If web 2.0 is the answer, what was the question?

Web2.0 is not the holy grail. Web 2.0 will not provide instant harmony or longlife.
IT does not deploy itself. It does not establish its own trajectory magically solving the ills of inadequate relating.
Tis a means to an end and not an end in itself.
While it is more than 'just a tool', it is not 'the' answer.
This rant was provoked by a proposal that web 2.0 would help to resolve dysfunctional team dynamics.
Its a bit like outsourcing IRD to a place where the people aren't, thus minimizing attacks on staff.
Web 2.0 the answer? Yeah right.
Show some respect; get the trust, empathy and unconditional positive regard right first and the people might relate better.

He aha te mea nui o te ao?
He tangata! He tangata! He tangata!
What is the most important thing in the world?
It is people! It is people! It is people!

a blinking entanglement; digital youth culture

Publics are, argued Latour, not a singular pregiven entity (‘The Public’) that we can assume to simply exist, ready to be consulted when, and if needed, but an entity whose visibility is variable and intermittent: blinking into view only when, and if, the lighthouse beam of a controversy falls on them, or to use a different metaphor, when finding themselves entangled within one. And we should be careful, continued Latour, to assume that these publics are necessarily the same as those who are spoken for, whether by governments, companies, activists and NGOs. Because publics ‘blink on’, only when a particular controversy escapes the ability of these very spokespersons to adequately resolve them. Part of our job as researchers becomes to remain attentive to the ‘coarse signs’ that signal towards the existence of, or transformations in these controversies.

What consequences might this apparently abstract debate have for the objects we study?

I came across this question while following a google alert on Latour, where a blog posting by Joe Deville provoked some thinking on my part. Performed identity is an area i have been attending to recently. Seems a youth culture is one of these blinking entanglements.

In looking at young people's use of mobile technologies for counselling, it becomes easy to say that x is part of youth culture... and that use of x is part of a young person's identity... is it a bit like saying the landline is a part of a middle aged culture and shapes the identity of middle aged people?
Well, yes.
We are shaped in association.
And its also going to be messier than that, as not all young people, middle aged people all do the same things...and they/we dont do it all the time.

ps. I am wanting to read a transcript or listen to an audiofile of Bruno Latours address on The changing dynamics of public controversies, if you know of a link, please leave it here...thanks in anticipation :D

Advice for a PhD; the kiss approach and taking one step at a time

"It's entirely possible that you will choose a niche that's too small. It's much more likely you'll shoot for something too big and become overwhelmed. When in doubt, overwhelm a small niche." Seth Godin

The advice from my supervisor
1. A picture of where i want to be at the end of the PhD above my desk: Matakana Brickbay sculpture trail. (The photo is of Mary_Louise Browne's artwork at Brickbay,Matakana on the sculpture trail.)
2. A box below the picture to save the ideas in for the post doc life. Happy and fascinated as I am with my topic, there is a word limit, and a time limit,and a life....In the words of Latour; a good thesis is a finished one.
3. "If its not last weeks cure for cancer, leave it out." cj

About the artwork, seen today in misty rain, a perfect medium for the bluestone carved words:
MIST MOST LOST LOSE LOVE LORE LORN LOIN LAIN RAIN
Its about journeying. One can enter stairs going up or down. The stone has both words and meaning. A simple play on changing one letter in each word transforms one up and down on an emotional journey also.

objects we think with; I am therefore I think...revisited

I'd been cleaning out my parents unit and came across a wooden folding ruler and a wooden pyramid shaped 3d ruler and these reminded me of ways of thinking. I was reminded of maths classes where slide rules were the technology of the moment and log books...I couldn't use either now - I was going to say for love nor money. Love of such 'technology' and my Dads old tools could pique my curiosity.
And then in my google alerts there was a prompt to Sherry Turkle on Evocative objects; Things we think with. A student, gnaedigefrau, had a task to match a self taken photo and some poetry, and it got me thinking, again. My laptop has me thinking, the connectivity of the internet has me thinking...and I have to concede that things i think with include people, friends and strangers. I had been tagged to write of 25 things about myself in facebook, and it got me thinking...
I was 'mucking about' and fluttered into twitter, and there Colin Warren provoked some more thinking, an exercise in networking where a ball of wool was thrown around a lecture theatre symbolically concretising the networks.

There are multiple layers or realities involved in this provocation to thinking, the performance involves multiple realities of intimacy within a public space, and of being a thoughtful phd student while also being a lecturer...and I am reminded students will be blogging their learning too in the knowledge and enquiry paper, and how the tracing of thinking becomes possible with hypertext links making some of this more overt. A committment to what Wesch refers to as being knowledge able as oppossed to knowledgable.

I'm now seeing in Latour's writing when he writes of an ANT informed analysis as being a way to see, for instannce a cloth, folded, and refolded where what is illuminated is subject to change. And that this too is a performance, and the researchers own part in this is a further aspect to whats performed, whats seen and not seen. That reality is more than a perspective, its an engagement and it is not fixed, actors and artefacts are all shaped in combination. Mol talked of the ways different people engaged with arteriosclerosis, showing the multiplicity of this disease entity, but what of how the same actor engages differently at different times. Here's where there's an opening for investigating identity work.
I behave differently here than there, with these things rather than those things...My thinking is shaped by the tools i use, and is also presented differently because of the tools used.

Not killing the genius within or waiting on magical fairy juice. Performative identity work in writing a PhD

My blog had begun to go round in circles on change and I am trusting the move sideways to identity work is not a distraction. I have an inking its part of the same issue, for in as much as we change things, we too are changed.

Elizabeth Gilbert describes a way of being both normal and a genius. Its not the language of performative identity that she uses, but I believe she is writing of identity work.

While Annemarie Mol describes performativity occurring as different people work alongside others in a hospital and where arteriosclerosis is multiple as described in the stories where it is managed/treated/lived with, in contrast Elizabeth Gilbert is an author describing how she is both divine and human, creative and mundane; pressured to always be performing at peak.
And then I began thinking of my own lack of progress...

The following is a synopsis based on Kim Zetters write up
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/ted-how-we-kill.html

"Allowing somebody ... to believe that he or she is ... the essence and the source of all divine, creative, unknowable, internal mystery is just like a smidge of too much responsibility to put on one fragile human psyche," she said. "It's like asking somebody to swallow the sun. It just completely warps and distorts egos, and it creates all of these unnatural expectations about performance. I think the pressure of that has been killing off our artists for the last 500 years."

She acknowledged that an audience filled with rational-minded people would balk at the idea of creativity as a kind of "mystical fairy juice" that's bestowed on someone. But she said it made as much sense as anything ever posited to explain the "utter, maddening, capriciousness of the creative process."

Elizabeth Gilbert relayed a story that musician Tom Waits told her years ago. One day he was driving on a Los Angeles freeway when a fragment of a melody popped into his head. He looked around for something to capture the tune -- a pencil or pen -- but had nothing to record it.

He started to panic that he'd lose the melody and be haunted by it forever and his talent would be gone. In the midst of this anxiety attack, he suddenly stopped, looked at the sky, and said to whatever force it was that was trying to create itself through the melody, "Excuse me. Can you not see I'm driving? Do I look like I can write down a song right now? If you really want to exist, come back at a more opportune moment ... otherwise go bother somebody else today. Go bother Leonard Cohen."

Waits said his creative process, and the heavy anxiety that permeated it, changed that day. In releasing the creative force, he realized that creativity "could be a peculiar, wondrous, bizarre collaboration and conversation between Tom and the strange external genius that was not Tom," Gilbert said.

She recalled his story when she was in the midst of writing her (now top selling book) Eat, Pray Love and fell into a pit of despair when she felt blocked. She said aloud to whatever entity it was that usually helped her but was on furlough that day that if the book didn't turn out to be good it wasn't going to be entirely her fault since she was putting everything she had into the project. "So if you want [the book] to be better, then you've got to show up and do your part of the deal," she told it. "But I'll keep writing anyway, because that's my job. And I'd like the record to report today that I showed up."

I'm looking forward to the release of the Ted2009 talk.

And so for the record...
I'd like to report,today I showed up, today I'm human.
I'm having a Zen moment where before and after enlightenment there's still work to do.
And I am happy to accept my capacity for being genius and human is sometimes not performed concurrently, but performed within a compartmentalised life :)

Change: Invention as the mother of necessity

Necessity is the mother of invention.
Interesting turn around.
There is lots of evidence that demand does not create supply and that instead whats invented is then repurposed and a demand created.
The space shuttles needed heat resistance; teflon gets invented. And then its adapted, translated....teflon in so much more...frypans, spatulas, irons, ironing boards, fire retardent clothes, heat resistant anything and ... The invention creates unexpected and unanticipated supplies and demands. Some unwanted...
(Not related to teflon but to chemicals in coolants, we have fire retardent chemicals in polar bear fur and the levels of prozac in recirculated water in the north seas is measurable though subtherapeutic ...)

When things change, there is also a change of things.

In txt messaging, the technology was developed for one purpose, gets coopted for another, creating needs. My daughter needs her text capable phone...so now do I. But i never had the need before the product came along. And there's an ongoing ripple effect, the expectation of always being on/always on you...creating expectations of connectivity...your best friend is only as far away as your pocket...and will apparently (if i listen to the advertising hype) always be available to me, always want to be and always positive.
If it hadnt already existed, telephone counselling would need to be invented.
And reshaped, meeting a need by being reconfigured in a format that suits its target group, young people....

Shaping practice

Client centered therapy
Student centered learning
What next?
Employee centered workplaces?
:)
Apparently not.
Research is overwhelming, 90% of the literature does not endorse open plan offices.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1114300/Open-plan-offices-lead-stress-flu-raised-blood-pressure-study-finds.html
Evidence based practice?
Apparently not.

On power, durability, resistance and survival in a climate of change

Bruno Latour writes

Strenght does not come from concentration, purity and unity, but
from dissemination, heterogeneity and the careful plaiting of weak ties.
This feeling that resistance, obduracy and sturdiness is more easily
achieved through netting, lacing, weaving, twisting, of ties that are weak
by themselves, and that each tie, no matter how strong, is itself woven out
of still weaker threads, permeates for instance Foucault's analysis of
micro-powers as well as recent sociology of technology. But the less
intuitive philosophical basis for accepting an ANT is a
background/foreground reversal: instead of starting from universal laws
-social or natural- and to take local contingencies as so many queer
particularities that should be either eliminated or protected, it starts
from irreducible, incommensurable, unconnected localities, which then, at a
great price, sometimes end into provisionnaly commensurable connections.

This is a reminder to me that 'power' is not something to curl up and die in the face of...its made of little things. Its not nebulous, its not plaited ropes of sand.

I am reminded, again, of my background in critical social theory, and how to reconcile this with the descriptive form of actor- network theory. Here I have it. Power is plaited.

The man who writes to the masters of Pig Island
about the love they dread
plaits ropes of sand
but i was born among them
and someday will lie amngst their dead

James K Baxter (New Zealand poet)

Phd's: an act of faith or congealed labor

'think of technology as congealed labor' so says Latour (1994) On technical mediation - Philosophy, sociology, geneology. Common knowledge, 3(2), 29-65.

I am thinking how naive I ever was to think I might study change and understand how change occurs. My insight now is that I/we can only ever have limited knowledge.
What I might know is only what i can congeal at that moment. What at a particular time is held together. In looking I observe more, I broaden a picture, but there's always more, the traces are never fully made. And I suspect some of the traces I make might be seen by others as distractions or only loosely connected. The researcher is always situated. What brings me to this?
The path of being a Phd student is anything but straight. The iterative processes have me doubting my purpose and any end product. I sense that I might lose myself in navel gazing but for a willingness to consider a Phd as an act of faith made real; A pragmatic piece of work thats done when its done.

"I rely on many delegated actions that themselves make me do things on behalf of
others who are no longer here and that I have not elected and the course of whose
existence I cannot even retrace."

Latour (1994)
Taking this further; when i think i am acting, more than just me is acting, I am a product too of past and current actors, as are others involved, both human and otherwise. I might be able to say of the actors I identify, that they had such and such an influence, but even in this my sight will be limited to what I am able to perceive and uncover.
To use another of Latours analogies; at any time, some parts of the cloth will be more, and less, uncovered.

Multiple realities or alternate perspectives

Elderly care provokes alternate realities to consider. With Annemarie Mol the issue of other perspectives or multiple realities was always a sticking point for me; what was the difference?
Mol would state that in alternate perspectives the view remains the same just seen from different angles. I have had to mull this over for a considerable time before being willing and able to totally endorse this. But she is right. My mum and i do no look at the same view. We are in different realities when looking at the options available.
We might as well be in parallel universes.

dipping

Holiday reading has included Seth Godin's the dip, the extraordinary benefits of knowing when to quit (and when to stick). Not because my job needs this and not because of the PhD either, but it's still a worthwhile read on reviewing where one is at as well as a parallel area of interest in studying change.
I am still finding it a bit hard despite reading the book to know what's a dip vs a cul de sac except when looking back retrospectively. How will i know when persevering is going to do it or not? Its a bit like caving (not that i do this) but the ideas a bit like not throwing good money (or one's time) after bad. There's lost opportunities that might also be considered.
What i have found is some gems relevant to my study of change vis a vis Bruno Latour. While Seth Godin does not mention any philosophers there is a resonance in here. He describes the valley of death where 'the dip is so long and so deep that the nascent competition can't catch up.' Its a bit like cj talking of the habits and ruts made where the walls then get so high that doing anything else becomes harder and harder, you get out of the rut for a moment but are likely to fall back in. Its an easier path where its well trodden. And one that can be deliberately made in shaping th epath so getting out of it is harder still and its here that Seth Godin refers to microsoft where the building of relationships and establishing so many stds makes it essentially inconceivable that word or excell could be challenged. A similar analogy is also provided with ipod anditunes and apple. Instead of resting on laurels a whole raft of essential relationships are formed to make the "network"

Seth Godin describes how its easy to be seduced by the new (just as with the bright and shiny, just coz its new doesn't mean its good) and i like his description of how this leads to addictions and short little spans of attention but he also points out that many people are not led by the new but by the tried and true. Both can be problematic.

And thats where i find myself wondering if I'm in a dip or a cul de sac, again.
I'm left knowing, retrospectively, what I've got myself into. Nonetheless a few more clues provide me a bit more hope in not working myself into corners.

These are timeless themes, when is it useful to change, and when is it not. How might change be made, and what contributes to its fluidity or to its stickiness...And then there is also the effects not only of the dip on the people dipping, but the effects of the people dipping, on the dip... aggressive acts may not only make the people worse, but also the dip.
A very actor-network way of thinking about change.

It's the conversation that matters

Debating value in text counselling can usefully be viewed as a debate over what constitutes the boundaries of said texts.
The value is in the conversation, organic and open, and not in the transmitted increments. Yet wariness on the value of text messaging for counselling, more often then not, is because the focus stays on the transmitted increments, that is, singular messages of 160 characters or less, rather than the conversation. The analogous argument would be to criticize face to face- or any other form of counselling- based on sentences. The overall experience would be lost.

What is new about txt counselling?
It enables new forms of intimacy, new ways to perform counselling with distributed participants and new forms of performative practice. What then arises are differences in relating that can be considered.
1) What does txt counselling do to our sense of time and place and of being there for someone? Or as Jean Baudrillard provokes, what changes in the relationship when "the instantaneity of communication has miniaturized our exchanges into a succession of instants"?
2) There is a lot of "work" that goes into txt counselling, and this work is not always transparent, how is it configured, what reshaping occurs for counsellors and counsellees, as well as consideration for who benefits from the shift?
3) And a further problematic consideration: sms messaging is, at root, a database, and we are happily populating it with text based utterances, giving little thought to the uses to which such information could be put. Participants are "users" of the data base with little knowledge of, and no control of, the database. How does or should this affect how we use these technologies?

An so its worth looking at the actors involved in the performance, and of the work involved, for at present we do not know.

Whats my mobile good for?

Apparently its better than many other means for identifying weather, not in a pet-rock sense (if its wet, its raining) but strength of signals (fade) is apparently an excellent source for accurate weather scanning.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4974542.stm
And also, apparently, for exposing my very human habits.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7433128.stm
Seems my mobile has me covered in more ways than I realised.

Given that its seen by the BBC and by Pew and Horizon reports for higher ed as a, if not the, significant player in 2009, I will maintain my current symbiotic relationship, even though s/he is now appearing somewhat developmentally challenged...

The BBC item identifies that there are 3 billion mobiles in the world to 1 billion PCs, my prediction for 2009 is that they will breed more prolifically and have smarter protege.

Invisible / Visible Paris

I was prompted by Lina's blog to have a look at Bruno Latour's Paris invisible exhibition (online) and was thinking about what else might be added. In traversing paris he demonstartes Paris' digital traces, and Paris woven as a city of light, I would add this:

My daughter was awarded a Jenesys scholarship to fund her AFS year in Japan student exchange, so on her hard earned savings and slavings as a checkout chick she (virtually) took me to Paris :) and here is the virtual evidence which she kindly let me take and place on my blog.
Paris becomes dispersed, a form of it having been distributed. A social that is multiple. In invisible Paris Latour puts together a montage of stories of the social. This provides me a further avenue for considering a montage of stories (similar too to Annmarie Mol on the body multiple, for structuring my own thesis).
Invisibe Paris provides a provocation to think deeply as well as in fun as well but I am really pleased to see a virtually practical application :)

A naked kiwi and making things public

Just musing on making things public. The Johari window identifies 4 quadrants regarding self disclosure. 1. Whats known to me and known to others (obviously no new knowledge here). 2. Whats known (about me)to others but not known by me (my supervisor seems to think I write well...if he keeps saying it, i may come to believe it, but it may also be that affirmations make it so or at least increase the confidence with which I write, saying the opposite could always make it worse...). 3. Whats known to me and not to others (the data analysis and combinations of learning that are unique to me, and also some things that are better kept in the box!) 4. Whats not known by others or myself (the area of new knowledge, to be discovered...the phd) But the Johari window was really only related to knowing oneself better. What of 'other things'? 

Arguably,  there are some things that maybe shouldn't be public (for further ref see Susan Leigh Star who talks of such risks in terms of social justice and vulnerabilities were they made known). And there are some things that need to be told (sensitive research via Renzetti and Lee). Latour writes of whats hidden; what's blackboxed, what's normalised but is really a construction. Behind every initiative there are masses, myriad other things holding in place, tugging, pulling.  These myriad 'others'  Latour refers to as actors - they act - pushing, pulling, some are human, some are otherwise. 

In this pulling and shoving there is also no beginning, our connections always place us in the middle of things chronologically and geographically. In citing Samual Butler, Latour also reminds us/me that  the absence of movement and the absence of voice, is also political, for silence - seen as a virtue may be because it renders us agreeable to some of our fellows... What remains said/unsaid....what is performed & not.

Latour has also performed what's usually hidden in an art gallery exhibition looking at making things public. This brought together three modes of representation usually kept apart: How to represent people? Politics. How to represent objects? Science. How to represent their collective gathering? Art. Latour provides direction for considering how things curated (deliberate) and aggregate (deliberate and otherwise).  What holds such  assemblages together  such shapes...provides imetus for considering disputed 'things' also. To this end, there is reason to consider not only what pulls things together but what also pulls or tugs or attempts to unravel...or to hold fast, to resist...and that such things too may be human and otherwise. To tell  the ontological politics then of what is  both shaped and shaping (not that we have full knowledge of everything involved). And what of whats not included but pushed away, or 'othered'? 

I spent one of Auckland's glorious days inside the Auckland museum and its exhibition of secrets. I also revisited this exhibit this very wet day online. The exhibition provides a different reality to that usually experienced in the museum. This performance was of the inner workings revealed an exhibition in its own right of the behind the scenes work. I have chosen to describe the performance of secrets at the museum alongside actor-network theory and make use of reassembling the social for providing some structure to this. The first scene is of crating and uncrating, a provocation then to thinking outside of the box in which such works were displayed. This involves appreciating that which is unknown. The opening on arrival is described as always a revelation. Long-hidden objects emerge, reviving memory and invoking  silent questions of nonvocal actors -  What am I? Where do I come from? How did I get here? Why have I been hidden for so long? What stories do I tell? The objects on display in a museum represent but a fraction of the total collection and invites viewers to therefore consider what is seen beneath what is normally portrayed -  the iceberg, not the tip. This opens up further questions of involvement and of what was deemed noteworthy. The second scene is called registration, but its really of accounting, what's in and what's out, reminding me of Latour's first source of uncertainty where groups and their makeup are/might be disputed. Every object that passes through the doors – coming or going – must be accounted for. A political act of what fits and what doesn't..."Does it fit our collection policy? Our times? Does it need special conservation work? Are there any legal or copyright issues in displaying it? And when the museum decides that something is past its use-by date – known as “de-accession” – the whole process has to happen in reverse..." The third scene extends on this, What's grouped together? Who decides? Whats the structure of the performance in other words, how are things to be taken or 'other'taken? As a source of Latourian uncertainty, this reflects distributed agency. Who are the actors involved? The fourth scene is of the way things were. The museum isn’t 'just a big display case' it’s also a working space. Many objects are old (stating the obvious) and fragile or damaged when they arrive. "The job to preserve them, sometimes even improve them, so they can be exhibited, studied, interpreted and enjoyed isn’t always easy. Some exhibits are simply beyond repair. Others have been mistreated or neglected. And some are so unusual or rare that knowing how to treat them is a challenge in itself. And then there’s the question of whether to repair something at all – perhaps the damage or the missing parts tell their own story, every bit as important as an object in “perfect” condition. Or that the 'story' as told is no longer one that is wanted to be told. The museum conservator’s role is "to balance all these considerations and stay true to the purpose of the collection or exhibition." In this there is a marked similarity with ANT research, what's uncovered involves work, how this is then treated to let actors speak for themselves, as well as consideration for how the very telling also alters. The fifth scene considers storage, "Not just any old storage, of course, because everything has its own special needs. There are very large objects, very old and delicate objects, very precious objects – and living objects too. The temperature and humidity of our storage systems has to be strictly controlled and monitored. Just as important is that we can find and access an object when it is required for research or display." The treatment of what's stored is practical as well as ethical and political and philosophical. How is content to be treated, what damage might display do, what might enhance, whats in, out, here or there... The sixth scene is of artefacts in terms of books and papers. The exhibition details 2 kilomentres of manuscripts and archives, thousands of maps, words and pictures, ideas and knowledge and inspiration. Books are described as not sitting on shelves in isolation; they interconnect with the real world. I am reminded of much that i write being stored, of the mindmaps made and connected to, and of those not and of the millions of words written and the small percentage of these that are given life within a thesis. In the exhibit is the story of a golden frog (supposedly) stolen...and recovered...or not. The story told is that the display stolen was never the real thing. My mind wonders if anything is as it seems. And there's a sense of de ja vu for this web based cybertrip, trips on itself in act seven and repeats the 5th scene. Whats available through a different search onsite are stories of the naked and the dead. No-one knows how the kiwi, or at least this particular one, lost its feathers. As the kiwi itself says, plucked if I know... whether on school based travels, or moths or insects, or whether it should be kept to show deletrious effects or of positive aspects...providing opportunity to an audience to make meaning out of what is shared. Here is a sense of Latour's third source of uncertainty for actors too have agency, the links seem to twist on themselves, what's intended and what occurs differ, there are intended and unintended effects, unanticipated as well as unknown effects. 

In reviewing this, where might this story lead, what will the reader make of it? A very Latourian moment occurs as the exhibition comes 'fullcircle". The fourth source of uncertainty is an awareness of 'things' being matters of concern rather than matters of fact, and the knowledge that things could also be assembled differently or 'other'wise. And in ending is the fith source of uncertainty as there are risks inherent in writing down meanings, as if there were but one... I am again indebted to Artichoke for bringing to my attention the museums display, and well worth repeat visits.

living and learning in cloudland

I might be able to live without it, but can I learn without it?
Topping the list of the Australian-New Zealand Horizon report, identifying emergent technologies and key trends in higher ed, is the mobile phone.
The aspects of mobile phones that lead to this top ranking include ubiquity, portability, connectivity, and locus of control.

Critical challenges that they then identify include:
Teachers/lecturers not having the skills to make effective use of emergent technologies, much less teach students how to do so.
A research lag.
Lack of open broadband access.

At this point I would dearly love for any reader, philanthropist, parties with vested interest, or Santa Claus to financially support my PhD studies... a mobile phone, an iphone, and an internet service provider contract would assist me greatly in being a better teacher :) as well as supporting research in the impact that emergent technologies have on how care is communicated.

Adapting to change in institutionalised sectors is difficult. They tend to move slowly, despite the possibilities afforded. And its not only slow, its also resistant with bans on cell phones being prevalent. A trend more recently being reversed not because of learning applications but risk aversion with campus shootings a real concern. Actor-network thinking is useful because what keeps things in place as well as what reconfigures and stabilises gets to be considered. The parallel developments provide stability here. This and that strengthen each other. The actors in this network cohabit. The wherever and whenever affordances. Such changes seem unlikely to go away in the near future, they appear too useful.

A parallel 'emergent technology' development is 'the cloud'. The cloud refers to distributed data storage through to processing possibilities and applications ... for example Flikr, youtube, slideshare, and blogger 'live' entirely in the cloud. Such applications are not situated in any one space. Networkings hold the knowledge and to the end user the cloud is invisible. Such accessibility to data and to applications makes the mobile phone with internet connectivity an even more desirable commodity as content is easily sharable, easily distributed as well as easy to collaborate on.

These changes are important, the portability and access are changing how we relate to data as well as to each other. The actors are themselves reconfigured along with their technologies. Hence the need for further study...hence the PhD...

Moral hazards and what ingenious kiwis do with number 8 wire

Photo attribution to Brewbooks for this photo of a bra on a barbed wire fence in New Zealand. I trust no-one got hurt in the making/taking of the photo.

Moral hazards are a bit like climbing barbed wire; there's purpose and there's risk and some of the risks are anticipated (can see the barbs) and some are not; there's a tension in the wire as it's pulled down to climb over. This (almost) without fail comes back and bites you as you let go... and then there's what's in the paddock once you get there...but also what's in the paddock you were leaving...
And even further effects coz here I'm writing as a New Zealander and its amazing what we can do with number 8 fencing wire... even philosophize!

Thanks for the prompt form Keith Lyons on moral hazards, I found myself exploring wikipedia and then trying to edit wikipedia and then discovered further hazards... the process is so convoluted that wikipedias story of unintended consequence was unable to be changed by me.
I wanted to enter into the discussion. To me the defined concept of moral hazard was a bit one sided. A top down bias where underlings did not fully disclose to the upperlings. And where there seemed to be a deliberate intent to deceive. And i just wanted to add a prompt to the discussion on the page regarding unintended consequences for the page editors to consider a link to
Sproull, L., & Kiesler, S. (1991). Connections. New ways of working in the networked organization. Cambridge: MIT Press.
But there were no links on wiki to second level effects or to these authors, and by the time i wrote in my bit on a wiki discussion page and checked i'd done the right thing twice over, my scribblings got scrambled. So I'm blogging instead. Such are moral hazards also. Unintended sequalae when the process gets too hard.

Sproull and Kiesler make 4 points:
1. the full possibilities of a new technology are hard to see, likely to emphasize planned uses and underestimate the 2nd level effects.
2. unanticipated consequences usually have less to do with efficiency effects and more to do with changing interpersonal interactions, ideas about what is important...social organization. This may change how each of us works and even the work we do.
3. these 2nd level effects emerge somewhat more slowly as people renegotiate changed patterns of behaviour and thinking.
4. 2nd level effects are not caused by technology operating autonomously on passive organisation or a society. Instead they are constructed as technology interacts with, shapes, and is shaped by the social and policy environment.

In looking at the moral hazard of using technologies for learning or for counselling that do or dont add substance, its worth considering what technologies are. Here I take a broad understanding on technology as defined by Ursula Franklin as 'the way we do things round here' (Ursula Franklin).
I then take a comment made by Jenny Mackness post on social networking and how come some people are getting something out of facebook or twitter when in her argument these are not communities of practice.
"Etienne Wenger has explained all this for us in his work on communities of practice. A community of practice needs the type of commitment that Facebook and other social networks of this type cannot give us. In addition social networks of the Facebook type don’t gather round a clearly identified domain and there is no requirement to share practice."

And I disagree, levels of committment are in the eye of the beholder.
Its working for some, to the level some want, and sometimes there might be a lot of highly visible to'ing and thro'ing and sometimes not. And sometimes the point is the connection, whats felt maybe, rather than whats visible. And this fits with a definition of community where community is based on value rather than on materially defined factors and for which further argument can be found in reading Raymond Williams. (Or in my own masters thesis, a philosophical analysis of community care, Auckland University)

Committment is never a stable entity, it fluctuates, and therefore so do communities of practice. Sometimes they work as communities of practice, and sometimes they dont. Sometimes they do for some of the people involved and not for others. The stability issue suggests there is value in a network way of looking, as afforded by actor-network theory. This encourages the discussion to broaden into what holds this thing called a community of prectice in place and whats pulling it apart. The tensions. And in using ANT there's also the added bonus in that the things to be looked at, the actors to investigate, can be human and otherwise.

This is part of the political environment. Whats in/out, whats considered and whats not, and even that some subjects are considered at all.
And the morality of this, and the hazards of this, are integral.

And so to in the research of such things there are further hazards. Moral hazards of invisibility like barbed wire in sand or in surf. Whats foreseen and whats not. Multilayered performances.
And in my own small way, I attempt to do more good than harm.

Ascilite08 paper; Cn I jus txt, coz I don wan 2b heard

I've attached the paper I gave at Ascilite08 here; its a taster of what I've been studying. In retrospect i attempted to cover too much :)
Haxell, A. (2008). Cn I jus txt, coz I don wan 2b heard: Mobile technologies and youth counseling. In Hello! Where are you in the landscape of educational technology? Proceedings ascilite Melbourne 2008. http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/melbourne08/procs/haxell.pdf

iwant an iphone, igot iphoney

The simulated iphone is unfortunately as good as it gets with no contract, no purchase, gift or other means of acquisition. The keypad is not touch sensitive, the camera doesnt work, no music capacity, nor any downloadable applications such as navman. The phone doesnt work either - not for talking and not for text, sadly not even to simulate txt.
Its a bit "all fur coat and no knickers" as my granny would say.
However I can at least see what my webpage looks like on it :)

ascilite presentation and the joys of text

I have an unwarranted level of anxiety on getting this conference presentation for #Ascilite08 to work. Being cyborg is not growing on me, working with my mac i still find platform interchange difficulties annoying and untrustworthy, my flashdrive asks if i want to reformat it before it will open on a pc and i am unsure if that will wipe it or render it unfir for a mac... so have sent it to myself by email, but then unsure with latest update of aut groupwise how to get into this from outside aut.... and so have loaded it in to slideshare which on the 3rd attempt worked. The medium has altered the message a little, loss of one tiny graphic and loss of selected fonts, but its still got me to go with it :)
cant i jus txt

ailsa haxell can i jus txt

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.