Performing Statements

Benkler's Opening Gambit

Thinking about Wealth of Networks, I keep coming back to Benkler’s argument about the importance of nonmarket and nonproprietary production of knowledge happening at the core rather than the periphery of our economy. In an economy with the production and distribution of information and culture at its center, that’s a big deal.

Benkler chose the John Stuart Mill quotes on page 6 well. The first one provides a good metaphor to bear in mind while reading his book: “Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.”

Makes me look forward to hearing Senator Edwards at Gnomedex to find out what kind of arborist he is.

technorati tags:Benkler, Edwards, Gnomedex

Blogged with Flock

RCA Adapters and Web Services

Here’s a way to explain web services to my baby boomer friends. In Loosely Coupled, Doug Kaye mentions a great metaphor from The Stencil Group talking about interfaces and components in terms of RCA adapters. The introduction of this easy to use interface drove the transition from stereos that looked like self-contained pieces of furniture into stereos that were stacks of metal boxes. (If you are too young to remember, check out this antique stereo to see an example featured in a KEXP fund drive.) Once there was an interface that could be used to connect any component from any vendor, you could build out a modular system. Even components which weren't invented until after the interface (like DVD players) could easily be added without altering any of the other components.

Posting with Flock

Just installed Flock and was pleased with how straightforward the set up wizard was. Got set up with my Flickr account and the process seemed very friendly given that I had to go from the wizard to the Flickr sign in page (which presents 2 options) and then back to the wizard. The del.icio.us sign in process was more seamless, but I'll leave it to the usability folks to debate the benefits of jumping from one branded look to another and back when manually linking services.

Also, since I'm spontaneously posting using the fun new toy, this post clearly breaks my rule about "every post must pass through the 2nd rewrite filter"

Now let's see how the drag and drop photo publishing feature works . . .

technorati tags:Flock, Usability

Blogged with Flock

First Thoughts on Yochai Benkler’s Wealth of Networks

While I was working with the Windows Media team, the NAB conference was one of the highlights of the year. We were pushing new technology into the work flows at the very heart of 20th century big media, and it was very exciting to be part of the end of TV as we know it. (If you want a sense of how Windows Media fits into the world of big broadcast, check out their pages for AV pros.) Walking the floor of the LVCC for the first time in 2001, I was blown away by the spectacle of all the capital involved when you want to reach millions through traditional media (think of a $75K hardware encoder versus a free, downloadable, software encoder). It’s the scene I call to mind when Benkler writes about the threat of the incumbency and the need to protect new social patterns from them.

The folks who will upset the incumbency aren’t even playing the same game, “Nonmarket behavior is becoming central to producing our information and cultural environment. Sources of knowledge and cultural edification, through which we come to know and comprehend the world, to form our opinions about it, and to express ourselves in communication with others about what we see and believe have shifted from heavy reliance on commercial, concentrated media, to being produced on a much more widely distributed model, by many actors who are not driven by the imperatives of advertising or the sale of entertainment goods.” (56)

Benkler insists on the deep connection between markets and democracy, and a significant part of his project is to outline the economic sustainability of the new networked information economy he’s describing. He’s not into “an exercise in pastoral utopianism” but directly concerned with practical possibilities and the real need to take social and political action. “We still stand at a point where information production could be regulated so that, for most users, it will be forced back into the industrial model, squelching the emerging model of individual, radically decentralized, and nonmarket production and its attendant improvements in freedom and justice” (26). Benkler is not writing about the fringe when he describes our current state of change. Information and cultural production are at the core of our economy; establishing nonmarket, nonproprietary production systems at the core will result in radical changes to the democratic apparatus. (Benkler makes a great counterpoint for Chun, BTW.)

The Components of Vaill’s Learning System

What types of learning are important for people who manage “permanent white water”? Vaill describes seven interrelated modes of learning that comprise his system (an integrated, day-to-day practice). Below I’ve selected representative quotes that capture an important aspect of each type, but I’m not attempting to encapsulate his complete definitions which are more nuanced than the isolated quotes may suggest.

Self-Directed Learning
What it’s like to turn to experts when you are self-directed “We seek help not from a position of dependency but on our own terms, and we are conscious of our self-directed stance. We have questions to ask the experts, questions that grow out of our experience to date with the material, frustrating as it has been. We have reasons, which remain conscious and clear, for wanting to continue to struggle with the learning. Our questions are particular . . . “ (60)

Creative Learning
While managers aren’t generally engaged in the hands on creating of a thing in itself, they must learn how to manage the process of creating things in new ways: “The creativity of the managerial leader is to shape ways of working, ways of structuring human relationships, ways of focusing and budgeting resources, ways of evaluating progress that do not kill it in the process” (65). While not as glamorous as the creativity of an oil painter or musician, those four tasks cover some of the most difficult learning managers are asked to do.

Expressive Learning
If you consider our perception of time’s forward movement as the essence of consciousness, “learning by doing” is key. “. . . we learn the roles and the timing of the various elements in relation to each other . . . we learn the relationship of the activity to the wider setting in which it occurs, and we learn how the activity is spread out in time as well as in space. That is, since most activities of any complexity occur in a time stream, we learn the pacing they require, their rhythms and durations” (67).

Feeling Learning
If you are trying to learn in an environment where the pace, pressure, and complexity leave you distracted, anxious, and breathless, you’d better have a good sense of what it feels like when the learning process is working. “Self-directed learning, creative learning, and expressive learning all involve a whole range of feelings, among which curiosity, patience, courage, and self-esteem are particularly important. Inevitably, negative feelings arise also . . . we need to develop self-acceptance of the feelings that arise during learning because these feelings are part of the learning. They are not, as institutional learning would have it, annoyances which must be put up with in the learning process” (73-74).

On-line Learning
Vaill means something different than you may assume. Writing in 1996, “Thanks to the computer revolution, the term on-line has come into currency to describe a process that occurs simultaneously with all the other processes of the system in which it is imbedded. Thus, on-line learning is a process that occurs in the midst of work and of life rather than in an artificial, sheltered environment” (76).

Continual Learning
Think of an expression like “We’re rebuilding the airplane while we’re flying it.” Because we are constantly having to adapt to new technology and new circumstances, “We do not need competency skills for this life. We need incompetency skills, the skills of being effective beginners” (81).

Reflexive Learning
To the point that these components must work in harmony to be effective, “once we understand the practical function of reflexive learning, we can see that learning about learning is precisely determining the extent to which any learning activity possesses the first six qualities” (87).

User Generated Content at Where 2.0

Interesting observation from Tim O’Reilly at Where 2.0

“What's particularly interesting is how much activity there is in adding user-generated data. Especially interesting is the way that Google is trying to get users to build 3D models of buildings with sketchup. Brad Schell gave a great demo of how to visualize a building and place it in Google Earth. Particularly impressive was the ability to search for real-world architectural elements and add them to a building you're drawing. (AutoDesk, watch out....) Lovely.”

It would be useful to create and share a model that shows how you have to come around the side of my building and down the stairs to get to my front door. Very interesting to think of all the additional richness that could be added to Google Earth if lots of people start playing with it. (The product web site could do a better job communicating the scenario. An interesting point of contrast is the Flock product site which communicates well using the product UI as well as creating community.)

I love it when O’Reilly says things like “It becomes clear that Google Earth is not just a data visualization platform. It's a framework on which hundreds of different data layers can be anchored.”

The Problem Vaill Describes as “Permanent Whitewater”

Like the Web, companies are people systems. And people systems are shaped by people constantly making changes to the system. Speaking specifically about corporations, Vaill writes

Some of these changes are official, meaning that they go through a careful design review process and are incorporated at least somewhat planfully into the system (although designs and plans are no guarantee that changes will not create major disturbances). But just as many changes are informal—shortcuts, innovations, Band-Aids of one sort or another that individuals and groups apply to the system flow to solve the local problems they experience. These spontaneous innovations create a lot of unanticipated permanent white water for others upstream or downstream in the system. Valuable innovations are the positive result of this age of individual “empowerment” that we live in, but the cost is likely to be continuing system disturbances owing to members’ nonstop tinkering. However, because the tinkering can be seen as members’ way to cope with the stresses and contradictions they experience in the system’s operation, we have to permit as much local innovation as we can. For if members and users of the system do not do well in coping with stress and change, the macrosystem (dependent on their will and judgment) will degrade, even to the point of collapse. (8-9)

Clamping down on the people who manage the chaos is counterproductive. First Vaill explains why attempting to address chaos through process doesn’t work. His description is amusing and readily recognizable to anyone who’s had to endure this response (for example when people have a big idea but later can’t understand the outcomes of the activities they’ve mandated).

Faced with these conditions, it is understandable that some systems designers should introduce more controls on innovation, more reports to fill out, and more committees to clear before a modification can be adopted. Their impulse to control works against innovation at the operational level, of course, and is experienced by those with their hands on the equipment as a proliferation of red tape: in effect, an increase in the permanent white water. Thus, at any moment, the system is drawing out of both its operators and its nominal designers / controllers behavior that increases the complexity and fragility of the system, and just as importantly, frays people’s nerves and punishes their efforts to make the system run smoothly. (9)

Another equally frustrating approach is also described by Vaill: automating the process. Automation cuts human creativity out of the equation. Of course it’s not only a bad idea to jettison the benefits of creativity, it’s rarely even possible since humans are creative enough to identify new channels through which they can inflict their will on a system.

Another strategy system designers and controllers use to defend against degradation is to remove the human component by automating the system. This, however, can never be more than a local and sharply circumscribed solution. There will always be a larger sociotechnical macrosystem containing the automated component, and in this larger system, human will and judgment will continue to be decisive. We cannot escape the consequences of human suffering and ineptitude in the permanent white water of our systems. (9)

So rather than process or automation, Vaill proposes an existential strategy, “learning as a way of being.” On the one hand, it is a “consciousness and skill” (10) that seems to be pretty much the same as the “learning as a way of being” advocated at liberal arts colleges. On the other hand, Vaill is engaging an audience with a pressing need for results.

Chuck D and Wendy C

In chapter 3, of Control and Freedom, “Scenes of Empowerment,” when Wendy Chun writes about digital sweatshops I think of the Public Enemy lyrics “Have you forgotten, the other side of rotten, / Picking electronic cotton diggin digital ditches” As counterpoint (in the polyphonic, musical sense) to Chun’s deconstruction of race in turn of the millennium television ads about Internet utopia, take a look at this 2000 essay by Chuck D, DEATH OF A NATION- WHERE IGNORANCE IS REWARDED FOR A NEW RACE CREATION; THE NIGGRO...

Chapter 2 of Wendy Chun’s Control and Freedom

After finishing the second chapter of Control and Freedom I was reminded of Wittgenstein’s comments about contradictions filling up all logical space but leaving no room for sensible meaning. Many conversations about Internet freedom, online privacy, reputation, etc. get trapped in an argument space that asserts control and freedom in opposition to each other. Asserting the two concepts as inextricably tied together gets the discussion bogged down in anxiety and confusion. In chapter 2 Chun sets up a strategy to penetrate the non-sense.

Think of the way one person approaches a porn site as a way to anonymously explore desire, and another person may approach the site as a marketing opportunity to exploit visitors for increased revenue. “Porn sites enable you to investigate your sexuality without fear of exposure or they track your every move. This opposition of control-freedom erases the constitutive vulnerability that enables communications.” (126) Authentic communication, the flow of ideas, involves various selves interpenetrating and affecting each other in ways that require vulnerability and risk. “Publicity” is a way to describe this enabling, but vulnerable state. Chun cites Thomas Keenan, quoting “Publicity tears us from our selves, exposes us to and involves us with others, denies us the security of that window behind which we might install ourselves to gaze.” (126)

True democracy requires subjects who are vulnerable to dangerous knowledge. “Resisting this vulnerability leads to the twinning of control and freedom—a twinning that depends on the conflation of information with knowledge and democracy with security.” (127)

Jim McGee’s Reading List for Aspiring Knowledge Workers

Jumping into the business world with a background in Renaissance comedy and literary translation means you march to the beat of a different drummer. But I’ve found that business books can be extremely valuable tools for understanding where my colleagues are coming from. (The manager who recommended Peter Collins’ Good to Great to me made a lot more sense after I read that one).

So I’m always on the lookout for good business and management writing. It’s hard to find, and you’ll subject yourself to a lot of buzz, hype, and dreck if you try to seek them out yourself. But the Corante Future Tense blog is a consistent source of good thinking, so I was glad to find McGee’s list. I’ll be picking my way through them.

Jim McGee’s Reading List for Aspiring Knowledge Workers