In 1969-70 Chip Delany won the Hugo & Nebula awards with a little number called “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones“. Like a lot of Delany’s work it was more about art than science, but that made sense because we were on the cusp of post-modernity, and he was the great white hope of science fiction. Despite the indicators most of didn’t realize that he was both black and gay. Time was pretty good, the plot didn’t get in the way of the story and as usual it had characters that we wanted to identify with and a narrator that we liked, one Harold Clancy Everett or HCE an acronym which seems a bit pretentious until you stop and think that the whole thing is, on a certain level, about language and reference as markers of membership. All of which was brought to mind by a post by Scott McLemee on Criminal Incompetence:
There is a valuable lesson here. If you are planning on a life of crime, it is probably best not to get tattoos on your forehead. There are bound to be times when you will need to remain inconspicuous, and having a tattoo over each eye really won’t help with that.” Then again, career guidance for criminals is probably not what it could be.
….
On the other hand, it certainly shows a certain commitment to one’s chosen career. It’s also a way around the inconvenient fact that nowadays movie stars and accountants and writing-program administrators are sporting bitchin’ ‘tats. A generalized social destigmatization of body art ups the ante for people whose livelihood comes from projecting an aura of menace. In some lines of work, the forehead is a perfectly good place for one’s CV. It may even qualify as proof of ambition.
In Delany’s metaphorical (?) narrative, this translates to the underworld Word, which serves as a kind of global passkey. Used properly, two criminals who may never have met can communicate many shades of meaning, from a greeting to a warning. The Word changes every thirty days, and is always the name of a semi-precious stone. The Word is distributed/created by the Singers, who are public poet/performers with the ability to improvise a song to celebrate or memorialize a major event. Such Singers are highly prized in society, and are much sought after as guests at fashionable parties. All of this predates the World Wide Web, but there are certain parallels with today’s Internet memes. We establish communities of interest and perhaps communities trust by means of commonly mediated experience, and by our familiarity with the tools used to create and exchange these experiences. The LOLcat that begins this post really makes sense only if you’re familiar with the LOLcat Bible, and makes a different sort of sense if you’re one of the contributors to that translation. There are more parties and more ways to participate than there used to be.
Community in this context is probably a bad signifier. As Ze Frank points out, the shifting nodes of awareness and interest look something like community but are actually a different Heideggerian ”thing” entirely. What I find interesting, is that the meme markers now function as works of art; they define a kind of common and agreed upon humanness. To share the awareness and appreciation of a meme is to enter into an assumed agreement of likeness. By which measure, you may be experiencing this writing has wandering about, drifting as though searching for some point or conclusion, which would put you in good company with its author. Memes multiply, and when they function as the work of art, this abundance redefines the work. Meaning and understanding is what we crave, but what we are given is mere experience; what we need to share is enough: Calcite…
it’s best to read the whole post but if you’re pressed for time, here the bottom line:
UPDATED: Okay, so apparently the deodorant has been around since before Nirvana actually penned that song and I’ve been living in a hole my entire life and am the only person in the entire world who is not shocked this deodorant exists. My only comfort is the fact that when Kurt Cobain wrote “Smells Like Teen Spirit” he didn’t know it was a deodorant either and was quite put-out when someone told him he’d just written a song about deodorant. I read this on wikipedia so it has to be true.
The above is (obviously) an in joke, and probably a misuse of the SC meme, but you shouldn’t assume that that makes it less useful. Strange times are ahead, and the main danger is that we too rapidly assume common knowledge and culture. Life can be thought of as a series of introductions; some of you know me and for some of you this text is your first encounter. However, since I don’t have a terribly good handle on who I am, I don’t expect that your previous experience, or lack thereof, is going to be a major factor in our relationship; in either case we are about to embark together on a difficult, challenging, and I hope rewarded journey. Our mission is to introduce transformative technology into the University. It would be nice if I had a handle on what that meant, but unfortunately it’s about as mysterious as identity and motivation. Our CIO recently accused me of having the standard technologists answer “we should use technology because technology is good, and we know that technology is good because it’s technology.” Danah Boyd who is going to keep coming up in these posts has some thoughts on technophilia and you are highly encouraged to follow the links and read the entire article rather than just the excerpt below:
I want to push back against our utopian habits because I think that they’re doing us a disservice. Technology does not determine practice. How people embrace technology has less to do with the technology itself than with the social setting in which they are embedded. Those who are immersed in a techno-savvy, technophilic community are far more likely to embrace technology than those whose social world is shaped by other patterns of consumption and communication. People’s practices are also shaped by those around them. There are cluster effects to socio-technical engagement. In other words, people do what their friends do.
In my terms this translates to, “it’s a mammal thing,” We like to smell each other and technology allows us, and perhaps encourages us, to do that, smell each other, a remarkably great distances. This is important and the mysterious, but it’s not hard to understand or to make use of. Technology can help us form communities, communities of practice or of common interest; here again is Danah Boyd on Teens Don’t Tweet… Or Do They?
The most salient visceral reaction that I got when looking at the teens’ Twitter streams was that teens on Twitter seemed to fit into three categories: 1) geeky teens, tech teens, fandom teens, machinema teens; 2) teens who are in love with the Jonas Brothers/Miley Cyrus, musicians, or another category of celebs; 3) multi-lingual foreign teens with friends/followers around the world who seemed to participate in lots of online communities.
Meta Don: Hold on DD, I thought this was supposed to be a an introduction to the folks that work for you, you were going to tell them about your vision, and direction, and how you were all going to create a bright new day and save the University and just generally make things better; and now you’re talking about multilingual foreign teens who tweet, and nobody’s going to make a connection.
Daily Don: I wasn’t talking about MFTWT, Dana Boyd was, and I’m pretty sure everybody is following right along, and besides MD you’re supposed to be helping me get across the message and not just telling me that I’m being confusing, after all criticism comes easy and we all know that.
MD: True, but growth starts with a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
DD: Oh Lord, are you going to start with the whole 12 step thing again; I thought we had agreed that we were going to avoid patriarchy and stick to the Goddess approach this time, you know, less obedience more weirdness.
MD: A higher power is a higher power, and I wouldn’t be Meta if I always colored inside the lines all the time, so stop complaining and and figure out what you’re trying to say.
DD: Yeah, but it feels like we got our HP off an Oprah rerun.
MD: You stole that line; I sense a certain level of avoidance.
DD: Appropriated, channeling PM Don, and you’re the one who started the BHJ thread.
MD: Post-Modernity’s a bit past the sell-by date; focus, what’s your message?
DD: Well, I guess what I’m trying to say is sort of, like, if we’re going to succeed we need to build a community, and in order to build a community need to have things in common, tools, goals, and maybe you know a…a…
MD: A philosophy?
DD: A philosophy, right, and they’ll all understand that, won’t they?
The I Ching makes a not so subtle distinction between the “easy” and the “simple”. By way of example: lets say that there’s a mountain and for whatever reason we need to get to the top. The “easy” solution is to rent a helicopter, or if you’d prefer we could design and build a funicular which would allow us to make multiple trips, and perhaps make it possible to sell tickets to future tourists. Easy solutions, both. On the other hand, the “simple” solution is to start walking/climbing. What you’ll notice is that the simple solution doesn’t require much thought, just a bit of work and a lot of determination.
I’ve suggested that we need to become community organizers, and given you a tool to help you get started; my assumption being that we need to get our own community going before we can start helping others organize and manage theirs. I’m fairly certain that my suggestion has caused a good deal paranoia and paralysis, because you don’t know how to make a community or how to use the tool. I’m equally certain that the real problem is that you’re looking for an easy solution when what’s required is simplicity; all you have to do is share something. It can be a link, a picture, a thought, an idea, a tweet, or a LOLcat. It really is that simple; share something on a daily basis and community will happen. It’s not easy, because it feels new, different, not something you’re used to doing, but it is simple, sharing is always simple …
‘Tis the gift to be loved and that love to return,
Tis the gift to be taught and a richer gift to learn,
And when we expect of others what we try to live each day,
Then we’ll all live together and we’ll all learn to say,
When true simplicity is gain’d,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come out right.
Well, it would appear that everyone, myself included, has survived the first week of the new management paradigm. It actually feels like the week lasted about a month, but maybe that’s just me. Before we take off on practical and more directly related topics I thought it might be fun to take a quick look at the backchannels that have been running around in my head during the last 36 hours.
The backchannel phenomena is one of the interesting things that technology makes possible; it’s a catchall phrase for the now shareable conversations that happen during a conference presentation or a lecture; twitter, IRC,cell phones, and texting in all formats come into play. Usually within the academy the backchannel is seen as disruptive, but that maybe because we’re not paying attention. Here’s Danah Boyd with a meditation on that possibility. I’ve been falling behind on my news reader, so thanks to Mike Morrison from the other end of the hall for reminding me to take a look in the old aggregator. Mike commented that he didn’t imagine that the Boyd post would be of interest to most of the folks in the unit; if that’s the case, I’m hoping that it doesn’t remain the case. I think our eventual success will depend on all of us being interested in this sort of thing. This because there’s a loud and lively conversation going on about technology and learning, and we need some local participants. Here’s a post from Ryan Bretag by way of John Pederson; the core being:
Leaders are never content with their status as a leader, learner, and teacher. As John F. Kennedy said, “leadership and learning are indispensable to each other” and I believe that is a core tenant of anyone identified as a leader: a life-long learner growing deeper and broader intellectually, listening deeply, and leading through inquiry, passion, and community.
BTW, and just so there’s no confusion, the leader I have in mind is you. The specific you in this case being the folks who work with me. It’s a little odd to have a specific target audience; blogs normally operate under the illusion that they’re talking to everyone on the Internet, in much the same way that books and posts on leadership pretend to be news rather than simply the flavor of the week. Not that there’s anything wrong with the FOTW mind you; it’s just that after a while it can feel like you’re reading an extended AA aphorism. But then as David Foster Wallace reminds us, the secrets of life are pretty banal . Benjamin Zander likes to point out that you can lead the orchestra from any position, even if all you’ve got is a kettle drum. He also notices that the only person in the orchestra that doesn’t make noise is the conductor. Anytime you feel a little down and wonder what we’re doing or why, or whether it’s worth it, watch one of the Zander videos; they tend to run a little long, but you’re guaranteed to have a more or less life-changing moment, or your money back.
Speaking of videos; Ze Frank goes legit as a video commentator with some thoughts on being a progressive. As Peterson points out however, Waves is still the best Ze piece ever:
Of course it would be kind of pointless to have an aggregator without having the Gibson blog in it so you can find things like:
On a more serious note, after all you are reading this at work as part of a job assignment, right? You might want to take a look at Enterprise 2.0 & Social Computing I apologize for the 2.0 reference, but hey, we’re wandering around inside my mind, remember?
This has probably gone on long enough, possibly longer than that, so I will leave you with one last link to something that we definitely will need to pay attention to as things develop Wikimedia is about to make wikivideo, or if that’s too serious for you might want to head over to Rock, Paper, Sonehotgun and check out what’s really happening.
You wouldn’t think that jet fighter combat had much to do with manufacturing efficiency, let alone with how we’re going to rework a university help center. OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act; the OODA Loop was discovered/invented/proposed by Colonel John Boyd also known as “Genghis John”, the “Ghetto Colonel”, and “Forty Second Boyd” for his standing bet as an instructor pilot that beginning from a position of disadvantage, he could defeat any opposing pilot in air combat maneuvering in less than forty seconds, which if you think about it, brings new meaning to “Agile”. For our purposes the key to the OODA loop is the second “O”; Orientation covers our ability to get inside the mind of the other, what you might think of as the “enemy they”, and getting inside the mind of the our clients and colleagues is critical to our success. The key is what they think; the danger is what we think. Actually’ I’m just getting started with all this, and rather that go into how I think we can use the OODA-loop, I’m going to break off here and use it as an entry point to the Theory of Constraints.
Contextual digression: I’m not sure what it means that combat turns out to be the analogy of choice for business; first Miyamoto Musashi with The Book of Five Rings and now John Boyd. It’s particularly odd given that one of the fundamental precepts of constraint theory is that there are no conflicts in nature – only erroneous assumptions. It may be easier to sell this proposal to the lion pride than a herd of gazelle, but as long as the sun keeps coming up it’s an axiom that’s hard to argue with.
I’ve managed to talk to most of the staff, and in my effort to emphasize the need for (rapid and radical) change, I may have encouraged a depressing paranoia. People keep asking me what the Enemy They think we are doing wrong, followed by what the ET would count as doing right. In sense these aren’t bad questions, but we’ll get more traction by asking, “How can we kick butt?” As Musashi points out, “The warrior succeeds by finding the heart of battle.” Actually what he says is, “…by seeking death,” but that takes a lot of processing.
Well, I have a new job, or maybe just new responsibilities. I’m managing the University Service Center or help desk or however you want to think of it. It’s about reinventing whatever it was and making it work; by my lights that means making something new. It’s not first time I’ve been in this situation, but this one feels a little different maybe because what I have in mind is just a tad bit different than what I expect the folks that hired me have in mind. Still, I figure if I do it right they’ll be happy enough, and probably won’t even notice that it wasn’t what they imagined.
At any rate, LA is going to take a little different track for a bit. Blogging for me is always a little like thinking out loud, but with an audience; talking to yourself and not knowing who’s listening. Right at the moment though, I’m going to be expecting my new staff to be paying attention. This isn’t purely an ego trip, it’s partly a way of getting them used to a new technology format, and letting them a little bit inside my head. And yes, for those of you on staff, there will be tests (though not for a week or two) and I will expect that you keep up on a fairly regular basis. For those who haven’t been following along, let’s start with a little history and context: I like to say that everything I know about labor relations and management, I learned working with horses and mule’s. To be fair though, I also picked up a few tricks working as a field construction Boilermaker in Coalstrip Montana. That’s where I figured out that life was a good deal more serious than I had normally paid attention to, and a bit more complicated, because building a coal-fired generating plant in the middle of Paradise made you kind of wonder what you were up to and why. Here’s my old friend Wally McRae with kind of a reminder:
If you’re on staff, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with where we’re headed. Don’t worry, be happy, all will be revealed, but the revelation is going to take a little work on your part. Next post will introduce OODA loops and The Theory of Constraints; saddle up and stay tuned.
This page, like this Wiki, is in the stage of constant evolution. What follows at the moment is theory and background taken from some folks who are considerably smarter than I am. I’ve excerpted and rearranged, but hopefully stayed true to their thinking and intent. I’ve also provided links to the original articles, and I encourage you to explore. What we are trying to accomplish with the knowledge share experiment is at once simple and complex; how it evolves, how we evolve, is part of the experiment.
Now, let’s say you’re the dean or president of an academic venture, and your institution began entering, marking-up, formatting, and promoting an online library of academically-important sources. Let’s say that your school puts its faculty online in short-span audio/video spots that address topical problems in digestible segments. In the process of producing these materials, of course, your students and faculty learn better the ins and outs of the texts that they’re working with (as Thayer notes, Qui scribit, bis legit: “One who writes, reads twice”). Let’s say that your students can expect open access to much of their learning materials, written and audio and video; and let’s say that your faculty and your institutional name are bouncing around the Web as the font of this treasury of learning. Doesn’t that sound like a big competitive advantage for your institution as you scrabble to attract students (and grants, and faculty)?
These are the faster horses of technology as it interacts with the academy. Every penny you invest in technologies that perpetuate the familiar patterns of classroom/library instruction depreciates the minute it’s spent. Every penny you invest in the technological transformation of the academy along lines that match best-use cases of various technologies (including, especially, the seminar room and the book) will redound to your advantage multiple times.
On the other hand, no one ever got fired for signing up for another year’s subscription to BlackBoard, and being an advocate for a transformative approach to technology and academy hasn’t helped me land a job. Maybe the future does indeed lie with encumbering teachers, students, writers, readers, researchers, and a generally-interested public with systemic limitations in order to preserve the economic and pedagogical superstructure of the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century academy.Those of you with the curiosity to have clicked through the “faster horses” link above have some good reason to suspect that the open wiki path we are proposing is likely to get as they say in Montana “right Western”. We were pretty comfortable with frontier metaphors in the early days of the Internet, but seem to have forgotten that and we try to convince ourselves that things have grown more civilized. Example of that is our general belief that if we pay enough money for the right software and the right consultants our problems will be solved FOR US. However, as Mr. Ed reminds us no matter how you deck it out, “a horse is a horse”. The $600,000 horse should run faster than the $2000 horse, but as this year’s Kentucky Derby demonstrated, should doesn’t necessarily scale; nor is the race always to the swift, but let’s not ride the metaphor into the ground. The real point is that we are proposing a solution not because it is cheaper but because we think the frontier is still where we live. The Knowledge Share Wiki just might work; no guarantee and in fact pulling off is going to be a real challenge but here’s Mark Pesce with some explanation of why just might be worth the effort, the risk, and the responsibility. You are encouraged to read the full Sharing Power (Aussie Rules) essay as if you rely on the c&p you’ll miss things like, “Studies of Japanese teenagers using mobiles and twenty-somethings on Facebook have shown that, most of the time, activity is directed toward a small circle of peers, perhaps six or seven others. This ‘co-presence’ is probably a modern echo of an ancient behavior, presumably related to the familial unit.”
In the 21st century we now have two oppositional methods of organization: the hierarchy and the cloud. Each of them carry with them their own costs and their own strengths. Neither has yet proven to be wholly better than the other. One could make an argument that both have their own roles into the future, and that we’ll be spending a lot of time learning which works best in a given situation. What we have already learned is that these organizational types are mostly incompatible: unless very specific steps are taken, the cloud overpowers the hierarchy, or the hierarchy dissipates the cloud. We need to think about the interfaces that can connect one to the other. That’s the area that all organizations – and very specifically, non-profit organizations – will be working through in the coming years. Learning how to harness the power of the cloud will mark the difference between a modest success and overwhelming one. Yet working with the cloud will present organizational challenges of an unprecedented order. There is no way that any hierarchy can work with a cloud without becoming fundamentally changed by the experience.
The cloud, this new thing, is really what has us scared, because it is, quite literally, ‘out of control’. It arises naturally out of the human condition of ‘hyperconnection’. We are so much better connected than we were even a decade ago, and this connectivity breeds new capabilities. The first of these capabilities are the pooling and sharing of knowledge – or ‘hyperintelligence’. Consider: everyone who reads Wikipedia is potentially as smart as the smartest person who’s written an article in Wikipedia. Wikipedia has effectively banished ignorance born of want of knowledge.
Don’t expect a revolution. We will not see masses of hyperconnected individuals, storming the Winter Palaces of power. This is not a proletarian revolt. It is, instead, rather more subtle and complex. The entire nature of power has changed, as have the burdens of power. Power has always carried with it the ‘burden of omniscience’ – that is, those at the top of the hierarchy have to possess a complete knowledge of everything of importance happening everywhere under their control. This new power that flows from the cloud of hyperconnectivity carries a different burden, the ‘burden of connection’. In order to maintain the cloud, and our presence within it, we are beholden to it. We must maintain each of the social relationships, each of the informational relationships, each of the knowledge relationships and each of the mimetic relationships within the cloud. Without that constant activity, the cloud dissipates, evaporating into nothing at all.
For each of us, connectivity carries a high price. For every organization which attempts to harness hyperconnectivity, the price is even higher. With very few exceptions, organizations are structured along hierarchical lines. Power flows from bottom to the top. Not only does this create the ‘burden of omniscience’ at the highest levels of the organization, it also fundamentally mismatches the flows of power in the cloud. When the hierarchy comes into contact with an energized cloud, the ‘discharge’ from the cloud to the hierarchy can completely overload the hierarchy. That’s the power of hyperconnectivity.
How does this happen?
What is it that turns a cloud in to a storm? Jimmy Wales has said that the success of any language-variant version of Wikipedia comes down to the dedicated efforts of five individuals. Once he spies those five individuals hard at work in Pashtun or Khazak or Xhosa, he knows that edition of Wikipedia will become a success. In other words, five people have to take the lead, leading everyone else in the cloud with their dedication, their selflessness, and their openness. This number probably holds true in a cloud of any sort – find five like-minded individuals, and the transformation from cloud to storm will begin.
At the end of that transformation there is still no hierarchy. There are, instead, concentric circles of involvement. At the innermost, those five or more incredibly dedicated individuals; then a larger circle of a greater number, who work with that inner five as time and opportunity allow; and so on, outward, at decreasing levels of involvement, until we reach those who simply contribute a word or a grammatical change, and have no real connection with the inner circle, except in commonality of purpose.
What, then, is leadership in the cloud? It is not like leadership in the tower. It is not a position wrought from power, but authority in its other, and more primary meaning, ‘to be the master of’. Authority in the cloud is drawn from dedication, or, to use rather more precise language, love. Love is what holds the cloud together. People are attracted to the cloud because they are in love with the aim of the cloud. The cloud truly is an affair of the heart, and these affairs of the heart will be the engines that drive 21st century business, politics and community.
All of you have your own hierarchical organizations – because that’s how organizations have always been run. Yet each of you are surrounded by your own clouds: community organizations (both in the real world and online), bulletin boards, blogs, and all of the other Web2.0 supports for the sharing of connectivity, information, knowledge and power. You are already halfway invested in the cloud, whether or not you realize it. And that’s also true for people you serve, your customers and clients and interest groups. You can’t simply ignore the cloud.
How then should organizations proceed?
First recommendation: do not be scared of the cloud. It might be some time before you can come to love the cloud, or even trust it, but you must at least move to a place where you are not frightened by a constituency which uses the cloud to assert its own empowerment. Reacting out of fright will only lead to an arms race, a series of escalations where the your hierarchy attempts to contain the cloud, and the cloud – which is faster, smarter and more agile than you can ever hope to be – outwits you, again and again.
Second: like likes like. If you can permute your organization so that it looks more like the cloud, you’ll have an easier time working with the cloud. Case in point: because of ‘message discipline’, only a very few people are allowed to speak for an organization. Yet, because of the exponential growth in connectivity and Web2.0 technologies, everyone in your organization has more opportunities to speak for your organization than ever before. Can you release control over message discipline, and empower your organization to speak for itself, from any point of contact? Yes, this sounds dangerous, and yes, there are some dangers involved, but the cloud wants to be spoken to authentically, and authenticity has many competing voices, not a single monolithic tone.
Third, and finally, remember that we are all involved in a growth process. The cloud of last year is not the cloud of next year. The answers that satisfied a year ago are not the same answers that will satisfy a year from now. We are all booting up very quickly into an alternative form of social organization which is only just now spreading its wings and testing its worth. Beginnings are delicate times. The future will be shaped by actions in the present. This means there are enormous opportunities to extend the capabilities of existing organizations, simply by harnessing them to the changes underway.
So this is where we stand at the moment; as I said at the outset this page really should be blank. To make Knowledge Share work we need five people who are in love with its idea. They don’t need to know what they’re doing; they just need to be willing to keep trying until something works, and if they really are in love with the idea I suspect they’ll find that something much faster than we would have imagined.
Remember that Deming said; “The system is such that almost nobody can do his best.You have to know what to do, then do your best.Sure we need everybody’s best – everybody working together with a common aim.And knowing something about how to achieve it.Not just with what seem to be brilliant ideas, but with a system of improvement (10).”
