Monthly Archive

Barbara Dieu posted to TALO these links to stat graphs looking at the generational uptake of social media. Click to view. My initial thoughts from them:

I see the high bars moving WITH the generations, rather than other generations adopting these practices… which means the types of things that we are seeing 18-26yo doing online will change and evolve as their life experience grows.. in other words, social media will become rich and broader ranging with information and learning on a wider variety of things and with varying levels of depth.. within about 5 - 10 years. At the moment educationalists could be doing much more towards attempting to engage the % of the age group, and on their terms, so as the maximise the potential energy in this early adoption. Obviously, doing so will mean we learn the things now that we will need to know in 5 - 10 years time.

Then again, do these stats affirm the need for reaction at all? Or are those that promoted the use of social media doing so on the belief that it is simply a good thing to do proactively?…

Long time no chat with Teemu Leinonen. Tonight he skyped me out of the blue and in no time has me signed up to Jaiku - another group IM system, but seems to have more features than Twitter such as intergration with mobile phones..

We also got to chatting about various stuff in the world, flicking links to movies back and forth before we settled down to watch the first part of the BBC series Century of the Self. More info about this BBC series here.

Its another very thought provoking film in what seems to be a series of stuff I’m just happening across, such as Newman’s History of Oil and Zeitgeist. Apart from being interesting in that this BBC series seems to support in some way the general ideas coming out of the more “conspiracy” minded films like Zeitgeist and History of Oil, Teemu and I kept the skype chatgoing through out the 1 hour movie. We chatted to each other, summarised what was being said, grabbed links to some of the names etc. It was quite an enjoyable way to watch this film.

Here’s some of the transcript: [10:42:12 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: I am watching the movie too.
[10:42:21 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: me too
[10:42:33 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: I have this idea of having a TV with chat. We can do some quick user testing in here.
[10:42:44 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: right
[10:43:27 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: I have often tried to talk to my grand father about his life - but he does not talk about himself too well
[10:44:28 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: Where did he grow up?
[10:44:35 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: Australia
[10:44:52 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: through Depression WW2 etc
[10:45:48 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: My grandfather wrote down his memories.
[10:45:56 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: good man
[10:46:34 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: was common to keep journals in the 18 19th century hey
[10:46:35 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: I have this plan of “digitalizing” them. They are written with a typewriter.
[10:46:42 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: great
[10:53:50 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: hmm cigarettes
[10:54:02 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: torches of freedom
[10:54:21 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: bernays takes credit?
[10:54:27 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: dunno about that/..
[10:54:37 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: Bernays
[10:55:23 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: Bernays = emotional connection to objects
[10:55:32 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: emotional
[10:56:18 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: I think functional virtues will come back
[10:56:30 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
[10:56:46 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: needs to desire culture
[10:57:03 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: does this reflect a European experience?
[10:57:43 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: emotional connection to objects is good if the objects are good.
[10:57:54 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: ah ha
[10:58:18 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: I don’t have anything agains good propaganda if the products are good.
[10:58:50 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: cigarettes - torches of freedom - money - wealth - jobs = good in 1920
[10:59:03 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: bad today
[10:59:12 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: hmm.. well…good for whom?
[10:59:32 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: women freedom?
[10:59:39 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: good point.
[11:00:30 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: if you could jump right from the “smoking” to the “torches of freedom” and the rest will still follow it would be much better.
[11:01:06 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: smoking - torces of freedom - money - wealth - jobs.
[11:01:33 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: well, money and jobs are good for others
[11:01:44 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: wealth for the nation/community
[11:02:01 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: women freedom means money for women.
[11:02:02 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: but all this just to question the notion of “good”
[11:02:36 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: “…and everybody was happy.”
[11:03:10 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: this bernays is a demon
[11:03:13 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says:
[11:03:21 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: he has horns
[11:03:28 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: hah..
[11:04:35 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: bernays and co strike me as gloting arrogants
[11:04:46 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: or just american>
[11:06:37 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: freuds thinking = christian belief of inate sinfulness of men
[11:06:40 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: ?
[11:08:01 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: the mob and web2…
[11:08:09 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: unconsciousness = innate sin.
[11:08:17 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: hmm
[11:09:21 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: “engineered concent” - Bernays.. later Naom Chompsky
[11:10:55 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: Actually I mean: freud’s unconscious mind = the christian innate sin.
[11:11:42 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: right
[11:14:54 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: It seems to be that Europe exports “ideas” to US and when they are “imported” back to Europe it is a catastrophe.
[11:15:00 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: need to watch Zeitgeist for an idea about why the depression happened
[11:15:27 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: indeed
[11:16:00 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: …just waiting when the nuclear bomb will be finally “imported” back to Europe.
[11:16:24 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: freedom is impossible
[11:22:41 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: on archive.org there is a good film called Despotism - 1947 or something..
[11:25:28 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: yes. I have used the Despotism in some classes.
[11:26:51 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gallup
[11:36:01 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: not as active citizens but passive consumers
[11:36:15 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: web2 = active citizens?
[11:36:24 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: hmm..
[11:40:06 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: oh no.. the CIA
[11:40:15 p.m.] Teemu Leinonen says: Right..
[11:40:34 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: good film
[11:40:43 p.m.] Leigh Blackall says: thanks to the google pirate

Hey ya. 3 examples of what I think make good n simple online courses, but more importantly - flexible learning. Note that they all use wikis, but that’s just a technical feature that helps with ease of management.

1. I reckon this is a straight up and down good example of a simple online/distance and highly flexible course: Intro to open ed syllabus . Hopefully you’ll be able to draw ideas from it. The thing I like about it is its simple, no frills, matter of fact way of telling a learner what to do. It is teacherly, but in a matter of fact, straight up kinda way. The design is in the activities, questions, and assessment tasks. It uses a wiki to schedule the course and present the questions and activities, but then hands it over the learners and their blogs. NB the discussion page behind the course wiki.
2. Taking this further would be the CyberOne where it uses a combination of a course blog, wiki and SecondLife. Not as good as the first one even though it has more engaging features… the features are what works against it I reckon, making it no doubt hard to manage and stay on top of… hence it looks as if it might be falling by the side in terms of maintenance. Lesson in this is that with too many features (even as little as three) people can still get lost in the navigation and management of it all - hence making it too difficult to sustain.
3. I reckon our very own development is shaping up ok too. Tour Guiding as part of a Diploma in Applied Travel and Tourism. It still has some way to go, and could very easily simplify its structure somewhat - it is currently developing along the lines of this concept. I think it shows the beginnings of a good course. At the moment it is using a course blog as a front end because the teachers were worried that the students would spin out a bit at the wiki’s look and feel. So think of it as more like at open source kind of online course. You see the more pretty course blog, but the source info is available too. The potential is for it to develop into more of a flexible, self paced, open participatory kind of thing…

This week’s guest lecture was a biggy. We were very lucky to have the famous Nancy White talk with us from the lovely Seattle USA on Tuesday 12noon NZST.

Nancy suggested that we watch this animation about Peer Assist before we met. (After you click play, the movie will have to load a little before it starts playing. If you are on dial up, right click and save the movie file to your computer).

It was a very inspiring and engaging talk and Nancy got it in at under 15minutes! That’s the best so far Here are the recordings:

• MP3 audio of Nancy’s talk - 2.7meg / 15min
• MP3 audio of discussion after the talk - 6.3meg / 35min
• Elluminate recording - (no password needed)
• Slides on slideshare

http://online-learning-communities.blogspot.com/

Alex Hayes has composed an excellent slide presentation that sums up 2 years or more of research and development in the area of mobile learning - Australia in particular. It is a beautiful presentation, innovative in its creation, extensive, participatory, self explanatory… although audio is forthcoming after Alex presents the slides at Canberra CIT National TAFE on the 5-9 September (Sorry, no link to the event! Can you believe that? In this day and age! Alex is sure to fix that

Nice job Alex. A celebration!

George Siemens has posted much needed rethinking on the role of teachers and experts in Networked Learning. He presents the idea of a curator as a central player in initiating a focus for a learning network.

I very much like this idea of the curator and I’d like to add more to it by describing and preserving the integrity of the teacher and the facilitator.

As many already know I try to reinvigorate questions and discussion on the role of teachers from time to time - all be it a little confrontational :)  Lately I have been broadly focusing on the integrity of a facilitator, especially as I reckon the teaching profession is [innocently] corrupting the integrity of facilitation with teachers calling themselves facilitators - but remaining teachers in every sense of the word. I guess teachers do this in response to the as yet illdefined roles needed in a networked learning. They are perhaps prematurely trying to redefine their role of teacher without yet fully understanding why or how, and engaging in the dialogue that George points to. I don’t think teaching needs redifining, it is fine as it is, it just needs to be deinstitutionalised and moved away from being the primary player in people’s learning. Artichoke is in my opinion the deepest and most thought provoking edublogger writing in this vein of thinking, and she is drawing very much from the thinking of Illich.

As George suggests, perhaps the expertise of a curator are more suited to becoming a central role in networked learning - someone that draws on an array of teachers and content to suit a particular purpose. I want to add the facilitator as another important role here, as someone or something that assists people to negotiate the exhibition that the curator has assembled. Not a teacher dressed up as a facilitator - someone who manages to remain impartial while at the same time engaging and interpretive; someone that can respond quickly to various and often unpredictable contributions from participants; and someone who does all this without asserting a sense of authority or even expertise over a topic, but instead calls on teachers and experts to engage when a teacher or an expert is needed. And that’s where networked learning and the Internet really help us. They give us access to a vast number of teachers and experts to call on at any given time!

But where can we find curators and facilitators? I don’t think we can reliably find good facilitators in the teaching sector.. perhaps we will find better facilitators from the fields of journalism, comedy, performance, talk back radio, speakers to the house of reps, etc. And as George points out, we will find curators from museums and art galleries (lets not forget the librarians!) I see the likes of Stephen Downes, George Siemens, David Wiley and so many other “A listers” - or most referenced contributors, primarily as teachers and content providers in this network. People and content that the curator might draw from. Modern day researchers who are available to be teachers and content providers in an exhibition, conference of course. They’re participants as well - especially in areas they are not recognised as experts, but the sustained focus, quality, popularity, experience and depth of their work makes them more teacherly than participants in their field. So it is not them that are the facilitators (although they are often capable as George showed with his facilitation of FOE). But one cannot be both an expert or teacher and facilitator at the same time.

I’m yet to come accross someone in our widened educational network that I would call a professional facilitator and/or curator.. perhaps like the teaching sector, the edublogging sector is not a reliable source for good facilitators. Perhaps the source for good facilitators and curators do not have an online presence and network yet…

But when they emerge I see the roles playing out like this: A curator finds resources and a space to bring together an “exhibition” of content, experts and teachers, then either adopts the different role of facilitator, or employs the services of a professional facilitator who will assist all the participants to negotiate the various aspects of the exhibition.

For example: Someone who organises a conference is essentially curating content, and will either facilitate that event themselves, or hire a professional conference facilitator to do it. The teachers and experts play a secondary role in these sorts of learning environments by providing the content and focus. In a sense, the people and content in this secondary layer are competing with each other for attention and recogniton.. they often choose to collaborate instead/or as well as compete (I mean compete in a very positive sense) for the attention and participation in their topic area. The tertiary level in this type of learning environment are the participants. They move around the content that is presented to them by the curator, and engage in various discussions, workshops and other events with assistance from the facilitator if needed. Often the curators, facilitators, teachers and experts join in and participate as well, but they unavoidably carry with them the status and isolation of their role, while the participants are free to move around unrestrained by an identity as fully formed as a teacher or expert at this “exhibition” that the curator has put on.

An art exhibition (and the opening in particular) is very similar. The artworks, the artists and the critics provide the content; the curator selects the content; and the participants develop the interpretation/learning. The more I think about it, so much of the world works like this. The old practice of classroom, captive audience teaching, and standard set fees is such an abused privilege!

So begins a new/or revisited thread of networked thought I hope… and we may at last be developing a clearer model for networked learning.

Konrad Glogowski (that’s him on the right) joined us for the 2nd in a series of 10 minute lectures relating to the facilitation of online learning communities. In this recording Konrad talks about developing a sense of community and individual presence before attempting formal learning. Konrad talks to his middle school teaching experiences but his research and insight is very applicable across many efforts to develop an online learning community.

• Recording of the Elluminate session - slides, audio, and chat text
• MP3 audio recording of lecture only - 4.5M / 25min (and worth every second!)
• MP3 audio recording of discussion afterwards - 4.5M / 25min

MP3 recording of the meeting (12.5M)

Thanks to Kattie Ellwood from the Otago Polytechnic communications for her great work drawing public attention to this occasion. Press release as follows:

Vancouver-based Commonwealth of Learning (CoL) representative Wayne MacKintosh, an expert in the field of open and distance learning, visits Dunedin this week to meet with the growing number of Otago Polytechnic staff members developing education resources on the CoL’s WikiEducator initiative.

While WikiEducator is likely to be unfamiliar to most as yet, the website which is loosely related to the world’s largest, most extensive, and fastest growing encyclopaedia Wikipedia, has the potential to have an enormous impact on the way education is accessed and delivered internationally.

“I believe that all learners and teachers should have the freedom to use the technologies of their choice,” writes MacKintosh.

“No learner should be denied access to an education because learning material is locked behind copyright or because people may not have the resources to pay for licensed software. All people of the world have a fundamental right to participate in the knowledge economy.” [http://wikieducator.org/User:Mackiwg]

The Commonwealth of Learning an intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of education knowledge, resources and technologies in a socially inclusive and sustainable way. COL is helping developing nations improve access to quality education and training.

Wikieducator promotes the development of free education content; open education resources that anyone with an internet connection can access and edit.

“The Commonwealth of Learning’s provision of Wikieducator and its facilitation of an educational development network has helped saved some of our flexible learning development projects an estimated $10 000 so far this year,” explains Leigh Blackall, Programme Developer in Otago Polytechnic’s Educational Development Centre.

 

“This estimate is based on their hosting many megabytes of our content, backing it up, and offering round the clock technical support for teachers working on the platform.”

The CoL recently paid for Blackall to visit Vancouver to learn about upcoming plans, the future for related projects like Wikipedia and the importance of careful copyright management to education.

MacKintosh is also expected to congratulate Otago Polytechnic on the development of their new Intellectual Property policy which uses the Creative Commons Attributes license as a default.

“This license places Otago Polytechnic as the most progressive educational institution in New Zealand and Australia” says Blackall.

“Using such a license not only makes our educational services and content more accessible, it also allows us to collaborate in educational resource developments internationally, on such platforms as Wikieducator “

Wara points to another facinating titbit in his post, The importance of hacker thinking

The 5 part youtube playlist, The History of Hacking

During the 1970’s, the phone phreaks or phone hackers appeared: they learned ways to hack the telephonic system and make phone calls for free.

John Draper built a ‘blue box’ that could do this and the Esquire magazine published an article on how to build them. Fascinated by this discovery, two kids, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, decided to sell these blue boxes, starting a business friendship which resulted in the founding of Apple.

Getting their laughs and skills from hacking and cracking into primitive computers and exploiting the Arpanet (predecessor to the internet), they created a novelty that would become the target of federal crackdown in years to come.

James Farmer joined us for the first in a series of 10 minute lectures relating to the facilitation of online learning communities. James talks about identity and ownership in online learning. Specifically comparing typical learning management system environments to blogs.

Recording of the Elluminate session
MP3 audio recording of lecture only
MP3 audio recording of discussion afterwards

From video to print: http://www.wikieducator.org/Creating_a_screen_recording

Still images: http://flickr.com/photos/leighblackall/sets/72157601298720211/

Someone please make a comic strip out of Mike Caulfields piss take on IT management.

I would if I had a little more time, but I’ve had my go, and D’Arcy’s had his. This is the best script yet and deserves better treatment. Perhaps a SecondLife Machinima or snapshot comic strip?

Barbara Deu rounded up the troops to support her presentation to the Merlot Conference in New Orleens last night. She had the main conference wired in with a SecondLife conference and a Webheads VOIP and chat conference all at the same time. There must have been 40 or so people online joining in the conference.

Barb gave nice talk on networked learning - slides and audio - and then handed the mic around to a variety of people coming in from all over the world to give a brief sentence or two on networked learning.

Finding my way into the webhead channels was too hard for me - something to do with that olden style free ranging that Webheads do, and being 1 in the morning for me I just needed something easy. So SecondLife it was, and my first go at the new voice feature.

It was really something actually. Jeff from WorldBridges did a great job relaying the audio from the Merlot and Webheads conference through to SecondLife via his Avatar’s voice. We in SecondLife all sat around Nick Noakes’ famous campfire and listened in on Barbs talk while we chatted amongst ourselves.

I was really impressed with the quality of the sound and the usefulness of the effects (surround sound with close and distant effects) how engaging it was to be in there supporting Barb as one of many. SO much better that Elluminate, and successfully bridged between the haves and the have nots. I could feel Barbs nerves though! I was nervous! but it all went well, topped of by a nice little Banjo playing (I could have heard more though

So, hats off to you Barb, not only did you give a great talk, you successfully brought your network in with you and gave something tangible to the conference goers to see what it is you are talking about with networked learning.

Wara points out another useful little tool.

Wikimindmap

Insert your search term or topic, select the Wikipedia language, see the results in a clean interactive mind map.

Janet Hawtin has posted an idea that really gets me thinking. We should combine the literacy skills of online and offline researchers and communicators.

Because these are subtle and personal customisations for specific contexts this means they are diverse. As a community we are developing social skills around finding and filtering for our own personal purposes the collective diversity available. I think this is where literacy exchange comes in.

I think Janet’s idea is a great one! I know I am guilty of forcing people into a very narrow range of research and communication technologies (blogs, wikis and RSS of course), and this naturally frustrates people who are accustomed to other ways of researching and communicating. Meeting professional researchers and communicators who don’t understand these technologies is frustrating however.. but as Janet says, it would be beneficial to draw on a diverse range of literacy skills, more, it would be very important to actively seek out this diversity and support it.

I think Janet’s idea relates to my idea of using analogue media along the lines of socially networked media so as to bridge digital divides.

There is lots to explore here, and Janet’s suggestion is something I might add to my list of objectives when facilitating learning communities. That list?

1. Losing the teacherly voice
2. Linking analogue media and communications with digital networks
3. Supporting and promoting a range of research and communication literacies
4. Establishing networks more than groups
5. Supporting long term learning communities
6. umm

Janet Hawtin  over in the TALO email forum alerted readers there to Microsoft’s campaign to get their OOXML format made an international standard for office type documents. We already have a standard! Its called Open Document Format and we should use that. See this website for more info on why we should say NO to OOXML.

Microsoft is currently trying to make the ISO National Bodies believe that its Office Open XML (OOXML) format is a good standard. This website discusses why this broken proprietary standard should never be accepted by ISO.

New Zealand will be considering the two formats at a workshop in Wellington 23-24 August, and from that will be collecting stakeholder views. Details below.

Meeting Notice Standards New Zealand Office Open XML Workshop

23-24 August 2007

• • Workshop purpose The purpose of the workshop is to provide a forum for discussion to assess New Zealand stakeholder views, and guide Standards New Zealand’s vote on the Office Open XML draft standard.

Meeting details The workshop will be held at Standards New Zealand, Wellington.
Date: Wednesday 23 August 2007

Thursday 24 August 2007

Time: 9.30am – 4.30pm (both days) 

Venue: Standards New Zealand

Level 10

Radio New Zealand House

155 The Terrace

Wellington

      A light lunch will be provided on both days.

• • RSVP Please RSVP to Craig Watkin by 20 August 2007

• • Email: craig.watkin@standards.co.nz

• • Address:  Private Bag 2439, Wellington 6140

• • DDI: 04 498 5904

• • More information If you require any further information please contact Michelle Wessing, General Manager Standards Development on 04 498 3957 or email michelle.wessing@standards.co.nz

If you are unable to attend, or nominate a representative to attend on your behalf but would like to provide comments, please forward these to Craig Watkin no later than 17 August 2007. These will be circulated to the workshop participants prior to the meeting.

Bill Kerr seems to be willfully applying a modernist frame of reference over his developing critique of social media. To my mind looking at the world today through the lens of modernism is a bit like turning up to a party wearing your work clothes… I’m not sure if that analogy works for others out there, but it works for me at the moment. This is not to say I don’t appreciate Bills choice of reference, it is quite thought provoking and its certainly giving me stuff to blog about

I get this idea about Bill from a recent film Sunshine and I have just seen called Helvetica.

Its a documentary on the story of the type set helvetica. Well, its more than that really, its the story of modernist visual communication and media and its relationship to the world today. And that’s the link to Bill.
The film started with the old modernists, nostalgically reminiscing about the crisp, clear, rational idealism of helvetica. Through interview after interview it sampled the perspectives of designers on the significance of the type set. The post modernist designers came on later and almost embarrassed themselves with their naive politiks, but they cleared the thick, pipe smoke air left by the modernist old boys, and made way for the deconstructing grunge. The sort of punk deconstructionists destructionists who dismissed it all and wiped the slate clean of these historical burdons and over all disappointments.

Gradually the film moved through these observable historic periods and attempted to clear some of the fog around today. The current generation of professional designers and their freedom to sample everything from that historic pallet. They are able to balance the rational clarity of modernist style, with the political messaging of the post modernists, and the subjective expressionism of the grunge to create a range of unique messages and visual environments based largely on sampling and remixing. Often deep and considered (as it has to be with these historical references), but largely surface and superficial, intentionally too.

Of course the old boy modernists are still hung up about the post modern “disease” that snuffed their flame, and think and behave like they are the guardians of everything “true”. The post modernists are still hung up about their modernist parents not accepting anything they do, and while they relax into a conservative retirement they on the whole refuse to acknowledge the sophistication of their successors. The punks still don’t give a shit and just get on with it.

But its the emerging generation that is interesting to us now.. this is perhaps the age that will be called the neo constructivists, the time when media and communications was somewhat democratised, when the set up cost to be a film maker was within reach of many, to be a communication designer was within reach of many more still, music, journalism etc..

But that right there is still considering the world with a modernist reference! To use the professions of film making, record producing, journalism as some sort of reference or comparison to the socially networked media is a mistake. To be hung up on the quality of output from socially networked media, based on the outputs of professionals is largely out of place. Of course there are emerging professionals that are using the social platforms - the A listers and the like, but on the whole, considering neo constructivism in terms of historical professionalism is a bit like turning up to a juiced up punk/grunge rock party dress and drinking your 60’s helvetica.. you’re gunna get bashed or worse.

Its not quite right, but I wanna say that there’s no such thing as a film maker, a designer, a journalist or record producer anymore. These historic reference points for media and communication have been diluted and washed away. If these things are everywhere now, then these things are nothing (to appropriate Robert Hughes‘ famous line). Of course we still go to see films, and buy recorded music, and take notice of journalistic expertise, its just that these are no longer the only, or most significant platform for cultural expression. Visual communication and design is now merging with personal expression and identity and professionalism has nothing to do with it.

The Helvetica film ended with an excellent observation of this new social mediascape by a fella named - I’ll have to watch the film again I’ve asked the Youtube pirate if he/she has the clip I’m thinking of… but the fella was observing the scene through the lens of society and communication. The point of this post is that appreciating the historical significance of the socially networked media scape, or the neo constructivists (if i’m ok to call it that (?) is better done through the lens of contemporary social science, through communications studies, through culture and visual communication. Not through modernist perspectives in computing, rationalism or objectivity.

Dangerous words I know - to a precious modernist despairing at the destruction of his world as the boys and girls strip him of his work suit.