How Ideas are Made

Found this baby this morning in my mailbox. Watch it and liked it. I somehow feel it is going to be relevant for this course and my work at MACT.

Making Sense of the Printing Press Stuff...

...before I immerse myself in the discussion postings on e-class. Here we go!

• Try to keep in mind and understand sequence of events that take place from which the Print Revolution emerges.
• Connect Winston's model to the development of the printing press.
• Consider disruptions and consequences of the revolution.

Mumford, L. (Chapter 12, p. 91 - 95)

The article seems to want to position the machine as a central role in between the ever smaller human presence at the beginning of the revolution process (the printing press) as man creates the tools and the human consumption of what the machine makes at the end of the line (the printed word). The idea that the initial ideation step (in Winston's terms) begins as very close to the human presence as possible (for example, the fact that initial printing stamps would copy the written hands of manuscripts, until they further processed ahead and became less personal and more standardized, seems to apply the iterations of prototypes that Winston supports in his model.

Another point that brings Mumford to the Winstonian way of processing the communication progress cycle is the fact that social factors had to be in place for the invention to take place and to prosper until final products would take over the new communication method. Mumford states:

" But before the method was applied to books a new social medium was necessary: a community that had abandoned slavery and was ready; indeed eager, to equalize cultural advantages once reserved for a ruling cast; so that the rise for free cities, of urban democracy, of an increasingly literate group of citizens gave an incentive to a method for manifolding and cheapening the process of producing books." (p.92)

Another interesting idea that I discovered lingering in my mind was the idea of noise, and how the perfecting process of the printing press seems to have emulated, at least at the beginning, the desire to lower the noise level in the text by standardizing the characters and coming up with rules that would clear the way to the true voice of the author, free from the distraction of the personality expressed in the handwriting of the manuscript writers. And how, by eliminating the noise and amplifying the scope of production literacy becomes a more democratic mean of communicating, lowering barriers of distance in space and time.

The Presentation to Make Sense of the Model

It took me a bit longer than expected but I am proud of this little show I out together about the Winston model. The model aims at giving some directions on how to make sense of technological advances and warns us about the idea that progress and new inventions are not necessarily proceeding at light speed ways, nor are they actually that different today than they were a hundred years ago. In fact, Winston attempts to justify the fact that not inly the pace is quite representative of the social make up of the group where the new ideas are generated, but that the social make up is actually and in fact a key force in ensuring that the advances take place, are supported or rejected and change occurs.

This notion reverses the common thought that change is upon us, that technology is imposing its presence on society as if society had nothing to do with it. In fact, according to the model, this is quite the opposite. I hope this idea transpires from the model.

Here it goes.

Officially the First Serious Look at the Wiston Model

Ok. So here I am, trying to make sense of all the information around the new 505 course for MATC (I enrolled in the 2010 cohort this spring, yeah!) and things are just ready to start on the right track.

Our friend Eva started us all with Google groups, sharing information she would discover along the way well in advance of the opening of the e-class this September 1, and I truly do not know how far we could have come without her lovely support. Gerrit, from far away BC also helped us out by sharing some of his transformation thoughts in more pictorial ways, as strategies and tips to support understanding.Class groups are well under way, as far as picking topics and selecting who to work with, and I think I have been doing my part with sharing some suggestions on how to collaborate. E-class at UofA is ok, I know the platform and its possibilities - as well as where all the limits are, where things seem just to work a bit too slow and bit not as interactively as one could wish, especially one like me. Far from considering myself an expert in online collaboration, I do believe I have been exposed to working with some really great people who have inspired me to move ahead and trydifferent places and tools, now so easily available on line.
These include the blog space I use here as well as the wikispaces that I have been exploiting a lot for sharing teaching ideas in the past ten years or so. I love my computer, and how it has become the window to the world, when I can share words, sounds and images with my friends, but also and specifically my 'everywhereIgo' tool to post my thoughts and organize them as often as I need to, not having to carry around one single piece of memory hardware, but my passwords and account names.

So, in way, as I enter this journey into Comm 505 for fall 2010, I truly believe I an fully using the technologies I am exploring from an academic perspective, supporting the idea of reflection and collaboration while embedding the journey into the spaces of current technologies. I am open and ready to feel transformed, surprised, puzzled, challenged and question through this journey. This afternoon it was already a great opportunity.
I have read in detail and begin to reflect on Winston's model from our first required reading. Thanks to Gerrit the image that the author broke down into smaller units is even clearer after the first take at the new model. This impressed me and I am now pulled into what I call my usual drive to make sense of a new complex concept by visualizing and adding media to my memory files. But before I invest more time and energy into that task, I want to list and show the two cool new artifacts that have hit me this morning, as I begun the readings.

First the quote about Klee's painting: "Angelus Novus". If an image is mentioned I HAVE to go out and search about it, find out what the images tells me as I look at it, and possibly contemplate it. I discover that Klee is a contemporary artist I had actually never heard about before (here is the intimate tone of these pages - as I admit to my great ignorance in fact of art, especially contemporary!). His painting is actually often called upon together with agreat masterpiece: Picasso's Guernica. Both paintings seem to be surrounded by mystery and tragedy, and bring about a sense of destruction and inevitable desolation, so why am I so up-spirited?

Well, first of all the discovery. Learning about these two pieces of art made my day - now I will know them forever. Then gratitude - I entered to read about communications and a philosophical model, thinking my brains where going to be destroyed (well - some pieces are hanging around indeed!) and here I am contemplating art. In addition, as I collect a small visual copy of what I found online, I stumble upon a wonderful presentation on TED (one of my favourite learning places of all times) listening to a well-spoken PhD speaker about the need to have everyone play online games to save the world. I am about to dive into more deep thinking with all my thoughts for Winston's model, and truly appreciate the fact that what we continue to call 'drastic change' and 'phenomenal pace of change' in these days of technological advancement, is nothing more than a misguided interpretation and reading of the times and how humanity's evolution has been interacting since the first civilizations. And that is why I love to get on with the final invitation to actually listen to this girl and her TED talk - since she speaks of future, remembering the past and how the first civilizations actually learned from playing games and get on their epical adventures!

And this is all for now.