Chris Lott

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 shoothead] 

Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away.

A few years ago a friend sent me a version of this ‘Being Poor’ list via email. "Really makes you think, doesn’t it?" he said, "Can you imagine?" 

Being poor is going to the restroom before you get in the school lunch line so your friends will be ahead of you and won’t hear you say “I get free lunch” when you get to the cashier.

I could more than imagine… many of the items in the list I could remember.

Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually lazy.

I can remember a lot of the feelings and experiences from that list and add a few more of my own: claiming apathy to avoid field trips that would cost even a few dollars, paying for a meal out with the class using change (not to mention the concept of "small" change), simply not eating at all on a sports trip, working from 3:30a-6:3a before two-a-day practices and homework until 11p, blocks of free cheese, the looks you get bringing out food stamps (and, worse, when you are loudly informed that "welfare doesn’t cover" an item and asked if you want it put back), having someone in school recognize the grab-bag shirt you are wearing that used to be theirs…

But the worst part by a mile is the cultural claustrophobia and aspirational myopia that come with material poverty which, after all, is quite often accompanied by– if it doesn’t necessitate– intellectual poverty. I can tell you how it feels to be the first in the family to make it through high school; among other things it’s the feeling of thinking "that’s it! I did it!" and being absolutely clueless about the next step. I can tell you how it feels to discover years into an undergraduate degree at the only place I thought I could afford, after feigning disinterest in a flood of offers based on high test scores and straight-A high school grades, that when tuition is advertised as X dollars per year you can still get that education even if you don’t have X dollars in your pocket in cash when you arrive; it’s nauseating. I can share with you to this moment how a profound lack of understanding of handling money and credit can perpetuate a cycle of constant fiscal near-drowning the same way academic knowledge of swimming leaves you (if you are lucky) barely able to keep your head above water when you go overboard.

Physical hunger gnaws at the stomach and chest, intellectual hunger gnaws at the head and heart, and in both cases too much desire, too much necessity, too much static in the form of the whispering "need, need, need" makes them inordinately important and ultimately, no matter what you achieve or receive, turns them into demands that can never be met. The insatiable need and the inability to believe in achievement and self-worth– the constant perception of being a fraud– is a constant static, a kind of psychological tinnitus that one can learn to ignore but is always on, waiting to be noticed– and intruding– at the worst possible times.

Last night, a friend Twittered about a book she was reading, The Price of Privilege, which is:

A critical look at America’s culture of affluence explores the epidemic of emotional and psychological problems crippling America’s privileged youth

I don’t doubt her judgment. I don’t doubt that the book is discussing real problems. But I really can’t comprehend it. More importantly, I can’t feel it. I’m sure there’s a price for privilege… I just haven’t been privileged enough to get a chance to pay it.

A few weeks ago I was reading a voyeuristic profile of George Clooney in the New Yorker in which, at one point, he warns the interviewer after discussion of some recent troubling incident that he has to keep it in perspective and that he’s aware how ridiculous and outlandish it can be to hear celebrities complaining about their miserable lives. Even George Clooney suffers! I know it’s true, but it’s more fantastic than quantum mechanics and harder to really internalize than 6th and 7th dimensions.

But it made me think about educators… in particular "my circle" of friends and colleagues and influential acquaintances. How many of them, I wonder, have experienced poverty themselves? For how many of them would the Being Poor post strike a resonant, uninvited chord? And what does that mean to our efforts? "We" are already a select group in this context: college educated, most teaching college undergraduates or higher, working with or in academic institutions. But many of us are teaching or influencing the teaching of students who are struggling to escape circumstances of poverty and lack of privilege. Do we allow for that? Can we? If someone who comes from  relative privilege is as clueless about the needy as I am about the wealthy classes, how do we teach? 

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.