Has been a turbulent week in Auckland – I know it is still school holidays but I have been doing action research around the three drinks metaphor with as many different minds as I could persuade to join me. Has been even more draining than those “when you know you shouldn’t” Bogart and Bacall on the balcony moments ” at ULearn06.
Some Artichokean think tankers reacted in a Zoidbergian way to their invitations – much like I did when the Magnet for Misadventure accepted an (e) party invite from the MoE on my behalf at ULearn06.
Zoidberg: "Strange... Why would Nixon - an awkward, uncomfortable man - suddenly throw a party? One of the most social events imaginable! It's a trap is why!"
And I found these “constantly looking over one shoulder” thinkers were much more challenging to move through the 3 drink sequence towards Sidorkian dialogue.
Artistotelian excluded middle thinking be dammed - paranoia saw them shuck neatly into two buckets - some determinedly requesting mineral water throughout and, others bolting through three drink exchanges to five, six and ten drinks under the table and on the floor dialogue before I could introduce the thinking metaphor challenge.
However, I can report that as a result of all this thinking through drinking research I find the 3 drinks metaphor limited when we are representing possibilities for generative dialogue involving the net.
Cj encouraged me to explore metaphor through Doc Searls on the Giant Zero video at Berkman September 20 2006
“The origin of the metaphor, however, is Craig Burton, who was the first to observe that an end-to-end architecture in which every point is essentially zero distance from every other point (and as stupid as possible in the middle as well), would geometrically resemble a 3-D zero.””
"The giant zero" where being networked means you are free to have end to end relationships with anyone anywhere anytime seems to capture much of the same thinking that Sidorkin tilts at with his exuberance of voices “three drink metaphor”, BUT takes it further for thinking about dialogue in a networked world.
Searl's “nobody owns it, everybody can use it and anybody can improve it” is exactly what we valorise the integration of ICT in knowledge building constructivist pedagogies in schools preparing for the mythical 21st Century Learner.. However, we kneecap what we valorise- – not only through the institutional hierarchical power plays but also in the stark confrontational way we militate dialogue with our virtual classrooms replicas, LMS, SMS, passwords, ID, Watchdog surveillance in educational institutions. Check out BardWired’s Filtering Frustrations lament
Searl’s “architecture that is all ends” metaphor suggests that when “nobody owns it, everybody can use it and anybody can improve it” is the infrastructure of our dialogue, then everybody is “generative – by ourselves and with others”.
Is undoubtedly the botanist in me but I have always been fascinated by process, by squeezing, and water loss – fascinated by the process whereby plant debris becomes peat, peat becomes lignite, lignite becomes coal, and coal becomes graphite – It is another metaphor that works for dialogue and knowledge construction on the web…
First we must bury the idea of plant debris dialogue in the sediment of many voices to squeeze out as much water as we can. Heaping more sediment onto dialogue through our internet connectivity - adding in time and a friction of connectivity warmth will cause dialogue to breakdown releasing gases (hot air conversations all that farting and belching ranting discourse). The squeezing out of water and release of those hydrocarbon gases from peat dialogue leaves a more intense and focused dialogue. Makes “dialogue” carbon rich – creates pure graphite dialogue, makes dialogue generative, makes dialogue into infrastructure.
Tracking "process" on the web leads to Seal’s notions of a “static web” and a “live web”. The “One looks through billions and the other listens to millions” stuff.
If “the static web is about spaces and places, the live web is about time and people.”
“Static Web search sends bots out to crawl and index billions of sites. Live web search listens to pings from millions of syndicated feeds, or live sources and indexes just those. Technorati’s goal is a time to index (heard ping to searchability) of under one minute
"Live Web search only responds to signs of life."
Live web as signs of life, signs of life as dialogue – what a fabulous criteria for assessing whether we have dialogue – dialogue not simply something that happens after 3 drinks when identity to the group loosens and the idea can be tossed around and played with – dialogue is recognised as generative – as signs of life, signs of life
I recognise that dialogue is what happens with ed_bloggers – with a sharing of provisional thinking – with offering raw and flawed thinking for comment by others , with continual revisions, - with reoriginated conversation,- with relationships formed and developed.
Searl takes the thinking further – he layers this generative infrastructure between fashion and commerce on one side and governance, culture and nature on the other. You have to check out his visuals on this one. It is a geological framing. It is thinking that needs its own post
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