Chris Lott

In late October I had the privilege of presenting at WCET on the topic of digital literacy, new media fluency, and secondary orality ala Walter Ong. Thanks to the able help of Jared Stein (who had his own very well-received presentation) I was able to stream the session live in a format that made a bit more sense to me than the mere talking head and allowed more than 30 people outside the room to participate.

It’s immaterial whether Ong is “right” or “wrong” because his theory is important as a lens. If it reveal something useful, then the specific composition of the lens is, pragmatically, irrelevant. And the theory of a secondary orality is, as I tried to bring out in my presentation, both fantastically relevant to many different areas of the current information ecology/arena (not least in that it might present an opportunity to cut the Gordian knot of digital/media literacy/fluency confusion/conflation – how’s that for slashing a sentence?) and distinctly under-studied.

So, here’s the video (the setup Jared Stein came up with worked well… the only change I would make would be to use a detached cam instead of the built-in web cam… and figure out a way to mic the audience for questions):

And because some of the slides are hard to read on the web-video, the slides:

[image by viagallery.com]

I’ve been searching for the perfect portable computer (laptop, then notebook, now netbook) since 1985 when, courtesy of a program at school, I got my hands on a Tandy Radio Shack 100. The new Samsung NC-20 (aka MINI-ME) comes so, so close but for a couple of completely unnecessary changes from TINY-MC, my previous favorite Samsung NC-10.

I don’t intend that a netbook replace my primary computer (at the moment the Dell Precision M4300, which I’m incredibly happy with but for the caveat that the build quality in mine was poor), but to excel at the kind of tasks I spend my time away from that machine doing, primarily: writing—including long documents, surfing—including the requisite amount of video and audio, using Skype, some web development, and some sysadmin tasks using SSH and VNC.

Because I need to integrate fully with others in the office, running Microsoft Office and Windows (XP for now, Windows 7 soon) and Adobe products adequately is also a necessity. Nothing against Linux, which I love in my own way, but the pragmatic reality makes it impractical in this situation.

The NC-20 has pretty much everything I’ve been looking for. The good-great features:

• Powered by the new Via Nano chip, the NC-20’s performance is more than adequate for my use, essentially indistinguishable from the NC-10, with 5-7 hours of battery life without significantly compromised settings
• With integrated graphics and hardware acceleration, video performance is quite good and the 12” screen is bright and runs at 1024*800 resolution, which is perfect for my primary task. The extra 200 pixels in height over the NC-10 makes all the difference in the world
• The keyboard is full-size—or very close—with better feel than the smaller NC-10, which I could already type on at full speed. And unlike many other netbooks, the ENTER, RIGHT-SHIFT, and ARROW keys have the proper relationship to one another
• 160g hard drive
• Onboard 3-in-1 multi-card reader
• 3 USB ports
• Wireless (Atheros 802.11 b/g) and Wired (10/100) LAN
• Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
• 1.3mp built-in web cam

The two things that keep it from being perfect, changed for no good reason from the NC-10:

• The glossy screen. Glossy screens are great on larger displays that don’t see out of doors or bright-light use very often… but MC-TINY’s matte screen was definitely better.
• Two keyboard problems: I can deal with the `/~ key being moved to the bottom row, but why put it right next to the space bar where the ALT key should be? And even worse, there is no LEFT-WINDOWS key, which has been replaced by the wholly useless APPLICATION key. I’ve had no luck remapping a switch between these two keys. This is highly annoying, but not a showstopper since these flaws don’t interfere with normal typing (they get in the way because I use ALT-TAB switching and WINDOWS-Q for the absolutely indispensable Slickrun launcher, which now must be accessed with two hands unless I use some Steve Vai on the fretboard style contortions.

There are many smaller netbooks with even longer battery life and many more powerful netbooks that are significantly more expensive, but the NC-20 is the best of all that I’ve tried, right in the sweet spot for the way I want to use it. Size-wise it is near full-size notebook territory, but with much better battery life and of course a price-point that makes it nearly a commodity. I can’t recommend the NC-20 (and its smaller NC-10, which whups all the 10” competition) highly enough.

Scott Rosenberg—author of the fascinating Dreaming in Code and the always-interesting Wordyard blog—has a new book out that looks even more interesting than his first: Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters.

There’s an excerpt up at Salon which doesn’t diminish my interest, but does rub me the wrong way just a little bit. Either Rosenberg actually believes what I am about to quote, or he doesn’t see the conflation he uses to make it plausible, or he doesn’t care to make a more nuanced argument. He writes:

According to this perspective, talent is a resource of fixed supply. The existing institutions of the publishing and broadcast world are already doing an efficient and thorough job of finding all that talent and giving it a platform. And all this other stuff that’s spewing forth from the Web’s profusion of blogs and podcasts and videos? It’s just dross that obscures the real talent’s output.

Beyond the obvious arrogance, this view misreads and underestimates the Web in several ways. It’s a mistake to think of human creativity as a kind of limited natural resource, like an ore waiting for society to mine; it is more like a gene that will turn on given the right cues.

I can’t disagree with where Rosenberg is going, but not only is the idea of talent as a limitless resource wrong on its face, but it’s not “obvious arrogance” to keep that fact in mind when considering the media and artistic landscapes that the web is part of.

The idea that there is limitless talent is just another take on that warm, particularly American, and ultimately harmful mythos that anyone is capable of doing everything if they just (gosh darn it!) work hard enough. But there’s no evidence that this happy fiction has any truth to it… and plenty of evidence, in the shape of the world of art and media around us, that it’s untrue. It’s easy—and it feels good!–to maintain this illusion as often as we can, despite it’s harmful consequences (just look at our train-wreck of an educational system to see some of them). But put yourself or a loved one in a situation where their life or livelihood depends on the skill of another—undergoing delicate brain surgery, say—and you know as well as I do that you’re going to want the surgeon that has not just trained and worked to become the best, but who did so with the most generous helping of talent to capitalize on.

But Rosenberg’s second paragraph above is true, thanks to a conflation of talent and creativity. Talent is clearly a limited resource. Creativity is not. Anyone can, and should, create. That is a fundamentally fantastic characteristic of the read/write web. They might not have any talent at writing in general or the specific forms they choose to utilize. But in most of the important ways that’s not the point.

A more nuanced argument could go along a few different lines. You could say that, since everything is news to someone, there’s no need for the traditional focus on that kind of creation which will appeal to the most people. You could argue from the perspective of the positive aspects of self-expression and creative activities regardless of the talent one has (or doesn’t have). You could argue that while talent is limited, it’s very difficult to know where those limits are—and impossible to know in advance—so there’s no harm in acting as if there’s no practical limit. You could argue that limits on talent aren’t important because it isn’t really about how much talent there is, but how many talents, because each person must find theirs (this isn’t a philosophy that can be proven, but at least it takes into account the very obvious condition of individuals having little or no talent for particular activities, despite their effort). The last sentence quoted above goes in this direction, but because an important change has been made—from talent to creativity, which are not synonymous—it doesn’t quite get there.

The important point being made by Rosenberg still stands, of course: the old rules don’t apply. But it’s not because there’s no such thing as talent and it’s not because there’s a limitless supply of talent to be had… it’s because in one important operative, functional sense, one reason that talent mattered—as a way to determine prioritization of access to limited resources for publication and sharing—has become relatively unimportant. That’s a huge, fundamental change, the importance of which can’t be overstated… but let’s not use it to perpetuate a myth of endless talent and absolute equality which, ironically, serves to undermine our culture’s support for that already beleaguered natural resource.

[photo by Thomas Levinson]

I couldn’t find the thread George mentions, but questions about our grading system and the invocation of William Farish are interesting to consider. The history of grading as we know it, as laid in the article that George links to, can use some expansion. In that article, we learn that Farish instituted his grading system in 1792 or later. But there is an interesting parallel (?) development outlined in a 1993 Educational Forum article:

The history of grading in American colleges was eloquently detailed by Mary Lovett Smallwood (1935). She related that marking, or grading, to differentiate students was first used at Yale. The scale was made up of descriptive adjectives and was included as a footnote to Stiles’s 1785 diary.

President Stiles wrote that 58 students were present at an examination, and they were graded as follows: “Twenty Optimi, sixteen second Optimi, 12 Inferiores (Boni), ten Pejores” (Stiles, 1901, vol. 3). In all probability, these may have been the very first collegiate “grades” given in the United States.

Yale took the initiative in formulating a scale. Smallwood quoted the following from the Book of Averages — Yale College: “Record of Examinations,” 1813 — 1839: Rules respecting this Book and its records, 1. This book shall be kept with the Senior Tutor of the College, whose duty it shall (be) to see that the following rules are carried into effect. 2. The average result of the examination of every student in each class shall be recorded in this book by the Senior Tutor of the class.

Also this very same book from Yale gives a reference to marking on a scale of 4. In all probability, this was the origin of the 4.0 system used by so many colleges and universities today. There was, however, still no connection to letter grades. .or example, an A was not a 4.0, for at this point in time, there was no A.

The gap of 28 years between President Stiles’s remarks of 1785 and Yale’s in 1813 is also interesting. It is hard to imagine there were not any records or statements concerning grading written during this time, but apparently none have been found.

The article goes on to outline dates of implementation of various numeric systems at Harvard, Mount Holyoke, etc.

Regardless, the point being made by George and the CCK08 participants is well-taken– grading systems of the kind we are familiar with are relatively new to education. If you could go back in time, you would look in vain for grading scales in the Platonic academies, letter grades in the Lyceum, or calculators (literally) feverishly working out GPAs in the monasteries.

But before we get all medieval (figuratively and literally) on the system, let’s remember that the previous system wasn’t without its flaws. Then, as now, there were charges of favoritism and corruption, cults of personality and pressures to push learners through for reasons other than merit. Frankly, I find the quote George highlights:

"When a student graduated, the most impressive thing she or he could share with a prospective employer was not a Grade Point Average (GPA) or even the name of the institution attended: it was the name of the teacher. Students of the great teachers of history often became famous themselves because of the thoroughness with which their mentors had inculcated knowledge, understanding, skill, and talent in them."

terrifying. Because the truth is that while some students in the past became famous themselves because of the names and thoroughness of the teachers, others became famous because of the names of their teachers end stop. Great names are not necessarily great teachers; studying with a great name doesn’t mean one has learned anything; great names– knowing that the system that their students tend to thrive in are not meritocracies– are under the same kinds of pressure with or without grades to assign.

I’m the last person to defend contemporary grading systems. I much prefer performance- and apprentice- based systems of evaluation and promotion. But in our struggle to fight the man we shouldn’t lose sight of the reality that when it comes to the conferring of value and the measure of learning that grading is meant to stand for, there are many ways to go wrong and a wealth of subjectivity that ultimately will work to a significant degree to undermine itself by virtue of being accepted enough to become a "system" in the first place.

The official followup to Did You Know: Shift Happens, Did You Know 2.0 is worth the 8 minute viewing time for anyone involved in technology, culture and education.

Discussion, sources, and reactions can be found at the ShiftHappens wikispace.