Down to the Wire

Sometimes something will just hit you in the face that you don't realize until a while later.

In reply to a comment (or several comments) I'd made on a post in Pligg, Lis addressed me as "mtt143." This has been one of the most annoying aspects of Pligg: Why are we identified by our Penn State IDs? In our own blogs, we can choose to display our names however we'd like. Most don't change the default FIRST MIDDLE LASTNAME format; some change it to First Lastname, F. Lastname, First M. Lastname, or some variation of it. We could use any of our online handles if we wished, but none of us choose to. But, at the least (and at the risk of sounding complex), in our own blogs we identify ourselves however we identify ourselves. We don't get this option in Pligg.

Is it odd that Pligg--the online version of our CI 597C classroom/community--chooses our identities (okay, labels) for us? Pligg forces us to relate blog posts to a jumble of letters and numbers instead of a name or a face. In our online community, I am mtt143; I'm not Minh-Dan, or even Minh, or that weird Asian girl who causes trouble in class. Just mtt143. I didn't even choose mtt143! I didn't choose this name, these initials, or the fact that I'm the 143rd mtt to get an email account at Penn State.

When reading posts in Pligg, I can look at other writers' IDs and put a name and a face to it. sck (hi Steve), eal (hi Betsy), dmd (hi Donna), ecs (hi Lis), rsw (hi, Becci), . . . . Maybe I'm blessed with a better memory than some, or maybe I just care to identify the author as a person I know rather than as an (seemingly) anonymous contributor to an online community. But, who's to say that same courtesy will be extended to me? Maybe people don't care that Minh wrote that horribly offensive comment. Just that mtt143 person, whoever that is.

I have a friend at Cornell who calls me mtt29 (that's two-nine) to my face. That's just funny, and it's okay, because he in the same breath will call me by my full name (full first, middle, last) name and also by my AIM screen name. And, that's okay. He knows who I am, and I get that. But again, that kind of familiarity is rare, especially now that we've been exposed to these (I believe) limiting Web 2.0 applications and environments. You can know all the details of a person's life, put that to a name and see a photo of a face, but who's really going through the effort of putting it all together? Most people probably won't bother.

Just mtt143.

I'm a little out of practice with Wenger and unsure if I want to get back into that practice. Hmm. I'll kick myself out of the Wenger community of practice one day.

I want to make examples of Wenger's modes of belonging using ideas of a previous post; otherwise, I won't be able to make sense of whatever it is he's talking about with this whole "modes of belonging" idea. Also, I want to see if putting the words "MARCHING BAND" into a post will alert some commercial marching band website to try to trackback to this post multiple times. (Whoever you are, I want you to know I WILL REJECT YOUR REQUEST EVERY SINGLE TIME.)

So, Wenger's modes of belonging are engagement, imagination, and alignment.
As a clarinetist in a competitive high school marching band, I would feel "belonging" to multiple communities. I would be engaged in the practice of playing the clarinet with other clarinetists in the band. I would be engaged in the practice of marching band-ism (marching, playing, rehearsing, competing, etc.) with the other members of the band.

My imagination would allow me to "belong" (or not belong) to multiple communities. I could imagine other clarinetists in other high school marching bands, college marching bands, concert bands, jazz bands, orchestras, professional symphonies, etc.; I would belong to an arguably elite group of clarinetists worldwide, even if I've never met them or never heard of them before. I could imagine other high schools' marching bands; although we attend different schools, we (I would imagine) practice the same activities (marching, playing, rehearsing, competing, etc.). I could even imagine how other schools may have different practices: maybe they high-step instead of roll-step; maybe they only have a drum corps (no clarinets!); maybe they have bag pipes; maybe membership isn't voluntary (or by audition only). Imagining how others may be different may allow me to feel more belonging to my own community; imagining how others may be different may also allow me to feel belonging to multiple, similar-but-different communities.

Our high school marching band would try to align its practices to rules and practices of larger organizations. The band "belongs" to a particular school district, and because of this, we must choose our music and programs to appropriately represent the district (no nudity, no explicit language, proper conduct). The band also "belongs" to a bigger organization called the Tournament of Bands, which encompasses many districts in a variety of states; because of this, we must choose our music and programs to match given standards set by the TOB (for example, length of program), and we must practice and rehearse according to the TOB's standards (for example, using high school football field hash marks, not college football field hash marks; also, on an American 100-yard field as opposed to Canadia's 110-yard field; using proper roll-steps; making appropriate eye contact with the press box; memorizing music; etc.). Aligning to an outside organization's standards breeds a feeling of belonging to "something bigger." This also requires some imagination! And engagement!

See my previous post (about the Symposium) for thoughts on identity. (I beat Wenger to it.)


And to you, Mr./Ms. Commercial Marching Band Website Advertiser Person: Prepare to have your trackback rejected!

I knew I was forgetting something this week. I forgot to write in my blog!

1. Upload your file (in .mp3, .aiff, etc. format) to your PASS space.

Here's an introductory podcast for our podcasting presentation.

Wenger: "...styles and discourses are not practices in themselves. They are available material--resources that can be used in the context of various practices" (p. 129). Doesn't the style and discourse of a "community" such as Twitter and other applications/technologies/programs (SMS text messaging, radio hams, etc.) create a community of practice in and of itself? Or are those styles and discourses actually by-products of those communities? Here's the age-old chicken or the egg: does Twitter produce 140-character speech that produces a community, or does a community that uses 140-character speech produce Twitter? Of course, Twitter (as we learned) evolved from SMS text messaging, so in this case the practice of text messaging gave birth to Twitter, which became an online community. But, my question remains: Does the use of certain online styles of speech/writing (l33t, how r u, kewl, etc.) necessarily mean engagement in a practice that creates a community? In regards to my previous post, would sharing this style or discourse count as an "action" that creates such a community? Or, is it a community but not a community of practice? I would argue that it's a community of practice, and we can't ignore the other aspects of online conversations that contribute to such a practice: for example, online short-hand like "r" for "are" is a way of achieving a goal/practice/enterprise, like "having a conversation with friends" or "meeting new people." But, again, does one necessitate the other? Is "necessitate" a word? Is it a style of writing that creates a community of practice? Or is it a by-product of my trying to communicate with an academic community of practice?

I have to wonder at Nardi's and O'Day's obvious resentment and opposition to use of the word "inevitable." While I have to agree that ultimately, we--as humans--do have control over what kinds of technologies we produce and how we use them, we--as a society--have less control. The notion of "inevitability," as the authors have mentioned, is so commonplace even among "technical" people; I wonder what the general populace thinks? If the notion of "inevitability" is (as they imply) ignorant, is the general populace of society more ignorant than the "technicians"? If so, how can we possibly hope to diffuse to the masses that WE control technology and not vice versa? (There will be no diffusion if this type of discussion remains in "academese" and among scholars.)

Sweeping generalities:
I actually think there are some technologies that are inevitable. I don't see inevitability as inherently bad. The discovery of new technologies and new uses of existing technologies is part of exploration. It's what makes us human: we're innovators. We will do everything that's within our capabilities, if only just to prove that it's possible. How we choose to continue with such endeavors is within our control, but the fact that they will happen I believe is inevitable. Robots? Space stations? We're there. Are we creating cylons yet? Are we colonizing and seizing control of alien solar systems yet? No, but that choice is ours.

I apologize for acting like a brat today in class. I suffered a saturation of information, wherein my brain imploded, and I lost the ability to comprehend speech. If you're reading this in Pligg or a reader, I suggest you take a moment to relocate to my blog, because I used formatting with the intent of stressing key points.

Since we often discuss definitions, allow my take for a moment; again, I apologize if this was already said during discussion, as I completely zoned out:

Someone (I believe Brett?) posited that "shared value(s)" separates a community from a community of practice. There seemed to be some agreement here. I think, though, any community must inherently share some values. People mentioned things like proximity, repeated interactions, and communication as some things that make a community a community; while this is all true, I would argue that "living in an area with which we're all familiar," "interacting with others" and "communicating with others" are all shared values that define such a community. Of course, there are other values, such as "surviving cancer" or "appreciation of World of Warcraft," etc., which could define a community. One could also argue that words like "living," "interacting," "communicating," "surviving," or "appreciating" are examples of practices, but herein lies my difference between a community and a community of practice: I would argue that a community of practice has a shared goal (yes, this was said in class), which is different than a value. I think Wenger calls this "joint enterprise." A goal implies purpose and action, and it is this last bit that I think really differentiates the two. A community of practice is active, not passive (as an ordinary community can or may be). Of course, how you define "active" is another matter altogether.

Secondly, I voiced my frustrations after what seemed like an eternity of trying to figure out and define "boundary object." I think what happened is that the term and the idea got separated from the context; this is how the words "boundary object" began to take a concrete and physical nature. I don't want to define "boundary object" here, because this is not my intention. When I said that "I don't understand 'boundary object' outside the context of 'community,'" I meant just that. How can you have a "boundary object" without a community? What else does a "boundary object" create boundaries for/around? (Obviously, no one explicitly said that boundary objects could exist without communities, but when the arguments go around in circles multiple times, this is the meaning I start to get from the conversation.) When I said "context," I didn't mean that I need concrete examples. Examples can help sometimes, but I think they muddle the definitions when the definitions haven't been set yet. (Wenger is an excellent example of this.) By "context," I mean that a term like "boundary object" has no meaning when it is not applied to "community." Wenger writes (and I agree) that "meaning exists neither in us, nor in the world, but in the dynamic relation of living in the world" (p. 54); I could cite other scholars and such who also argue that meaning--or knowledge, information, whatever--is in the connections and therefore does not exist on its own. In fact, I think this is what we discussed two weeks ago in class when Betsy proclaimed that her head hurt.

Although I heard some kind of stifled, collective moan at the time, I for one was grateful to Becci for bringing up how one's identity could define/shape/influence/affect what "boundary objects" or "reification objects" are/could be/mean. I'm pretty sure that most people were talking about boundary objects in relation to the design aspect of technologies like Twitter. For me, it would make the most sense to talk about boundary objects in relation to communities. It's only in the relations between these concepts that an idea as abstract as "boundary object"--whether it is inherently abstract or whether we made it abstract--could take any real meaning.

There's always talk about the disconnect between theory and practice. I think, in the future, we really need to focus our discussions on the three themes of Community, Identity, and Design, with an Educational Flair. Otherwise, I'm going to walk away from this class without any real benefit and with absolutely no idea of the practical applications of the theories, not to mention the technologies, we learn.

While reading Wenger, one question repeatedly arose in my mind, in several forms: Does one need to learn in order to be in a community of practice? In other words (Wenger is fond of this phrase), does practice imply learning? Can communities of practice exist where learning does not? This view is somewhat antithetical to my usual views on learning (that it is ongoing, permanent, omnipresent; that almost anything can be considered "learning"), but Wenger defines learning more in a sociohistorical sense (social theory of learning: that we learn from/through/with/because of others). Let's take Wenger's claims processing example, and say we have the same group of five claims processors who have all been there for a period of time (i.e. no newcomers) who have been working with the same forms for that time (i.e. no revisions or new software). Although the individual claims processed change, one might say these five people have fallen into a "routine," and they all know each other well enough that they have their niches in this community. What are they learning, and how? If they are not learning, are they no longer a community of practice? (I think I know how Wenger would answer these questions, but I'm curious to see how you think and whether you agree with Wenger.)

Physical design (structure) influences (gives birth to? restructures? re-forms? creates?) the community.