Public Intellectuals and Media Frye, McLuhan and Jarvis

The readings this semester of the New Media Faculty Seminar have been challenging week after week, Doug Engelbart and Nelson less so Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg. This week the reading from McLuhan was difficult in a different way. McLuhan is a type of public intellectual that draws from a wide array of sources from literature to intellectual history. He was in fact creating what became media studies.

Marshall McLuhan and Northop Frye, the author of Anatomy of Criticism were two Canadian public intellectuals who not only framed their own disciplines but set ripples in a number of other disciplines. What made it possible for them to function as public intellectuals was the way they were able to transgress disciplines.

Part of this type of transgression involves parsing out metaphors of well worn and tired mental associative paths. Cppant explores the desktop metaphor as a way to think about the computer. She observes the way that the metaphor desktop and the limits of paper have become a limiting metaphor. The metaphor of Bookburning and metamedium (Alan Kay and Adel Goldberg NMR 394) appliances provide an alternative way to think about augmenting human intellect.

Just as McLuhan and Frye brushed away dead metaphors and created new ones through the venue of public intellectual discourse, as opposed to discipline limited discourse, so Jeff Jarvis in his blog buzzmachine.com does today. I watch and listen to Jarvis, a professor at City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, on the TWIT Network show This Week in Google.  Jarvis’ description of the types of media today reminds me of the discussion of McLuhan in his Gutenberg’s Galaxy when Jarvis describes the New Molecules of media.

My Early Life with Computers

“Personal Dynamic Media “ Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg   appeared in Computer magazine in 1977. This article adds to the conversation of Engelbart and Nelson. First the idea of Dynabook makes the computer personal not institutional. Personal for Kay and Goldberg becomes a matter of scale, that is to say size.

Reading Dwight Russell’s reminiscences emboldened me to remember my beginnings with computers.  A student got me into computers. I went to an early computer show in San Francisco. When a salesman invited me to buy a computer I tried to brush him off by saying my credit card limit was not enough to buy it. He said let me run your credit card. Much to my chagrin it was approved and I had bought my first computer. Luckily I had a church meeting after the conference and I sent my new computer home by the student and only later would I have to explain this to my wife. When colleagues were purchasing the larger Radio Shack model I was drawn to the Kaypro, so-called portable computer. The Kaypro was not as much a portable as a lug-able. The Kaypro was built by Andrew Kay, no relation to Alan Kay.

No wonder that many see this as the first imaginings of the notebook computer. I remember how excited I was when I purchased my TR S-80 Model 100 from Radio Shack.  I thought of the computer as an institutional asset that one had access to through an institutional that is college relationship that is tuition.  But once the size came down then it became personal.  The picture of the dynabook and the TR S80 Model 100 illustrate that eh early personal computer notebooks were more notebooks that dynamic media. Lance Grigsby provided the link to the end of the article.  The final paragraphs indicate a sensibility of the ethos of Nelson’s computer lib.  “The burden of system design…is transferred to the user.” This transfer tot eh user. This embodiment of computer lib is a crucial aspect of what makes  this a personal dynamic media instead of mass produced static media.

Our design strategy, then, divides the problem. The burden

of system design and specification is transferred to the user.

This approach will only work if we do a very careful and

comprehensive job of providing a general medium of communication

which will allow ordinary users to casually and

easily describe their desires for a specific tool. We must also

provide enough already-written general tools so that a user

need not start from scratch for most things she or he may

wish to do.

We have stated several specific goals. In summary, they are:

•to provide coherent, powerful examples of the use of the

Dynabook in and across subject areas;

•to study how the Dynabook can be used to help expand a

person’s visual and auditory skills;

•provide exceptional freedom of access so kids can spend a lot

of time probing for details, searching for a personal key to

understanding processes they use daily; and

•to study the unanticipated use of the Dynabook and

Smalltalk by children in all age groups.

The promise of the Dynabook is the way it anticipates not just the size of the computer, making it more personal, on a personal scale but Rob Rogers points out that Kay and Goldberg’s the end user as designer fall short.   Nonetheless, what I think provides the biggest challenge to educators is the way the Memex, Xanadu and the Dynabook transform books by putting them into these appliances. These appliance  can facilitate learning of the student designed education. Kay and Goldberg write “For educators, the Dynabook could be a new world limited only by their imagination and ingenuity.” (NMR p. 403)

Hillary Blakely describes how last week as we struggled with Nelson the idea of student, read user, designed education was a hot topic. She pointed out that Nelson worked well with motivated learners but sometimes in order to get to the motivated learner stage one must go through preliminary less joyous steps, biochem and calculus.

The seminar anxiously awaits Ivan Illich who will open up the idea of networks through the concept of learning webs more than Bush, Engelbart, Kay and Goldberg. Rob Rogers post on the missing equation as the human one anticipates some of what e will see in Illich.

The Future at the Brink: Asynchronicity in the Classroom and Pop Culture

David Pogue comedian and technology contributor to the New York Times and CNBC presents a short video “debating the Future of Television”. The video is a little more even handed than his article in the NY Times TV’s Future Has Arrived (Almost). Pogue continues to prefer Apple products so his article focuses more on the new AppleTV than the new capability of the Roku set top box. But I digress. The real issue in terms of new media is sychronicity and asynchronicity.

Growing up in a black family in Dayton Ohio we did not stop for the Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan. But I do remember when Atlanta stopped and watched the television miniseries Roots. The last episode of MASH was a social occasion.  Network executives orchestrated television events as the ritual behavior. The family or other social entities gathered around an icon to watch. Pogue observes, in passing, that the possibility that such events will be rarer. The set top box allows a person or group to watch on demand.  The gadgets like TIVO and Slingbox allow persons to schedule what they watch. Will students expect classes to work around their schedule like their television?

The Educause Learning Initiative online conference Blended Learning: The 21st-Century Learning Environment, September 15 and 16 2010 explored the combination synchronous and asynchrononus environments. The shift from broadcast television to on demand television does put pressure for on demand education but Educause views blended learning as much as an opportunity as a threat.

Let’s take a moment and nuance our topic a little. Synchronous and asynchronous is a matter of time; it brackets the question of space. Synchronous can happen in Second Life as easily as it does in a classroom on campus. So one question is the value added of synchronous learning environments.  Theodor Nelson could be construed as a strong proponent of asynchronous learning but without an orchestrated dialog.  The face-to-face synchronous learning environment has clear benefits but the new world of television there will be increasing need for educators to make a case for face-to-face synchronous learning environments.

Religious communities are not immune from this time shifting pressure. The on demand television is the next step to tele-evangelism. I do not know whether television audiences outstrip the numbers in the pews. But I know it would be nice if church met according to my schedule.

Today’s Information Technology Literacy is Nelson’s Computer Lib put into Action

Early in my teaching career I required student in the basic class to display competence in how to use the library. Over the years this has become a requirement for students in the basic Scriptures course demonstrate information literacy including how to navigate the technology in today’s research theological library. This semester Michael Skinner has put this in a form that student can gain access to theological bibliography online.

Most students are too polite to ask why I am making this a requirement in a Bible course.  Well the syllabus says that information and technology skills are meta-professional skills necessary in the area of ministry and biblical studies. Theodor Nelson’s book Computer Lib/Dream Machine abridged in the New Media Reader as a long chapter provides a backdrop for my intuitions. “Any nitwit can understand computers and many do…. Everybody should understand computers.” (Nelson, NMR  p 303) This literacy is necessary so the religious professional not be held captive by what Nelson calls the “computer priesthood.”  Literacy is the key to liberation. Nelson’s computer lib depends on information and technology. The “Do priests dream of electric sheep” post encouraged us to envision a time when the computer priesthood gives way with the “unbridled creativity – our children.

Much of Nelson’s essay portends our exploration of Ivan Illich and the Deschooling of Society.  Rob Rogers points to the psychic work that this exploration on the nature of learning requires. I would want to re-consider Nelson’s attack on “subjects” in education in light of Parker Palmer’s apology for subject centered instruction. The seminar session also pointed to the way that Nelson’s presentation reflects his passion and emotion about education and thereby sometimes hijacks our emotion and passion about that subject. Ashley pushed us to lean into the radicality of the piece.

Nelson calls for a fundamental change in education. This includes even our textbooks. The typical introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament uses old media book. The old media book still does not take advantage of hypertext , “…forms of writing which branch or perform on request; they are best presented on computer display screens.” (Nelson, NMR p. 314)  Jim helped us understand what Nelson was getting at with the concept of hypermedia. Jim asked us to think about the Matrix and Star Wars experience where a narrative universe is created through film, games, novels and short stories.  Of Anti-Westerns and Fish Bowls one gets a glimpse of how hypermedia reflects the cultural interchanges in a global media village. Ellen introduced us to the term transmedia literacy as an expression of the ongoing interpretation of hypermedia.

The concept of hypertext combines with his notion of fantics, the visual-musical-linguistic memes used in communication. The e-reader makes it possible for a reader to experience a fantic

space. I am still a little confused about the concept of fantics. I am not at all clear how one teaches students to create fantic space.