A postmodern lesson in deconstruction

January 16th, 2012

A great many people (e.g. here, here, here) have commented about Tim O’Reilly’s dramatic question in response to a White House weekend blog entry about legislative efforts to stop online piracy. The blog entry/press release includes the assumption — as stated by the copyright industry — that legislation is needed to give them the power to control “their” intellectual property, because it’s harmed theirs and the nation’s economy. O’Reilly, however, isn’t so sure.

“In the entire discussion, I’ve seen no discussion of credible evidence of this economic harm. There’s no question in my mind that piracy exists, that people around the world are enjoying creative content without paying for it, and even that some criminals are profiting by redistributing it. But is there actual economic harm?”

I wish to point out that this question is an outstanding illustration of the philosophical concept of deconstruction, a key process involved in postmodernism (to which this blog is dedicated). Deconstruction is the great threat to our hierarchically-driven culture, because it proves that much of it is based on unproven and self-serving assumptions, like the one to which O’Reilly is referencing. In the one-to-many media world, it was easy to get away with this, because the channels available to dispatch sweeping narratives was extremely limited. Today, that’s not true, and it’s only just begun. The essential function of a hyperlink is to practice deconstruction, and a culture armed with this ability will not sit still for anything resembling bullshit.

Respected observer and friend Jackie Danicki, Director of Social Comms for Weber Shandwick in New York, posted another assumption on Facebook yesterday. An article in her hometown paper began with this sentence:

“With the first drug-related warrant of 2012 under its belt, the Chillicothe Police Department continues to investigate drug crimes and work on making the city safer.”

This prompted Jackie to state, “How blindly these people accept and repeat the disproven idea that the war on drugs is making ANY community ‘safer’. Disgraceful.”

This is another postmodern example of deconstruction, and we’re going to see it more and more as The Great Horizontal advances. Can the public actually know more and better than it’s elected representatives? As the Wicked Witch once said, “Oh, what a world!” It’s what I call “The Evolving User Paradigm,” and it’s going to bite every institution in the rear end sooner or later. 21st Century businesses will be driven by the quality of their products and services to an increasingly hip public. You won’t be able to buy your way to the top by lobbing spit-shined horse droppings at “consumers.”

As Doc says via Project VRM, Caveat Venditor.

Posted in Culture, Disruptions, Networked World, Postmodernism | No Comments » |

A bluegrass miracle to start the new year

January 8th, 2012

A few days ago, something remarkable happened that I thought I’d share. It’s a testament to the wonder of hyperconnectivity for my generation. I think this kind of thing will only be experienced by those who’ve not grown up with the Web, so these kinds of stories will gradually disappear, but that’s just a guess. Here’s what happened.

Neal Lynch, the brother of a high school girlfriend contacted me via Facebook inquiring if I had been a member of the River City Singers from Grand Rapids, Michigan during the 1960s. Facebook is the source of reconnections so plenty these days that this one would simply blend in with the others were it not for the fact that I’m able to pass it along to you. Neal lives in California, and the circumstances under which he contacted me are remarkable all by themselves, but The Great Horizontal — the connected culture we’re just beginning to know — is what made this possible.

I wrote back that I was indeed a member of that band, whereupon he sent me two photographs of myself and my two brothers playing our music in his basement. He was 12-years old at the time and shortly thereafter picked up guitar and has been playing ever since. The photos were made from old Kodak slides and are the only high-resolution, digital color pictures of the three of us playing together. The ONLY ones, and I’d never seen them before. These pictures blew my mind, because I was able to zoom in and closely examine facial expressions. The experience really took me back to when I was 18-years old. All that I am, I was back then. The experiences I’ve had in the last 47 years have shaped only what I do, but all that is really me — the gifts, the spirit, the emotions, the soul — can be seen in these pictures.

I sent copies to my two brothers and heard back from older brother Jim (the guitar picker). He told me that he was so blown away that all he could do was go sit in his back yard alone and think about our lives as a bluegrass band. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

Words cannot express my appreciation for the way Life has engineered this and especially to Neal for contacting me. In the picture to the left, you can see me, as my daughter told me via Facebook, “lost in the music.” This is true, but “lost in the music” can also be a form of “hiding from everybody,” which took a big emotional toll on me over the decades that followed.

My two brothers and I are not close. The Vietnam War broke up our band, and we all went our separate ways. It has been one of the biggest regrets of my life, because I really did and do love my brothers. That fact is inescapable when examining these pictures. We were really good, and to quote Marlon Brando, “I coulda been a contender.” Bluegrass is a music meant to be played, not just listened to. I haven’t had a banjo in many years, but this may inspire me to find something at a pawn shop. I’m playing an old Gibson Mastertone in the pictures. That instrument is worth a lot of money today.

This event in my life has reinforced everything I believe deeply about the enormity of this “second Gutenberg moment” in the history of Western Civilization. We may spit and snarl and fight it all the way, but this “Great Horizontal” is transforming everything about our culture. The more open we become, the harder it is for anybody to live a double life and to present bullshit as a cover story for one’s life. We have to rethink everything, and I envy those who are just entering adulthood, for life will be very different for them when they reach my age. The naysayers shout down change, usually because they have something to lose in terms of their position vis-a-vis everybody else.

I’m incredibly hopeful for tomorrow, because truth weighs far less than falsehood, and we’re all ridiculously overweight. That’s what my view of postmodernism is all about. These pictures have helped me in the ongoing journey to find my truth, and I am forever grateful.

Posted in Culture, LifeSlices, Networked World, Personal, Postmodernism, The Great Horizontal | No Comments » |

Postmodernism defined

September 28th, 2011

This is from a New York Times piece today on our changing world. It perfectly defines the view of postmodernism that has been expressed here for nearly ten years:

Increasingly, citizens of all ages, but particularly the young, are rejecting conventional structures like parties and trade unions in favor of a less hierarchical, more participatory system modeled in many ways on the culture of the Web.

Welcome to the Age of Participation.

Posted in Culture, Postmodernism | No Comments » |

The Future is Now (Really!)

September 15th, 2011

Here is the latest in my ongoing essay series, Local Media in a Postmodern World.

The Future is Now (Really!)

For those with eyes to see, the dawning of the Postmodern era is growing brighter as technological advances begin to reveal the vast cultural changes that lie ahead. Those of us in media must understand that the nature of the new era is horizontal, not hierarchical, which is essentially all we know. Mass media is the microphone addressing the masses from the top of the heap, and this is slowly, but surely, fading away. We simply cannot prepare for a prosperous tomorrow without accepting this truth today.

So from time to time, I write about the culture itself and the culture ahead, because the light from these glimpses can reveal much, if our minds are open and we are teachable.

I haven’t been publishing much lately, because I’m deeply immersed in an exciting new project. I can’t talk about it just yet, but I can promise that it will excite everybody who visits this little corner of the Web. Think future. Think local TV. Think the most creative thinkers today.

Posted in Culture, Disruptions, Essays, Postmodernism | 1 Comment » |

Court redefines “The Press”

August 31st, 2011

This was inevitable.

A few weeks ago, I wrote of the coming clash between police and everyday people with cameras. The issue advanced significantly on Friday with a stunning Federal Appeals Court ruling affirming the First Amendment right of citizens to photograph or create videos of police while they’re on duty. Police agencies in some communities were using an odd interpretation of wiretap laws to confiscate the camera phones of bystanders, and the court rightly found that to be unconstitutional.

The decision has far-reaching implications that go beyond the mere taking of pictures at crime, disturbance and accident scenes. By granting everyone this “right,” this ruling redefines “the press” in this country by shattering the myth of privilege associated with working for a so-called “legitimate” news organization. Some will cry that it opens Pandora’s Box, because a clearly defined “press” helps the machine of modernity function. This decision is potential chaotic, for example, to those cultural institutions who have a vested interest in keeping their “news” in the hands of a professional class (that can be manipulated). Think of an agency holding a press conference, for example. If press freedom applies to everybody, then that agency cannot restrict access to only those who work for a news organization.

The decision should make anybody in a traditional newsroom shutter. As we’ve been saying for years, the personal media revolution — what Jay Rosen calls “the Great Horizontal” — IS the second Gutenberg moment in Western civilization. It destroys the hierarchical infrastructure of the modern world and scatters authority across the people that the hierarchy was supposed to serve. Hierarchies, however, are comprised of human beings, and each has drifted into self-preservation and self-advancement rather than service.

It’s an enormous cultural shift, because power disrupted impacts everything. If the First Amendment press freedoms now belong to everyone, we clearly need an entirely different way of thinking about how information gets created and distributed in the culture. We’re going to hang onto the old for as long as we can, but we MUST be exploring ways to compete against that model, because the path for others to compete against us is now much simpler.

The ruling itself is fascinating, and I strongly recommend you go read it. The language is clear, as the following excerpts reveal. The case itself originates from a 2007 incident in Boston. Simon Glik was arrested for using his cell phone to film several police officers arresting a young man on the Boston Common. The case was thrown out in municipal court, but Glik sued. The Federal District Court affirmed the suit, which was automatically appealed to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, which issued its decision Friday.

The defendants moved to dismiss Glik’s complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), arguing that the allegations of the complaint failed to adequately support Glik’s claims and that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity “because it is not well-settled that he had a constitutional right to record the officers.” At a hearing on the motion, the district court focused on the qualified immunity defense, noting that it presented the closest issue. After hearing argument from the parties, the court orally denied the defendants’ motion, concluding that “in the First Circuit…this First Amendment right publicly to record the activities of police officers on public business is established.”

…is there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative.

It is firmly established that the First Amendment’s aegis extends further than the text’s proscription on laws “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” and encompasses a range of conduct related to the gathering and dissemination of information. As the Supreme Court has observed, “the First Amendment goes beyond protection of the press and the self-expression of individuals to prohibit government from limiting the stock of information from which members of the public may draw.”

As I wrote a few weeks ago, police in many places are using the smokescreen of wiretap law violations to avoid scrutiny, and I warned of the consequences:

The law of unintended consequences is waiting in the wings, however, as governments try to press their need for authority over this in public. The First Amendment is the “first” for a reason, and in the age of its writing, it protected those who bought ink by the barrel and those who printed their pamphlets any way they could.

…In this country, the right to report news isn’t reserved only for elite professional organizations, despite the reality that we’ve operated that way for a long time. We want and need to stay as far away from “licensing” as possible, for who then would report on those providing the licenses? Times have changed, and there’s no going back. The best we can do is adapt, and in this issue, that means getting involved.

Technology is altering many of the core beliefs and functions of the modernist world. This is why I’ve maintained a blog for the past ten years under the banner “The Pomo Blog.” Pomo stands for postmodern, and all of my ideas, suggestions and memes flow from the belief that modernism died the day the Web was created. This simple observation has been validated almost every day.

We want and need things to stay the same, because it’s what we understand. This includes media, so let me repeat for those with ears to hear that our future is along a different path, and the sooner we get on it, the better. There is no value in being the last buggy whip maker.

Posted in Disruptions, Journalism, Legal, Postmodernism, The Great Horizontal | 8 Comments » |

The Web Is Our Friend

February 20th, 2011

Here’s the latest in my ongoing essay series, Local Media in a Postmodern World.

The Web Is Our Friend

We’re watching the world change before our eyes in the Middle East as everyday people are picking up the tools of new media to spread revolution against tyranny. Most of us “over here” see this as a good thing, although we fear the vacuum that might result. Good or not is an important question, because this idea that everyday people can connect so easily is at the core of everything that’s disrupting the media world today. If everybody is a media company then the media is everybody.

I’ve dedicated my life to the belief that the Web is a good thing for culture, and I teach that we’ve just begun to feel the ramifications of a genuinely hyperconnected world of human beings. I think it’s going to change everything we know, and if I had the money, I’d invest in that wager.

And so I think it’s appropriate for me, today, to take a trip back and explain why I think the Web is our friend. Insofar as Life moves us upward and onward, it’s important to know where our belief is, for only then will we be free to explore tomorrow.

Posted in Citizens News, Culture, Disruptions, Essays, Networked World, Postmodernism, Social Media, Twitter | 1 Comment » |

What makes us so uncomfortable about Wikileaks?

December 24th, 2010

In a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887, British historian and moralist Lord Acton said these famous words: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” This utterance of human nature can be found throughout history, regardless of the politics or culture involved. There’s something about being in charge that causes those in charge to need more.

I like to write about human nature, because it’s one thing that never changes. Whether you believe in God or not, the evidence is pretty clear that man wants to be his own god. That’s why we need an internal governor to live with each other and get along. Either that, or an external governor will rule us, although another group feels we can educate ourselves to a better place. I’m unconvinced but willing to give it a shot.

Wikileaks is arguably the biggest cultural event so far of the 21st Century, and while others are debating the many issues associated with it, I want to talk about culture and human nature. Wikileaks makes everybody uncomfortable, but why? I can think of at least ten reasons.

Before I go there, however, a little review is in order for those unfamiliar with my work and philosophy. The hyperconnected Web is pulling us into an eonic cultural shift, from modernism, with its hierarchies, to postmodernism, with its participatory nature. What exactly we’ll end up with is unknown, but it won’t be what we’ve had. If you don’t like “postmodernism,” try post-colonialism, for the world of hierachies fits very well into the colonialist mindset of “the masses NEED the elite.” In a hyperconnected universe, this isn’t necessarily true, and so we have a cultural conflict that some have described as a “war.” I don’t think it’s a war; it’s just the passing of the times. And just as modernism didn’t “replace” the faith of its predecessor, postmodernism won’t entirely replace modernism either. Change, however, brings discomfort, and that’s the biggest problem with Wikileaks.

So here are ten things that make us uncomfortable about Wikileaks:

1. We can’t trust authority. Modernism needs that trust in order to function. It’s a world of oaths and promises, which are problematic in a trust-less culture. Wikileaks clearly shows that the secret world of diplomacy is very different than the one that we’ve been led to believe exists. This lack of trust is pandemic in our culture today, which is one of the reasons we’re looking to each other instead of “up” to culture’s leadership.
2. Leadership lies to us. This directly impacts trust, but there’s an even bigger issue. If we can’t trust our leadership to tell us the truth in the bigger matters of life, how can we believe they’ll tell us the truth in the mundane? “He who is faithul in little will be faithful in much,” but the opposite is also true. Nobody likes to be lied to.
3. We’re just pawns. We go through our lives knowing but not admitting that we’re really powerless, and we search for power everywhere. The demonstration of how our government routinely pulls the wool over our eyes or hides things from us screams of our powerlessness, and we feel used. That makes us uncomfortable.
4. Powerlessness leads to fear, and that threatens the basic concept that we’re safe. Wikileaks makes us feel we’re unsafe, because the facade of control presented by our government is really a house of cards, according to what we’re learning. We don’t like how that feels.
5. That leads to the next thing that makes us feel uncomfortable about Wikileaks: we wonder what’s going to happen to us? Fear seeps into our lives in ways we’re unprepared for, and this is complicated by what appears to be the collusion of the press in keeping us “down here.” The sources that the press quotes, after all, are the government. They lie, and the press passes it along. Nobody has prepared us for this, and we’re frightened.
6. We’re disillusioned, because we thought that our interests were “the country’s” interests. Clearly they are not. To the extent that big business and the banks represent “our country,” you could say that foreign affairs are about us, but Wikileaks is showing us that in all the ways that matter, our government is interested in what happens to the haves, not us.
7. We are not the “government of the people” that we were taught in elementary school. We are, instead, a government of the elite, who play us and other citizens of the world through secret dealings with other elites, regardless of their affiliation, but always to the end that the rich get richer.
8. Our institutions are not infallible. We go through our lives in the hope and belief that those in charge work on our behalf, but Wikileaks shows us that they work on behalf of themselves. This, we discover, includes every institution, and this disillusionment makes us feel uncomfortable. All are run by humans, and humans with power…”
9. The real government isn’t the one we see. The shadow government revealed by Wikileaks is really in charge, and they answer to no one but themselves. Its power is derived by keeping the truth to themselves, so what appears to us to be black can, in reality, be white. We can handle the truth, but it’s kept from us in the name of “need to know.” This is what hyperconnectivity disrupts so very well.
10. Finally, we’re learning that our global reputation is earned. All along, we’ve thought that “they” were nuts, and we’ve never quite been able to understand why “they” don’t like us. Well, hello! Those in charge here lie to “them,” and at least some of “them” know it. This makes us super uncomfortable, because we suddenly realize that anger over such can cost us lives in the name of war.

Looking ahead, Wikileaks could very well be the major catalyst in the cultural transformation that’s been brewing since the 60s. Those in charge don’t like it, because the fatted calf being whacked here belongs to them. I genuinely like the forced transparency that this has caused, because, like many of my contemporaries, I’m just sick of all the bullshit. Yes, we have it good in this country, but that’s because we have a Constitution written by some terribly wise people with funny wigs, and the extent of our discontent lies with how far we’ve drifted from that document. If this helps us get back to that, then I say that’s a good thing.

I also think this leads to an opportunity to shine for those intellectuals who believe so much in education. If we truly want to govern ourselves, we’re going to need a boatload of information upon which to base our decisions. That, too, seems like a good thing to me.

The prophets of the 60s spoke of all of this, and perhaps that’s what makes some of us most uncomfortable.

Buffalo Springfield: “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.”

And, of course, Dylan:

“Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s naming.’
For the loser now will be later to win
And the times they are a-changin’.”

Posted in Culture, Disruptions, Education, Politics, Postmodernism | 2 Comments » |

I’ll take being “connected” every time

December 17th, 2010

I’m reading with interest (again) how people apparently don’t like what they wrongly view as a big downside of connectivity – the ability of advertisers to track their online behavior. This is a meme so filled with dis- and mis-information that it’s hard to know where to begin. And regardless of the number of times I try to set the record straight (read Jarvis Coffin’s piece today), I really feel I want to talk about the upsides of connectivity, because even if the fearful nonsense that’s sprouted by so-called “privacy advocates” about this were true, I’d still take being connected over not being connected, every time.

I’ve had three big personal events in the last ten years that have shown me a side of human nature brought about by connectivity that I’d simply not encountered before. Each came from having a blog, but that was just the vehicle. What really took place was people working together on behalf of my wellbeing, and that’s not something for me to take lightly.

The first event took place in 2004. I’d been without health insurance for a couple of years and developed a lump in my left breast. I needed surgery but didn’t have the money. Jeff Jarvis convinced me to put a tip jar on my blog and ask for help. I swallowed my pride and did so. To my utter amazement, people came out of the woodwork to help, and I raised almost $4,000. It didn’t cover everything, but it came close, thanks to the generosity of people I didn’t even know.

In April of 2006, my beloved Allie left this world, and I wrote about my sorrow for my blog. My online world was all I knew, and it was there that I turned for comfort. Once again, the outpouring of love was beyond anything I could ever have imagined. People who knew her came to my site to leave messages for me, for anybody to read, a way of saying goodbye to a talented and generous friend. It comforted me more than you’ll ever know, and it changed my life forever.

The following year, CompUSA sold me an empty box instead of one with a camera inside, and they refused to do me right by it. “All sales final” trumped common sense, and I was stunned. So I wrote about it, and the story spread like wildfire. I made the front page of foxnews.com and got worldwide coverage. The next day, CompUSA called me and apologized. They gave me a gift certificate for a new camera, and I was happy with that.

These three lessons paint a picture of what’s possible on the upside of connectivity. There’s an odd form of righteousness that comes with being transparent, of sharing that which is you with the world. It’s why I think we need to be very careful in tampering with hyperconnectivity, and especially in the name of privacy. In modernism’s top-down world, there are good reasons to be private. Power is concentrated in the hands of a few, and the less they know, the better, right? In a connected universe, however, power is scattered, and transparency brings rewards that we can’t even see through our modernist-trained eyes.

We run the danger of setting back human progress by decades if we mess with the connection, regardless of our motives.

Posted in Culture, Postmodernism | No Comments » |

Aaron Sorkin’s disgust with the Web

November 7th, 2010

It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything specifically directed at the subject of this blog — postmodernism, the big cultural shift that’s underway. You can like it or not like it, but the evidence that our culture is turning is overwhelming. That I choose to call it the “postmodern” era has more to do with my pragmatic roots than any call for the tail-chasing that’s known as philosophical postmodernism. I simply believe that the modern era, it’s roots in the first Gutenberg moment, namely the publishing of human thoughts, annotating those thoughts, and the restoration of the Academy, is being replaced by a second Gutenberg moment with the Internet, its system of storage and retrieval of knowledge, its flattening of the top-down, modern-era hierarchy, and its hyperconnectivity. It is the age of participation.

What brings me to this today is a tweet by Andrew Keen, that defender of the modern way. This tweet referenced a BBC interview with Aaron Sorkin (33 minutes in), writer of the film The Social Network, but better known as the writer of the award-winning TV series The West Wing. Anytime Keen likes something, I automatically am suspicious, so I followed the link to give a listen. Sorkin’s disdain for the Internet in general and social networking in particular explains his distortion of the facts and his interpretation of the concept in general. He is a textbook modernist in hate with the postmodern world, and he explains it via the chaos that he sees. Since the interview is via podcast, I’ve transcribed the important points for you:

I think that the Internet in general, and social networking in particular, that the goal was a good one and a noble one, to connect us and bring us together, but I think that the result is the opposite. I think it’s pushing us further apart, I think that people are socializing from the solitude of their room. They’re reinventing themselves, that there’s an insincerity to it, that there’s this surface quality to it, a performance quality to it, that somebody making a wall post on your Facebook page saying, “Had a girl’s night tonight. Split five desserts. Better hit the gym tomorrow” that she is reinventing herself as a time-tested, lovable character, the 30-something girl making it on her own, and has got to watch her calories.” There’s a lack of human contact there.

On the larger picture of the Internet, there’s something more dangerous going on. First of all, anonymity is a terribly dangerous thing. There’s a lack of civility that’s appalling. There’s a meanness and a dumbness that is absolutely appalling, and it is incredibly fertile ground for bad information to get passed around.

There is an anonymous, mob mentality on the Internet that is only making us meaner and dumber globally, and that’s a terribly dangerous thing.

…The user has to be responsible somewhat. Just behave yourself. The fact that you’re anonymous doesn’t mean that you should be a jerk. Number two, you are a columnist, and the same standards that you have to meet and that I have to meet when I’m writing a television show, Internet content, the same laws should apply to Internet content. It will thin the herd.

…It has lowered the level of national discourse and national debate. No one has gotten more use out of the United States Constitution’s First Amendment than I have, which guarantees your right to free speech. So I think everyone is entitled to a voice, but I don’t think that everyone is entitled to a microphone. I think a microphone has to be earned. We’ve seen the loss of credentials as something being important. Anyone can start their own blog page  I could start aaronthoughts.com, and I can write what I want, and then the New York Times can pick up what I’ve said and then it’s out there as if I’m somebody who’s qualified to be talking about this.

…I was invited onto a program to CNN, and I was invited onto that program, not because my name was picked out of a hat, but because, whether you agree with it or not, I have done something; I have written this movie, which made these people want to invite me on this program where my opinion was asked. That is much different than everybody out there having the same voice.

Sorkin is coming at this from a modern-era perspective, but worse, he’s one of the haves of modernism. This is fine for him, but not for the minions at whom he so haughtily looks down his nose. He loathes the masses, for he sees himself as above them. This is textbook modernist, colonialist thinking. The masses are there only to serve his interests, because he entertains them.

There exists at the core of modernism, the belief that the masses need the elite, that they are incapable of maintaining any sense of order, because they are uneducated and, therefore, dangerous. Dangerous to whom? To the elite, of course.

And as the gap between the haves and have-nots widens in our world, the have-nots suddenly have a voice. The ability to fight back against what they feel is the oppression of the haves, and that is not going to end well for modernism’s hierarchy. This is why we have people such as Andrew Keen and Aaron Sorkin.

If you want a really great example of how this is playing out, read Matt Ingram’s piece today about how The Gap’s use of Facebook seems to have backfired, despite a nice, neat, top-down, PR/news controlled story in Fast Company about how successful the promotion was. The problem for The Gap is that on both Facebook and in comments to the Fast Company article, people said the opposite of what The Gap was selling. This is the bottom correcting the top, and it’s just beginning.

We are living history today, and the final words about the conflict between the old and the new won’t be written for many years. As I’ve said so many times, however, look around and ask yourself if the fruit of modernism is really working and for whom? The formulaic “go to school, work hard, get promoted” mantra of the modern era clearly serves the interests of those who created it, but does it really work for everybody?

I totally disagree with Mr. Sorkin, gifted and brilliant man that he is, for the words I’ve posted above come not from someone in touch with that which burns in the heart of humankind but rather from one comfortable with the path he chose, the path he prescribes for others and the culture itself, not because it serves others so well as much as it serves him well. Once inside the velvet rope, after all, one’s first order of business is to help keep others out.

This is the fuel of the postmodern, post-Christian, post-colonial revolution. Technology is but it’s servant.

Posted in Culture, Disruptions, Postmodernism | No Comments » |

Education is next. Are we prepared?

August 11th, 2010

Education is next, as western civilization’s second Gutenberg moment moves along, and those readers with universities in their markets need to be pursuing this story with all seriousness. I’ve been saying it for years, but now Bill Gates is saying it, so people will have to pay attention (the guy’s pay grade is a little above mine!).

For the unfamiliar, when Gutenberg printed the Bible, he tossed a significant monkey wrench in the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, because access to the Bible was what gave “the church” its role in the culture. There were kings and lords, but all feared the church, because the church controlled the masses. They were the ones who published the Bible, and here was Gutenberg defying them. Damned heretics! When you add John Wycliffe’s common language translation, anyone who could read could access formerly protected knowledge.

This event dramatically changed everything in the West, and the modern age was born.

The same thing is happening today, because the Internet is making formerly protected knowledge available at our fingertips, and any institution — there are NO exceptions — whose authority is based on protected knowledge is threatened. The 21st Century will be one of disruption upon disruption, and what comes out on the other side won’t even resemble what we have today.

Media was first, because it’s so visible. Media controls life’s narratives, and that has worked just fine for culture’s elite, but no so much for everyday people. Journalists like to think that we have some sort of “special” knowledge that enables our trade, but as the tools of personal media have advanced, that knowledge doesn’t seem so special after all.

A lot of writers think that technology is doing the disrupting, but my view has always been that it’s disgruntled people USING technology that’s doing the job. This is why the second Gutenberg moment is so important to understand. Hyperconnectivity is something very new under the sun, and it’s going to continue to get very ugly for the trappings of modernism as this chugs along.

According to TechCrunch, Bill Gates told the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe over the weekend that “five years from now on the web for free youÂ’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university.”

He believes that no matter how you came about your knowledge, you should get credit for it. Whether itÂ’s an MIT degree or if you got everything you know from lectures on the web, there needs to be a way to highlight that.

He made sure to say that educational institutions are still vital for children, K-12. He spoke glowingly about charter schools, where kids can spend up to 80% of their time deeply engaged with learning.

But college needs to be less “place-based,” according to Gates. Well, except for the parties, he joked.

I think Gates’ five year prediction might be a little soon, but I am absolutely convinced that advanced education in the latter half of the 21st Century will be far different from what you and I have known. And when the disruption takes place, thousands upon thousands of people who exist to support the institution of higher education will lose their jobs, and most university buildings won’t be needed. Sound familiar?

Just as we have with media, we’ll hear plenty from education “experts” about why this will be a bad thing, but as they make these claims, the financing for education will begin slipping away. It will be slow. It will be painful. But in the end, our culture will be better educated than it ever has been, which will also be something new under the sun. How can that really be bad?

There’s already an assault on so-called “education for profit” with bureaucrats calling for special regulations for this class of higher education. A recent Frontline report on private sector education was conceived, written and produced from a “this is God-awful…how we gonna stop it” perspective, completely missing the point of the disruption. I expect we’ll see much more of this, because in the minds of higher educators — just as it was with media companies 15 years ago — there’s just no conceivable way that anything disruptive could ever impact them.

Every institution under disruption will, of course, fight for its life, and that will include legal challenges galore. It’s here when the biggest unknowns exist and why seemingly simple concepts like net neutrality are so profoundly important for the future. Net neutrality opposition is nothing less than modernism’s status quo trying to hang onto power that no longer belongs to it. This includes the whole fiasco this week with Google and Verizon “partnering” on self-centered recommendations for net neutrality.

My advice to news departments in markets with a university is to assign someone to this as a beat. Every university in America has had discussions about this, but it’s not something they’re prepared to talk about publicly. We need to talk about it, however, because we are a culture in transition, and our role ought to be one that informs and prepares.

(Originally published in AR&D’s Media 2.0 Intel Newsletter)

Posted in Culture, Disruptions, Education, Postmodernism, Technology | 1 Comment » |