My world on the web
The nation divided into two classes of person this week: people in Victoria, and people horrifiedly observing what’s going on in Victoria.
A curfew and declaration of a state of disaster, together with Stage 4 lockdown and Stage 11 Online Form Madness, is what Melbourne encountered this week.
“Doomscrolling” refers to the ways in which people find themselves regularly—and in some cases, almost involuntarily—scrolling bad news headlines on their phone, often for hours each night in bed when they had meant to be sleeping. Certainly the realities of the pandemic necessitate a level of vigilance for the purposes of personal safety. But doomscrolling isn’t just a natural reaction to the news of the day—it’s the result of a perfect yet evil marriage between a populace stuck online, social media interfaces designed to game and hold our attention, and the realities of an existential global crisis. Yes, it may be hard to look away from bad news in any format, but it’s nearly impossible to avert our eyes when that news is endlessly presented via designed-to-be-addictive social media interfaces that know just what to show us next in order to keep us “engaged.” As an alternative interface, The Endless Doomscroller acts as a lens on our software-enabled collective descent into despair. By distilling the news and social media sites down to their barest most generalized messages and interface conventions, The Endless Doomscroller shows us the mechanism that’s behind our scroll-induced anxiety: interfaces—and corporations—that always want more. More doom (bad news headlines) compels more engagement (via continued liking/sharing/posting) which produces more personal data, thus making possible ever more profit. By stripping away the specifics wrapped up in each headline and minimizing the mechanics behind most interface patterns, The Endless Doomscroller offers up an opportunity for mindfulness about how we’re spending our time online and about who most benefits from our late night scroll sessions. And, if one scrolls as endlessly as the work makes possible, The Endless Doomscroller might even enable a sort of exposure or substitution therapy, a way to escape or replace what these interfaces want from and do to us. In other words, perhaps the only way out of too much doomscrolling is endless doomscrolling.
In his autobiography, Miles, Davis wrote that in the early 1960s, “I had gotten into cooking. I just loved food and hated going out to restaurants all the time, so I taught myself how to cook by reading books and practicing, just like you do on an instrument. I could cook most of the great French dishes—because I really liked French cooking—and all the black American dishes. But my favorite was a chili dish I called Miles’s South Side Chicago Chili Mack. I served it with spaghetti, grated cheese, and oyster crackers.”
The answer to our epidemic of misinformation is not 20th century-style ‘information literacy’ resources. Instead, what we need to give people is a real grounding in Humanities, a range of subjects that at their core contain a critical stance to information that circulates in society.
Marko, our task is both simple and extremely difficult. Our task is to remain patient and vigilant and to not lose heart — for we are the destination. We are the portals from which the idea explodes, forced forth by its yearning to arrive. We are the revelators, the living instruments through which the idea announces itself — the flourishing and the blooming — but we are also the waiting and the wondering and the worrying. We are all of these things — we are the songwriters.
The key is to understand that this feedback isn’t just feedback — it’s a vital cue about the relationship. The reason this works so well has to do with the way our brains are built. Evolution has built us to be cagey with our efforts; after all, engagement is expensive from a biological standpoint. But when we receive an authentic, crystal-clear signal of social trust, belonging, and high expectations, the floodgates click open.
I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.
On the family front, my wife continues to ride the waves of being in leadership during such chaotic times. One minute talking about building back better, next minute scrambling plans for how learning online might be for Victoria’s second wave. All while balancing study as well. In the meantime, the kids have taken to finding joy in forgotten places, such as the backyard. This included using the sticks from the apple tree to create a homemade tent.
At work, the month started with questions from schools about whether they needed to change things back to normal within their system to frantically checking that everything was still in place from last time schools to move back online. In between all of this, I have been supporting new schools and continuing to develop various resources. I am not sure if it is just me, but there is a different level of scrutiny when recording video content compared with written material.
Personally, I have continued to live the life of working at home where everything morphs into everything else. However, Troy Hunt wrote a useful reminder about not sweating the small stuff. I have found it important to remember that things could always be worse. I am still employed and as Damian Cowell recently explained, there are always worse jobs.
In regards to writing, I wrote a reflection on stealing time, as well as some more pieces about space. I have also been continuing my dive into the sonic spaces of Joseph Shabason, listening to DIANA. I have also been enjoying Taylor Swift’s pivot.
Here then are some of the posts that have had me thinking:
Steve Collis reflects on the challenges associated with designing for emergence.
Christopher Emdin discusses the importance of pedagogy as a response to the world around us.
Mike Caulfield breaks down some of the pieces associated with the structure of blended learning and some consideration in regards to the creation of video content.
Aliya Chaudhry reports on how some librarians have turned to the creation of digital escape rooms.
Thomas Guskey responds to concerns raised around offering students the opportunity to retake tests and assessment.
Ian Bogost reflects on the recent Twitter hack to highlight how centralized the internet has become. One with little room for design and creativity.
Sarah Morrison digs into the way in which APIs and SDK kits provide the framework for tracking.
William Davies discusses the place of private groups in the rise of the web.
Ben Thompson reflects on the growing concern around the political implications of TikTok. In a follow-up piece, he discusses the different internets and the role they play.
In a new introduction for Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother and Homeland, Edward Snowden reflects on the change in consciousness in the last ten years.
In other histories, the Walkman turned forty and the car radio turned ninety.
Jacob Collier re-imagines the idea of a solo performance with multi-part presentation for NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert
Amanda Mull discusses the challenges associated with turning around years of open planned spaces.
Sean Blanda discusses remote work’s focus on tasks, the ways in which people can become forgotten, the culture of disruption, and the challenge associated with career growth.
Beth Mole unpacks the data on coronavirus and aerosol transmission, with the push to recognise the distribution beyond just droplets.
Hannah Reich discusses the problems associated with a one-side perspective of police portrayed on the screen.
Zan Rowe speaks with Susan Rogers about working with Prince, archiving his music and our experience of music.
Ben Folds captures the current moment best, stating:
It used to be ‘that song is so 2008’. Now it’s ‘ugh, that song is so 10am. What are you thinking? With that old song you old man?
On that note, stay well and thank you for reading. I hope you found something of interest. Oh, and thank you to my one avid reader for.picking up the careless mistakes in my last newsletter.
Cover Image via JustLego101
DIANA is a Canadian synthpop band, consisting of Carmen Elle (vocals), Joseph Shabason (keyboards) and Kieran Adams (drums).[1] Their debut album Perpetual Surrender was a longlisted nominee for the 2014 Polaris Music Prize.[2][3] It was followed by their second album Familiar Touch in November 2016.
Place between Methyl Ethel and Laura Jean.
Folklore (stylized in all lowercase) is the eighth studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, released on July 24, 2020, through Republic Records. A surprise album announced without pre-release promotional campaigns, Folklore was written and recorded while in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Musically, the album marks a departure from the upbeat pop sound of Swift’s preceding studio albums to stripped-down tunes driven by piano and guitar, with production from Aaron Dessner, Jack Antonoff and Swift herself. Categorized as an indie folk, alternative rock, electro-folk, and chamber pop record, Folklore portrays what Swift called “a collection of songs and stories that flowed like a stream of consciousness” rising out of her imagination. It manifests vivid storytelling from largely third-person narratives that detail heartbreak and retrospection.
More Lana Del Rey and less Carly Rae Jepsen.
Lyndsey McKenna
Folklore applies Swift’s signature lyrical style — richly and carefully detailed, rife with knowing callbacks — to a new palette informed by Dessner’s work. Skittering instrumentation proves a match for Swift’s use of speak-song cadence; meditative piano and horns offer a cinematic soundscape for explorations of character that move beyond autobiography.(source)
Beth Garrabrant
“Folklore” isn’t a folk record—it feels mostly genre-less, though it drifts toward gauzy, atmospheric pop—nor is it particularly autobiographical. Instead, Swift is interested in the idea of storytelling—of folklore, writ large—as a kind of sense-making process, a real and useful chance to order the world. How do we find meaning in the absurd or banal things that happen to us? Which narratives float us, which hobble us, and which are we totally free to reconstruct?(source)
Tom Breihan
With folklore, Swift has made a self-consciously minor transitional album, a grand readjustment. She’s nailed it. Swift, it turns out, is one of the few great pop chameleons to come along in recent years. She was great at gleaming Walmart country. She was great at bright-plastic global-domination ultra-pop. She was a bit less great at quasi-trap club music, but she made do. And now she’s great at lightly challenging soft-thrum dinner party music.(source)
Spencer Kornhaber
With its woodsy black-and-white art, not to mention its title, Folklore advertises itself as an expected pop-star maneuver: the “back to basics” or “stripped down” revelation. But the album’s more complex than that, and does not conjure the image of Swift slumped over a guitar for an acoustic set. With the producers Aaron Dessner (of the indie band The National) and Jack Antonoff (the rock singer turned pop-star whisperer), she swims through intricate classical and folk instrumentation largely organized by the gridded logic of electronic music. Melancholy singers of ’90s rock radio such as Natalie Merchant and Sarah McLachlan seem to guide Swift’s choices, as do contemporaries such as Lana Del Rey and Lorde. The overall effect is eerie, gutting, and nostalgic. If Folklore is not apt for summer fun, it is apt for a year in which rambunctious cheer and mass sing-alongs have few venues in which to thrive.(source)
Taylor Swift has stated that,
My gut is telling me that if you make something you love, you should just put it out into the world.
The challenge was, Spreadsheet Kid, from a BCcampus Kaltura URL, can I devise something that will take that and extract that mp4 URL?
I explain below, but for those who want to cut to the chase, you can make a copy of my spreadsheet and explore/play/criticize.
The compromise I settled on was to produce a ‘List’ of those accounts which appear to be interested in literacy in primary schools; there is then no potential pressure to follow back. By describing my list as “Teachers and organisations tweeting about literacy (within the (UK) Primary school context)”, when people were notified that someone had added them to a list, they could choose to follow it. As I write, ten people have done so, are hopefully learning something from the List members and as a consequence I feel slightly happier that I’ve made a modest contribution that might help the primary literacy community.
We write the equivalent of 520 million books every day on social media and email. The fact that so many of us are writing — sharing our ideas, good and bad — has changed the way we think. Just as we now live in public, so do we think in public.
Just as we now live in public, so do we think in public. And that is accelerating the creation of new ideas and the advancement of global knowledge.
Having an audience can clarify thinking. It’s easy to win an argument inside your head. But when you face a real audience, you have to be truly convincing.
Children who didn’t explain their thinking performed worst. The ones who recorded their explanations did better
Once thinking is public, connections take over
The things we think about are deeply influenced by the state of the art around us: the conversations taking place among educated folk, the shared information, tools, and technologies at hand
FAILED NETWORKS KILL IDEAS. BUT SUCCESSFUL ONES TRIGGER THEM.
The Convivial Society: Dispatch, No. 8
She shared tales of his relentless work ethic, spending sleepless nights recording what would become some of his most iconic music. “So many of his hours were spent in isolation to achieve his dreams,” she said.
“He was a boss, he had a lot of employees; he made a lot of money for people at the age of 25, and he was responsible and a good leader. What does it take to be like that? What does it take to not do drugs and not be involved in whatever bacchanalia that rock stars are sometimes involved in?
“What does it take to focus on the work at that young age? With no songwriting partner – it’s not like it was Lennon and McCartney or Jagger and Richards; it’s one guy all by himself from North Minneapolis figuring this out on his own. It took tremendous guts, as well as brains and heart and everything else.”
Best practices, which aim to standardize teaching and flatten the differences between students, are anathema to pedagogy.
In higher education, too many of us cling to other people’s models, because we have rarely been taught, encouraged, or given the support we need to create our own.
What matters most are the conversations as much as the product.a
Models like Bloom’s are a distraction from the hard conversations we should be having about teaching and learning, and I don’t think that’s an accident.
This is what I like about the Modern Learning Canvas and the way in which it helps frames the conversation.
