Smelly Knowledge

or, How A Meme With A Reference To A Jew For Jesus Hip Hop Artist Reminded Me Of Dangerous Ideas

I don’t really remember how I got there, but I ended up at memepool, the brainchild of del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter and Jeff Smith. Posted on January 5th, 2006, was an entry which read:

The popularity of 50 Cent has given rise to spin-offs that range from Jewish Hip-Hop to 80s Pop mixups.

Hey, I’m always on the look out for more quality Jewish Hip Hop, so I followed the link to the website of Aviad Cohen, aka 50 Shekel (the shekel is the standard of currency in Israel, hence the connection to 50 Cent). His splash page looked earnestly Jewish, almost too much so. Clicking on the enter site link, it became quite obvious that Aviad-Cohen-50-Shekel is a Jew for Jesus. I don’t really want to get into a discussion on Jewish identity, and I have a fairly liberal perspective, but I have a distrust of proselytizing ministers who claim to have a direct mandate from God (and, by the way, ask for prayers and money to support his mission and to buy, among other things, a video iPod).

It seems very likely that pjammer didn’t even follow the “enter site” link. The photo of Aviad in a “Jesus/King of Kings” graphic tee or the link to Jesus-Is-Savior (”get schooled quick”) would have sent up a few red flags to even the most unknowledgeable goy.

To get on track with the underlying moral (as looking back at my writing, many of my posts have at least one), it seems that memepool is concerned with getting “memes” out, linking out to, being linked to. This is what I’d attribute to the Google Effect — with its relevence-based search ranking, using measures of link and traffic intensity — and it has had a measurable influence on the blogosphere (check out Francine’s 4 months of blogging… for a very nicely written and honest retrospective of blogging as a practice tightly intertwined with the ego).

What are memes, these things with which memepool is so concerned? A meme is defined by Wiktionary as, “a unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.” I had mentioned memes earlier in passing, without really delving much deeper. Jason Godesky of the Anthropik Network describes memetics with an example that just makes sense:

The term was first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1978 classic, The Selfish Gene, where Dawkins ended with a discussion of humanity’s ability to adapt culturally. Cultural adaptation works many times faster than biological adaptation; a man can sew a sweater in far less time than it will take natural selection to make his great-great-grandchildren hairier. This cultural adaptation has given humanity an adaptiveness and evolutionary fitness rivaled in the animal kingdom only by cockroaches.

So we pass on memes because culture is adaptable in a more efficient and far-flung manner than biology (unless you’re a fruitfly). Most of the time, these memes are passed either laterally or down the generations tacitly through modeling. Unless one stops and thinks about it, the average person really doesn’t have a cogent reason for wearing sweaters in the winter (at least, we in New England wear sweaters in the winter — for now). Other memes are spread intentionally and explicitly, like those on memepool. While I have no evidence to back this up, it seems that the more explicit the meme in a time of relative stability, i.e., when adaptation doesn’t need to occur, the less likely the meme has to do with survival. Following this thought through, the explicit transmission of “junk memes” leads to an apparent trivialization of cultural adaptation.

If we consider the analogue of junk memes in DNA, junk genes mean that scientists don’t know what they do. The same could be said, really, for these junk memes.

For 2006’s World Question Center, The Edge posed, “What is your dangerous idea?” This question elicited some interesting responses, but the two I was drawn to the most were listed on pages 7 and 8. Harvard’s Daniel Gilbert wrote:

Dangerous does not mean exciting or bold. It means likely to cause great harm. The most dangerous idea is the only dangerous idea: The idea that ideas can be dangerous.

Similarly, physicist and computer scientist W. Daniel Hillis wrote,

I don’t share my most dangerous ideas. Ideas are the most powerful forces that we can unleash upon the world, and they should not be let loose without careful consideration of their consequences. Some ideas are dangerous because they are false, like an idea that one race of humans is more worthy that another, or that one religion has monopoly on the truth. False ideas like these spread like wildfire, and have caused immeasurable harm. They still do. Such false ideas should obviously not be spread or encouraged, but there are also plenty of trues idea that should not be spread: ideas about how to cause terror and pain and chaos, ideas of how to better convince people of things that are not true.

Incompletely and inaccurately labeling 50 Shekel as Jewish — rather than as a Jew for Jesus — probably isn’t going to start a war, cause widespread suffering, or the like; however, a seemingly innocuous meme has the potential to be dangerous in some yet unknown way. The danger will probably only be apparent in retrospect. So, in conclusion, isn’t it important to be mindful of the information and memes we explicitly pass on, and aware of its’ potential to bring about good as well as its’ potential to be dangerous?

If we aren’t mindful of this binary potentiality as memetic receivers and transmitters, as learners and teachers, someone else probably already is, and is willing to use this awareness not for the survival of the many, but for the benefit of the few.

From visual searches to verbal searches, (without intending to pull an Annie Hall) Marshall “The Medium Is The Message” McLuhan must be having a celestial party right now.

Podzinger is a search engine for podcasts. Rather than allowing you to just search for a podcast based on the title, description, tags, or categories (as podcasting portal sites such as Odeo, The Education Podcast Network, PodcastAlley, and iPodder do), Podzinger lets you search the transcript of the podcast itself. Built upon speech-to-text technology developed by BBN, a searchable transcript is automatically generated whenever one of the indexed podcast feeds is updated. The context surrounding your search term(s) is displayed in the search results, so you have the option of listening (and subscribing) to the podcast in its entirety, or clicking on one of the words to jump directly to it.

While I’m on the subject of audio technology tools, I’ve installed Talkr functionality to to this blog. Talkr reads the RSS feed of this blog and then using text-to-speech technology creates an mp3 file of individual posts being read using fairly high-quality synthetic speech. You can either subscribe to the Talkr feed or listen or download individual posts by visiting the original post entry (the link to listen to the article is at the bottom).

Just as I brought up the notion that certain individuals may favor images and visualizations to words, there is also research to support the idea that some (or many, depending on who you talk to) learners’ reading comprehension skills are facilitated by computer-based text-to-speech functionality (e.g., Text-to-speech software for helping struggling readers, Applying Principles of Universal Design to Test Delivery, and Jumping off the page. Since I mentioned Marshall McLuhan earlier, it should be noted that this research, and more or less Talkr podcasts (my own included), do not really delve into or exhibit the power of the spoken word as a medium in and of itself. Instead, the transformation of printed text into spoken text is considered and represented. I hope to tackle these ideas later.

Just as a point of reference, someone who does a great job of taking advantage of podcasting as a medium in its own right, is Bob Sprankle and his students of Wells, Maine (US). In a professional development institute I co-lead last summer, entitled Shaking Up The Classroom, I introduced podcasting to the group of teachers through a clip from the Summer Literature Circle 02 podcast (kids and parents discussing books together? During the summer?).

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N.B., I’m realizing that this post on Podzinger and Talkr, as well as my earlier post on Retrievr is helping to put a focus on my talk for November Learning’s Building Learning Communities 2006 conference this summer. I’m listed on the Main Conference Sessions page along with all very impressive people, including one of my professors from graduate school. Not that there’s any pressure or anything. But some of posts in the near future may take this tact. At BLC ‘06, I’ll be talking about using social software to help build inclusive learning communities.

Has anyone stopped to think about how computers might be different if the first widespread human-personal computer input device was the sketch pad and not the keyboard? I usually try to avoid the googly-eyed “wow” factor of new technologies, but this one, Retrievr, is very cool and has the potential for facilitating access for learners who might have trouble expressing themselves or processing information in words.

Retrievr is an interface which allows you to find Flickr photos by drawing a rough sketch (see the screenshot). It may not be as accurate as, say, a search on Google with words, but it’s also not bad. At one point, as I was attempting to elicit a red apple, a pumpkin was included in the results. I then tried to get the pumpkin back by sketching an orange blob with a short stem: I was unable to get a pumpkin included in the results, but I did get a bowl of spaghetti. It’s also important to keep in mind that it does not recognize sketches as iconic representations. For example, in the screenshot, Retrievr does not recognize my sketch of a rough green triangle with a short brown horizontal line as a “tree.” It recognizes my sketch in its entirety as a rough green triangle with a short brown horizontal line and a blue/green/white background (it took me a bit of experimentation to figure out the background piece of the equation: the background does matter when performing a Retrievr search). In addition, Retrievr currently only draws upon Flickr’s most interesting photos; Retrievr’s developers do invite submissions and a submission interface is in the works.

But enough about Retrievr’s limitations. I think that this method of search holds some promise for learners, as I said above, who may have trouble expressing themselves or processing information in words. It may also be a boon for those who simply prefer images and visualizations to words, especially if you combine Retrievr, Flickr, and, without trying to toot my own horn too much, my Greasemonkey script Trope for Flickr. Learners can start off a search by drawing a sketch in Retrievr and find the most appropriate Flickr photo(s). Because Flickr provides the ability and encourages photographers to assign tags to photos, a (albeit unvetted) descriptive vocabulary is provided for each photograph. With Trope for Flickr installed, icons are placed next to each tag allowing the learner to branch off to find information in other forms of media with the same tag, such as web pages (via del.icio.us), blog entries (via Technorati), podcasts (via Odeo), and academic references (via CiteULike).

Imagine the potential for access and power afforded by Retrievr to those learners who have been kept back from interacting with technology because the primary interaction mode of the World Wide Web is the written word.

Here are some things that are making me think as we transition into 2006:

• Joanna Weiss predicts that 2005 will mark the beginning of the end of serendipity.
• George Siemens is grappling with the nature of meaning making, learning, and subjectivity.
• Doug of Borderland is searching for a “broadened conceptualization of curriculum.”
• Lisa Lynch and Bob Stein of the Institute for the Future of the Book consider Wikipedia’s potential commercial turn, whether out of subversive necessity or categorical design.
• Meta of metas, Ulises Ali Mejias reports on using social software to teach about social software.
• Jason Godesky meditates on the true (truer?) meanings and implications of memetics.
• Can an ultimate theory of Lost really be found, and will the boys from South Park, Colorado, ever grow up?

Happy New Year, and I hope 2006 brings a sense of satisfaction in the search, whatever you are looking for, to everyone.

There was a disconcerting (at least for me) response to Stephen Downes’ summary of my post on Wikipedia. While someone else might let it slide, I think I’d like to address it because as I turned it over and over in my head (is it because I’m from, dare I say it, Massachusetts?), I began to realize how little the comments had to do with me, and how much they had to do with the author (which, same others who would’ve let it slide from the beginning would’ve recognized from the get-go). Here’s the comment in its’ entirety, posted by, in my attempt to reflect Stephan’s dry humor, the Anymouse Who Roared:

What is “object centred sociality?” Why do you guys invent word combinations like this? It gives you a kick? A literate feeling? Makes you more knowledgeable? Excludes others? What is it? Why cant you academics and pretenders just S I M P L I F Y!!!???!!! People like you and the others who subscribe to such stuff are responsible for the elitism we see everywhere. Knowledge held captive by groups of people who just cant [sic] explain or let go before charging rent or fees.

Once I got over the personal nature of the comment (”academic” hurt, dude, it hurt), I realized that there are two issues at play here: the use of “jargon” and the nature of snap judgements.

In my “verbal” life — as opposed to my “written” one (I’ve come to realize that this blog provides me with an intellectual outlet that is difficult to obtain without going back to graduate school) — I poke fun of eduspeak and jargon almost as much as the next person (for some laughs, visit the Education Jargon Generator). To be more accurate, I’m no big fan of buzzwords; at least jargon has a definition buried in the Free Dictionary which reads, “The specialized or technical language of a trade, profession, or similar group” (granted, it is 3 of 4). In interactions, there is often an unavoidable need for technical terminology which allow us to draw boundaries within complexity and to describe concepts and ideas. If Anymouse read the entire series of postings and tracked back through the links (which I am assuming Anymouse did not), Anymouse would have garnered, I hope, a fairly full understanding of object-centered sociality. If you consider this “rent or fees,” Anymouse, I am happy to accept payment in full. Which segues into….

….The second issue, that of impatience in the learning process and making snap judgements on little information. Adrian Savage writes a nicely crafted critique of quick thinking. He describes to a simple experiment designed by Guy Claxton which,

…proved rapid thinking prevented people [from] reaching the correct conclusions. Even when forced to wait before giving an answer, those who still got it wrong were found to have used the extra time thinking about unrelated matters. They relied on their immediate conclusion and saw no need to waste more time questioning it. Those who used to time to realize the correct answer, didn’t spend more effort on the problem itself either. But by thinking about the nature of the problem and what its purpose was, they realized they had underestimated its complexity and so to reevaluate their answer.

Some issues, ideas, concepts, thoughts are complex and necessitate deep and thorough thinking. The issues surrounding the use and nature of Wikipedia is one such topic. It cannot — should not — be distilled so far down that it can be groked at a glance.

So as I end this post, I actually feel better about the work I am doing here at Smelly Knowledge. I am fulfilling the stated mission of this blog, to advocate for the idea that,

…the “getting of knowledge,” the quest for understanding, and the formation of learning communities and communities of practice, should be “smelly”: complex, difficult at times, deep, and meaningful.

Sometimes it takes criticism to be reminded of such things. And to Anymouse, I ask that rather than closing off an opportunity for dialogue, let’s continue. I think we have much to learn about the world from each other if we are only open to it. My e-mail address is jfprice924@gmail.com.

Here are some worthwhile and interesting responses to and critiques of my last post, The Emergence of Meaning: Wikipedia As Object-Centered Sociality:

• Artichoke posted a response positing, “‘What does it do?’ takes precedence… over what it might mean.”
• Stephan Downes writes, “…I read the value of Wikipedia differently…. Wikipedia’s article selection also varies - while editors and reviewers ensure objectivity, they also narrow the bounds of what is considered [relevant]. Wikipedia carrie[s] no such constraint.” Point well taken. Also informative and well taken is the comment left by an anonymous visitor.
• Albert Ip wrote a very thoughtful and thorough analysis that is more a synthesis of his thinking on the issue of Wikipedia as a source of information.

Also worth reading, in my opinion, is a post I found after posting at Penny Arcade.

I’ve noticed a disconnect between my intentions and my writing before, in which I get caught up in exploring the nature of what I write about, appending the “what to do about it” as almost an afterthought. It may be a reflection of who I am and what interests me, but I was kind of hoping that the instructional implications nestled in there — considering discussions and edit histories when reading Wikipedia articles — would generate more discussion. It’s a good reminder of the law of unintended consequences….

This is the first in an occasional series in which I hope to develop an argument for the continued development of critical literacy skills in “new media.” I am hoping to argue that it is not enough to grapple with the products and artifacts of these new media as “media types” (e.g., video, audio, animation, etc.), but it is also necessary to be mindful of an epistemology in process, made all the more difficult for many of us because of its distributed and emergent nature rife with uncertainty and indistinctness. We must neither reject these ideas out of hand nor accept them with nary a critical mind; instead, it is my hope to be open to new ideas, learn from past experiences — both philosophically and empirically — and work for a better future.

Looking for extremes in a discussion and then working toward a more tenable position can be instructive. Recently, Wikipedia has been batted about and criticized for issues concerning accuracy. As Wikipedia has become an important — if not always consistent — source of information for many learners and educators, it’s worth considering what’s going on. Surveying the blogosphere for takes on the Wikipedia debate, here are two opinions:

Both positions shed some light on the issues; the premise of Wikipedia, verification through community regulation, may not be “authoritative” in the traditional, centralized sense, but there is value to this form of emergent meaning making. As Umberto Eco writes in Serendipties: Language and Lunacy, “After all, the cultivated person’s first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopedia.” In a sense, Wikipedia has been fairly successful. Despite, or maybe because of, the range of contributors, the journal Nature has found that Wikipedia is almost as accurate as the print-standard Britannica).

Yet questions still linger. The duality of authority and certainty are difficult concepts from which to break away. So much of the Western philosophical tradition has craved expressions of predictability that it is difficult to disambiguate these constructs from one’s own sense of self; it is almost as if it is human nature to accept what is “written” in one form or another.

I agree with Nicholas Carr that Wikipedia is not in many senses an “encyclopedia;” it is more a successful example of object-centered sociality. Thinking about Wikipedia as an example of object-centered sociality helps to realign what is considered when reading an article on the site. Whereas there is a certain amount of trust given to publishers to find appropriate authors for articles, no such guarantee exists with community-driven information sites like Wikipedia. It is important, therefore, to think about how the article you are reading emerged into its’ current state. Wikipedia provides two tools for discerning this process: the “discussion” and “history” tabs. Clicking on these tabs will provide you with a window to the communal thought process that results in the articles we read on Wikipedia. At least one person has lamented that knowledgeable potential contributors have only contributed to the discussion and not the article itself. As an encyclopedia, the behavior is to be admonished; as an example of object-centered sociality, this is a legitimate form of participation. Readers of Wikipedia should be aware of this range of legitimate participation, from authoring, to editing, to discussing.

It is useful in discerning “truth” and meaning in Wikipedia to consider the tensions between what is written in the article and the discussions and edits which occur more-or-less behind the scenes (unless you are in the know). It would be an interesting exercise to develop an interface for Wikipedia where the discussions and edit histories are more up-front, formatted more like a page of Talmud than like a page of Britannica. Jews have been dealing with this emergent form of meaning making for centuries (full disclosure: I am Jewish). As Joann Sfar writes in the graphic novel The Rabbi’s Cat,

Westerners want to resolve the world. Turn multiplicity into oneness. That’s a delusion, says the rabbi.
Cat: But, master, doesn’t Judaism also try to turn multiplicity into oneness?
Rabbi: Yes. But not in the same way…. Western thought works by thesis, antithesis, synthesis, while Judaism goes thesis, antithesis, antithesis, antithesis….

In any case, the tensions between accuracy, discussion, and emergence highlight the continual need for critical literacies; given the changing nature of these information sources, however, the necessary skills are slightly different. Let’s continue to delve deeper into this discussion over time.

This is what happens when I have a day off…

La trahison des betes

There is no question in my mind that many of the ways that technology has developed — especially in facilitating the forging of connections between learners and content, learners and teachers, and learners and learners — are great boons to the field of education and to the cause of improving the learning process in general. Social software in particular has incredible potential to challenge the traditional notions of teaching and learning and to provide access to a wide variety of resources — both in terms of people and in terms of information — for learners who previously may not have had these opportunities. Every step forward in terms of innovation should also serve as an opportunity to reflect.

Here are just a few items for consideration when thinking about the use of social software (such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, photo-sharing services, social bookmarking and annotation services) that I’ve come across or thought about:

What new challenges and barriers does the use of social software create, or what challenges and barriers does the use of social software reinforce?

I’ve written about this topic in terms of Zeno’s Paradox; social interaction, collaborative work, and the community-based emergent categorization practice of tagging are all important and useful literacies to develop, and may allow for greater access and participation. With tagging there are even quite a few interesting articles about the more cognitive aspects of the practice (e.g., Tagwebs, Flickr, and the Human Brain and A cognitive analysis of tagging). But there is the potential in collaborative environments for individuals’ weaknesses to be reinforced; as Drs. Eide write in Commenting on Commentary: Interdisciplinary People vs. Teams?,

Many of the most successful innovative personalities are quite lopsided in their cognitive and social abilities. In fact, sometimes very smart people can make big mistakes by diluting their native talents by brooding and working too hard on their weaknesses rather than devoting themselves to their strengths.

In a collaborative environment, there is the danger that the failure of an individual to effectively participate will go unnoticed as those around him or her essentially pick up the slack. This can reinforce this individual’s feelings of low self-worth, breeding more failure. Members of the social network and an educator/moderator should be on the lookout for such scenarios and encourage every individual to contribute so that their strengths are accentuated and to value each and every contribution. It’s not an easy thing to do.

On a slightly more technical note, many of the social software and services utilize a technology called Ajax; while it is very useful for most people, it should be noted that when implemented incorrectly, Ajax poses an access problem for those learners who are blind or have reduced vision and use screen readers.

Again, I am certainly not advocating that we should disregard social software and the affordances such technology brings to the learning table; I am just posing questions to think about when planning and utilizing social software for learning.

Does the use of social software connect back to the learners’ experiences and “real-world” environment (and yours)?

Largely through this blog, I am hoping to encourage educators to think about the implications of the educational process — a concept that is often left out of the discussion of schooling, learning, and pedagogy. More often than not, the discussion ends at “Learners need to know things” or “Learners need to know how to do things” without taking the next step of asking why. What social, political, and cultural implications are triggered by schooling and learning for both the learner and for society as a whole?

Ulises Mejias asks many of these questions and responds with his idea of a pedagogy of nearness. Drawing on the work of Paulo Freire, he posits that social software is a way to foster praxis. He describes praxis as an emerging and evolving “prescription for action,” formed by the confluence of reflection, interaction, and action. Interaction by itself, or even interaction and reflection, falls short in this framework. Furthermore, praxis keeps with the idea of nearness, that is, the relevant and imminent; activities within this framework include the idea that there can be communications about and communications with (ideas, causes, concepts) on a variety of levels: the personal, local, and global.

As Ulises writes in A Nomad’s Guide to Learning and Social Software,

…The challenge for social software users is to contribute to a social cause in a way that enhances and aligns with—not disrupts or fragmentizes—other forms of activism.

Ensuring that the benefits of social software reach all circles of society will require that we focus not on the virtuality of social interactions, but on their reality. For a long time we have lived with the misconception that what we do online is virtual, and that since virtuality is a lesser form of reality (or a higher form, depending on who you ask), the consequences of our actions there have little to do with the ‘real’ world…. Nearness, in the sense I am using it, does not refer to spatial and temporal distance, but to immanence: the desire for connection and understanding, the nomad’s learning as becoming.

Does the use of social software the encourage the development of depth of thinking, knowing, and becoming in addition to breadth?

Avant-garde theater director Richard Foreman laments in The Pancake People, Or, The Gods Are Pounding My Head,

But today, I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the “instantly available”. A new self that needs to contain less and less of an inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance—as we all become “pancake people”—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.

As young, impressionable, and forgetful as I am, a member of Generation X who remembers a world without the Internet and instant access and communications as well as a participant in and product of the “Information Age,” straddling nostalgia and prospection, these sentences strike a chord.

Connectivism is a theory which has spread far and wide across the educational blogosphere. The basis of connectivism, in short, is that learning can occur across people and networks and is the process of drawing connections between nodes. Far be it from me to deny that such skills and literacies are important, and the emerging nature of technology is making such practices ever more vital.

But is the idea that “the pipe is more important than the content within the pipe,” or that there are joys in shallow thinking the only way to conceptualize learning in the information age? Could there exist both breadth and depth? I am of the opinion that the two are not mutually exclusive, nor is it a “friend or foe” situation. As educators, we need to develop the skills to be able to recognize the affordances and drawbacks of both and to develop activities which encourage the development of both ways of thinking. We need both the cathedral and the bazaar.

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And that — after three days of on-again, off-again writing, punctuated by the necessities of real life with family — are my two cents. I hope that I’ve presented some questions to think about and to foster discussion, dialogue, and practice.

From the novel I am currently reading, Angry Black White Boy; Or, The Miscegenation of Macon Detornay:

How much respect can you have for something you refuse to criticize?

Often in the blogosphere it seems that new ideas and practices are touted, celebrated, embraced, and sometimes even followed with a very short — or even non-existent — period of reflection and criticism. Peter Ford refers to this phenomenon as the “edu-blogging echo chamber.” To critique something, when done without malicious intent, is a call for an extended dialogue; it seems like that can only help bring about that open exchange of ideas in order to better the world at large.