Category: Practices

This got a lot of play earlier this month in my aggregator, but I only managed to get to it this weekend. It certainly lives up to its billing and Gaping Void now has a place in my aggregator.

Too much writing and thinking about creativity perpetuates a myth that creativity is some sort of innate binary characteristic–you either have it or you don’t. I much prefer a perspective that, regardless of your creative gifts, there is craft to be learned and developed. You can’t do anything about the raw material you were given at birth, but, as Macleod also points out, it is within your power to put the hours in. Reminds me of Jerry Pournelle’s classic advice on how to get his job.

Hard Truths from the Gaping Void.

A few months ago I stumbled upon Hugh Macleod’s Gaping Void weblog, enjoying his crazed cartoons and his jaundiced insights. He has one post that he keeps adding to that is just completely fricking brilliant, called “How to be Creative”. The original post is good, but he has a couple elaborations that are even better:

• Climb your own Mt. Everest
• Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.
• The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.
• Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.

He has one observation that is straight out of the advice I hear over and over for new writers, most of whom are looking for some sort of silver bullet that will allow them to become successful without spending all that boring time with their ass in a chair doing the work:

3. Put the hours in.

Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what seperates successful people and failed people is time and stamina.

This stuff is all good reading, and worth thinking about if you have any ambitions towards being creative – as an artist, as an entrepeneur, as a software developer, as a person.

Comment on Hard Truths from the Gaping Void [Evil Genius Chronicles]

Nice to have these all collected and in one place.

How thinking goes wrong. Michael Shermer about twenty-five fallacies that lead us to believe weird things. What a great document about scientific thinking.

[owrede_log : interfacedesign.org]

Substitute “knowledge worker” for “information literate student.”

Which raises the next question. How good a job are we doing at preparing people to be knowledge workers in today’s world?

Weblogs and Literacy.

“The information literate student validates understanding and interpretation of the information through discourse with other individuals, subject-area experts, and/or practitioners.”
—ALA

I’ve been working through some ideas for a piece about Weblogs and wikis and all these new tools and their impact on “literacy.” In a nutshell, the Internet has changed the requirements of what it means to be literate. While just about everything we used to teach with was a finished, edited text, the Web now provides us with a gazillion unedited texts, which means it’s no longer enough just to be able to read; we have to read critically. And now that the Internet is a read AND write technology, part of our literacy has to include skills to communicate and collaborate with a much larger, less contrived audience. Finally, since there will no doubt be an ever-growing body of information out there to deal with, we need to be literate in managing information what we find relevant and meaningful.

In my travels this morning, I landed on the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education put up by the American Library Association. It gives some pretty in depth definitions of information literacy, and lists 23 performance indicators for information literate students. What struck me is how many of them can be addressed by blogging:

The information literate student retrieves information online or in person using a variety of methods.

The information literate student extracts, records, and manages the information and its sources.

The information literate student summarizes the main ideas to be extracted from the information gathered.

The information literate student articulates and applies initial criteria for evaluating both the information and its sources.

The information literate student synthesizes main ideas to construct new concepts.

The information literate student compares new knowledge with prior knowledge to determine the value added, contradictions, or other unique characteristics of the information.

The information literate student validates understanding and interpretation of the information through discourse with other individuals, subject-area experts, and/or practitioners.

The information literate student applies new and prior information to the planning and creation of a particular product or performance.

The information literate student communicates the product or performance effectively to others.

The information literate student follows laws, regulations, institutional policies, and etiquette related to the access and use of information resources.

The information literate student acknowledges the use of information sources in communicating the product or performance.Weblogs are such a great tool for doing much of this, and they offer a transparent, organized way for teachers and students to measure these proficiencies and others. [Weblogg-ed News]

This is the kind of post that makes us happy to see folks like Nancy White join the ranks of bloggers. Insightful, based on experience, and, already, well tuned to the emerging standards and conventions of blogging. danah’s original post that triggered Nancy’s post is also well worth following up on as well.

I’m one of those, for example, who finds web-based discussion less satisfying than blogging. Denham, on the other hand, appears to prefer web-based discussion. But he has made the effort to try the alternatives and can ground his preferences in that experience. You need to “go native” long enough to grasp what makes each of these new experiences worthwhile in their own right. You can’t stop at the metaphorical level. And you can’t stay detached.

There are two reasons I prefer blogging over web-based discussion. First, it allows me to get my own thoughts in order at my own pace. I lose the thread in threaded discussions. Second, blogs make it easier for me to find and link to others’ thinking. The conversation moves at a slower pace and in chunks I find more satisfying.

All of these tools ought to be in the repetoire of any knowledge worker. But that requires a commitment to experimenting and working with the tools long enough to discover their signature rhythms and styles. That runs counter to software marketing practices that emphasize “out of the box experince” over time enough to learn how to use the tools and fit them to your needs. Those of us who are scouts in these new territories need to think about how to ease the transition for the settlers who will follow.

Don’t Practice? Watch your Preachin!. danah posted on Many2Many something that I want to pick up and run witha bit farther:

“This is precisely why it’s bloody hard to study/discuss these technologies without being a practitioner. Distance is valuable as a researcher, but it’s also limiting. You need to engage with the culture at a deep level in order to study it. Because digital technology cultures are so peculiar, you need to be involved at an intimate level. Being a lurker is just not the same. It is the practice of engaging with these technologies that makes you able to move beyond the metaphor.”

I have been harboring a bit of inner burn over the past few months as well. It stems from the ease of condemnation people seem to be able to conjure about things they have not experienced, or perhaps more importantly, not experienced in the same way as another. “If it didn’t work for me, it’s bad. I don’t care that it worked for you.”

I seethe when a “blogger” or a “wiki person” condemns as inferior a web-based discussion and call it a controlling environment. It may have been inferior to them, but for others it is a very freeing, useful and even preferred medium. I boil over when a web-based discussion person dismisses the possibility that bloggers experience “community.” Just because something gets a label slapped on it like “social software” or “old style” does not make it universally better or worse. There is far more subtlety in the context of each instance and deployment. There is the unseen ways in which users bend technology to meet their needs, irrespective of the intention of the designer. This is not taken into account.

There is insufficient experience and practice to slap labels around and make claims that completely ignore a key factor of online interaction technologies.

• They are designed for a group experience.
• They are almost always experienced by an individual in the isolation in interaction with their computer.

My experience is not your experience. Further more, it is hard to even describe OUR experience. We romanticize the concept of group interaction, but in truth, it is imperfect, online and offline. And online we don’t see the consequences as quickly nor are our communication antennae, trained for millennium to F2F communication, as attuned to online communication. I think we are getting better. I see changes. But I can’t see if you are smiling, frowning, curious or pissed off as you read this. And if I want to communicate and engage with you, that matters to me. (If I just want to spout and publish, well, you are out of luck!)

Circling back to danah’s observation about the need to be involved at an intimate level, I want to chime in with a big AMEN. Intimacy means being ready to let my perceptions aside for a moment and get a peek into yours. In means slowing down, experimenting, diving in, risking failure and god forbid, being wrong.

Or perhaps better, being both right and wrong which is how the world works. Context is everything and my right may be your wrong and visa versa. That’s life.

Also posted at Many2Many
[Full Circle Associates Online Interaction & Community Blog]