Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts

Monday, April 10, 2017

Comedy of the commons?


"I'm a rambler, I'm a rambler 
from Manchester way.
I may be a wage slave on Monday 
But I am a free man on Sunday."
Ewan MacColl.

Free men 

 We ramble, we ramble...

We roam, we search, we browse, we surf, we hack.

We are nomads of the steppes.

We are urban flâneurs.

We rove the range.

We free-ride, we couch-skate, we long-board, 4G wifi, 360°




Wingsuit revolutions will now be televised.

Red Bull crashes Go Pro - viral death spiral.





Olé.

Internet Service Provider Free has its Freebox Révolution.

La Révolution Française.

(designed by Starck.)

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!


Declarations of independence.

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather." 


John Perry Barlow, Davos 1996

(The Economist)


Dreams of freedom.

Stories of freedom are pervasive. 

Imagined communities.

 Mass movements have powerful hold. 

 Massaged egos, echoes of the twenties.

TALE SPIN.

 Viral market crashes into a Wall, echoes of the thirties on the streets.

Some have more money, more time to dream...in neoliberal eagle's nest, Davos.

Une Révolution (virtuelle)

Don't worry about the mob.

Let them eat Youtube and Fifa 2017

Let them eat Semtec.

Sad losers will get to ruffle the feathers of the great and good, only occasioning the odd Breivik.



Who gives a fuck for collateral damage?  

Bigger bangs for their bucks.

Dream wilder, think bigger, grasp further, dig deeper, sow hate, love and manipulate.


We'd have to be an ostrich with our heads in the sand not to hail this virtual reality as "freedom."






 Building the Commons.

Any doubters among you?  

We can save the world. 

We can build the commons "freely."

(With a modest fee for charitable Free or your local friendly ISP)

Not happy with that?  

We shall build fucking Jerusalem...bigger.




Or Middle Earth, complete with brave hobbits and trolls.

Pure fantasy?

We shall hark back to untrammelled images of Empire and hymns of colonial philanthropy. 

We shall nurture our green commons "freely."

 We shall scatter seeds...or bomblets.





We shall provide "public service" "freely."


We shall save some millions, "freely."


Tragedy of the commons.

No worries of spoiling the commons is there?




We can't overload the virtual information commons, surely?

OK, you can overload the wifi, I give you that, above all, in soon to be "developed" corners of the globe.

What use is the world with no wifi?

The more you share your lol cats the more lol cats and joy there is for the others!

The internet commons does not deteriorate like land!

No sirree!

OK, so there are piles of tech waste in soon to be "developped" corners of the globe, out of view.


Comedy of the commons.

Wikipedia is a great example of the comedy of the commons! 

Contributors distribute widely, give freely their expertise to inform the world!



What a beautiful sight, an army of erudite slave ants!

Joy to the world.

We shall train them.

Hail Wikimedia!



Recant deviant!

Attack wikiants!


Comedy of commons.

 'Tis a comedy of commons, the internet.

Oh ha, ha.

NOT!


IT AIN'T!

Funny.


...you shall not pass!

"I'm a rambler, I'm a rambler 
from Manchester way.
I may be a wage slave on Monday 
But I am a free man on Sunday."
Ewan MacColl.


Come on ramblers!

Get your laptop backpacks, your sarnies, let us occupy the virtual commons!

ER?

Sorry?

I'm a game-keeper.

Come again?

I'm going for a pint.

Well whatever did happen to public space?

Er, well, after the pub, he rambles.








Blimey! 

 Who are these bleeding game-keepers? 

Well there's us and...then  there's....them.






Don't forget the Kinder Scout.

We're going to need that mass trespass, feet on the ground, in the street.

Act local.

Think Global.

Mass trespass.

Do a public service.

Fire the game-keepers.

Reclaim the commons.

Tragedy of the commons.

"I'm a rambler, I'm a rambler 
from Manchester way.
I may be a universal basic wage slave on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. 
But I am a free man on Twitter."

 With apologies to 

Ewan MacColl.


 Footnotes.

 The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. These resources are held in common, not owned privately.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons
Mayo Fuster Morell proposed a definition of digital commons as "as an information and knowledge resources that are collectively created and owned or shared between or among a community and that tend to be non-exclusivedible, that is, be (generally freely) available to third parties. Thus, they are oriented to favor use and reuse, rather than to exchange as a commodity. Additionally, the community of people building them can intervene in the governing of their interaction processes and of their shared resources".[15][16]
Examples of digital commons are Wikipedia, a type of Free Software and Open-source hardware projects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons#Digital_commons


Afterthought.

 Are we their commons?

Oh what the hell.


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Sunday, March 6, 2016

Platform Game.



That's when we get to the next level..


Question:
Does "rhizomatic learning" exist without the internet?

Possible answer:
Of course.

Possible responses to possible answer:


  • OK but does it matter? 
  • OK does it count? 
  • OK if it matters/counts  why?


Possible supplementary question:
Do indigienous/native/aboriginal people do "rhizomatic learning"?

Possible answer:
Er...

Possible response to possible answer:
Why may your hesitation be important?

Question:
What images does the word 'blockchain' suggest to you?


Supplementary question:
Do any of the images you associate with the word 'blockchain'  correspond to what you consider to be your concept of freedom?

 Possible answer:
Yes. Validation will be distributed. Everybody will have access to the ledger.

 Possible response:
Everybody can access music 'knowledge' 'information', 'books',  'freely''...Is that freedom?

 Possible answer to possible response:
Er...

 Possible response to possible answer:
Why may your hesitation be important?

If you are reading this it is thanks to a platform.

Touches of the sense is 'my' platform.

I am accessing the platform 'freely'. 

Though I am paying the ISP, the EDF (electricity company), for the PC, for the pleasure...

I am giving up access to this 'data' contained on this platform.

When you read this 'freely' you will be enabling the collection of more 'data' for this platform.

I and you will receive more acutely targeted commercial messages thanks to this 'data'.

I may receive more acutely targeted government surveillance thanks to this 'data'.

 This is for purposes of security.

 I am not sure that that equates to freedom.

If we must access the net to be free what does that say about our freedom?

If we must manage our 'personal data' what does that say about  the use of the word 'personal'?

Is 'data' freedom?

Why do I need 'data'?

If I don't need 'data' who does?

Do indigienous/native/aboriginal people need 'data'?

If we must rely on a "globally-stretched net" and be a "global citizen" what does that say about freedom?

I must now submit my tax forms via the net to the French state.

I accept to pay taxes for services which are "for the common good".

I am not sure to what extent my vote guarantees me having any voice in what 'services' are considered 'for the common good'.

 I don't have a vote in France.
I don't have a vote in England.
I am voteless.

 Unlike Google I pay my taxes here.

Who is paying for my "freedom" here?

Do they have our best interests at heart?

To what extent is Google not evil?

Will Google pay for my health care?

Will Facebook pay for my education?

What will be the cost?

Will I get a vote on how they design my education?

I read an article about indigineous people:

Murrumu: one man's mission to create a soverign Indigenous country inside Australia.

I read an article about platforms written by Douglas Rushkoff on the Medium platform:
Corporations weren't designed to run on code.

It appears to me that corporate monopolies don't have our best interests at heart.

To what extent does Uber feel concern for taxi drivers in France?

It appears to me that national governments don't have our best interests at heart but at least there is the means to exercise a minimal level of local pressure on such institutions to consider the implications of their policies on the local populations.

What means are there to exercise pressure on an algorithm?

I read an article on a bank blog (unusual for me) entitled:
Blockchain-based digital identity will disrupt commerce and government.

I am always suspicious when I hear the word 'disrupt'.

 I found an article from the New Yorker entitled:
The disruption machine - What the gospel of innovation gets wrong.

"Disruptive innovation" is 'better' for some.

The question is what is this 'better' and who are "the some"?

"The idea of innovation is the idea of progress stripped of the aspirations of the Enlightenment, scrubbed clean of the horrors of the twentieth century, and relieved of its critics. Disruptive innovation goes further, holding out the hope of salvation against the very damnation it describes: disrupt, and you will be saved."

Social improvements have generally come through conflict within communities.

People in power care little for the life of slaves as long as they have fine linen and a nice view.

Moneyed ignorance is bliss.

Moneyed vulgarity becomes a platform for presidential candidates...

Is freedom access to a platform?

Whose platform will guarantee our freedom?

Do our 'democratic' platform politics guarantee our freedom?

People have challenged exploitation, slavery, working conditions...in the streets.

How do you challenge a distant, distributed platform with its artificial intelligence and weaponed drones?

Is Facebook Irish if I use it in France?

I note the Pyrrhic victory of Alan Levine in his battle to protect himself against catfishing:
We regret to inform of the passing of Malle Gottfried's Facebook profile.

I fear that much of "rhizomatic learning" will concern learning to live within this net.

Is this learning in the wild or corporately husbanded learning?

Will access to such platforms be our only means of sustenance?

I think of the French farmers who are obliged to sell their produce to hypermarkets.

Will denial of access to such platforms guarantee our extinction?

While the French farmers are considering suicide, the market platforms are thinking about profit.

What is the cost for cheap milk and big profit?

Who cares?

What is it to talk of a 'global platform'?

Who cares about the indigienous/native/aboriginal people who are dead in the name of progress?

Who cares about diminishing fish stocks, polluted rivers, impoverished farmers?

Shareholders?

Is this platform to be our water?

We are platform game...

I fear my friend we are netted dead or alive.




There it is, we are stripped of all that is marketable, skinned, gutted and recycled.

These are the bare bones of it.

 This is 'data'. 
This is 'data'.
This is 'data'

Tread softly on 'my' 'data'.






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Wednesday, August 12, 2015

A letter to the editor.




A faithful and very ancient newspaper reader bemoans.


Dear Sir/(Madam/Other)

I am writing to complain about what I consider to be an unfortunate erosion of values under your watch.

I am sending this by (paper plane) airmail for fear that snail-mail will be a dud.

The Royal Mail is a b. disgrace.

Colour!

Faithful reader of your publication over the last one hundred and fifty years, I have noticed a growing dependence on colour and sensationalism, and news (if that is what one must call it) coming from what appears to be overseas.

Talking of colour, have you started to employ writers from the colonies as some economy  measure or have you dreamed up some new-fangled (ill-considered) scheme to export your (our) daily broadsheet abroad in order to pick up a few cheap readers?

It is a b. disgrace!!

What ever happened to our place in our Commonwealth???

It has become increasingly difficult to find your (our) paper in the diminishing (disappearing) number of reputable newsagents.

More and more people are suggesting that I bite the bullet and go 'digital.'

HA! BROADSHEET!!

What must a man do now if he wants to protect his bald pate from the mid-day sun?



Hold up a bloody iPad?

YOU seem to have forgotten the importance of a BROADSHEET for an Englishman's afternoon nap.

Have you never been to a test match!

Have you never spent a day on Frinton-on-sea greensward in mid-July?

I am told that I will be able to buy, nay 'have' a constantly updated version of the publication 'online'!!

What the hell is that about?  

Am I to radiate myself with one of those light boxes that I hear commuters now glue their eyes to?

How am I supposed to hide my proud carriage grimace behind a five-inch rectangle?

How am I supposed to avoid speaking to my better half at breakfast behind a five-inch rectangle?

How am I supposed to light a fire with a bloody piece of aluminium and glass and plastic and various bits of toxic handmedowns?

Have you lost hold of your senses man (woman/other)?

Furthermore, moreover, and what is also the case:

Subeditors.

I buy a newspaper to inform me at reasonable intervals of what a trained and trusted group of professional journalists consider to be an essential synthesis of our nation's days events; not to give me a bloody running commentary on some ruddy American football match.

What the hell is American Football???

Quality, a quality broadsheet that is what I deemed to buy.

Quantity, or frequency dear chap (madam/other) is no compensation for weak quality!

Furthermore, moreover, and what is also the case:

What do I care about a horde of shabby migrants vagrants queuing up in Calais to invade the home counties?

What do we have the armed forces for?

Chat-show!

The other day, there was even some 'LIVE CHAT' ladida with some obscure FRENCH actress.

Juliet Binwash or something.

What are you thinking of?

What will my better half think when she sees me tapping up some floosy over my kippers?

British standards.

Might I add, I even had the shock and disappointment not to have any reading matter to accompany my cod, chips and mushy peas the other day.

While the meal was wholesome enough (no thanks to you!!), it was wrapped in an offwhite piece of blank paper and with the grease held in some sort of plastic carton.

Whatever happened to the Fleetwood Gazette NEWSPAPER which wrapped it before???

I understand that half the bloody press is now owned by some vulgar pom basher from down under.

Well frankly, is that any wonder if these are your standards.

Yours, frankly

Disgusted from Frinton.


PS. digital like digitalis is toxic!



Footnote.

Disgusted from Frinton unfortunately featured in this week's online obituary column.

He/She/Other will be greatly missed by a few selected mourners.

No flowers please.



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Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Planet of the apes?

Planet of the apes, is surely one of my top three movies featuring Charlton Heston.

It is a wonderful morality tale for our DOT (com) age.




Man's savagery is out-savaged by the apes.
Ape culture is to the fore.

That icon to the age of enlightenment, the Statue of Liberty herself, is found derelict on a beach by an agonising Charlton.

God! Nobody does agonising better than Charlton.



My top three Charlton Heston movies are, in no particular order:


  • Planet of the Apes (for the Statue of Liberty scene)
  • Ben Hur (for the chariot race)
  • Bowling for Columbine (for Maryline Manson).


Return to Planet of the Apes

 Actually, it was Howard Rheingold who got me reminiscing about Charlton's agony.

I was watching one of my favourite hangouts from the Connected Courses Studios featuring John Udell, Howard Rheingold, and Gardner Campbell entitled "Thinking Like the Web" and there were some remarks of Howard's which caught my imagination;

"You know the irony of this issue, of people saying, 'I'm really not a technical person, why should I use the web?' is that the web was such a wonderful step that enabled people who weren't technical people to use the internet. You don't have to go through any kind of technical depths in order to move from one internet site to another, you click on a link. 

 You don't have to go through some kind of command line arcana to do things on the web, there are forms for that. 

 I think it is a little like saying, 'Well I don't intend to be a published author why should I learn to read and write?' We're living in a literate world, if you don't read and write, you are disempowering yourself. 

 You are not necessarily going to choose a career in literature, you are participating in the power that the literate community conveys on anybody who goes through the quite a bit of trouble to learn to read and write."

I am struck by the irony of the mass of research funding which has gone into enabling humans to communicate with our cousins the apes.

Latest developments in ape-education include (no kidding) iPads!!


Despite our best efforts, and millions of dollars in research funding, literary critics are sadly disappointed at ape efforts to produce great works of art.

Complete works

 Apes - 0
Shakespeare - Quite a lot.

Just think of the quality of post-renaissance literature embodied by William Shakespeare.

Thank goodness that he had  forward looking parents!

Thank goodness for Will's remix artfulness!

Learning to read and write must have been seen my some as new-fangled in those days.

School wasn't even compulsory at the time!!

 Measure for measure.

 Back in the lab...
(you know the one responsible for ape-mutations leading to our downfall and Charlton's agony)

Wise scientists are pessimistic that apes will ever be able to, to... ape Will's best efforts:

"Is it really feasible that a chimpanzee with a typewriter and an infinite amount of time will be able to produce the complete works of Shakespeare?"


Dumb and Dumber

So we are giving apes, iPads to undumb them.

So we are giving kids iPhones and worrying that such technology is dumbing them down.

We are arousing moral panic about:

in the same way that our elders and bettters did in the 18th century about novels .

Protect our vulnerable ladies and children.

Oh the irony!

Such trashy, morally suspect stuff as is now studied in length at school.

Moll Flanders anyone?

 We complain that kids waste their time on the most sophisticated communication tools ever devised playing Candy Crush, taking Selfies, and ban them from classrooms, so that we can concentrate on studying 18th century novels and writing essays.

Do most kids know how to write essays with a pen before we teach them?
Do most kids know how to use the web and social media to learn before we teach them?
Do most kids need to learn how to learn about living in their present and their future?

It is unlikely that either apes or kids will be writing many 18th century novels now...sniff.

What the hell is the point of education?

Is it a) clicking for cheap bananas?
Is it b) clicking for freedom of expression?
Is it c) clicking away the clicker?

Declaration of independence anyone?

 It is certain that our  current vision of freedom has much to do with a revolution of thinking and of communication which has its roots in the 18th century.

Maybe we are forgetting the long struggle for people's hearts and minds which enabled such freedom?

Maybe we are forgetting the connection between the introduction of new technology and new ideas, new forms of art?

Manifesto anyone?

I would suggest that digital technology does not dumb down apes any more than it dumbs us down.

I would suggest that we need to learn with our kids how to use digital technology like smartphones to communicate widely and create new forms of art.

I would suggest that our masters are no longer nationally or geographically dependent.

I would suggest that Amazon is no longer simply the brave young girl accompanying Charlton.

I would suggest that our own species and other more vulnerable species are in danger.

I would suggest that we need to learn how to use the web to participate in discussions on what constitutes Liberty in a net-age, unless of course in our DOT-age we want to become captive signing-apes in a zoo.





Thank you Howard, Gardner and John for your inspiration.










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Thursday, October 16, 2014

Russian dolls...

It is an image which keeps coming back to me.

I escape one enclosure to find that I am in another larger enclosure.

It is the image of a Russian doll.

I have been spending much time reflecting on my place on the web, on the earth over the past few years.

I have recently been working my way through issues connected to the 'Reclaim your domain' movement.

I am struck by the 'self-proclaimed' impassioned pleas of Howard Rheingold and Gardner Campbell to build the web that we want to build.

I am convinced that they are putting their fingers on a burning issue which we need to work through.

An immediate reaction to the question of 'Reclaiming your domain' was expressed in my post of the same name. 

Auvergnat dolls.

I feel that we can not divorce our thinking about the 'web' space with our thinking about the physical spaces in which we relate locally.

One lens which has helped me think about role of technology in education has been Puentedura's SAMR model as presented by Doug Belshaw here:


There is a short presentation in this video 



I remark that the narrator in this video talks about 'the classroom' - transformation of the classroom.  

I can't help thinking that the 'classroom' lens is one which stops us thinking through a wider transformation of education.   

There is no question that mobile web-enabled personal devices are disrupting 'classrooms' and 'educational institutions'. 

Of the obstacles to building new models, we can note 'habitus' of teachers, the 'classroom discourse', we can mention 'standardised assessment' amongst others.

The real question is what are these boundaries obstacles to?  

Who or what is protected by boundaries which have been built physically or virtually? 

Who stands to gain from crumbling frontiers, from blurring of boundaries between work and play?


As a child I never imagined seeing the Berlin Wall fall.

I remember witnessing the moments of joy when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. 

What were we witnessing in these moments? How were once disconnected people connected?


I remember using the image of the Trabant to talk about the contrast between Walled Gardens of the LMS/VLE and the construction of Personal Learning Environments enhanced by Web 2.0 applications and Google cloud computing.  

Institutional enforcement of the use of out-dated communication tools was, I reasoned an obstacle to the learning of the students.   

It wasn't just an obstacle to the learning of students, it was also a means to protect the positions of a technological elite, who had the power to dictate the tools to be used.  

Outsourcing of net hosting and institutional virtual environments would/will inevitably mean de-skilling, cost-cutting measures and dependence on massive corporations.

The Trabant disappeared from production, replaced by Western-made models.  It's disappearance was symbolic of the defeat of a political system and its socio-economic elite.  

A Trabant

There is no doubt that learning spaces in which I am working are being transformed physically and virtually by the possibilities to connect more widely via affinity with people around the world.  

This is exciting, we are moving towards a new era, of that I have no doubt.

I am constantly brought back to my image of Russian dolls.

We can not concentrate our attention simply on education without seeing how it relates to economic, ecological, social, and political contexts. 

One thinker who has helped me reflect more widely on Learning Futures has been Keri Facer.  


'Non-stupid optimism' is an expression which resonates for me and 'educated hope' is what I aspire to. 

Hope and power

As educators we do have real power to enable sustainable change, we must realise together we do have real power, we do have a voice, which can be heard, the young are our hope. 

I come back to 'Reclaiming my domain', again and again.

I am quite happy with the idea of running my own server.

I am quite happy with the idea of building my own WordPress space with a name of my own.  

I would however not want to stop there.  

When I hear, we can build the net together, are we speaking about building our own computers? 

Are we speaking about running our own cables? 

Are we speaking about becoming our own ISP's?  

Building our web is one thing. 

Building relationships locally with those globally is quite another. 

How does all of this relate to the bigger questions of society as evoked by Keri Facer?

How do we react to writers such as Douglas Rushkoff?

“Our enthusiasm for digital technology about which we have little understanding and over which we have little control leads us not toward greater agency, but toward less...We have surrendered the unfolding of a new technological age to a small elite who have seized the capability on offer. But while Renaissance kings maintained their monopoly over the printing press by force, today's elite is depending on little more than our own disinterest.” 
Douglas Rushkoff.

Is this what Howard Rheingold and Gardner Campbell are talking about? 

If this is the case, then we need to start thinking much more widely about the societies in which we are living, and how power is structured.

We need to think through what these Connected Courses are really preparing us for?   

We need to ask our friends:

What it is we are working towards? 

We need to spend much time on this business of building new relationships with ourselves and others. 

We can not expect to embark on new relationships without accepting that our relationships with ourselves will inevitably be transformed.  

New environments require new language.

I can not conceive that this map is 'our territory'.

Do others consider that they own this?  



Might 'owning your own domain' be an outdated metaphor?  

Maybe we need to start thinking over our ideas of what constitutes 'ownership' of what constitutes 'capital'. 

How can 'capital' be other than social?

What are we educating ourselves for? 

I am only too aware of my ignorance, of my inability to find answers for my questions.

We must educate ourselves beyond our 'stupid optimism' to build a web of  'educated hope.'

What will be our legacy my friends?

I am at a loss for words.

And as I ask one question, another appears, incessantly...












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