Wednesday, July 8, 2009

It's wonderful to have full access to the writings of philosophers. My university connection helps me get the connection through JStor

Results 1–25 of 915 for << (Annette Baier) in multiple titles >> Sort by Display: Page 1 of 37 < Previous | Next > Go to page

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* 1. o Review: Agency, Nature, Transcendence, and Moralism: A Review of Recent Work in Moral Psychology Review: Agency, Nature, Transcendence, and Moralism: A Review of Recent Work in Moral Psychology o Charles T. Mathewes o Reviewed work(s): The Morality of Happiness by Julia Annas Moral Prejudices by Annette Baier Contingency and Fortune in Aquinas's Ethics by John Bowlin Mind, Value, and Reality by John McDowell Reason and the Heart: Prolegomenon to a Critique of Passional Reason by William Wainwright o The Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Summer, 2000), pp. 297-328 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 2. o What Emotions Are About What Emotions Are About o Annette Baier o Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 4, Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind (1990), pp. 1-29 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 3. o Explaining the Actions of the Explainers Explaining the Actions of the Explainers o Annette Baier o Erkenntnis (1975-), Vol. 22, No. 1/3, Epistemology, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science (Jan., 1985), pp. 155-173 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 4. o Realizing What's What Realizing What's What o Annette Baier o The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 105 (Oct., 1976), pp. 328-337 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 5. o Hume's Account of Social Artifice-Its Origins and Originality Hume's Account of Social Artifice-Its Origins and Originality o Annette Baier o Ethics, Vol. 98, No. 4 (Jul., 1988), pp. 757-778 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 6. o Trust and Antitrust Trust and Antitrust o Annette Baier o Ethics, Vol. 96, No. 2 (Jan., 1986), pp. 231-260 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 7. o MacIntrye on Hume MacIntrye on Hume o Annette Baier o Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Mar., 1991), pp. 159-163 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 8. o Mixing Memory and Desire Mixing Memory and Desire o Annette Baier o American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Jul., 1976), pp. 213-220 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 9. o The Search for Basic Actions The Search for Basic Actions o Annette Baier o American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Apr., 1971), pp. 161-170 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 10. o Hume on Heaps and Bundles Hume on Heaps and Bundles o Annette Baier o American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Oct., 1979), pp. 285-295 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 11. o A Naturalist View of Persons A Naturalist View of Persons o Annette Baier o Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Nov., 1991), pp. 5-17 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 12. o Extending the Limits of Moral Theory Extending the Limits of Moral Theory o Annette Baier o The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 83, No. 10, Eighty-Third Annual Meeting American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division (Oct., 1986), pp. 538-545 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 13. o Hume's Account of Our Absurd Passions Hume's Account of Our Absurd Passions o Annette Baier o The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 79, No. 11, Seventy-Ninth Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division (Nov., 1982), pp. 643-651 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 14. o Hume's Analysis of Pride Hume's Analysis of Pride o Annette Baier o The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 75, No. 1 (Jan., 1978), pp. 27-40 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 15. o Helping Hume to "Compleat the Union" Helping Hume to "Compleat the Union" o Annette Baier o Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 41, No. 1/2 (Sep. - Dec., 1980), pp. 167-186 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 16. o Baier on Hume's Absurd Passions Baier on Hume's Absurd Passions o Robert J. Fogelin o The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 79, No. 11, Seventy-Ninth Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division (Nov., 1982), p. 652 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 17. o Reply to Dahl, Baier and Schneewind Reply to Dahl, Baier and Schneewind o Ala Sdair Macintyre o Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Mar., 1991), pp. 169-178 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 18. o A Note on Justice, Care, and Immigration Policy A Note on Justice, Care, and Immigration Policy o Annette C. Baier o Hypatia, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Spring, 1995), pp. 150-152 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 19. o Trusting People Trusting People o Annette C. Baier o Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 6, Ethics (1992), pp. 137-153 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 20. o Caring about Caring: A Reply to Frankfurt Caring about Caring: A Reply to Frankfurt o Annette C. Baier o Synthese, Vol. 53, No. 2, Matters of the Mind (Nov., 1982), pp. 273-290 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 21. o The Intentionality of Intentions The Intentionality of Intentions o Annette C. Baier o The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Mar., 1977), pp. 389-414 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 22. o Commodious Living Commodious Living o Annette C. Baier o Synthese, Vol. 72, No. 2, Kurt Baier Festschrift, Part II (Aug., 1987), pp. 157-185 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 23. o How Can Individualists Share Responsibility? How Can Individualists Share Responsibility? o Annette C. Baier o Political Theory, Vol. 21, No. 2 (May, 1993), pp. 228-248 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 24. o Moralism and Cruelty: Reflections on Hume and Kant Moralism and Cruelty: Reflections on Hume and Kant o Annette C. Baier o Ethics, Vol. 103, No. 3 (Apr., 1993), pp. 436-457 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation * 25. o What do Women want in a Moral Theory? What do Women want in a Moral Theory? o Annette C. Baier o Noûs, Vol. 19, No. 1, 1985 A. P. A. Western Division Meetings (Mar., 1985), pp. 53-63 o o Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation

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10:41:32 AM    
 Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Whether you're a teacher or a researcher the combination of weblogging and the proliferation of incredible knowledge-making/communicating tools is causing, I believe, a knowledge explosion.

Let's leave aside the fact that there is no longer a corporate or state-ist stranglehold on what information and knowledge is disseminated to whom. It's a big, no, HUGE, topic but not the one I want to talk about at the moment.

My emphasis is upon the tools for thinking and communicating that are now available that were unavailable, say, twenty years ago. We're only indirectly talking about machines. Yes, this thinking and communicating is done on machines and with the aid of thinking devices made possible by machines. But all of this has magnified our ability to know, to teach, to communicate and to organize.

Let's look at what a professional educator and communicator had 30 years ago: chalk, blackboard, overhead, book, movie. S/he was bounded both in what was learned or constructed and what s/he disseminated by those tools.

Now add,say, personal ability to construct and manipulate data-basesthe ability to converse, at length and indepth (via discussion groups, blogs, chat rooms, etc), the ability to access and/or collaboratively construct complex knowledge systems on wikis and the ability to construct concept/mind maps (FreeMind, NovaMind(NovaMInd), and timelines via Dipity(Dipity). With these tools we've considerably aided our ability to think and communicate as individuals.

It's not just that we've empowered groups of people to think and decide as a group. We have! And bravo!!

We've given tools for thinking and communicating to individuals that considerably enhance thought processing, organization and the ability to communicate complex ideas to others.

Individuals with enhanced idea processing and accessing power are working with others similarly altered.

We should expect a magnified ability for learners to conduct self-directed learning and for teachers to communicate information directly and, more importantly, to aid individuals in their quest for information and skills that give them the power to manage their own life spaces.

If part of the ability to rule is to control information flow and to minimize understanding and organizing powers of subject peoples … I think government that is run for the few off the backs and lives of the many is becoming less and less likely.

I eagerly await new developments.
7:10:04 AM    

 Sunday, April 29, 2007

Summary: This extension of my group knowledge building model isn't so much one of structure as of membership. It occurred to me that with the support of an "expertise exchange" either a classroom or professional knowledge-making group could extend it's efforts and effectiveness. [This entry was originally drafted on March 22 ... but somehow was left in the draft stack. Here it is --- a bit later than I planned.]
My point is that most groups will run into a "wall" at some point or another. That is, they will soon find that, even between them, they don't have the answers to some of their important and central questions. Nor, they find, do they have resources that quickly provide those answers. Sometimes just waiting out the impasse may help. Perhaps a new problem solving technique will get them there. There are undoubtedly problem solving algorithms that could be adapted to the online group. But, even then, the collective knowledge base and problem solving expertise may not be enough.

Does the group disband or does it look for an expert … someone who will volunteer or who will, for pay, get them through the wall?

To make this situation more imaginable let's first start with a within-class learning group. It could be online or it could be face to face. The group is working within one subject and with problems that are within the reach of the expertise of the teacher. Teacher sets up a problem series and the groups independently tackle the problems [using within class materials and those they can find in the school and class library as well as what they can find online. Often, early in their skill development, occasionally when the group has become more sophisticated at solving posed problems, the group will hit a wall. For the wall we have the teacher. The teacher, who has picked the problems that he/she can solve or has solved, steps in to offer the timely and useful hint … just, barely, enough to get the group over its problem-solving hurdle. The group solves that problem and learns content and problem solving skills in the process. As the class progresses more and more complex problems are solvable by the group, partly because of advances in content expertise and partly because of its growth in problem-solving sophistication.

Take a look at my original model, below.

KnowledgeMakingGroup

Now imagine that this class is online. The learning environment is, for the most part, Moodle, say, or Blackboard. In the Illustration we may be midway in the group problem solving experience; that is, the group decided at an earlier time, last week, as an example, to partition the original, BIG, problem into S1, S2, S3 ... and S5 … smaller problems. The teacher stands either as the coordinator (RC) or is paired with the coordinator -- when it's becoming obvious that whoever has rotated into coordinator position is "stuck", and it is obvious that the other members (R1-R5) aren't able to help. This too seems to be a "doable" approach to within-class problem-solving-based instruction.

In "real" life, the group may not have access to the teacher who happens to have problem solving skills appropriate to their problem. From the perspective of a spontaneously organized problem-solving group ... the classroom is "rigged".

After all, in real life the problems haven't yet been solved. The group has organized in the hopes of surmounting a problem that they aren't sure can be solved. Yet, determination, frustration and solidarity, perhaps, have them joining together to try anyway.


.

Now another, big jump … to non-structured learning situations in which the group has not been organized around a class and acquiring competence in some school-ish way but is, instead a) self-organized and b) motivated by an issue, each member having some reason to be invested in addressing, talking about, learning about, and/or resolving that issue. Picture the situation in which a group of people have locally self-organized around this issue. Each person is computer-comfortable and in communication with the others. Between them they have either partitioned the problem into subproblems -- or have each tried to tackle the problem separately. Each has kept her/his own weblog of work to date. And, using GoogleGroups, they have discussed and attempted resolution without, as far as they can see, any workable synthesis that "solves their problem". Their assigned leader has reviewed their steps to date and all agree that they DO still have the problem/issue but DON'T have a workable solution. Their individual weblogs (W1-W5) as well as their joint group weblog -- GW in the picture above -- reflects their lack of satisfactory closure. They're stuck!!

In the class the teacher would come at the sign of a waving hand in the air or in response to an email asking for help. In real life, the part that isn't in a classroom, who or what fills the role of the teacher? Perhaps a content expert. Better yet, a content expert who can help the group "discover" the answer [Discovered answers can often sink in deeper and hold on longer]. Given the reality of "need and expert" the group needs some means to get the volunteer or paid services of an expert who will provide enough expertise to get them over this hump... and to be available for the next one.
7:25:29 PM    

 Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Summary: I praise the free knowledge-making possibilities now available on the web. Some would have said, did, in fact say, that team knowledge development could be strongly advanced by the combination of weblogs and wikis. It's now a free reality.(draft 3/19/07).

This will be the first draft.. less subtlety than I'd like. At the very least it's a place-marker for what I consider to be a worthwhile "philosophy, technology and the times" entry. While keeping my original title for the sake of continuity I find "Team Knowledge Development" to be too obscure. The phrase conjures up sports and hi-tech think tanks... that is too small a venue. The possibilities are far huger than that!!

Why? Think: do we need more knowledge (def. that which allows you to satisfy basic needs in a constantly changing, always demanding environment)? Yes. Where can it come from: any one of the 6 billion entities that call themselves human.

So anything that advances the ability to adjust and adapt and shape for humanity is needed. Sure. No argument, one might say! But, I am also arguing that computers linked via the internet and these free knowledge-making venues , if generally and broadly available and applied, offer us the chance to accelerate the development of useful individual and social behavior.

Individual and group and community, for that matter, knowledge construction is becoming accessible to those who access to the internet via the 100 dollar computer, the internet, and, of course, some kick-off training to develop the taste for it (there is always a need) and a starter set of skills. The taste and the starter set may be more of a challenge than the technology. But, once developed, will have I think, HUGE potential repercussions.

Take 1 group blog on blogger.com and a wiki from wikispaces or from an inexpensive open-source provider (see, for example, www.siteground.com - 4.95 per month) and you have either a free or very inexpensive group knowledge-making environment.

Three years ago it was an operational reality in well-heeled think tanks or online classrooms like Blackboard and Moodle. This was utilization in one --even unrecognized as a "knowledge-making venue" because doing so in the guise of traditional teaching-- of a far broader list of potential individual and social knowledge-making activities. Research as a general knowledge-making activity was by-and-large untouched. This year, while it isn't commonplace, it is possible for all and sundry and has developers and forward-looking venture capitalists recognizing the possibilities.

Now we have to create the social processing that allows us to do what the tools now allow.


The following is a connectivity weblog entry from early December of 2003.
Summary: I illustrate and explain a small group knowledge-making model. I do this in order to distinguish communicative contexts for weblogging. The general weblogging case --well described by Dave Pollard in a recent entry (See also my response and links here)-- is different from the situation in which weblogging is part of an individual or group research (knowledge-making) activity. My sense is that, since new knowledge development requires extensive introspective note taking, research journaling and, often, the testing of successive hypotheses, a wiki is better suited to the process. I've left the external communication role (of more finished pieces of research work) to the weblog. Details below and in notes linked to below.

In my above-referenced  entry I noted:

…if the issue really is expanding individual and collective knowledge, then the inter-blogger steps are a "surface" process which is an overlay on another, less accessible phenomenon, namely, a group's acquisition of new (at least to its members) and goal-related knowledge. IMHO the explanation of the blogging process in this context would be better served if some explanation of essential knowledge-making actions were folded into, or at least linked to from within, the discussion of sequential blogging behavior.

I followed this expressed concern with notetaking concerning the differences between general case blogging and blogging in the context of research/knowledge-making. For my set of notes using Dave Pollard's blogging steps but expressed from the point of view of an individual writing an in-house blog for a working research/knowledge-making group look here.

Those notes led to my construction of this entry's diagram which I offer for your consideration and evaluation. It, too, is drawn from the within-research-group perspective.Explanation of the research and publication process follows beneath the diagram.

KnowledgeMakingGroup

Most research group endeavors have a life cycle--preceding from formation and ending with either a mature knowledge product or a partial version of the planned-for knowledge product, (or, in the extreme worst case, nothing that was intended nor even any unintended side product that has value). The within-group processes I describe below are aimed somewhere in the middle of the life of the research group.

At the base of the diagram you will see 5 R-S pairs. Those represent 5 researcher pairings with a research(knowledge-making) "situation". Each has researcher's assignment has two aspects: first is to "getting a good answer" to a research question and second is to make it accessible, via explanation, to other members of the research team.

Each researcher's notes, problems, results and explanations are detailed in her/his respective wiki. As part of participating in the research team each researcher comments upon, offer suggestions for, evaluate, etc. , the work of two other team members--via the evaluated member's wiki. Those processes are signified signified by the dashed arrows from each researcher to two other team members' wiki documents (those documents are W1, W2, W3, etc.). Such cross-communication can help to assure that the researcher will be developing her/his findings and explanations in ways that are compatible with the larger knowledge question which all are addressing with their particular research projects.

There is one other (the sixth) team member: the Reporter/Coordinator(RC). S/he will also be reading/evaluating the wiki's from the perspective of the larger knowledge-making situation of which the separate researcher situations are each distinct parts. S/he will also be reading from the perspective of an explication of the total product to a public.

In the early project stages the research coodinator/reporter documents impresssions of progress in the in-house summary document which is the group wiki (GW).

For non-group members summary snippets are issued via the group weblog (GWL); its purpose is to document progress and/or to justify solicitations of material support from a suprasystem or from a granting agency. Informational support might come via weblog comments from collaborating groups in a larger enterprise (e.g., a containing suprasystem) or from the broader public made up of knowledge consumers and competing research enterprises. Any responses from those outside sources will be fed back into the group wiki as a means of challenging/updating within-group work.

A last observation: the dashed line surrounding the group is meant to indicate that the boundary is voluntary. All members voluntarily limit their communications to fit within the bounds of the research mission. This self-limitation will occur for some portion of their time as dictated by their interests and the commitment made to the group. In the best of research groups this self-limitation is in fact empowerment. (See my entry about knowledge-making in bounded groups)

[Note 1: I have expanded the number of tools used to two: wiki and weblog. When a publication is to show it's edit history and to allow text intrusions ranging from paragraph level editing by multiple editors to page-level comments, I've chosen a wiki. When the document itself is to remain intact but is be accessible to attached commentary and for linking, I've chosen a weblog. It is possible to follow the design using weblogs alone (replace all wikis with weblogs).The wiki, however, affords a far more nuanced set of possibilities.]

[Note 2: Larger knowledge-making enterprises could be approached by using the illustrated group design as a module and by adding necessary organizationalinfrastructure and process]

[Note 3: If we replace the researcher and group wiki's with in house circulation of a weekly progress update--- on paper, and if we replace the group weblog with newsletter publications and/or journal articles -- again, on paper , then we still have a "plan". How much better off are we , at this level of analysis, because we HAVE inserted Wiki and Weblog?]


11:43:40 AM    

Summary: I praise the free knowledge-making possibilities now available on the web. Some would have said, did, in fact say, that team knowledge development could be strongly advanced by the combination of weblogs and wikis. It's now a free reality.

This will be the first draft.. less subtlety more like a placemarker.

Take a group blog on blogger and a wiki from wikispaces or from an inexpensive open-source provide and you have a low cost/no cost group knowledge-making environment. Three years ago it was an operational reality in well-healed think tanks.. but not that well disseminated. Now, while it isn't commonplace, it is possible for all and sundry.

Now we have to create the social processing that allows us to do what the tools now allow.


The < a href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0106698/2003/12/05.html#a202">following from early December of 2003.
Summary: I illustrate and explain a small group knowledge-making model. I do this in order to distinguish communicative contexts for weblogging. The general weblogging case --well described by Dave Pollard in a recent entry (See also my response and links here)-- is different from the situation in which weblogging is part of an individual or group research (knowledge-making) activity. My sense is that, since new knowledge development requires extensive introspective note taking, research journaling and, often, the testing of successive hypotheses, a wiki is better suited to the process. I've left the external communication role (of more finished pieces of research work) to the weblog. Details below and in notes linked to below.

In my above-referenced  entry I noted:

…if the issue really is expanding individual and collective knowledge, then the inter-blogger steps are a "surface" process which is an overlay on another, less accessible phenomenon, namely, a group's acquisition of new (at least to its members) and goal-related knowledge. IMHO the explanation of the blogging process in this context would be better served if some explanation of essential knowledge-making actions were folded into, or at least linked to from within, the discussion of sequential blogging behavior.

I followed this expressed concern with notetaking concerning the differences between general case blogging and blogging in the context of research/knowledge-making. For my set of notes using Dave Pollard's blogging steps but expressed from the point of view of an individual writing an in-house blog for a working research/knowledge-making group look here.

Those notes led to my construction of this entry's diagram which I offer for your consideration and evaluation. It, too, is drawn from the within-research-group perspective.Explanation of the research and publication process follows beneath the diagram.

KnowledgeMakingGroup

Most research group endeavors have a life cycle--preceding from formation and ending with either a mature knowledge product or a partial version of the planned-for knowledge product, (or, in the extreme worst case, nothing that was intended nor even any unintended side product that has value). The within-group processes I describe below are aimed somewhere in the middle of the life of the research group.

At the base of the diagram you will see 5 R-S pairs. Those represent 5 researcher pairings with a research(knowledge-making) "situation". Each has researcher's assignment has two aspects: first is to "getting a good answer" to a research question and second is to make it accessible, via explanation, to other members of the research team.

Each researcher's notes, problems, results and explanations are detailed in her/his respective wiki. As part of participating in the research team each researcher comments upon, offer suggestions for, evaluate, etc. , the work of two other team members--via the evaluated member's wiki. Those processes are signified signified by the dashed arrows from each researcher to two other team members' wiki documents (those documents are W1, W2, W3, etc.). Such cross-communication can help to assure that the researcher will be developing her/his findings and explanations in ways that are compatible with the larger knowledge question which all are addressing with their particular research projects.

There is one other (the sixth) team member: the Reporter/Coordinator(RC). S/he will also be reading/evaluating the wiki's from the perspective of the larger knowledge-making situation of which the separate researcher situations are each distinct parts. S/he will also be reading from the perspective of an explication of the total product to a public.

In the early project stages the research coodinator/reporter documents impresssions of progress in the in-house summary document which is the group wiki (GW).

For non-group members summary snippets are issued via the group weblog (GWL); its purpose is to document progress and/or to justify solicitations of material support from a suprasystem or from a granting agency. Informational support might come via weblog comments from collaborating groups in a larger enterprise (e.g., a containing suprasystem) or from the broader public made up of knowledge consumers and competing research enterprises. Any responses from those outside sources will be fed back into the group wiki as a means of challenging/updating within-group work.

A last observation: the dashed line surrounding the group is meant to indicate that the boundary is voluntary. All members voluntarily limit their communications to fit within the bounds of the research mission. This self-limitation will occur for some portion of their time as dictated by their interests and the commitment made to the group. In the best of research groups this self-limitation is in fact empowerment. (See my entry about knowledge-making in bounded groups)

[Note 1: I have expanded the number of tools used to two: wiki and weblog. When a publication is to show it's edit history and to allow text intrusions ranging from paragraph level editing by multiple editors to page-level comments, I've chosen a wiki. When the document itself is to remain intact but is be accessible to attached commentary and for linking, I've chosen a weblog. It is possible to follow the design using weblogs alone (replace all wikis with weblogs).The wiki, however, affords a far more nuanced set of possibilities.]

[Note 2: Larger knowledge-making enterprises could be approached by using the illustrated group design as a module and by adding necessary organizationalinfrastructure and process]

[Note 3: If we replace the researcher and group wiki's with in house circulation of a weekly progress update--- on paper, and if we replace the group weblog with newsletter publications and/or journal articles -- again, on paper , then we still have a "plan". How much better off are we , at this level of analysis, because we HAVE inserted Wiki and Weblog?]


11:29:54 AM    
 Thursday, October 12, 2006

Summary: My move into teaching was propelled by my first reading of Martin Buber[base ']s I and Thou .

One core, resonant idea at the center: our transactions with others glow with moral purpose. Buber notes that if we treat others as an instruments in our own, self-centered life plan, we are [OE]it[base ']-ing those others, reducing each into a set of qualities that are valued only as far as they help in our own life plan, like puppets in a Punch and Judy play. Buber offered a deeply argued other approach.

There is, he suggests, also the possibility of Thou-ing another. Addressing that other in her or his fullness now and in the future, in both actuality and potentiality. This meant to me that my approach to another should respect her or his wholeness, her or his integrity as now seen and as envisioned in the future.

This meant that a great act of teaching would bring a person[base ']s understanding and actions in better alignment with the translation of actuality, what is at every level, and potentiality, what could be.

What a [base "]Thou[per thou]-based teaching relationship would not be:

  • simply being nice, ie wooing or by other means making the other person comfortable
  • teaching elements of a common curriculum or of [OE]cultural literacy[base '] for their own sakes (as opposed to as incidental to a thou-centred plan for becoming or enablement)
  • comfortable, necessarily. What I am, most fundamentally and now is not necessarily accessible to me. What future versions of me that might be best interpretations of the core [base "]me[per thou] might, at this present moment, be incomprehensible, strange, even repellent to me.

I conclude by saying that I believed then, as a 22 year old, and as I do now, more than forty years later, that helping others become what they have the will and potentiality to become is a great and good thing. It gave me goose bumps to think of the possibilities -- still does!!

I still think that this pursuit is a noble calling, a great quest. Noble because difficult and challenging. Noble because Thou-based. Noble because, if successful, it yields great works of living human art, one miracle at a time. It[base ']s a quest because the goal is not always realized and because the fulfillment is the journey as much as it is the destination.

Oh. Last thought: the sign on my teaching shop was going to be the title of this entry. Teaching: Your Thing.

One of my first jobs, I realized, way back then, would be to figure out what on earth that meant!


3:33:11 PM    
 Sunday, December 4, 2005

Summary: Bill Wong's parents and I mull over what Bill should learn next. We've just finished a conference with the teacher. Now we explore the same topic with Bill's parents.

The parental take on the "short and sweet" is probably neither short nor particularly sweet to any of the others involved in the question of what and how to teach.

[See my earlier entries in the What to Teach sequence of entries, First entry here , and the second here . This entry and the one which will follow will focus on parental and individual takes on exactly the same profile of skills.
* A reminder: Bill Wong is a hypothetical person. His profile does represent, however, the very real complexity that each person, each learner brings to the discussion of what to learn/what to teach.

Bill W's profile

Now Bill's Parents and I process Bill's Results. What do they think should be taught?
Mr. and Mrs. Wong have requested a review of Bill's test results. They want to plan his middle school and high school education.

As we sit down they both glance at their copy of Bill's Profile of test results(Copy just above )

Mr.Wong: Is this some kind of report card or something? We called for this meeting to talk about Bill's future.
Spike Hall: It's Bill's Achievement Profile. I've taken all of his achievement test results and summarized them in this form. This form or graph can really help us think about Bill's future.
Mr. W makes sure his copy is the same as mine and then notees, " It's pretty complicated , I see that, but I don't see any of the courses he's signed up for on the chart!. What's it have to do with what we're meetings for --
And what're the vertical lines about and the colored dots and so on. Mrs. W nods in agreement.
Spike Hall: Ok. Each vertical line is an area of development. For example, gross motor development translates into, say, athletics. Each vertical line is an, like athletics, area of important development that starts with what you and I and Bill -- everybody-- generally bring into our first days a Kindergarten class and ends with what most of us master in our late teens. Generally speaking, roughly one hundred things, things that need to be learned pretty much in order, are, learned each year of school. Of course there are individual differences and school to school differences.
Mrs. W asks, "Are those differences important?" Oh -- and what is that horizontal line across the graph. Is that important? I see some of his dots, five, are above the line and a couple are a little bit below? Spike Hall: That's an important question Mrs. W. That line represents what other boys and girls of Bill's age are capable of doing -- on the average. You can see --
Mr. W interrupts to say: Fine Motor, Gross Motor, Math and Ethics are the ones that are obviously above and Receptive Language and Expressive Language are below. What does all of that mean. In everyday speak? Bill's capable of reading and writing and speaking but, at least on tests and during observations, he comes up a shade under the class average in those skills. But in athletics, in penmanship and in drawing and in knowing and sharing what he considers right and wrong he is outstanding. Sometimes his skills in communication -- or reluctance, I'm not sure, your experience at home may help clear up that mystery -- get in the way of his strong sense of right and wrong and of justice. But he's clearly a leader, a leader for the good, in my opinion, in these areas.
Mr. W: So he's high in some areas and low in others. Are we supposed to do something because of that? Spike Hall: I'd say yes! We build on this at home and at school. We can, I believe, be pretty darn active in involving Bill's high skills (and high interests) in his schooling and in helping him bring enhance the other skills to support his strong areas. I believe that, now that we have this information, we can use it to tailor how we advise Bill on activities and how we encourage him to take on new projects and to set goals. In other words, with this material in hand you and I and Bill can all make life more challenging and more interesting to Bill. At the same time, we can help him see how other areas (math for example) can support the growth areas that he really does like and with which he has such considerable skill.
Mr. W: Makes sense so far. But we need to talk over the results with Bill. It's ok, right? (Hall nods emphatically). He's never seen this kind of thing before. Spike Hall: Makes sense. Then maybe we can have a follow up with all of us and Bill putting together a plan or outline that builds upon Bill's interests and strengths to take him farther on the path he seems to be on.
Mr. W: Hold it. What if he changes his mind three years from now? What if he wants to, all of a sudden, focus on, say, poetry -- which is not interesting to him now. Spike Hall: That would be his choice. The idea isn't to make him a slave to his best skills or his least skills. Rather-- it is to have his skills work for him and for his life interests (and your backing for them) be in the driver's seat rather than some anonymous and bureaucratic textbook series.
When he has the inclination to shift his priorities our job isn't to stop him or to say, blindly, "Go for it!". Our job, at least as far as I see it, is to help him learn and to help him project the consequences of his actions and plans into the future -- and to weigh those consequences against his needs and our greater experience.
Mr. W: Sounds good. Mrs Wong: Good but work too. But nothing we wouldn't be doing anyway. This is the first time I remember thinking that school and home we're obviously working for the same thing. Spike Hall: Nice to hear you say that Mrs. W. I'll look forward to hearing from you two and Bill after you've had your first talk. If I can help interpret or back up interpretation at school with Bill in class let me know. Then we'll all get together in the next 2-3 weeks.
I appreciate your coming over and your kind comments so much!!


The Wong's and Hall exit school building on way to cars. Mr and Mrs. drive away having an animated conversation. Hall waves and smiles. They're too busy to notice!
3:59:37 PM    
 Thursday, July 21, 2005

Summary: It would be a complicated proof, at this point in our [proven] understanding of weblogs, but wouldn't we start with the "Goose to Gander" inference?

"What's good for the goose is good for the gander!" is intpreted to mean , "What is good for a man is equally good for a woman; or, what a man can have or do, so can a woman have or do." This comes from an earlier proverb, "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander."
From Bartleby's New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy

That is, if weblogging enhances deuterolearning for students then don't we at least make the initial assumption that it enhances learning for teachers, too?

Thus, given that a significant fraction of professorial behavior involves teaching, don't we also assume that weblogging would be good for the learning of professors too?

Therefore, I offer the following hypothesis:
Intensive, consistent and persistent professorial weblogging significantly accelerates meaningful professorial learning* **.

Let's get on with specific research efforts on professorial weblogging! Let's find out what aspects of weblog form, structure and/or process separates translates this speculative logic into a comprehensive set of real findings which verify the utility of weblogs in the job-related practice of professors !


*Where meaningful professorial learning is defined as documented changes in behavior, i.e., real and significant change in content of knowledge shown in relevant instructional, research and service domains.
**"Meaningful" is meant to distinguish job-relevant learning from learning that does not relate to the professors role or competence with her/his specific discipline. No disrespect is intended towards other learning that may also occur. However, those learnings that enhance the income and prestige for the institution, the advancement and known disciplinary competence of the professor and the quality of education for the student are seen to be centrally important in the higher education context.
1:35:18 PM    
 Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Summary: Earlier his month the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article on faculty weblogs in higher education, it was Bloggers Need Not Apply by Ivan Tribble (a pseudonym). The apparent message of this entry: "Don't write a weblog if you want to get be hired as a faculty member; the risks far outweigh the gains" [or words to that effect]. Stephen Downes' reaction to the entry: "[In a nutshell you've said :] Let's keep our lives secret before we take a new position; that will make it much more certain the job will be a good fit. [And I say, ] "Rubbish". More reactions below.

Given that I'd just written about multiuserweblog set ups in university settings this counter-response to "rubbish" seemed apt. More, , possibly, later.****


SearleJRConHead.jpg

A respected University of California Philosophy Professor, J. Searle, in a public service appearance. His purpose, in this case, was to make his ideas accessible to the broader San Francisco Bay Area community. (details on all professorial duties immediately below). Professors have multiple public functions to fill.


---------------------------

Background on being a professor, i.e., teaching faculty member in a college or university: The professorial position is not paid by the hour but, rather, in return for carrying out of certain functions. The are three central functions are generally seen as:

  1. make new knowledge (=scholarship),
  2. transmit knowledge to students (undergraduate and graduate), and
  3. help the institution carry out its functions now and in the future (=teaching), within the institution or within the community within which the institution functions (=service).

The quality of a professor's efforts in each of these areas depends on the quality of her or his written/spoken/or-otherwise-communicated knowledge or thoughts.* In short, the professor is a public knowledge resource in her or his specialty area and is expected to be a good, thoughtful and reasoned thinker in the general sense communicating effectively to a fairly wide audience in a considerable variety of situations. In the classroom the professor is expected to be an effective communicator and to be a just grader. She/he is expected to use her or his influence and power in an ethical fashion.

The principle of academic freedom affords the professor (at whatever level) the room to pursue knowledge development in her or his field as he or she sees fit. The methods of research must be both legal and moral. The degree to which the topic(s) of those investigations are popular or acceptable to a general public, even to Deans or to Board of Trustee members is, at least in theory, out of bounds.

First criticism of Tribble's view (you can find plenty of them by searching Google under "Ivan Tribble"), nicely said by Evan Roberts in his weblog (one of many in the University of Minnesota multiuser weblog system) Coffee Grounds:

To me it seems that the gist of Tribble's article is that the search committee was shocked (shocked) to learn that their candidates had outside interests and emotions that might prevent candidates from spending 14 hours a day on research or teaching.

He gives a lead in to some other higher ed weblog material from Daniel Drezner

"…"[Untenured faculty are cautioned to] think very, very, very carefully about the costs and benefits of blogging under one's own name (emphasis original)." I'm not sure that I thought very, very, very carefully about blogging under my own name; perhaps very carefully.


as well as the following analysis

Can academics be bloggers?

A truncated version of what I said at the Public Choice roundtable with Michael Munger and Chris Lawrence on the question of "Can Academics Be Bloggers?":

1) Of course academics can be bloggers. The more interesting questions are:

a) Can academics be good bloggers?

b) Should academics be bloggers?

My answer both of these questions is "yes, with significant caveats."

CAN ACADEMICS BE GOOD BLOGGERS?

The answer should be yes:

1) 40% of TTLB's Higher Beings have Ph.D.s, so clearly it's possible.

2) Academics possess skills that are useful for blogging -- expertise, writing experience, analytical and critical thinking skills, etc.

That said, the answer for many academics is no:

1) To put it gently, some top-notch academics have not completely mastered the art of the blog. In all likelihood this will change, but it points to a barrier to entry for good scholars; unlike lower-level primates like myself, high-profile academics will often attract attention the moment they start blogging, stripping them of the opportunity to stumble out of the gates and move down the learning curve under the radar.

2) Furthermore, tenured academics have to adjust to a new and strange power structure if they start blogging. Suddenly they're in a world where mere graduate students, or worse yet, people possessing only a B.A., wield more power and influence than them. I mean, it's been three months and Munger is still in a fetal position from being exposed to my "mighty" hit count. And that's just between a full professor and an assistant professor!

3) Richard Posner's theory of public intellectuals suggests that as academics stray from their area of expertise, their signal to noise ratio of the information they generate drops. Some academic bloggers strongly confirm this hypothesis.

4) Yes, academics have writing experience, but they've been trained within an inch of their lives to eschew clear prose for jargon-laden discourse. There are sound and unsound reasons for this within the academy, but for blogging to the general public it's disastrous.

5) It should be stressed that these hindrances are not permanent, but they do constitute a barrier to entry.

SO, SHOULD ACADEMICS* ENGAGE IN BLOGGING**?

*By academics, I mean untenured ones, for tenured faculty [ motivation to exert oneself is less?, see however Manho Singhman's notes on why he blogs below. ]

**By blogging, I mean [general blogging-- my phrase SPH] rather than blogging only about one's research, which is an unalloyed good. [emboldening is mine , SPH. See, for example, excerpts below*** from Mano Singham's Web Journal

1) Blogging can be thought of as part of service. It's a low-cost way of reaching beyond the ivory tower. It's also acting like a quasi-referee of public intellectual output.

2) As blogging has become more respectable, the stigma associated with the activity has faded away.

NO:

1) It can be addictive.

2) If the blog is successful, it will breed resentment from colleagues, because it creates an alternative path to acclaim where tenured faculty do not function as gatekeepers.

3) Colleagues who do not write for a wide audience will overestimate the amount of time you devote to blogging, because they assume a one-to-one correspondence between public articles and scholarly articles (the actual ratio is more like 1:3). They will also underestimate the possibility that blogging is a complement rather than a substitute to traditional scholarship.

4) Scholars who out themselves as not part of the mainstream political persuasion of academics will have some uncomfortable hallway moments -- though this cost is often overestimated.

5) More serious are the academic political minefields that blogging can trigger -- you know, thin-skinned senior academics who are perfectly willing to carry a blog grudge into the academic realm.


*There are gradations in professorial rank (in the US, typically, instructor, assistant professor, associate professor, professor-- professor the highest).


** Movement through the ranks is supposed to relate to quality in carrying out the actions associated with the role. Generally the actions are categorized as teaching, scholarship and service. While much time can be, and is, in some cases, spent assessing each, in my experience rough and ready solutions are applied in order that committee members can return to more familiar, and less intense, duties. I would say that, in general the rough and ready translations are: quality of scholarship translates as "number of juried journal publications (prestigious , juried, journals preferred) per year", quality of teaching translates into a summary of student evaluations on after-class polls and quality of service translates as "number of worthy nonteaching, nonscholarship activities (committee work is typical) successfully undertaken.


***Mano Singham's "Why I blog"

I reached a kind of landmark this week with this blog. I have been making entries since January 26th, posting one item each weekday, except for a three-week break in June. As a result I have now posted over 100 entries and consisting of over 100,000 words, longer than either of my two published books.

Why do I blog? Why does anyone blog? The Doonesbury comic strip of Sunday, July 3, 2005 fed into the stereotype of bloggers as self-important losers who cannot get real jobs as writers, and feed their ego by pretending that what they say has influence. The idea behind this kind of disparaging attitude is that if no one is willing to pay you to write, then what you have to say has no value.

Of course, there are a vast number of bloggers out there, with an equally vast number of reasons as to why they blog so any generalization is probably wrong. So I will reflect on why I blog. Some bloggers may share this view, others may have different reasons. So be it.

The first reason is the very fact that because of the blog, I have written the equivalent of a complete book in six months. Writing is not easy, especially starting to write on any given day. Having a blog enforces on me a kind of discipline that would not exist otherwise. Before I started this blog, I would let ideas swirl around in my head, without actually putting them down in concrete form. After awhile, I would forget about them, but be left with this nagging feeling of dissatisfaction that I should have explored the ideas further and written them down.

The second benefit of writing is that it forces you to clarify and sharpen your ideas. It is easy to delude yourself that you understand something when you have the idea only in your mind. Putting those ideas to paper (or screen) has the startling effect of revealing gaps in knowledge and weaknesses of logic and reasoning, thus forcing a re-evaluation of one's ideas. So writing is not a one-way process from brain to screen/paper. It is a dialectic process. Writing reveals your ideas but also changes the way you think. As the writer E. M. Forster said “How can I know what I am thinking until I see what I say?” This is why writing is such an important part of the educational process and why I am so pleased that the new SAGES program places such emphasis on it.

Another benefit for me is that writing this blog has (I hope) helped me become a better writer, able to spot poor construction and word choice more quickly. Practice is an important part of writing and the blog provides me with that. Given that the blog is public and can (in principle) be read by anyone prevents me from posting careless or shoddy pieces. It forces me to take the time to repeatedly revise and polish, essential skills for writers.

When I started this blog, I had no idea what form it would take. Pretty soon, almost without thinking, it slipped into the form that I am most comfortable with, which is that of a short essay around a single topic each day. I initially feared that I would run out of ideas to write about within a few weeks but this has not happened. In fact what happens is what all writers intuitively know but keep forgetting, which is that the very act of writing acts as a spur for new ideas, new directions to explore.

As I write, new topics keep coming into my mind, which I store away for future use. The ideas swirl around in my head as I am doing other things (like driving and chores), and much of the writing takes place in my mind during those times as well. The well of ideas to write about does not show any signs of going dry, although it does take time to get the items ready for posting, and that is my biggest constraint. Researching those topics so that I go beyond superficial "off the top of my head" comments and have something useful to say about them has been very educational for me.

Since I have imposed on myself the goal of writing an essay for each weekday, this has enabled me to essentially write the first draft (which is the hardest part of writing, for me at least) of many topics that may subsequently become articles (or even books) submitted for publication. If I do decide to expand on some of the blog item for publication, that process should be easier since I have done much of the preliminary research, organization, and writing already.

All these benefits have accrued to me, the writer, and this is no accident. I think most writing benefits the author most, for all the reasons given above. But any writer also hopes that the reader benefits in some way as well, though that is hard for the author to judge.

I remember when I was younger, I wanted to "be a writer" but never actually wrote anything, at least anything worthwhile. Everything I wrote seemed contrived and imitative. I then read a comment by someone who said that there is a big difference between those who want to be writers and those who want to write. The former are just enamored with idea of getting published, of being successful authors and seeing their name in print. The latter feel that they have something to say that they have to get out of their system. I realized then that I belonged to the former class, which I why I had never actually written anything of value. With that realization, I stopped thinking of myself as a writer and did not do any writing other than the minimum required for my work. It is only within the last ten years or so that I feel that I have moved into the latter category, feeling a compulsion to write for its own sake. This blog has given me a regular outlet for that impulse.

I would never have written so much without having this blog. I would recommend that others who feel like they have to write also start their own. Do not worry about whether anyone will read it or whether they will like it. Write because you feel you have something to say. Even if you are the only reader of your own writing, you will have learned a lot from the process.

POST SCRIPT

Paul Krugman is an economist at Princeton University and is a member of the reality-based community. His July 15, 2005 op-ed in the New York Times shows how far politics has moved away from this kind of world and into one in which facts are seen as almost irrelevant.

Thanks to Richard Hake for the following quote by F.M. Cornford, Microcosmographia Academica - Being A Guide for the Young Academic Politician (Bowes & Bowes, Cambridge, 4th ed., 1949 first published in 1908), which might well have been addressed to Krugman and other members of the reality-based community, although it was written over a century ago:

You think (do you not?) that you have only to state a reasonable case, and people must listen to reason and act upon it at once. It is just this conviction that makes you so unpleasant….are you not aware that conviction has never been produced by an appeal to reason which only makes people uncomfortable? If you want to move them, you must address your arguments to prejudice and the political motive….


**** a more systematic analysis of perceived benefits and detriments on the part of higher education practicitioners; I'm collecting documents now. Suggestions are welcome!


9:12:51 PM    
 Saturday, July 16, 2005

Summary: I started with leads from Jeremy Smith and James Farmer , D'Arcy Norman, among others. I have compiled a list of higher education multi-user weblogging implementations. There are two results: a) the table below, in which are noted institutional weblogging adaptations and software, where known, and b) also a list of some of the softwares available.

There were more institutions and softwares mentioned than I have shared. Why? If I, rightly or wrongly, had the impression that in-early-development was more the flavor than "we're using it, it works for the average user" I left the institution or software off the list. (This is a weblog entry, however, and I was, no doubt, less consistent in this attitude than I could/should have been {;o} !!)

While we're at it let's moderate any unbridled enthusiasm for the institutional momentum chronicled here and elsewhere. As excited as I am about the possibilities of weblogging as a part of effective and collaborative learning, I am leery of the consequences of rapid deployment for the sake of invention and institutional fund-raising (not the same as a deep, collective conviction amongst the majority of those who will have to live with all of the consequences of the innovation). In this vein, James Farmer also wrote another entry in which to worry about this phenom here. He was thoughtfully supported by a number of others. His entry is well worth your reading and thinking time. Let me here add my vote for caution; it's a mistake to give full reign to the charge led by early adopters and fund-raisers; I'm old enough to have helped "lead the charge" (aka dragging the many behind the cart of the enthusiastic few) more than once. The results of precipitous development aren't always pretty, even for the developers!!


University Weblogging Systems
Country Description Comments
Case Western University US Jeremy Smith of Case Western (see below) gives a 3.5/5.0
Stanford US Campus-Wide Weblogging

Collaboration is essential to the Stanford University mission. After starting with one installation to meet a specific need in IT, the university now offers a campus-wide license of Movable Type to support the multi-disciplinary teamwork of faculty, staff, and students.

Approach

A member of the IT staff who'd been using weblogs for a while set up Movable Type as an ad-hoc bug-tracking system, allowing his team to submit bugs, make notes, and stay current with development project status.

The department evaluated various backend tools for communication with an eye to campus-wide deployment. Movable Type was selected.

Results

Movable Type is designed to facilitate communication. For instance,at Stanford, science departments are able to work with engineering departments to realize innovative ideas and bring new projects to completion. And now anyone at Stanford can better foster highly collaborative teaching, learning, and research.

[Statement above is from Moveable Type site]

Yale US
Harvard US Open to anyone with a Harvard email address. Hosted at Harvard Law School. Dave Winer, one of the pioneers of weblogging, instrumental in setting up Harvard system and philosophy. Donna Wentworth is coeditor. 765 weblogs (onsite and off) hosted on Userland Manila server.
Northern Michigan University US Looks as if there's a clearance/recruitment process. Implying a wish for control signifying much for all institutional moves in this direction.
University of Minnesota US Assigned a 4/5 by Case Western rater (which has its own blogging system which the rater, http://blog.case.edu/jms18">Jeremy Smith gave a 3.5
Reed Journals US Run independently and is, at this point, used by a small fraction of student, administrator and faculty population (186 accounts on 7/14)
University of South Florida US ---
Bryn Mawr US (for use with language classes, 67 users on 7/15)
Penn State US experimental system
Rice University US Official launch 2/24/05
Virginia Commonwealth University US (not rated; not clear from online links how much weblogging is a central feature of WSS services at VCU or of student or faculty participation in the university)
Dartmouth US
MIT US Rated by Smith at a 3.5 out of 5
University of Calgary Canada Appears to have been up 20 weeks or so; wiki available and navigable/editable by all. Powered by Drupal. (See this page to read D'Arcy Norman's comparison of multuser weblog systems.)
Weblogs@UBC (University of British Columbia) Canada
University of PEI (Prince Edward Island) Canada
University of Warwick Great Britain (rated a 5 out of 5 by J Smith of Case) Some advantages: single sign-on system, a blog directory, a "planet" site, as well as a roster of blogs for courses, faculty divisions and services plus "tons" of documentation, FAQ's, tours, a glossary and etc. Plus all setting up of blogs has be automated through something called Blogbuilder .



Software:

As for software to run a multiuser weblog system, see James Farmer's entry on Incsub his weblog. He and his commentors give considerable detail. His initial list includes* **:

  • Manila,
  • Drupal. See, also, this this presentation on Drupal as a nonproprietary Drupal to forward teaching, writing collaboration and general engagement in higher ed (Samantha Blackmon, David Blakesley, Charlie Lowe, TLT Conference, Feb 2005) ,
  • Moveable Type,
  • Tikiwiki,
  • WordPress Multi User,
  • pLog,
  • LiveJournal.org,
  • Roller, and
  • Blosxom (The Blosxom inspired Blosjom (a java application) can also be configured for a multiuser environment. It now comes bundled with OS X (Tiger) version (more here from Tom Hoffman).
  • *Click on the software name to get James' summary points about each. **Click here to link to commenter responses to James' detailed entry.

    Technorati tags: multiuserweblogs universityweblogs universityweblogging highereducationweblogs webloggingsoftware socialsoftware knowledgemaking wiki weblog

    6:54:20 PM    
     Saturday, April 2, 2005

    Summary:It is no trivial matter to be able to send a question into "web space" and have an answer come back.However, It's one thing to send out "New York Yankees" or "weblogging"; the search task is pretty simple. It's another search entirely that brings back sites, commentary, photos etc. that are "precisely" at the edge of your knowledge space. No single word, probably no single phrase, will bring back such a result.

    The likelihood of search success diminishes as the searcher's knowledge space increases in size and complexity. Or, putting it in another way, my bet is that, holding "results=successful--the search result desired was found" constant, the more complex and layered the knowledge space, the more difficult the construction of and deployment of search tools/robots/spiders and etc.

    And, as for tags?

    Tags connect us. But they are imprecise. However, imprecise though they may be, when I am faced with the options that are now available, I'll take tags, over one word or multiword search phrases, as the fundamental search term. Tags, when used as categorical signs, will afford me a stronger chance of connecting with someone who is working on material that overlaps my knowledge space (pks or personal knowledge space), enough, I think, to inform/inspire any learning reach beyond its present boundaries .


    When thinking about this it will probably be useful to think of a specific knowledge concern. For example, let's say that I am interested in knowledge-making, knowledge-making in the situation: "ecological protection in isolated, communities faced with strong real estate development forces (e.g., wealthy retirees from the big city who are more interested in a shoreline view of whale migrations than in the ecosystem damage done by acquiring a private access to such a view)".

    How would I explore ? How would I choose between possibilities? 1) reading the entries of my favorite bloggers hoping for an appropriate stimulus or 2)perhaps googling a word or, in really sophisticated fashion, a set of words combined with a set of blogger names. I am faced with the sure knowledge that this must be a multilayered complex search process. Reading favorite bloggers and writing reactive entries seems to be comparable to the "One Hundred Monkeys Typing" method of creating Shakespeare's plays (i.e., pretty incredibly unlikely). If I use tags, however imprecise, I am forcing myself to abstract my own categorical view of path and implications of my own body of ideas. If there is/are people out there in somewhat the same space... and categorically representing where they are in the same fashion, if that is so, I will find them and their material. And, my knowledge space will have food for growth and elaboration.


    Here's what Dave Wineberger had to say(I love the ambivalence here; exactly my kind of see-sawing! I have taken some liberties with layout and occasional emboldening):

    Companies like Boeing spend years developing controlled vocabularies to drive ambiguity out of their technical documentation. For example, tech writers might be told to use the word "turn" but not "twist" when describing any circular motion involving a tool. And, at Corbis, the home of millions of digital images, the in-house cataloguers might be told to use the word "shore" and not "beach" when describing coastal photos.

    But no one is in a position to write a controlled vocabulary for the Internet, And if they were, you can be sure that many of us would be twisting the night away on the beach, just to break the rules.

    This is the promise and the risk of folksonomies. Folksonomies arise when people are tagging objects (Web pages, photos, etc.) in public. If you want something to be found by others, you'll choose the most popular tag. That adds yet more momentum to that tag. And before you know it, most people tag posts about PC Forum as "pcforum05," not "pcf", "pcf05" or "Esther's thang." Folksonomies are bottom-up controlled vocabularies.

    For not very good reasons, the word "controlled" raises a red flag for me. Here's my mental back-and-forth on the issue:

    Back: A folksonomy is not centrally controlled, which is good because a vocabulary dictator would not only frequently get it wrong, but would silently enforce her interpretation. Word choice is too important to be left to the tyrants. In fact, the first thing tyrants do is try to control our word choices.

    Forth: But a folksonomy is nonetheless controlled by a majority. Do folksonomies replace the central vocabulary dictator with an emergent dictator? The word choices are likely to be more in tune with majority thinking, but the conformism of the hippies was as bad as the conformism of the suits.

    Back: This is simply how language works. Words and meanings arise from a type of "conformism," but so what? Meaning itself is a type of conformism, you aging hippie douchebag!

    Forth: But, language changes through implicit evocations of meaning. There is no word dictator who declares "Thou shalt now replace the word 'idea' with 'meme.'" Nope, we hear the word, get a sense from context or from a bumbling, hand-waving definition from someone at a party, and we appropriate it. After a while, a dictionary notices and attempts to freeze and formalize the definition. Yet, tags are explicit. They take something as rich in meaning as a family photo and reduce it to a single word. That's a diminishment.

    Back: Big freaking deal. Categorization diminishes. Everyone knows that. It's why we categorize: It reduces complexity to something manageable at least for the moment. But often categorization diminishes so that things in their richness can be found: Menus in restaurants categorize food so you can taste it in all its glory. And if people feel that the popular tags are not categorizing objects the way they want, they can build local folksonomies, using the tags accepted by their social group.

    Forth: Not in the commercial world. Steve Papa at Endeca at the PCForum open discussion a few days ago pointed to eBay as an example: There are economic reasons to describe your items for sale using the most popular language. E.g., call it a "notebook," not a "laptop." Likewise, where there are economic or other reasons for people to use the popular tags, some folksonomies will dominate. This will undoubtedly drive some ambiguity out of our everyday language. For example, someone pointed out to me recently that CNN started out calling the tsunami a "tidal wave," but switched when everyone else was calling it a "tsunami." That sort of thing will happen faster and more regularly as folksonomies grow in more and more fields.

    Back: Big deal. Tsunami = tidal wave. And because CNN switched, now we can find its stories when we search for "tsunami."

    Forth: No two words are every exactly the same. And clarity leads to division. Imagine that a site like NYTimes.com allows us to tag their posts in a del.icio.us sort of way. (We can do that already at del.icio.us, of course, but doing it on the Times site would be different.) There will be tag wars over whether to tag articles as "tax relief" or "wealthy welfare." Communities will form around semantics, making George Lakoff happy, but further driving us apart.

    Back: So the only thing that lets us live together is the ambiguity of our language? If we ever really understood each other, we'd kill each other?

    Forth: Well, ambiguity sure helps. What would we do without those gray zones?

    Me: Folksonomies will influence how we use words outside of the tagging environment. It will sometimes replace the subtle, organic ways in which language evolves with the crudity endemic to explicitness. Groups will form around words, and words will form around groups, as always. We and our language will survive.

    [ViaJoho the Blog: Controlled and suggested vocabularies: Are tags making us dumb?]

    Adam Bosworth has similar concerns.. expressed in his own way reflects on social software at in his weblog.:

    …As long as we don’t let the ontologists take over and tell us why tags are all wrong, need to be classified into domains, and need to be systematized, this is going to work well albeit, sloppily. What it does is open up ways to find things related to anything interesting you’ve found and navigate not a web of links but a link of tags. At the same time Wikipedia has shown that a model in which content is contributed not just by a few employees, but by self-forming self-managing communities on the web can be amazingly detailed, complete, and robust. so now people are looking at ways in which the same emergent self-forming self-administering models of tagging and Wiki’s and moderation can be used for events (EVDB) and for music and for video and for medical information. It’s all very exciting. It is a true renaissance. I haven’t seen this much true innovation for quite a while. What I particularly like about all this is how human these innovations are. They are sloppy. To me Tags are sloppy practical de-facto ontologies. Wiki’s are sloppy about changes and version editing. It is accepted that we’re trying new things and that sometimes messes will occur. In short, it is unabashedly creative and imprecise. I’ve always believed in the twin values of rationalism and humanism, but humanism has often felt as though it got short shrift in our community. In this world, it’s all about people and belonging and working with others….

    Adam goes on to note that social software gets spammed (nod to Clay), “We got, unfortunately, any application talking to anyone (we call this spam).” He raises privacy concerns and the cost of interruptions to conclude:

    It is going to be fascinating and exciting to watch how these tensions play out, namely the rising trend of people working together and collaborating and communicating over the web in increasingly real time ways contending with the human needs for privacy and reflection and with the unfortunate nature of some humans to vandalize rather than to construct.

    As things play out, I’d suggest we will see forms of communication more asynchronous than email, the social network employed as a filter, richer forms of presence, easier group forming and reputation used only at large scales.

    Many-to-Many 3/25/05 9:55 AM


    [Technorati tags: taxonomy folksonomy tags knowledge-making "personal knowledge space"]

    [edited and revised, 4/3/2005]
    10:22:18 PM