Acting like a kite, witnessing the future and marshalling resources.

Asking how we identify the future – and how we bring the future into the present form a large part of current educational discourse – especially those edu_conference keynote conversations.  

Jensen (Witnessing the Future pdf) cites Serres and Latour and suggests that “assemblage”, “design”, “finish” and “slickness of advertising” all play a role in how we identify the future .  

"What are things contemporary? Consider a late-model car. It is a disparate aggregate of scientific and technical solutions dating from different periods. One can date it component by component: this part was invented at the turn of the century, another ten years ago … Not to mention that the wheel dates back to neolithic times. The ensemble is only contemporary by assemblage, by its design, its finish, sometimes only by the slickness of the advertising surrounding it" (SERRES & LATOUR, 1995, p.45). [1] 

It made me wonder why we focus so much of our attention on the future, when our educational present needs so much help.  

Jensen provided an answer when he identifies the critical shift in the conversation as being the shift from “"looking into the future to looking at the future, or how the future is mobilized in real time to marshal resources, coordinate activities and manage uncertainty" (BROWN & MICHAEL, 2003, p.4).  

So people like us to look at the future (or at least think we are), because the existence of a  classroom of the future (or a school of the future) allows resources to be marshalled.  

Marshalling resources is high focus activity in education. And it is not just the educational technology companies that are trying to do this. Monday’s NZ Herald  features a local special education centre that would like to marshall some resources to keep paying the salaries of two therapists.   

Finding out how to persuade people they are looking at the future so we can marshall resources would be useful for lots of people. 

Jensen’s study suggests that “looking at the future” is all about persuasion and witnessing; and that these strategies are not as different as you might imagine.  Both are artificial, constructed situations.

So if you want to marshal resources in education by marketing yourself as the future you will need to learn how to play with both. 

When reading  “Witnessing the Future” I realised that I had never really understood persuasion – nor did I have any clear measure of how to judge whether persuasion had taken place. 

In describing “the procedures and rhetorical strategies” used by a manager to persuade business journalists that it was “the office of the future”, Jensen argued that we can tell if “Persuasion has taken place if a second actor follows a first actor in such a way that the first actor's program is strengthened.”  

So power is understood as a consequence of an action rather than a cause.

The actions of others make me powerful.  

I take this to mean that when I am persuaded to RT a fellow tweetcher – I am enhancing their power. 

Persuasion has occurred because I have acted in a way that empowers/ strengthens the credibility of a fellow tweetchers message.  All that “repeating and disseminating” makes Twitter as much a strategy for persuading other tweetchers as it is a strategy for informing others. Something already understood by those educators controlling multiple accounts who regularly re-tweet themselves – an activity I found bewildering and just a little sad until now.  

So repetition reveals an act of persuasion; because repetition reinforces the power of the persuader.  “One hundred million blowflies can’t be wrong” thinking rules Ok. 

NetGen Sceptic’s recent post describes repetition as a Snark Effect strategy The Snark Syndrome and the Net Gen Discourse  

In Women and Science: The Snark Syndrome, Byrne says about women in science:

"By dint of repetition three times (or thirty), the educational community had internalized an oversimplified and often unscholarly selection of beliefs and premises which had descended to the 'everyone knows that...' level of slogan-like impact."

Thus the Snark Syndrome is the "assertion of an alleged truth or belief or principle as the basis for policymaking or for educational practice, although this proves to have no previous credible base in sound empirical research"

The Snark Effect is the application of the Snark Syndrome to implement specific educational policies and practices.

The post identifies the advantages to be gained/ resources that might be marshalled if repetition is used to persuade educators that the NetGen exists as being related to digital technology.

“I have lost track of the number of times I have heard educators repeat the stereotypes about the Net Generation: short attention span, expert mutitaskers, technologically savvy etc etc. Countless Michael Wesch-like You Tube videos are circulating urging us to wake up and change our ways or else risk losing an entire generation of learners who we are failing to engage. The answer, we are told, is more digital technology.”

I recognise high levels of “Snark Syndrome” repetitive NetGen and witnessing the future educational discourse in Twitter streams, blog posts, newsletters and educational conference presentations in New Zealand.  And it is working. Resources are being marshalled through digital technology because of it.

So once we have the repetition thing going how else do we mobilise the future in real time to marshal resources? 

 Jensen’s article moves from repetition to “Tricks of the Witnessing Trade” – many of which will be familiar to educators who are charged with witnessing digital classrooms bedecked with wirelessly lap-topped/mobile phoned students.   

Think of strategies of virtual witnessing, drawing in multiple allies and those courtroom strategies of highlighting, categorising and undermining.   

The United Spaces manager persuaded others they were witnessing the future by contrasting what was going on in the offices with what was happening elsewhere.  He used categories of social isolation, professional demarcations, stable patterns of work, and distrust.  The result was visitors “witnessing” the United Spaces offices as a place of community, boundarilessness, flexibility and trust.  

Interestingly Jensen identifies that in this case study the most effective strategy in persuading others (and thus marshalling resources) is to “act like a kite” – 

United Spaces gains upward drift by blocking and resisting. It works by posing itself up against something else. Thus United Spaces' source of persuasive power is that it draws contrasts rather than drawing things together. With its arrangements of tables and with the rule of sitting at a new place every day, it has found a way to articulate a number of problems or even absurdities of "normal work". And like a protest movement, it lifts off the ground at the moment when it is able to channel diffuse dissatisfaction with the existing state of affairs into support for a clear rallying point. 

Perhaps our local education centre needs to persuade others to witness how it is “the future” education facility by adopting repetition and act like a kite strategies – 

Remembering all the while that “The ensemble is only contemporary by assemblage, by its design, its finish, sometimes only by the slickness of the advertising surrounding it"   

Then it may marshall back some of the resources that went to those “we are the future / we are creating remarkable futures” independent schools who swallowed up an extra 35 million dollars in funding in the last budget.

Elgaard Jensen, Torben (2007). Witnessing the Future [59 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative
Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 8(1), Art. 1, http://nbnresolving.
de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs070119 .

Comments

[cj]

The Jensen thesis (as in PhD) is also a good read if yer gettin into performativity 'n ANT. And w/o jumping totally every which way-- Law's notion of hinterland is pretty handy when mullin this. It's not just any future, i.e. when you draw stuff together it can't be a poor fit with the funny little shapes and assemblages that go to make up schooling.

[Artichoke]

Thanks cj,

It still slips away from me - I have read and scribbled over this article many times - it is covered in marginalia - but I am still not satified with my interpretation - for example there are several major disconnects in reasoning in this post - but I figured I had been wrestling with it long enough and I had to make a first attempt.

Need to pursue ANT until I feel more comfortable with how it all connects.

Will look for Laws (and the hinterland) and search out Jensen's other thinking.

[ailsa]

its a fascinating read Arti, and its why I'm drawn to ANT; how to make changes happen, or to at least better understand my failures :)
Knowing what's aggregated lets me think that it can also be aggregated differently, so the possibilities open up.
"Persuasion has taken place if a second actor follows a first actor in such a way that the first actor's program is strengthened"
In ANT terms those other actors can also be actors who are not people but which also have impact, for example the computers and software invested that takes money away from other things like staff.
The way things might be strengthened can be by aligning but may also be by taking away the props that kept something occurring, might be unpeeling people from their current loves...might be by undermining any other alternative.
I find ANT provides me with useful insights on how the world, or at least my local experience of it, gets shaped...and what might be done differently.
Truly I am a subversive at heart; hitting my head on brick walls does me in.

[Heather Davis]

Hi Pam, CJ & Ailsa (small world!!)
Great post Pam, very insightful. Did you catch any of Richard Hames's presentations at ICOT-09?. He's a futurist and in his masterclass in Sydney in July he talked about a globally literate leader having a futures focus...In that they were futures focussed and then worked back to the present to plan for the future focussed vision.

See his blog and this post for a taster http://fiveliteracies.typepad.com/richard_hames/futures/

[Tony Forster]

Hi
Daniel Livingstone seems to enjoy debunking the idea of a net generation
See for example http://learninggames.wordpress.com/?s=digital+natives

[Artichoke]

Thanks for Daniel Tony, reading his "Learning Games" blog has cheered me enormously.

And thanks for reminding me of "debunking" it is such a good word - deserves a post of its own - "D- cubed -Debunking, debunkers and debunks"

[WQLN Ready Set Learn]

I have to say this is the first I've seen your blog, but a recent experience drew me to it immediately. We had a special guest visit our area from PBS Kids and after a couple of meals together she says to me, "Boy you really like artichokes, don't you!?" Of course now I clearly see the educational significance of my love for artichokes!

If you have a chance and you'd like to visit my blog, you can do so at www.wqlnreadysetlearn.wordpress.com. Enjoy your day!

[Artichoke]

RE: "Boy you really like artichokes, don't you!?" Of course now I clearly see the educational significance of my love for artichokes!

And when you add to this the gastronomic and historical significance - is so hard to fault an affection for the artichoke

Will be visiting your blog ... thanks for the comment

[Artichoke]

Also refer to this typology for representing "contemporary"

Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement
by David S. White and Alison Le Cornu.
First Monday, Volume 16, Number 9 - 5 September 2011
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3171/3049

This article proposes a continuum of ‘Visitors’ and ‘Residents’ as a replacement for Prensky’s much‐criticised Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. Challenging the basic premises upon which Prensky constructed his typology, Visitors and Residents fulfil a similar purpose in mapping individuals’ engagement with the Web. We argue that the metaphors of ‘place’ and ‘tool’ most appropriately represent the use of technology in contemporary society, especially given the advent of social media. The Visitors and Residents continuum accounts for people behaving in different ways when using technology, depending on their motivation and context, without categorising them according to age or background. A wider and more accurate representation of online behaviour is therefore established.