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Photography literally means “the process of drawing with light” – it’s not “taking pictures of people or things,” it’s all about playing with light. If the light isn’t there, there’s no photograph. If the light is boring, the photograph is boring. But, if the light is right, even the most boring subject is transformed into something magical.

Much of the time, when I jump to grab my camera, it’s because the light has caught my eye. Warm light coming through a window. Light refracting through glass. Reflecting off of a surface. Sometimes it’s just a property of the light that catches my attention – warmth, softness, darkness, harshness.

Shoot the light. Start with the light, then find the subject or story, and work on angles and composition.

It’s not an absolute, and I’ve got plenty of counter-example photos that work despite the light, but it’s a pretty good starting point to find the light, and a photograph will follow.

I have found myself drawn to channels that are best described as “alternate” – outside the traditional scope of the Institution. I publish, but on my own blog. I provide support and services, but for software and tools that are not blessed by the University. I share everything I do under a simple Creative Commons license, without worrying about control or ownership. I exist, from some perspectives, outside of the Institution.

This has bothered me for some time. That my activities were in some way irrelevant to the University. That there was no real way for me to affect change, when my actions aren’t recognized, or even noticed, by traditional aspects of the enterprise.

This weekend, I got a chance to crack open the latest issue of Seed Magazine (Dec. 2008). I started with an article on epigenetic inheritance. I had heard the term, but hadn’t given it much thought before. I last studied genetics almost 20 years ago, and remember Mendelian inheritance due to dominant and recessive genes and their interactions. I constructed endless Punnett squares to calculate probabilities of traits based on parental genes. DNA was king. If it wasn’t coded as a gene, it didn’t matter, evolutionarily speaking.

Epigenetic inheritance is the ability to pass traits from one generation to the next, without representation in the genetic code. Phenotype as a result of environmental and behavioural influences, without direct genotypic expression, and in addition to (or in concert with) that which is genetically defined. This can range from simple response to chemicals or pollutants, to passing antibodies through maternal breast milk, to more complex social and cultural activities. Language is epigenetically inherited, passed from one generation to the next through education (formal and informal).

Reading (and rereading) the article, it hit me. The traditional University, the Enterprise, the Institution. These are analogous to the genotype. They are raw data, which becomes translated and expressed in the context of the current generation. Although the genotype of various Institutions are essentially the same, the phenotypic expression differs, as well as the epigenetic aspects that exist as a result of context.

What I’ve been doing has not been irrelevant to, or even outside of the University. What I’ve been doing is working on epigenetic factors, which are passed on without need for direct representation in the formal Institution.

The other interesting concept of epigenetic inheritance is that it can precede genetic representation. A property or behaviour that begins as an epigenetically transmitted trait can find its way into the genome proper. And so, I choose to stop worrying about recognition and relevance, and to focus on the fringe activities, the interstitial, the disruptive. The epigenetic. And will trust that anything truly worthwhile will eventually find its way into the Institution.

Brian wrote a great post about the focus on content creation in the open education movement. There were some great comments on that post – some arguing (correctly, IMO) that there isn’t enough great content available.

But even that misses the point, I fear.

Content is the least important part of education. What is far more important is what takes place between and among the students. The activities of the community of learners. What they actually DO with the content and with each other.

Great content IS important, but only if there is also a functioning and active community working together to learn, create and share. Otherwise, all that takes place is content dissemination. And that’s not education, open or otherwise.

Content Dissemination

or active community of learners

The proposed US bailout of greedy financial institutions is crazy enough, but now there’s talk of bailing out the automakers? What in hell happened to the free market? US automakers are in trouble because they build shitty products that people don’t want to buy. And they haven’t retooled fast enough, as others have. Toyota’s not looking for a bailout, they’re just making better products. Honda’s doing OK. etc…

A US automaker bailout is just the government declaring “we know our products are shit, and we think you should keep buying them, so we’re going to subsidize the morons that run the companies.”

Companies that come up with brainstorms like the 3 ton monster truck “Escalade Hybrid” (now getting 18 miles per gallon! amazing!) shouldn’t be allowed to continue existing. They need to go away. It’s sad that people will lose their jobs, but the companies are zombies already. Lots of OTHER people are going to lose their jobs, without the chance of bailouts. Why are automakers special? Because we LOVES our cars. And burning oil. That’s the (North) American way.

I did a test this morning to check out how well the video recording gear we have would work for recording a presentation tomorrow. The gear works great – it records directly to DVD so I can just walk away with a nice shiny disk after the presentation is over.

But that’s not what this post is about. This DVD, that I made, containing no DRM and no copyright, triggers the evil DRM software that’s baked into the operating system that I use. I had the DVD program running in the background, and went to take a screenshot of something else – and was rewarded with a warning dialog:

“Screen grabs are unavailable during DVD playback. Please quit DVD Player first.”

Great. I wasn’t trying to take a screengrab of a DVD. Of MY DVD. It was paused, behind a bunch of windows. I was trying to grab a portion of a browser window. But, irony of ironies, I was able to capture this:

That’s me in the DVD. But because the MPAA makes software companies bend over to protect their content by baking DRM into the apps that ship with my computer, I’m prevented from doing legitimate things with my own content. Thankfully, there are ways around it (Jing was more than happy to capture a screenshot – I’m sure the MPAA attack dogs will be closing that hole ASAP).

DRM is nothing but a pain in the ass. It doesn’t stop anyone from copying anything if they really want to, but it does get in the way of legitimate use of content. I’m not pissed at Apple for putting this screengrab block in the OS – I’m quite sure they did it to prevent having endless series of lawsuits by the MPAA legal beagles, and/or to abide by some licensing terms.

The MPAA can bite me, though. They have no right to compel anyone to cripple the programs I use to interact with the content I create.

I keep being surprised by how much fun I still have with photography, especially after almost 2 years of shooting every single day. Shooting silly things, not worrying about perfection or production quality. Experimenting. Having fun. Although sometimes it feels like I just keep shooting the same boring things over and over again, if I step back and look at the photographs, there is so much that I love about them. Sure, many people and things are recurring in many photographs. But that’s part of the fun. Seeing the same thing at different times, from different angles.

As long as I’m having fun, I’ll be shooting photographs. Or is it the other way around. Either way, I’m sure glad I’m not a photographer – that would be far to limiting, and probably not much fun.

I deleted my twitter account. After posting almost 11,000 tweets over a year and a half. And I don’t miss it. I don’t regret it.

Twitter is a strange, unique beast. At first blush, it’s a tool to connect people and to share information.

But that’s not really what twitter is, at all.

Twitter is probably one of the most powerful experiments in behaviorist conditioning ever crafted. Neither Pavlov’s dogs nor Skinner’s pigeons were as well trained as the thousands of people madly clicking refresh refresh refresh refreshrefreshrefreshREFRESH in the hopes of scoring a quick high from fresh information (or worse – using the desktop apps that display the updates instantly).

What twitter claims to do, it does astonishingly well. Ad hoc informal groups, defined and refined by each member according to the people they are interested in. No other service provides quite the same level of transparent control and flexibility for each and every individual.

But when I post a tweet, or read someone else’s, it is not as it seems. It feels as though there is some form of tight connection, a baring of souls, a bond. But that’s not possible, given the limit of 140 bytes of ASCII text.

Which means that twitter is really nothing more than a giant plastic piano, with it’s members the chickens obsessively pecking at keys until food pellets are released. We’re not aware of the keys, the piano, nor of the song we’re being trained to play.

I keep coming back to one thing. Who is paying for twitter, and why? It’s not advertising. At least Facebook is clearly partially financed by advertising revenue.

The only value I see in twitter, from a financial point of view, that even comes close to justifying the expense if providing the service, is to teach The Machine. The constant tweeting, linking, geopositioning updates are providing a vast database which can then be mined. But why, and by whom?

So I decided to opt out of this strange experiment.

One thing I’ve found is that by removing myself from the Pavlovian update/response feedback loop, I feel as though my thinking is clearer. I’m more present. I’m not constantly distilling my life into 140 character chunks, nor am I constantly wondering if there are any @dnorman tweets waiting for me.

Another thing I find is that I now use richer and deeper channels of communication. I’m not trying to stuff conversations into short asynchronous segments. I’m talking in realtime via IM. I’m communicating in more depth via email. I’m writing more and better blog posts.

One thing that surprised me is the reaction from people. Some seem to think this is some extreme or scary act. How could someone possibly delete their twitter account? wow!

But twitter is just a website. It’s not even my website. Someone else’s website. Nothing more. Deleting the account means absolutely nothing. Anyone that is truly interested in knowing what I’m doing will use any of the countless other channels (like, for instance, my blog posts) to find out. Anyone that really cares about what I’m doing is already connected to me on so many other channels that dropping the connection via twitter will have no effect.

So long, twitter. It’s been fun. But I need to stop pecking keys and waiting for food pellets.

I’ve been feeling in a photographic rut lately. It seems like all of my photos look the same. They’re of the same thing. They’re all of things I’ve photographed before. Same. Similar. Again. Repeat. Done it. been there. Oh, that again. Gottit…

I just popped onto the Photography tab of my blog, and it hit me – although things feel strongly similar, there is variation and diversity. And sometimes repetition of similar photographs and subjects tells a story in and of itself.

Thanksgiving is here. And I have lots to be thankful for, including (but not limited to):

1. I’ve got an awesome family, full of love and happiness.
2. Evan is growing up to be an amazing, inspiring young man.
3. Dad laughed at the doctors that gave him 6 months to live. Over a decade ago. He’s still going strong, for 73.
4. I have friends that I admire, respect, and look up to, and who know this.
5. As I hit 39, I’m in the best physical, mental and emotional shape of my entire life, and it feels great.

It appears as though 3 of the 4 major national political parties have balked at the suggestion that Elizabeth May represent the Green Party at the televised leader’s debates.

The Green Party is a valid national party, now with a seat in Parliament (although the member was previously an Independent who switched to Green, not an elected Green MP).

According to The Canadian Press,

But Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Monday that letting May into the debate would be in essence allowing a second Liberal candidate to participate.

He said it would be fundamentally unfair to have two candidates who are essentially running on the same platform in the debate.

Really?

Harper gets to decide on who gets to participate in the debate based on his assessment of the uniqueness of their platform? That’s not how democracy works. The leader does not get to decide which voices get to be heard, or which issues will be discussed.

All this exercise tells me is that the televised leader’s debates are nothing more than sanitized synchronous press releases. If it was a valid and honest debate, the Green party would be represented (as well as, perhaps, a few other parties).

And Harper wasn’t the only leader to threaten to boycott the debates if the Greens were allowed to participate. The only leader that welcomed May was Stephane Dion. Which means that Layton and Duceppe are right up there with Harper in avoiding a real, meaningful, democratic debate.

Threatening to boycott a debate if another valid candidate is invited to participate? Childish and undemocratic.

Update: And for the Canadian media outlets that decided to not invite May to the debate so as not to upset the other candidates – you just lost any shred of objectivity. You are no longer a separate, objective, impartial media. You are nothing more than media outlets. You are not journalists, you are not unbiased. You are a press-release distribution network. The right thing to do would have been to respond to the 3 candidates that they are welcome to participate in the debate, and would be missed by the voting public if they choose not to show up.

Update 2: w00t! score one for democracy in Canada! The Green Party will be at the debates!

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