Being a writer in a world that features Wallace would be like playing basketball in a world that has Michael Jordan, only none of us even know how to play basketball and we’re all injured toddlers with broken lacrosse equipment.

and

I know that if we as a society approached depression and mental health with the same dedication and persistence with which we approached drunk driving or smoking or, hell, littering in the past, we’d bury a lot fewer of our brothers and daughters and heroes.

genius. fucking genius.

when looking at any technology, (at least) 6 questions are important:

1. “What is the problem to which this is the solution?”
2. “Whose problem is it?”
3. “Suppose we solve this problem, and solve it decisively. What new problems might be created because we have solved the problem?”
4. “Which people, and what institutions might be most seriously harmed by a technological solution?”
5. “What changes in language are being enforced by new technologies, and what is being gained and lost by such changes?”
   • (eg. “community” and “conversation” have changed meaning wrt internet)
   • “conversation” – “email isn’t a conversation, it’s just 2 guys typing messages to each other.”
   • “community” – on internet, people of similar interests. traditionally, people who do not necessarily have similar interests, but who must negotiate and accommodate their differences for the sake of social harmony.
6. “What sort of people and institutions acquire special economic and political power because of technological change?”
   • the transformation of a technology into a medium – the exploitation of a technology – always results in a realignment of power.
   • eg. television gives power to some, while depriving others.
   • media entrepreneurs are the most radical force in culture.

“The answers one gives may have an ideological cast, but the questions [are universal].”

There are a number of studies on species that went extinct and most of them seem to refer to the fact that those who had become too specialized disappeared. A small change in the environment killed them.

- Carlo Ratti, Seed Magazine, December 2008. Page 42

Interesting observation to keep in mind when thinking about education…

My teaching assistants consoled me by noting that students have learned that they can “get by” without paying attention in their classes. Perhaps feeling a bit encouraged by my look of incredulity, my TA’s continued with a long list of other activities students have learned that they can “get by” without doing. Studying, taking notes, reading the textbook, and coming to class topped the list. It wasn’t the list that impressed me. It was the unquestioned assumption that “getting by” is the name of the game. Our students are so alienated by education that they are trying to sneak right past it.

and, BINGO!

They tell us, first of all, that despite appearances, our classrooms have been fundamentally changed. There is literally something in the air, and it is nothing less than the digital artifacts of over one billion people and computers networked together collectively producing over 2,000 gigabytes of new information per second. While most of our classrooms were built under the assumption that information is scarce and hard to find, nearly the entire body of human knowledge now flows through and around these rooms in one form or another, ready to be accessed by laptops, cellphones, and iPods. Classrooms built to re-enforce the top-down authoritative knowledge of the teacher are now enveloped by a cloud of ubiquitous digital information where knowledge is made, not found, and authority is continuously negotiated through discussion and participation. In short, they tell us that our walls no longer mark the boundaries of our classrooms.

…a course is a fraudulent technology. It is put forward as a desirable structure for learning when in fact it is only a structure for allocating space, for convenient record-keeping, and for control of faculty time.

Neil Postman, Technopoly, 1993. pg 138

New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thoughts develop.

Neil Postman, Technopoly, 1992

To a man with a pencil, everything looks like a list. To a man with a camera, everything looks like an image. To a man with a computer, everything looks like data. And to a man with a grade sheet, everything looks like a number.

Neil Postman, Technopoly, 1992.

…we do not get our perceptions from the “things” around us. Our perceptions come from us. This does not mean that there is nothing outside of our skins. It does mean that whatever is “out there” can never be known except as it is filtered through a human nervous system. We can never get outside of our own skins. “Reality” is a perception, located somewhere behind the eyes.

- Postman, 1969

This sums up so much of what I’ve been thinking about. And leads to so much more…

All authorities get nervous when learning is conducted without a syllabus.

- Postman, Teaching as a Subversive Activity, 1969

“You don’t learn anything from repeating what you know, in affect, so I keep trying to make (the process) uncertain. The nature of the photographic process – it is about failure. Most everything I do doesn’t quite make it. The failures can be intelligent; nothing ventured nothing gained. Hopefully you’re risking failing every time you make a frame.”

- Gary Winogrand, in an interview with Bill Moyers (1982)

Gary also had an interesting take on the editing process. He would apparently leave film undeveloped for at least a year (or longer) after a shoot, so his editorial decisions weren’t clouded by the emotions felt during the shoot. He didn’t want to be selecting the best shots while he could still remember any details of doing the actual shoot. That is an amazing level of self restraint, something that is probably much, much harder now in the days of instant digital processing and cataloging.