Critical Mass
In information design class today, I had a long conversation with a guy who is familiar with most of the user interfaces out there but largely unfamiliar with teaching writing. He said he’d done some tutoring, but hadn’t really taught. Our project for the class is to design materials for writing instruction for a new 3D multi-user networked environment under development called Open Croquet. I find it hard to get past the constraints of a “simulated” space which reduces the density of information a person can access. He found it hard to get past the constraints of the basic question—how do you teach writing?
The primary strength I see in the interface is that it is truly a multi-user environment. It might open up new levels of collaboration and erode the normal “preach mode” of which instructors, including myself, are very prone to. One problem is locating your “self” in relation to other collaborators in the environment given only a mouse and keyboard with no tactile or other sensory feedback. But worse than that is the problem of critical mass—how do we populate such a strange space?
I have recommended a short film to many of my colleagues, with virtually no reaction. Real life vs. internet seems like a masterpiece to me, particularly regarding “internet parties.” Early adopters of any new technology usually spend a lot of time standing around wondering where everyone else is. It seems to me that the most successful (in terms of broad adoption) interfaces of the last few years work by providing a higher density of information in the same amount of screen space—windows, tabs, feeds, etc. A 3D interface seems almost retrograde because there is actually less information and higher processing overhead. I can see attempting to demonstrate some writing heuristics (Burke’s pentad, the rhetorical triangle, tagmemic grid, etc.) in 3D but as far as the actual writing, well, writing is a 2D activity.
When asked “how do you teach writing” the only reply I had is that I sort of use a shotgun approach. I use as many creative metaphors as I can to compare it with other activities, offer frameworks for different aspects of the process and hope that something clicks with the student. I use peer review so students can compare their response to the assignment with other responses. A classroom is a multi-user environment, not merely a stage where the teacher “performs.” Somehow, in online instruction, this aspect gets stripped away. But the primary difference in classroom vs. internet is that the student has to be in the classroom. The internet is purely optional. Social activity on the internet, it seems to me, requires a lower “critical mass” to click—as Weinberger observed long ago, it only takes around ten or fifteen people reading for you to have some sense of “fame.”
I think that sustained effort is the key to learning to write. It is also the same thing that gives people mastery of the weird keyboard interfaced 3D simulated environments. It would be nice to bring these things together, but at this point, I still don’t have a good idea of how this could be achieved.
The Yea Nay Creeping Jesus
MGK has pointed at an interesting reading that posits T.S. Eliot as the discursive founder of the hierarchy of data, information, and wisdom. I’m not so sure. The roots of this hierarchy are deep and twisted, and I think better explained by the rhetoric of science.
Alan Gross argues that there was a shift between the science of Descartes which valued reason over observation, and the science of Newton placed observation as the final arbiter of fact. Reason, in this context, seems allied with wisdom and belief rather than information. I don’t think contemporary readers see the true nuances of the split easily. William Blake plays on the duality of “reason” which functions as both a descriptor of belief and a descriptor of logic in this notebook fragment:
You dont believe I wont attempt to make ye
You are asleep I wont attempt to wake ye
Sleep on Sleep on while in your pleasant dreams
Of Reason you may drink of Lifes clear streams
Reason and Newton they are quite two things
For so the Swallow & the Sparrow sings
Reason says Miracle. Newton says Doubt
Aye thats the way to make all Nature out
Doubt Doubt & dont believe without experiment
That is the very thing that Jesus meant
When he said Only Believe Believe & try
Try Try & never mind the Reason why
Blake actually had high respect for Newton and the rational belief of Descartes. He thought answers and errors were to be found in both. The indications of this are well illustrated in his letter to an editor regarding the persecution of an astrologer:
