this first definition of appropriate technology, “Appropriate technology is an ideological movement (and its manifestations) encompassing technological choice and application that is small-scale, decentralized, labor-intensive, energy-efficient, environmentally sound, and locally autonomous.”

I stumbled on a fascinating use of the online resource Quizlet. Langdon Winner, “Technologies as Forms of Life” a short set of flashcards that captures ideas in the article. In truth, it does not cover what I consider all of the key and crucial ideas but is still a fun little resource.

I  also stumbled on a previous ED 654 student’s blog posting on the topic, and Chris’s comments as well. Sarah Kessler-Frick explores the question here. Her blog post is dated in as much as some of her linked material no longer connects. But she wrestles with the same fundamental ideas.

References

Appropriate Technology. (27 May 2017)In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 29, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology

Kessler-Frick, Sarah. “Technological Somnambulism” EdHeadEd accessed May 29, 2017.

Technological Somnambulism. (5 January 2017). In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 29, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_somnambulism

Technological Determinism, (16 May 2017). In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 29,2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_determinism

Winner, L.  Technologies as Forms of Life. in Readings in the Philosophy of Technology., ed. David Kaplan Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, pp. 103-113.

searchandresearch

Your Choice Assignments: Search & Research

Digital Humanities

Just having completed Skip Via’s ED 677 Digital Storytelling class, it made sense to start with this topic.

Definition:

Bryan Alexander offers a working definition: “Simply put, it is telling stories with digital technologies. Digital stories are narratives built from the stuff of cyberculture” (Alexander, 2010, Loc 110 of 3318). I think there is a subtle difference between these two sentences. The first sentence is broadly inclusive.  And so content creators who purchase a sailboat and document their adventures online and content creators who stream MMO gameplay are both engaged in digital storytelling according to the first sentence. Alexander’s second sentence I think modifies the first, focusing the definition on being more exclusively online, “stuff of cyberculture.” I think this turn privileges the MMO streamer’s story. This is a turn with which I do not easily resonate.  Rather, it is our shifting back and forth between our online selves and our embodied selves that describe this historic moment for humanity. Perhaps in a few years with AI and robotics have lightened the burden of our embodied selves we will have a fuller sense of entirely digital humanities.

Pausing, because my undergraduate degree is in humanities it seems reasonable to ask what that meant previously? “Humanities” were those fields of inquiry other than math, science and social science. So for example, poetry, painting, theater, and writing both essay and creative, were some of the inquiries that traditionally informed the “humanities.” Hence, why I at the outset reached back to the storytelling of last semester. In summary, these were inquiries that tried to make sense of our human being. And, that detail, I think is why I hold out for a notion of digital humanities at this time that explores our shifting between online and embodied selves.

That said, it is prescient and relevant to anticipate a future where we live almost entirely online. Celebrating Alexander’s foresight, we can begin to predict a “digital humanities built from the stuff of cyberculture.” I recall studying, in the 1990’s, with an artist who was using fractal geometry to create images, or perhaps to let a computer create images, original each of them. His struggle to define “art” at that moment was interesting, but taking it the next turn, what happens when computers refer to images constructed by computers to craft subsequent images? When humans view these images what impact might that have on our person? The computers lack emotion, certainly, AI may become sophisticated enough as to offer us a convincing simulation but that is not the same thing as passion or desperation or any other distinctly human trait.  Will we use our unburdening to become distinctly human, or will we just consume and gradually retreat from our human being?

The Wikipedia article on Digital Humanities is particularly useful in term of its “values and methods” section. If we are going to define something as “new” part of that newness necessarily needs be methods, for the postmodernist in me, I love the blurring that is implicated in these methods, for example, one tells a story, and is at once writing literary criticism as well.  Treating programming languages as languages and discovering the poetry in them is fascinating as well, as examples.

Historically the arts are driven by patrons and donors, and happily, we see that the National Endowment for the Humanities has a subsite devoted to the Digital Humanities. The Office of Digital Humanities despite its unfortunately glum name offers access to grant funding and a wealth of information about projects and research.

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education provides both a catalog of resources and debate around the relative accessibility of digital humanities as a turn in one’s professional scholarship. One might say that this article is itself a practice in digital humanities since it curates other catalog’s of resources as well. It is a criticism/observation of higher education’s moment.

centerNet is an international resource for digital humanities scholars. It catalogs the locations of centers of study around the world.

The online journal “Digital Humanities Quarterly” has been published since 2007, they describe themselves saying, ” open-access, peer-reviewed, digital journal covering all aspects of digital media in the humanities.” A quick review of recent articles shows a pretty even split on doing digital humanities and on methodological self-reflexion as one would expect from a youthful cluster of research.

Digital Humanities although a commonplace in higher education and academic libraries is perhaps less ubiquitous a notion among the general public. This article again captures the unsettled moment in higher education. Interestingly reporting on an MLA presentation from a community college professor simultaneously advocating for digital humanities and celebrating how the lack of funding at her home institution forces her to be precise in her disciplinary practice. Other comments point to the joint practicing of scholarship by professors and students, changes in publishing, the article ends with a salute to the media literacy that grows out of digital humanities scholarship offering that as a pretty good reason to be involved on its own.

I think these articles were interesting because my approach to Digital Humanities was focused on what ordinary people were doing online with SoundCloud, Storify, YouTube for examples. I was thinking about the production of music, art, and storytelling, not about the scholarship of and around those activities. The scholarship, however, does an interesting thing to our traditional notion of humanities because the practices blur some of the clear lines between social science and humanities or math and humanities and that is fascinating.

References

Alexander, B. (2011). The new digital storytelling: Creating narratives with new media. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger.

Digital Humanities. (2017, Jan. 26). In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 28, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_humanities

Bessette, L.S. (March 14, 2017).Digital Humanities Training Opportunities and Challenges, In The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved May 28, 2017, http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/digital-humanities-training-opportunities-and-challenges/63709

Fenton, W. (JANUARY 13, 2017). Digital Humanities: The Most Exciting Field You’ve Never Heard Of, In PC Mag. Retrieved May 28, 2017, http://www.pcmag.com/commentary/350984/digital-humanities-the-most-exciting-field-youve-never-hea

YAWP

David White, & Alison Le Cornu, (2011)  offer a criticism of the binary digital native:digital immigrant framing of a web presence. However, they do not stop there, but rather they develop a theory of visitor:resident as a continuum of participation in their article Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement. In this video, White complicates our thinking in several key ways; first, White calls into question the importance of “generation” in our thoughts about web presence. White’s video further delves deeper introducing the model of continua in contrast to binaries. White also introduces the importance of motivation in propelling a persons’ relative residency or visitor status.

Therefore, if the simple binaries do not adequately open the conversation, what other possible models do we have at hand? Perhaps instead if we imagine the binaries as the ends of ranges and we imagine a node at which these several spectra intersect, then we can plot our “location” or comfort in the online environment — a multidimensional map. White indeed has mapping one’s participation as a goal of his method. White discusses motivation in relative participation as an essential element. “Participation” calls into question “presence” too. “Presence” suggests a product, perhaps, whereas “participation” suggests a process.

#D Coordinates

I begin with participation in the online environment since it seems implicit and necessary in any possible definition of “digital citizenship.”  Stripping the “digital” we are unlikely to recognize a person who does not pay taxes, does not serve on juries, does not vote, does not stay informed on issues as behaving like a citizen, perhaps visiting but not residing, not a citizen. Adding back the “digital” what then is analogous behaviors and responsibilities in the online environment?

My social media presence is linked by the familiar icons at the bottom of the page. LinkedIn is my professional persona. I am less active with it of late, but I do read articles on a nearly daily basis.  Twitter is exclusively for ONID, though I have found some interesting professional news on occasion. G+ is likewise related to ONID participation.  YouTube was initially only a library of content providers I followed. I tried to make a couple of videos to see if that was a storytelling format that inspired my creativity. Perhaps if I stuck with it and messing about with the camera became routine and second nature… but for now that is all I have done. I have a Facebook page that is locked down tight and is solely used for managing Facebook Ads, and my work page. And that is about it for social media.

I kept a blogger site for years that journaled my workouts: Sisyphean Enterprises, but it is unkempt now. I have played a couple of online games, Pirates of the Burning Sea, and Eve Online, my main Eve character is Haki Aldard. I messed about a little with DayZ as well.  The challenge of PvP is fascinating, not that I am any good at it. Alas, I cannot afford the cost or time to play now that I am living in Dillingham, Alaska.

I am susceptible to the existential notion of self — existence precedes essence. Accordingly, I am what I have done. My single greatest adult accomplishment is to have raised two kids, one of each flavor. My daughter just graduated from Columbia University and Lewis and Clark College with bachelor’s degrees in Environmental Engineering and Chemistry respectively.  My son is a Junior at University of Maine, Orono and working on an Environmental Studies degree. They are well launched.

I have as well cared for ailing parents, one who had Frontotemporal dementia. I supported my spouse’s successful cancer fight. Her blog, Riding a New Horse is here.

I graduated from Sheldon Jackson College, in Sitka Alaska in 1988. My connection to Alaska extends back to World War II.  My Grandfather and Grandmother lived in Kodiak during the war.  My Grandfather built the refrigeration on the Naval base. My Grandmother was the Postmistress.  My Mother was born in Kodiak in 1945.  Their lives took them to Southern California after the war, and it was there that I was born and raised.  But Alaska was always part of the family mythology. So, I chose to go to college in Alaska.  However, I met my spouse and her family lived on the East coast, and so before I was done with Alaska, we relocated to Maine. I worked 20 and change years at an elite liberal arts college. The last four years as an Assistant Director. I was completely burnt out and desperate to return to Alaska. Last fall I took a position with Bristol Bay Campus, in Dillingham Alaska. I no longer have a good work-life balance as I let hobby’s and interests go and instead prioritized work and graduate studies. This winter I realized, during the holiday break, I had too much time on my hands and so purchased some acrylic paints and started drawing and painting again. Painting gave me a creative voice in college of which I was previously unaware. Rather than a picture of myself I offer this attempt at sunrise over the Nushagak (if you care SoundCloud and LinkedIn offer a professional headshot, though now I am grayer).

A third grader could do better. If there is any consolation, it is that I have not put paint to canvas since 1988.  But, it feels good to be learning again.

I do not feel the affinity for lists, and so this is a struggle. However, among the many Chris offered I found these:

  • List the ways you don’t care to die
    • debilitating stroke
    • dementia
    • languishing disease,  e.g. Parkinson’s, Lou Gehrig’s,

 

  • List the epitaphs you might like on your tombstone.
    • He left it a little better than he found it.
    • One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Of course these combined offer a relatively morbid sense of self.  Perhaps at this moment, late in middle-age, and anticipating early old-age that is entirely appropriate. However, most of my waking time is not spent fixated on my mortality and rather on what I can still do and make both professionally and personally.

References

White, D. [jiscnetskills]. (2014, March 10). Visitors and Residents. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/sPOG3iThmRI.

White, D., & Le Cornu, A. (2011). Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday, 16(9). Retrieved October 4, 2016, http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3171/3049

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YAWP by Robert Heath is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.rdheath.com/blog/?p=457.