Johnson reading part 2

I thought I was goofing off with a couple of friends on Friday, but I ended up with a pile of evidence in favor of Johnson's Sleeper Curve. I'll spare you the back story, since it will never be available on DVD, but suffice it to say that we found ourselves (after pizza for dinner) at an apartment chockablock with tapes, DVDs, and techno gadgets. We, in this case, equals me and two friends, all OCD (more or less), geeky, and...oh, never mind. Like I said, the back story isn't available on DVD (and you should be grateful it isn't, but I'm starting to wonder what the ratings would be if it were). Two guys, one girl, all birders, all addicted to snappy wordplay, all with issues, two into Flickr and sf, the other one a self-described "online Luddite"...I guess it's like Seinfeld with binoculars and Flickr.

We watched a few episodes of The Middleman and Land of the Lost. The Middleman is based on a comic series and came out last year (I think, I'm not the greatest scholar of tv series) and Land of the Lost was the classic version from the 70s (which I watched when a kid, but that's another story).

The Middleman has a silly faux science fiction premise, but a gaggle of interesting characters, smart dialogue delivered at warp speed, and so many pop culture references that the creator's blog has entries listing all of said references for each episode. Plus, since the dialogue happens so fast, I wanted to watch each episode again just to get it the first time (but what I got, I liked a lot).

Land of the Lost had dinosaurs (you can't go wrong with dinosaurs), no outside references, illogical plots (despite the writership of such sf luminaries as Larry Niven and David Gerrold, in at least one case) (not that The Middleman's plots are that much more coherent), 70s hair and fashion (ok, that's probably unfair), bad special effects...

The Middleman makes you work for your satisfaction so much that when an episode is done, you immediately want to watch it again. Any reference you catch the first time around is all the sweeter (hey, the female protagonist and a neighbor swap song lyrics with each other instead of conversing). Meanwhile, what you see is what you get with Land of the Lost; since you're not distracted by anything else, you can home right in on the plot holes and bad special effects.

So, the question I'm supposed to be answering is what all this means for the library and/or educational worlds. Johnson provides more evidence for the directed learning discussed by Brown and Duguid (you can learn extremely complicated things if you're motivated to do so to fill a perceived need). He also makes a case that you can learn almost without trying, if you're viewing media that encourages you to learn how to keep up with it. Certainly, the fact that libraries now are getting into gaming and stocking DVDs of movies and tv series would seem to be a step in the right direction. After watching a couple of episodes of The Middleman, I could almost see a festival showing DVDs of the series; library staff could hand out scorecards to the audience so they could play along at catching the references. You could even call it the Pop Culture Literacy Festival or something. Ok, maybe not. But that was the kind of fun I was having with my friends on Friday night, and it was quite a bit of fun.

But there are still all those books on the library shelves and as Johnson notes, "Networked text has its own intellectual riches, of course: riffs, annotations, conversations--they all flourish in that ecosystem, and they all can be dazzlingly intelligent. But they nonetheless possess a different kind of intelligence from the intelligence delivered by reading a sustained argument for two hundred pages" (Johnson, p. 186). My question is how libraries can unpackage the intellectual riches in the books on their shelves for those who have grown up in a networked world. The knowledge encoded in our books is every bit as challenging as any game; one could argue that it just suffers from a non-networked delivery mechanism.

I would suggest that it all comes down to ensuring that learning and intellectual challenge are fun, fun like a game you play with your friends. New media seem to be better at capturing that balance than "old media" at the moment, but old media shouldn't be jettisoned. We need to find ways to show that intensive attention to a prolonged logical argument, or looking through an author's eyes for 300 pages, can be as fun as playing World of Warcraft, just fun in a different way.

Johnson reading

Since I disagree with George Will about most things other than baseball, I'm not really surprised to be disagreeing with his comment about the sophisticated delivery of stupidity. What does surprise me is how impressed I was with the argument made by Johnson's Everything Bad Is Good for You.

I don't consider myself a "real" gamer, but on the other hand, I've always enjoyed games. Board games, card games, D&D, computer games...when I think back on my life, I realize that I've spent a lot of it (probably too much) doing things like that. In other words, Johnson's contention that playing games sharpens the mind seems reasonable. Heck, I can even see a fast change in the learning curve as I've played new games this week and quickly improved my technique and reaction speed.

The part of the Johnson reading I enjoyed most was his discussion of tv. Now, I'm a tv snob. Sure, I've watched my share of junk tv over the years, but these days when I do watch it, it tends to be PBS. I was blown away by the persuasiveness of Johnson's argument that tv has gotten more mentally challenging, complete with very effective examples. That he topped it off by linking the appeal of reality shows back to game-playing (and his excellent discussion of emotional intelligence) was the final slam dunk. I won't think about tv in the same way again (whether or not I watch any more of it^). (It also helps that a good friend of mine is an avid game-player and fan of 24 and Survivor as well, and he even used a similar argument in trying to explain Survivor's appeal to me.)

So, consider me convinced of Johnson's argument, and add one more topic of disagreement with George Will to my lengthy list of them. :)

Librarians and the long tail

The most obvious place for librarians and libraries in the long tail would seem to be as New Tastemakers. Tastemaking, after all, has always been a big part of the job. However, librarians have typically done this from a position of authority relative to the patron (if an advanced degree isn't a marker of authority, I don't know what is). New Tastemakers don't generally have the benefit of a degree: they tend to be hobbyists and enthusiasts who has studied a subject in depth for the love of it. For librarians to succeed in this new world, they will have to lean less on the assumption that they know more by virtue of their training and education. Instead, they will have to play up their own specialized interests (but let's face it, librarians tend to be people with interesting hobbies!).

Being New Producers seems straightforward enough. With the technological tools now available, it's easy for libraries and librarians to put up blogs, wikis, podcasts, Flickr streams...the whole nine yards. With the push toward open source software, libraries can even roll their own OPACs and other computer infrastructure without being limited to expensive proprietary software.

In terms of New Markets, I think one has to think of library systems as a large group, not as individual institutions. Inter-library loan is already a way in which this happens. What may ultimately happen is that libraries may build their collections as part of a whole that is held by a consortium. This could be a good way to build a more complete collection in a way that uses limited funds more effectively. Of course, some books will need more copies because they're more popular, but this might be an effective way of stocking a larger number of books with a smaller demand.

Libraries and the long tail

I think the idea of the long tail has a lot to offer libraries, but I also think not all libraries will benefit from it. The libraries that will get the most out of it are likely to be special and academic libraries. These libraries need deep collections in topics that may be esoteric; even topics that are relatively mainstream get more obscure the deeper you dig. These libraries also serve patrons who need more than just the usual information, and are frequently extremely knowledgeable (and demanding) about specialized subjects and sources.

Archives also have the potential to benefit from the long tail, though many archival materials are so unique that they are beyond the scope of the long tail. If an archive has collections that provide context to the archive’s unique materials, however, the long tail may come into play. Since archival reference sources may be even more specialized than those found in special libraries, this is an obvious long tail situation.

A standard public library may not need the long tail, however. A public library needs to have a wide range of resources to cover a wide variety of needs, but may not have the need (or resources) to specialize. In a way, inter-library loan may be the best way for public libraries to use the long tail: if a patron needs more specialized information than what the public library can offer from its own holdings, inter-library loan is the next obvious path to take.

Education

One thing that strikes me about Brown and Duguid's discussions of learning in The Social Life of Information is that their model is very different from much that the US educational system has to offer. B&D emphasize that learning is an on-demand activity, and that "learning about" is different from "learning to be". In effect, the context of learning is what allows learning to happen, not the process of transmitting information itself.

Although there are many programs that no longer take this approach, the typical model for school learning in the US is that of a teacher lecturing to a room of students. It's hard to imagine a process that is less hands-on and participatory. If there's a need here, the need is "I need to pass this exam to get a good grade." No wonder students don't retain information past the end of the class! School is a separate universe from the rest of life, while Brown and Duguid argue that it needs to be an organic part of an individual's life.

In practice, this may be a difficult model to achieve. The current US school system has universal standards and benchmarks. Brown and Duguid envision something much more decentralized and able to adapt to the situations of unique individuals. Rather than one standardized process, there needs to be many different processes to suit different professions/occupations/fields of study, not to mention the different temperaments and backgrounds that students bring with them.

I'm reminded of the video we watched at the beginning of this class, "A Vision of Students Today." Those students were saying things that fit very neatly with what B&D are saying in their book.

More Feed thoughts

Finished Feed and I have to confess I was hoping for (but not expecting) a happy ending. The bit at the end where Titus was also wanting a happy heart-warming ending reminded me of the way the dystopian sf movie Brazil was recut for tv release, with a ridicuously fake happy ending slapped on, totally against the filmmaker's wishes.

I think in terms of technology, we're a ways away from the world of the book. It'll be a while before a jaunt to the moon is as routine as a jaunt to a casino. In terms of social attitudes, though, I think we're pretty much there. The obsession with celebrities, being cool, consuming the right products, demand for instant (and often superficial) information, corporations positioning themselves as being agents of good...it's all here already. Although it's more an undertone in the book (the geopolitical threats of war from other countries), the narcissistic society of feed consumers also allows them to shut out that unpleasant reality in a way that seems rather familiar.

The ultimate paradox I'm left with (and one that doesn't figure in the book so much) is how the ultimate customization of what one consumes (in terms of information and other products) leads to a society that is so conformist. It's as if even the nonconformists are looking for some way to fit in.

Feed thoughts

So far I'm finding Feed to be an interesting and often funny book (I'm a little over halfway through it). Although it seems like a fanciful vision of the future, at least some of it concerns processes that are already well under way.

• portability of data - more and more things are possible by using PDAs, phones and iPods, and more and more services have web-based interfaces (not hard drive-based ones) but what's more portable than being plugged directly into the network via your brain?
• customizing of one's computer experience - websites are falling over themselves to offer recommendations and browsing experiences tailored to the web surfer. The netizen can also customize his or her own experience by selecting what RSS feeds to read (say), rather than just taking a network news broadcast as it is. Titus himself is customized by his parents before his birth, perhaps the logical conclusion to the current research obsession of linking genes to specific traits and propensities.
  
• privacy issues - following on from the point above, websites can offer customized experiences by collecting data about their users, both overtly and covertly. The initial incident where Titus and his friends are literally rebooted in order to stop the hacker is perhaps the logical extreme of this process.

Some other real-life situations, such as consumer culture, the ever-extending reach of marketing and the desire of people to a) be cool and b) be able to turn to another source for support are not technological, but are fostered by the technologies around us and the ones in the book. I'd say that Feed is a good example of the "if this goes on..." school of science fiction. As someone who likes social software, but likes even more to be away from the computer with the cellphone off, I would consider this not the kind of future I would want to live in, even without the portents that Something Evil Is Afoot Behind the Scenes.

On a more frivolous note, I have to complain about an ornithological oversight in the book. The larger point of the passage I'm whining about is that birds such as hawks in cities were a symptom of the loss of their habitat elsewhere (it might actually be a symptom of hawk populations doing well enough that they can colonize previously unused habitats, but this would be a long digression calling for more research than I feel like doing right now!).

My main kvetch is with the line, "There were streets in the cities, and eagles flew over them, wobbling without moving their wings." If a large raptor-type bird flies that way, it's really a Turkey Vulture. Eagles don't wobble, in fact, their flight is about as steady as a jet airliner. These respective differences in flight style can allow a birder to make an identification from a considerable distance.

Of course, if I REALLY wanted to over-analyze this passage, I could say that it's presented as sort of an oral history (on the feed, no doubt), so maybe the "geezer" in question just wasn't good at bird identification. :)

Home Alone

Disclaimer: I read The Social Life of Technology earlier this year. I found it to be a well-argued, thought-provoking book.

Home Alone is filled with perceptions about computer use in society, to the point that it's impossible to distill every valuable insight into one short blog post. Still, two overall themes jump out at me.

The first is that when technology collides with human nature, human nature always wins. It doesn't matter how cool, elegant, functional or worthy the technology is; if it doesn't fit into what people want and are willing to do, it will fail. Brown and Duguid's example of hot-desking at Chiat/Day is filled with examples of how workers found this innovation to be hostile to their working process, and how they fought back. (This section also demonstrates how stubborn and resourceful people can be when their accustomed way of doing things is disrupted by something that they have defined as "no good reason".)

The lesson libraries should take from this is that any successful technology initiative is rooted at its core in a deep understanding of the group(s) that will be using it. As Brown and Duguid say about Alexander Graham Bell's process of "socializing" the telephone, "Though the telephone was a transformative technology, Bell nonetheless worked with the social context of his day, not against it." Libraries should know their patrons and community well before they attempt to implement a new technology (even one that has been successful at other libraries), or they risk wasting time and resources (or, at worst, alienating their public).

The other point that I take from this reading is that it can be hard to perceive computer technology accurately. On one hand, there is hype about anything new and shiny (in the book, hot-desking, but it's pervasive when one considers Web 2.0). On the other hand, the home computer is such a ubiquitous and mundane presence that the "home office" would seem to be a simple thing to create. This idea assumes that the individual and his/her computer are enough, while totally ignoring the business infrastructure (both technological and social) that supports a worker sitting at a computer in a corporation. (I'm currently experiencing this firsthand as I slowly work through self-installing DSL at home!) This combined exoticism/mundaneity just complicates the task of those who are designing computer systems, especially if they are not IT professionals themselves (say, librarians trying to design a system that will work for their patrons). The socialization of the computer is a slow and bumpy process, and one that is far from complete.