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Wow. It’s a strangely comforting/discomforting confusing feeling when someone you respect takes so much time to deconstruct something you’ve written. Nice, in a sense, that what you wrote seemed worth the effort to respond to in such detail, not so comforting that I took such a thrashing! 🙂 But let me pick up on a couple of issues, and see if I can’t speak a little clearer on them, and why i think they’re important. Here’s Stephen’s post.

and now, an attempt to put enough here to make this understandable without making it 20 miles long… I want to be clear at the outset, that the orginal conversation that i was describing was a real one, and the arguments that I was refuting were genuine. I know the blogevangelist in question. And this was not meant to tar the name of some very good blogevangelists (which is why I changed the title of the last post) because most of them are perfectly reasoned in their promotion of blogging.
dave Blogging (in its wordpress type form) is probably a transitional technology.

• Stephen Well yes, of course it is transitional technology. Name me one thing launched on the internet over the last ten years that isn’t transitional technology.
• dave’s response agreed Stephen. But you and I are fully aware of the transitionality of technology, there are many, many people who are not aware of this. And, when they think of tools ‘for democracy’ or ‘for teaching’ they tend to compare them to things that have much longer lifespans. This is a very simple premise that can be layed on the floor of a discussion, you yourself agree that it’s true. When people are as fired up as my friend was, it never hurts to start with an easy premise.
• Stephen continues “Blogging allows for only a pretty rudimentary interactivity.” Well yeah, but it allows for a whole lot more interactivity than, say, plain ordinary web pages (aka shovelware). and and people are working hard to make that possible. People, I might add, in the blogging community – and not their critics.
• Dave’s response Agreed. But the comparison that you are making is between internet technologies… The discussion i was having was comparing it to a classroom and live discussion. I agree that people are working hard to make it possible, which is why i linked to ELGG. But again, the person i was debating with is not online at all now… so the comparison of ‘better’ was not super important. It was the legitimacy of his saying that it wasn’t perfect that I was acknowledging. And it isn’t perfect. It does many, many good things. But people who’ve been turned off will focus on the negative, which i acknowledged.

dave It can(blogs), very often, lack accountability

• actually, i won’t really go into this one too far, I failed to link to the correct article in my post and Stephen assumed i meant Bill O’reilly and I meant Tim O’reilly. Stephen did make an excellent point about traditional media not exactly being perfectly accountable either. This is true, but they are, at least to some degree, more accountable. (I wish i was being ironic by mentioning Bill O’reilly, but i’m not that cool 🙂 )

dave It is not, by any means, a silver bullet

• Stephen’s response  where is that pundit out there who is actually saying blogs will satisfy every need of every person?
• dave’s response It was my conversation partner’s perception that he’d been told just that. That blogging was the key to democracy. I’m guessing he oversimplified, but again, simply agreeing to the fact that it isn’t, creates a comfort zone with the other participant that you aren’t a fanatic. And he was talking about a specific presentation and person. People do think that people say this. It ususally is said by detractors “Yeah, you blogging people just think that it will solve everything.” It’s a facile argument that needs a pat response. Just saying “i know that blogging won’t cure cancer,” is often enough to make people slow down long enough to listen to the good side of the story.

dave No one (at least not me) is suggesting that blogging should replace good teaching

• stephen He wrote alot of stuff… I encourage you to read it. Essentially he said it can. And i think that he took my comments a little out of context (as well as suggesting that my comments weren’t HONEST. which is a little hard to take)
• dave’s response yes. I agree. blogs are good for many things. A little more clarity on what i meant by ‘replace good teaching’. The person i was talking to is reputed by everyone to be a great teacher (better than good). What I was suggesting to him was not that blogging should replace the good teaching that he is currently doing. (i suggested ways it could be added)

The rest of his response covers many of the many good things that blogging (and associated techonologies) can do for people. Anyone familiar with my work will know that I can’t help but agree with him.

1. Blogging (in its wordpress type form) is probably a transitional technology.
2. It can, very often, lack accountability
3. It is not, by any means, a silver bullet
4. No one (at least not me) is suggesting that blogging should replace good teaching
5. There are still a number of very important social justice issues around blogging that stop it from being the IDEAL democracy tool.
6. Yes. Many of the most vocal bloggers will probably one day work for major media corps.

I think that, in response to my premises, stephen’s post gives a nice outline of the many nice things that blogging can do. I’m not entirely sure if he thinks that I’m being an apologist by using the above premises in a discussion. I hope not.

This sentence does concern me

• I see no reason why supporters of blogs in learning should roll over before the critics in an effort to be reasonable.
  

By my count, Stephen actually agreed with 5 out of 6 of the premises (i think he disagreed with the number 4, but i could be wrong) He then went on to elaborate on the powers in blogging in almost exactly the same way that I did in the conversation that I had on Wednesday night. (not surprising considering how much of his work i read 🙂 )

So here’s my question back to you Stephen, as you agree with the premises (even consider some of them facile Well yes, of course it is transitional technology.) then why not just come out and say them in a conversation if it settles the ire and lets the second part of that conversation happen? Is that ‘rolling over’ or is it just a productive conversation style?

I do see the need to roll over to be reasonable, for the very reasons that you described the media revolution as useful. I would like to see more people get a voice, and the more people in decision making positions that I can convince, the more that might happen.

(title change – used to say “Why i’m not a blog-evangelist,” but the gist of the post changed before the end.l

I want to emphasize, once again, that I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Rosen and his work, and am not intending to pick on him. It’s just that his article has brought a series of issues to mind, and started some great conversations that I’ve had a chance to be part of. I hope that Mr. Rosen will see this (that is, assuming he does see it) as a conversation spurred on by his thoughts rather than opposed to them.

I got blindsided in a discussion with some colleagues last night. We we’re sitting at the bar, casually talking about some soccer tournament ( 🙂 ) and he turns to me and says “how can you say that blogging is going to democratize the world?” And I said… “excuse me?” we debated, and i was a little taken aback by his enthusiasm for the topic. He explained to me that someone had told him this and he thought it was poppycock. And he was darn tired of everyone telling him he needed to do it. His classes are fine he says, he’s a purist.

Now… blogging is great. I’m writing this, you are reading it. We like blogs. That liking can turn the corner into proselitization, and certainly in the case of this friend of mine, it REALLY TURNED HIM OFF. We eventually came to a common ground once i clearly stated my concerns regarding blogging. It took us about 30 minutes to find that common ground, and, for posterity, i thought i would try and record some of what we worked out here…

Blogging (in its wordpress type form) is probably a transitional technology.

At the moment blogging allows for only a pretty rudimentary interactivity. There is one (or several) central characters, and then peripheral characters. You might argue that in the case of a classroom blog, everybody is a member and primary contributor, but i would say that a learning landscape is better technology for that.
It can, very often, lack accountability

A very clear example of this is during the o’reilly debate some nefarious dude kept coming in and posting that o’reilly was a chaild mohlester. No name. no recourse. Also, people can start a blog on any number of blogging sites and remain anonymous and then slander people.

It is not, by any means, a silver bullet

There are many situations where a blog won’t suit the needs of the given person.

No one (at least not me) is suggesting that blogging should replace good teaching

Blogging, in and of itself, will solve nothing. It will neither make a bad teacher good, nor will it save terrible curriculum. It is one, potentially important or central, but still one piece of the puzzle.

There are still a number of very important social justice issues around blogging that stop it from being the IDEAL democracy tool.

One is access. Can’t get to a computer, you can’t blog. Don’t have time? can’t blog. The second is the requisite literacy set. If you can’t understand Mr. Rosen’s style of English, or don’t understand the western conventions of argumentation, you can’t play. No matter how much you want to.

Yes. Many of the most vocal bloggers will probably one day work for major media corps.

However

There is blogging and there is blogging. Good blogging is bound into a community. A community where people aren’t anonymous and are rewarded (read) according to the quality of their work. This is good. Also, it does mean that we have a media that is not controlled in its voice sense, by money. Nasty comments can be moderated out. And blogging can give voices to many people. It can, in its own way, contribute to a more democratic world.

After we established these premises, we had a very productive conversation, and I might have convinced him of a situation in which blogging would be of use in his classroom. To some people telling them they need to do something like blogging, is tantamount to saying they aren’t currently doing enough. We are all salespeople in the new media revolution. We need to be realistic about what we say the technology can do so we can keep encouraging those middle adopters to join the party.

I’ll admit that I’m out of my league here debating with Rosen, but i’ve watched my partner blog with a baby with a full Maternity leave. It’s really hard to make the time to make that happen… the citizen, i think, is a bit more complex than mr. Rosen is letting on.

I’ve been called back to the blog today by an article that i came to through Stephen. Jay Rosen wrote a rousing article that came out of, apparently, his bloggercon presentation. It’s entitled, the people formerly known as the audience and talks in broad tones about the the coming of the revolution, how the people have been empowered, and how the world will change along with the media.

Now… Mr. Rosen is in wikipedia. According to the description linked to above, he’s a strong supporter of citizen journalism. He’s also a professor of journalism at NYU. Dude is way smarter than me. And, realistically, I spoke too strongly in the first paragraph (although his tone does remind me of those many writers over the last couple of centuries who foresaw the revolution brought on by the elite) what he’s actually saying is this..

• You [media bigwigs] don’t own the eyeballs. You don’t own the press, which is now divided into pro and amateur zones. You don’t control production on the new platform, which isn’t one-way. There’s a new balance of power between you and us.

I, myself, am a lover of the revolution. I’d love to see the emancipation of the masses from the dull glow of the television set, and, in my own field, from the painful inheritence of the mid-1800 british school system specifically designed to create robots (and reward robots) that we’re still fighting with today. And, in my incarnation as the lover of the revolution i say YAY! I say, hey, i have a blog. I’m in several podcast/webcasts. I’m trying to start a company by the people for the people. YAY. Call Che. Bring back Voltaire. Sartre’s gonna love it. TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!

oops. what’s that i smell? It’s the smell of napalm in the morning. you know. victory. The victory of the citizen journalist. The victory of web 2.0. The victory of the people against BIG BUSINESS. against BIG BROTHER.

But here’s the question. Is the guy who just quit and devoted his life to curing sickness in the world (Bill, say it ain’t so) BIG BUSINESS. or is it Mr. O’reilly and his slow slide over to doubletalk.

The bloated fatcats that Mr. Rosen tars in his blog post for ‘owning eyeballs’ and for their general misunderstanding of the ‘real people’ are not stupid. They do not make millions of dollars a year for sitting on their butts and accepting all the eyeballs thrown at them. There will be a rebuttall, and it will not be televised. It will be subtle. People will be bought out… they will slide as Mr. O’reilly has slid. People who were leaders of the revolution will blog for the poeple they once fought against. History has done this again and again… and change comes but rarely. Big media is made up of people who want to be heard, the same as Big Blogging.

And change comes when EVERYONE is in on the revolution. How much time do the single mothers have to blog? We did get a call from the western sahara on a brainstorm the other night… magical for its rarity. (and not exactly culturally representative of the rest of the people in that camp) You work all day, you see your kids, kiss the husband/wife have a beer, go to bed. Oh, and probably turn on your TV. Do you spend three hours configuring your RSS feed? not so much.

If change is going to happen, everyone needs to be emancipated. Emancipation, in the sense of empowerement to publish, to have voice, to be able to control your destiny, is a very, very long way off. The revolution, if there is ever to be one, is going to take years of concerted effort. I applaud mr. Rosen for his manifesto, I worry that too many people think we have already won. And that, exactly that conviction, will guarantee that we never do.

story link
So it continues.

• Waden [the mother] said she made clear on a consent form at the start of the school year that her 15-year-old daughter was not to be allowed Internet access. But the girl used the school computers to access the Web site MySpace.com, where she met 18-year-old Michael Macbeth.
  

two ways to read it. You can say “damn you my space! What about the children.” or you can take to heart the lesson that kids that are protected from a thing, and not taught how to deal with a thing, a at greater risk. see blog post over at will richardson

I usually don’t plug the show here in the blog, but as it directly relates to the things i was talking about here, I’m gonna break the rule and post a direct link to a show. Tom Raftery was kind enough to show up and give the Irish version of the o’reilly story. His website makes for VERY interesting reading on this whole issue.
a link i’ve picked up in the course of my research for the show.

links added later.

This is the CMP letter to It@Cork

Great post about the issue 

notice the date on this post.

Night all.

I’ve been flying around the internet for the last 24 hours, trying to get my mind around something that is disturbing me far more than it should be. Why should i care if Tim O’reilly’s company filed a trademark infringement cease and desist order to some conference with the name web 2.0 in the title?

Now i have my answer I fear oreillyism. I take issue with the coiner of the word, Dallas (whoever that is), as to the specific definition however. To me, oreillyism is the tendency of very good, socially construted ideas to be ‘owned’ by someone once they become successful and their usage/meaning enters the mainstream.

Let us take a case in point. Webct was created at the University of British Columbia as a collaborative project amongst many different people in and out of UBC. Last year, while trying to incorporate moodle into a school, I was told by the head of IT “listen, we were onboard with webct when it first started, we were asked to be part of the development, and now we pay 27000 dollars a year for the ‘campus edition’. and now you want me to get involved in another ‘free’ open source project. How long before moodle starts to charge us 30,000 dollars for its software?”

Am i saying that Murray shouldn’t have made a company, and they shouldn’t have sold it…? no way. Business is what it is. Schools need money as much if not more than other people. The problem is that oreillyism creates the form of alienation above. When people enter into a socially constructed environment, (like social software advocacy for instance) there is a certain expectation, right or wrong, that all the free work they are putting in will not be directly profited upon by others.

naive? maybe.

But that’s neither here nor there. The truth is that it happens. How many projects that were supposed to be ‘for the community’ have we all worked on, helped edit, playtest or whatever, that are now being marketed.

Again. Marketing is fair play. Situations change. Children need to be fed.

But every instance of oreillyism creates more alienation, makes it harder for everyone to trust that the project that they are working on is not simply going to be sold by the organizers.

So, how do we avoid oreillyism?

1. Please, everyone, clearly identify your trademarks so we can all know what we can and can’t use.
2. If you are going to be, someday, selling your product to google, let us know. Sell shares to your helpers.
3. If you have plans to do new marketing, post it on your website
4. Just let us know what you’re doing. Odds are if we’re working with/for you, we like you, we’ll be happy to see you succeed.

We can all make money together. We can all work together. This is about finding a new way to do business. AN OPEN WAY.

comment added following this post on eschoolnews

I in no way meant to imply that moodle WILL charge anyone anything ever. My intention in using the example was to illustrate how trust is affected by ‘oreillyism.’

Wow…

A rabid man took over my blog and posted a very silly comment… which, for posterities sake, I will leave attached to the end of the post. I must say, a couple of hours later, that i’m still a little concerned about the o’reilly thing. It always seems that someone will send out something trademarkish, demanding and limiting when there’s money involved. I’ve never really understood the reification of ideas.

So much has already been written about this… i really do need to take a day and think it over. for those of you who were forced to read the previous post… my apologies. dave.

Web 2.0 (from tim o’reilley) is a concept that, at its web 2.0 (ftor) heart, is a concept that lives and breathes on its (ftor) openness.

You’ve got to be fcuknig kidding me.

That is officially the first time i’ve ever sworn in this blog. But this is rediculous. A trademark is something that should protect WORK done. I can’t even write.

And now he wants to trademark it.

fine. poop on him.

it’s been a great couple of weeks hanging with Oscar and bon. So far being a dad is pretty cool. But time to get back to work, at least back to blogging.

Second life is not a game. That is the first thing that I came to realize after about fifteen minutes into the virtual reality environment. In order for something to be ‘a game’ there need to be clear defined rules, and, most would argue, a way to win. True, you could measure ‘winning’ by how much money you have, a common path in our own ‘meatspace’ world… and not one I particularly subscribe to. You could play a game IN second life… much like you could in ‘first life’. But, in and of itself, it is not a game.

And it is this potential for creating ANYTHING that both supports all the potential and all the difficulties with using it as a educational platform. At worldbridges we’ve been testing bunches of different ways to use second life.

• we’ve webcasted.
• we’ve met.
• we’ve built stuff.
• we’ve bought and sold.
• i bought a blackjack machine.
• i’ve won a lost money playing it.
• i built some furniture.
• jeff bought and configured an amphitheatre.
• we’re designing a conference environment.
• jeff built a soju tent.
• i’ve met new people

The 3.0ness assuming that makes any sense, comes from the feeling of ‘actually being there’. During our various live, participatory events, we’ve often gotten a great deal of feedback that people felt disassociated from other members, who were confused about ‘where to go’. In second life – you can follow. If someone turns to go into a group, you can follow them… chatting works by proximity, communities of conversation can form naturally, according to the needs of the people involved.

The interactivity of blogs and podcasts still comes from the old ‘expert central’ model. yes, you can respond to a blog and a podcast using your own blog or podcast, but it is still an exchange of expert opinions… and i’ve had some very nice conversations that way. But very little gets BUILT that way. How many projects have actually gotten DONE through blogging and podcasting? Even with live webcasting, there still tends to be a central voice, or voices that control the conversation. A conversation in second life, however, allows for an open conference without the without that central expert opinion.

Now, you might say, sounds life a real life conference, except with less beer. Well, that may be, but in a real conference, the money, the control of the agenda, no matter how open, still has a great deal of effect on the outcome. If Star Macrosystems supports a conference, is it really possible to openly criticise their work? A second life conference takes one call out, and it can begin. It’s completely supported by Linden labs.

The catch? They want your credit card or paypal account. but you can play without paying cash. And the sign up process is long and tedious. Ostensibly, the process assures that you don’t wreck the economy by signing up a million times and gathering the cash. and it does do this. But it does mean that anytime you find something appealing to purchase, you are that much closer to buying it.

Educationally, especially with adults and by distance, this environment is without equal. The opportunies for interactivity and to deal with the alienation that comes from virtual classrooms is amazing. With the K-12 system i forsee many, many more problems. A system of control would need to be very tight in order to stop students from simply skydiving away the whole class. It would be possible, but difficult.

We will be doing a conference there soon, and are in there working on stuff all the time. You are all invited. My name in SL is coarsesalt Warrigall. say hello.

Early Sunday morning and I find myself checking out fark… Interestingly, I find myself turning there for news more than anywhere else on the internet. While things can be a little… shall we say graphic, there sometimes, I find the multiplicity of viewpoint interesting, and the fact that thousands of people are searching out links and trying to be interesting/funny/sarcastic/mean/noticed/intelligent/etc on a given topic does make for some fascinating reading. What i don’t like, i don’t read. it’s simple.

This morning there was a link to this article in Minneapolis-St Paul Star Tribune. Quickly, the way things work there is that an article gets posted and then the members comment on the post. The ‘submitter’ who, well, submits the article, gets it submitted in part based on the appeal of their headline. The headline, in this case… not so good. The comment thread for this post makes very interesting reading. It pretty much runs the range of different opinions (including those that don’t particularly care)

some of the many i liked

• Muddie’s comment that those who knew the answers would read the quiz and those that didn’t would ignore the quiz.
• Neospartan’s why does beer come in sixpacks tautology
• tr0ut10’s comments about question framing

I whine, as i’ve whined many times… How many of you still have the image of the Bhor atom in your head? Is it helping you? Memory doesn’t upgrade, it doesn’t change with the times.

Of course, i got 8/10 so maybe i’m just bitter 🙂

A chilly holiday Friday morning here on the red dirt island. Coffee poured, and catching up on all the little things that have been left dangling due to the speed at which things have been going the last couple of weeks. Today the blog is going to wander away from education and into my real life.

First, my partner, seen here with her mother, has got her blog up and running. The crib chronicles are a slightly different flavour of mom blog, as you’ll sense from the first few lines of text. The most recent post at the time of writing is a powerful piece of writing (if I say it who shouldn’t) and speaks very much to the way the last year of my life has gone, and said in a way I’m not sure I’d be able to. Clear, direct, honest (if a little off the chart on the vocabulary… bon’s a smarty pants) It is, like I warned earlier, a very personal part of our lives, but to all those fine people out there who I talk to all the time, I figured this was the best way to share it.

Bonnie is also going to be starting a webcast on the site, maybe sometime next week… She’s one of my fellow interns at the Wedcast Academy. If any of you out there are interested in joining in, just drop a line over at her blog and let her know that you’d like to join in.

She’s been my partner now (no, we’re not married) for five years… and is my best friend. As well as my favourite debating partner.

The other girl in my house is not so nearly well presented. She’s the tyrant of the place. Her name is Clementine. As you can see from this photo, she’s very energetic… This is actually the five seconds that she was stopped on this given day. You can occasionally hear her during the shows…