May 2010 – Page 9 – Simon Fowler

rLiving Day 8: UK/US ‘Special Relationship’ (Continuity/Multiplexity)

You’d never know it – if you live in the US – but there was a general election in the UK yesterday, that resulted in a hung parliament. The last election was four years ago and the last hung parliament was in 1974. There was very little US media coverage of the election, so most Americans probably have little idea about it.

Image: screenscrape using Jing from news.bbc.co.uk

The US election, which seems to go on for four years even though it’s only held every four years, is covered by the British media head to foot.

Relational Proximity Dimension #3 is Multiplexity: a relation between two countries is better and healthier if they interact in two or three different contexts rather than just one. This is, essentially, about knowledge of the Other.

Relational Proximity Dimension #2 is Continuity: our relationship is formed and strengthened by the amount, frequency and span of time we are together. It includes a sense of shared history, and an anticipation of the future.

With respect to ‘knowledge’; the media is one way the US and UK ‘interact’, get to know each other as nations. So you can see from the example of election coverage that there’s a huge imbalance, not to mention deficit and distortion, of information and understanding between the two countries. Unless an American and Brit meet, or travel to one another’s country, the media is the only way the countries will build an understanding of each other as a people. The news media (let’s be specific here) is just one ‘context’. We need more (type, quantity & quality) if we’re going to have a better relationship.

With respect to continuity; a relationship anticipates a future, and a shared future (Dimension #5, Purpose). A relationship cannot rest solely on its past, shared history. It has a timeline but that timeline has to extend forward if it’s to be considered a relationship. The election coverage doesn’t reveal this, but I don’t get any sense of forward thinking between the countries.

Little knowledge, and little future planning. Doesn’t sound very special to me.

rLiving Day 7: Connectivism & Education (the Relational Imperative)

In a world of rapid change, astounding technological advancement and exponential information growth, how do we educate our children to be better citizens, better members of society?

This is a question that drives George Siemens, with whom I spoke today in the context of Forum Corp’s Principles of Workplace Learning (which I’ll likely blog about some time). With Stephen Downes, Siemens has spent several years exploring the context and characteristics of knowledge and learning. That exploration has resulted in a learning theory they call connectivism.

The premise of Relational Proximity: The foundation of human flourishing is relationship. Ultimately, the foundation is love, but love is predicated on relationship. We flourish to the degree we are connected or rather, proximate.

Essentially – as well as I can articulate a fairly sophisticated and still developing theory – connectivism moves the focus of learning from a linear, structured, controlled method rooted in an industrial age, to a distributed mode of learning rooted in networks; more specifically, rooted in the connections between the nodes in a network. That’s how the brain works, and it’s now how, thanks to technology, the world’s body of knowledge is stored, built and accessed. But it’s not just about knowledge. And it’s not just about a post-modern fragmentation of knowledge without a coherent narrative or framework. In his book, Knowing Knowledge (2006, also available on pdf), Siemens says:

We exist in dimensions beyond pure cognition. We are shaped by social interactions. We are influenced by our emotions, our motivations. We require transformative (spiritual) knowledge for novel recombinations (to rethink and recast information).
We want to belong. We want to be a part of the many, but only if we are ourselves. We do not want to fade and cease to exist as we meld with the crowd. Our tools are about individualization and personalization, but we individualize so we are a (unique) part of the crowd.

He recognizes that the new media revolution is causing fragmentation, but believes that it is possible to “create a centralized outcome from a de-centralized process”. In the video below, Siemens explains (at around 10 mins) that whether it’s dealing with H1N1, or pulling together information that will identify terror suspects before they maim and murder, “we need to distribute our cognition and connect it in such a manner that allows us to address and meet the needs of the individual problems or challenges that we face.” And with respect to education in general he says that with technology, “we can understand how my interaction with you [can result] in conceptual advances on my part”. His talk is about changing education with a view not just to produce people ready for corporations (that are still highly structured and largely ill-equipped to respond to the rapid changes taking place) but to produce “better citizens, better members of society”.

Connectivism has its critics, and I have many questions of my own. It’s not a comprehensive theory – “Better citizens, better members of society” require much more than better ways of finding knowledge – but as change in the way we educate children, it holds a lot of relational promise!

rLiving Day 6: facebook Nation (Purpose)

Is Social Media a fad? Is facebook a nation?

Social Media Revolution 2, the new video by Socialnomics says No to the first, and implies Yes to the second. The first video, uploaded in July 2009, received over 1.8million hits. I’m viewer 534 of the new one so I feel, like, way cool and on the cutting edge (but actually I’m just following Marcia Conner who’s the one on the cutting edge!)

Is Social Media a fad? Well, no. Given the numbers in these great videos, it’d be like asking if the automobile is a fad. And facebook is usually the prime example of the nonfadness of social media.

This statistic may be true in terms of numbers, but the comparison with countries is a category mistake. facebook isn’t a country or nation. [I know it’s a comparison just made for effect but I’m still going to exploit it for my own purposes!]

Relational Proximity Dimension #5 is Purpose/Commonality: Our sense of connectedness and relationship is greater to the degree we have things in common or share a common purpose or identity. A good relationship has a direction to it, something that is common between the members that holds it together.

facebook is ‘simply’ a tool, an affordance for connecting people with each other. But by itself, it’s just a computer network. It’s the connections between people that matter. And those connections are rooted in either identity (Red Sox!), commonality (city, college, Captain Sully) or purpose (Protest facebook’s privacy changes!!). ‘facebook’ doesn’t have any of those elements.

But in case you needed convincing not to think that facebook is actually something to form an identity around, consider this excellent quote that my friend Dana (male) left in a comment on yesterday’s post. The quote was from Ernest Renan’s famous speech attempting to respond to the question, “What is a nation?”

“A nation,” said Renan, “is a large-scale solidarity, constituted by the feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in the past and of those that one is prepared to make in the future. It presupposes a past; it is summarized, however, in the present by a tangible fact, namely, consent, the clearly expressed desire to continue a common life. A nation’s existence is, if you will pardon the metaphor, a daily plebiscite, just as an individual’s existence is a perpetual affirmation of life.”

What is your common life? What is the identity or purpose that maintains and feeds your relationships?

Is social media a fad? Watch this: