361/365: South Carolina Marsh
Originally uploaded by cplong11

Facebook
Originally uploaded by laikolosse

Make no mistake, these changes are designed to increase the revenue each of these companies is able to generate for itself.  But what interests me about this in particular is the manner in which these changes are forcing us all to be more flexible, open and, hopefully, inquisitive about the technologies with which we are engaged.  

We are not used to having the medium through which we communicate with one another change so radically so frequently. 

It is disconcerting. 

But perhaps there is something important to learn from that sense of vertigo that comes with such changes. We are required to learn anew the things we thought we knew. We are forced to ask ourselves new questions about how we post and to whom; we are made to think again about what is public and how we want ourselves to be seen and heard online.

These changes, whatever the value or lack thereof they have, force us again and again into a mode of play so that we might learn what we can do with these technologies and what they are doing to us. 

If we are to engage one another with a modicum of responsibility in and through these technologies, we will need to cultivate in ourselves the habits of playful exploration and curiosity; we will need to be willing, again and again, to reconsider the things we thought we had finished considering, to rethink those habits of interaction that have become thoughtless and rote. 

Whatever the value of the changes these companies have foisted upon us, our ability to navigate in a new, more dynamic digital world, will depend on our ability to cultivate in ourselves, our friends, our students, and our children an openness to change, a willingness to reconsider, an ability to playfully explore and the courage to act with integrity in the flux of things.

Student Panel at LASTS11
Originally uploaded by LAUSatPSU

The second reason for this use of a Google Plus Hangout is that I think the ease by which this technology makes face to face conversations public is very compelling. It is a simple broadcasting platform that can be used to raise the level of discussion online by adding the ethical dimension of the face. In our attempts to use technology to enrich the undergraduate experience in the College, it seemed timely to try to put Google Plus to work in this way. 

Finally, we now have a number of members of our community out in the "real world' - as if we in Happy Valley don't live in the real world. But I digress... In any case, these friends who were so engaged when they were physically here as students or staff members remain engaged in various ways. It will be interesting to see if that distance can be traversed by the G+ technology and we will once again be face to face, talking about the importance of the liberal arts.

I am looking forward to what this little experiment will bring. 

West End of Bloomsburg, PA
Originally uploaded by colecamp

Such is the case for me with my friend, Cole Camplese, and his experience with the Press Enterprise of Bloomsburg, PA.

The Press Enterprise is the local paper in Bloomsburg, a town that was hit last week with a devastating flood. 

Have you read much about it? No? Well, I would point you to the paper so you could learn more about the lives of those impacted by the flood, but if I did that, you would quickly come face to face with this:

No, to learn about the flood from this paper allegedly dedicated to "Serving Bloomsburg," you would need either to subscribe or visit their Facebook Page, where you would find comments from Facebook users and the occasional link to the Press Enterprise itself; and if you would like to read the articles to which these links point ...  well, then you would need to subscribe.

Of course, you could also look at the images and stories gathered by individuals like Cole. 

These images and stories articulate well the business of Bloomsburg at the moment. And it seems to me that the business of a newspaper designed to serve this community should really revolve around the business of the community itself. While the newspaper did unlock its content during the flood and in its immediate aftermath; it has now closed itself off again from the wider community of communication that is the internet.

Cole has written an eloquent post about this on his blog, a post that should move the Press Enterprise to reconsider its business strategy.

But it is the strange tension in the name of the paper that I find rich with ambiguous meaning. At a time when the culture of printing is giving way to a new, more dynamic digital culture the very enterprise of the press has been called into question.

When we speak of the "enterprise" in business terms, we understand, as Dictionary.com says, "a company organized for commercial purposes."  But the most common meaning of the term is "a project undertaken or to be undertaken, especially one that is important or difficult or that requires boldness or energy." I like that one. But it does not seem to be the meaning at play in the Press Enterprise.

Of course, we have been living since the invention of the printing press around 1440 in a print culture that has long been characterized by what might be called a logic of compression, impression and even repression. The printing press itself is an impressive machine designed to press information upon us, imprinting mass culture with the ideas, thoughts and values that have the imprimatur of the those with authority.  

The enterprise of pressing has been lucrative indeed.

But what might the press enterprise look like if we took seriously the common meaning of 'enterprise' as an important, difficult and bold endeavor? 

It would need to become something less depressing than the business of printing. It would need to be more attuned to the business of the community as the community engages in activities that make lives meaningful. It would need to become a curator, a collector, an open space of gathering, sharing, re-mixing and responding. 

It would need to relinquish its tendencies to impress, compress and contain. In short, the Press Enterprise needs to become a shared, community enterprise.

And if the newspaper business truly becomes the business of communities, I am confident it will continue to be lucrative as well; for people will come not to be told or imprinted upon, but because they find a place in which they can engage in a common enterprise about the business of their community.

127/365: Gotta Dance
Originally uploaded by cplong11

Do you know why I call you DancinGirl when I write about you here? 

It is because, from the moment I met you, now almost six years ago, you were dancing. At first, it was with hands and feet wriggling every which way, then it was the inimitable way you crawled - a sight to behold! - and eventually, as you learned to stand and walk and run, you danced and danced and danced. Always, you danced.

I love the way you dance. There is a spirit in it that is uniquely you. 

You have always moved through the world in a way that is all your own. It is one of the things I admire most about you.

As you start Kindergarten, and the long and wonderful journey that is your formal education, my greatest wish is that your creative, dancing spirit is nourished along the way.

There are so many ways that educational institutions and the culture of schooling dull the very spirit of creativity and imagination on which all real education depends.  But there are also so many people who can and will help cultivate your dancing spirit.

On this, your first day of Kindergarten, may that dancing spirit be magnetic: may it attract   others who recognize the beauty of your dancing and who can dance with you; and may the life of education and learning on which you are about to embark enrich the way you move through the world.

Love,

Dad

The Wind is Beautiful
Originally uploaded by cplong11

But the human relationship with technology is fluid, reciprocal and dynamic, and the boundaries between human-beings and our technologies are porous, as Freud already recognized in speaking about humans as "prothetic gods."

Technology does things to us as we do things with it, but we also do things to it as it does things with us.  

Issues related to the dynamic interaction between us and our technologies have been rendered poignant for me again as I begin to play with Google+. What strikes me most at this point, however, is how the Google culture of engineering has taken a decidedly humanistic turn, and in a potentially powerful way.

The rhetoric Google used to introduce Google+ reflects this humanistic approach. Vic Gundotra, Senior VP of Social at Google, told TechCrunch that Google+ was created to respond to the "basic human need" to connect with other people in a way that is less "awkward." 

There are a number of features and design decisions that recognize that human insight and understanding enrich the technology.  Circles, to take the central example, is beautifully designed in a way that makes it fun and aesthetically pleasing to create different audiences of people with whom one might want to communicate. The design, however, is important because it invites us to teach our Google profile about the sorts of communities about which we care. In so doing, our profiles become more flexible in communicating diverse ideas to diverse groups.  Facebook groups offers this possibility as well, though in a less compelling and playful way.  By making circles central to Google+ and by making it fun, Google has recognized that it will get smarter only if it invites humans to teach it.

This recognition seems also to be at the heart of the +1 button which adds a social component to search in a way that is designed to take your personal views and ideas into consideration.  There are, of course, dangers in this insofar as it can serve to reinforce existing prejudices and positions; but used effectively, it can also serve to open new horizons of insight.

The Hangout feature of Google+ is rooted in a metaphor taken from the world of concrete human interactivity. The Hangout is set up like a kind of front porch on which one can sit and wait for others to join. The conversation is inherently dynamic, because the Hangout need not be "about" something specific nor is it even owned by the person who began it: it is simply an invitation to a circle of people saying I am here if you would like to talk and it can continue long after the initiator has left. 

It is striking, however, that Bradely Horowitz, Google VP for Product Management, has been using Hangouts to open discussions with anyone following him on Google+ as a way to receive feedback on the product or, presumably, to participate diverse conversations, the direction of which remains open.  This in and of itself is testimony to the fact that Google has recognized that the only way it will get smarter is by attending and responding to human insight and experience in a dynamic and reciprocal way.

 

St. Andrew's Preschool
Originally uploaded by cplong11

In their June 9th letter to the Centre Daily Times, Carl and Melissa Anderson captured the sense of anguish and betrayal many of the parents, staff and teachers associated with the preschool felt upon hearing the news.

Both of our daughters began their lives of formal education in the nurturing environment of the St. Andrew's Preschool. There they first learned to trust adults outside their family; there they were encouraged to express themselves artistically and intellectually; there they found friends and loving teachers and a sense of wonder for all the world has to offer.

The spirit of the place is what drew us to it; for the teachers are dedicated, conscientious and caring; they developed a curriculum that struck just the right balance between guidance and play, structure and exploration. And this spirit has taken root in our daughters as they move out into the world, as it has for generations of students who attended the St. Andrew's Preschool over the years. 

That spirit will set no future generation of thoughtful, caring young people onto the path of lifelong learning. 

And what makes it worse, even tragic, is that the church handled the demise of the school without even a modicum of the grace, care and sensitivity the Preschool and its teachers embodied over the course of its 40 year life.

====

There has been some interesting and moving historical testimony about the Preschool on the St. Andrew's Preschool Facebook page.

148/365: Evening Walk on the Beach
Originally uploaded by cplong11

As a faculty member, when the semester of teaching is over, a span of summer begins in which time takes on a different dimension as research responsibilities press themselves upon you. The result is an expanse of unstructured time that needs to be given structure by disciplined research. Because we give ourselves that structure, faculty often develop a sense of never really "being off of work" even when we are on vacation.

That has changed somewhat for me since becoming an Associate Dean. When the semester ends, the structure of my work week remains largely unchanged - I continue to come to the office each day to meet and work with staff, faculty and students. The result is that when I take vacation, it really feels like time off. Of course, all the research pressures of a regular faculty member remain, which casts a shadow over every vacation.

This year, however, I have had some success in learning how to relax in this context. A few of my strategies are probably a bit counter-intuitive.

Keep in touch. Many people set up an automatic email message that says something like "I will be away from my email until x, if you have an emergency, please contact ..." I never do that, even on vacation. I know enough about myself to know that allowing email to pile up while I am away increases my anxiety. I am less relaxed in such situations. Rather, I check mail periodically, deleting things I don't need, delegating things to staff at work, responding briefly if possible or adding more involved tasks to OmniFocus, my To-Do list, for when I return. The result is a bit of time over vacation, but I save two or three days of being behind when I return. I am more relaxed when I take the time to do this.

Be unscheduled. The biggest challenge for me is to settle into being unscheduled. My days are hyper-scheduled, down to half-hour time periods. Even my unscheduled time has a research or administrative work schedule imposed on it by me to ensure I am maximally productive. On vacation, I find myself often trying to schedule the day: let's go to the beach in the morning, then do X for lunch, then let's go to the pool ... I simply need to let go of that compulsion to schedule, at least for a vacation like a week at the beach.

Attend to the Moment. During my work-a-day week, I have sought to cultivate the ability to attend to the moment and the task at hand. My Photo of the Day project has helped me practice attentive seeing. This week at the beach, I have relied on that practice as I listen to my daughters' stories, notice the play of light on the ocean, and enjoy the smell of the beach. I have written before about the beach as a liminal space and the details of life at the beach. One of the important reasons I try to practice the habit of being present to the moment is that the disposition is then there when you need it most: when vacation time slips slowly away and life appears to pass too quickly.

One of the reasons why these strategies work for me, I realize, is that I don't feel the need to separate radically from my working life when I am on vacation. I am lucky to have a career I love, one that feels more like a calling than a burden. This too, was a matter of intentionally attending to the course of my life, which I take to be one of the primary purposes of living a philosophical life.

Desktop Literacies
Originally uploaded by cplong11

For a description of the project, check out John's post on our Digital Research in the Liberal Arts blog about the iPad Summer Research Project.

The iPad project is part of a larger initiative designed to put technologies in the hands of faculty to empower them to do scholarly research. What excites me most about this project specifically and the Digital Research Initiative more generally, is that it is driven by the idea that if we put technologies in the hands of faculty to pursue scholarly research, they will not only produce excellent new scholarship, but also they will learn the affordances and limitations of the technologies as they think about how to integrate them into their teaching.

By inviting faculty to use the technology for research they are already doing and asking them to reflect a bit in writing on a public blog, we hope to cultivate a community of digitally literate scholars who are doing excellent academic work.  The measure of success from my perspective as a scholar and an Associate Dean will not be the number of posts we write or the various aspects of the technologies we uncover, but the quality of the research we do, the articles and book chapters written, submitted and published, the manuscript and dissertation reviews we write, and the conference papers we submit.  

With that in mind, I have posted a short reflection on using the iPad to review a manuscript without requiring a single piece of paper.

I hope you all will follow the Digital Research in the Liberal Arts blog and contribute when you are so moved.

Jumping a Wave
Originally uploaded by cplong11