Archive for the ‘education’ Category

The Path Towards Excellence

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

Today (Thursday) the Knight Center of Digital Excellence was launched in Akron, Ohio. I am deeply invested in the vision and language of Digital Excellence, and I hope the Center lives up to it’s name. Some words of wisdom for those undertaking this mission:

The path towards excellence starts with purpose, and not with technology. Be clear in your purpose, be strong in resolve, be prepared to fall and rise again. Digital is a word that often gets in the way: Strive first and always for human excellence and towards our higher individual and collective purposes. Excellence is a matter of character.

The Chicago Digital Access Alliance put this vision before our City, a vision of great ambition. We echo the historic Chicago mantra: Make no small plans. Has Chicago missed an opportunity? No. We have not. Not if we yet take up the challenge and establish what has been called for: A Digital Excellence Trust.

The wind left our sails when the Chicago wireless plans were put on hold. It was fortuitous that the vendor-driven segmented-technology model fell through, but the call for Digital Excellence didn’t have to stop there. We’re the windy city and our model was never tied to wireless technology. We have Olympic aspirations and Greenest-city-in-the-world goals. We know that these are deeply tied to a vision of excellence.

Excellence is our noble human calling. We’re not one of the Knight communities. How will we rise here and now to the challenge of digital excellence? Will we stir the soul of the city? Will we stir the soul of the nation?

Historical Consciousness, Pride and Hope

Friday, April 4th, 2008

What is historical consciousness? When does history touch our lives? How does the historical life of the nation become tangible for any one of us? These questions are difficult to answer in the abstract.

When Michelle Obama expressed her newly emergent pride in the country many were offended. But, the backlash of those who took offense is perniciously wrongheaded. We need to move beyond bombastic pride and unqualified emotionalism. It’s ridiculous to parse the language of another person’s inner experience of national identity while we willfully ignore the contradictions in our own relation or expression thereof. We have no standing to make such judgment.

It’s a matter of mote and timber in the historical mind’s eye, for no institution, no social relation can be accorded unconditional approbation. That is what our national identity suggests to me. Patriotism is a willingness to challenge the country when it does wrong, out of love. Glossing over inconvenient facts obstructs growth, leaving us in shadow. There is much to question in our present and in our past. We should embrace those with the will to question, raise dialogue and foster civic deliberation on matters afflicting the human condition.

Today I read a piece recounting many points in American history for which the only point of pride may be in the widespread hope or desire that we have since overcome those attitudes and behavior. It’s not clear to me that we have. There are many signs to the contrary.

Where does hope live? Hope is an active relation to the dream. The American project continues to unfold. Our best days are not behind us. Our living up to the civic principles we espouse requires questioning our selves and challenging false pride (as well as self-loathing).

Generations after Dr. King’s brutal murder we still aspire to a post-racial society, and we endeavor to live the dream he eloquently expressed. This is grounded in the wisdom that there is but one race. Some will say that the post-racial element of the dream is a denial of reality. I understand the point they are trying to make, even if I reject the categorical language of race in favor of a more nuanced dynamic of ethnic processes and social constructions of identity.

If I restated the case, our hopes would be realized in a post-racist society … a subtle difference, perhaps. We’re not calling for a denial of the past, or of present difference, but rather for a new relation to both.

This is not about homogeneity, it is about a deeper respect for histories and differences. We (as nation and as species) are the repository of a multitude of histories and we must be willing to face the darkness in our history, in a narrative whereby we collectively and continually rise above ignorance and prejudice. Attaining a degree of historical consciousness we no longer have an excuse to deny our past, nor to deny that which we are party to in the present. It is incumbent upon us to continue to grow, and to bring up those generations who follow in this attitude, that they may likewise live in active relation to humanity’s higher nature.

Once we begin to take maturity seriously, we will get down to the business of maturation.

We’ll not impugn others for their faith or for their doubts in the nation or in humanity, we’ll give them reason to be hopeful. Take pride in working towards the dream with others, don’t take excessive pride in the past.

Civic Entrepreneurship, Community Informatics and the Gift Economy

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

I composed a short list of some essential readings that reflect a world-view appropriate to the Internet Era, I shared it with friends studying Community Informatics and Civic Entrepreurship, two domains seeking a better world. Since I recently catalogued (part of) my personal library using LibraryThing, it makes sense to share these here as well (as they are part of my virtual library).

These writings provide a conceptual matrix for an interesting breed of Civic Entrepreneur- (it’s a partial list) … really a new model of Citizenship and Society/Polity. They aren’t new to a lot of you – and if you have other works that you think really need to be on the list, please let me know.

Movement as Network, by Gideon Rosenblatt, also: The three pillars of social source

David Isenberg’s Rise of the Stupid Network

Pushing Power to the Edges (pdf) by Jillaine Smith, Martin Kearns, Allison Fine

The Cluetrain Manifesto (Doc Searles, et al.)

Cory Doctorow’s Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom

Coase’s Penguin: (by Yochai Benkler … his book The Wealth of Networks is also recommended. There’s a wiki inviting discussion of his ideas.)

The list doesn’t represent any hierarchic ordering.

History and Trans-Physics

Monday, January 21st, 2008

A year ago, I had just returned from Memphis where the National Conference for Media Reform had convened. The timing and location of the NCMR gatherings has always been well considered. I rushed back in the wee small hours of the morning to be among friends at the annual i. c. stars gathering, marking the day we honor the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Memphis the location of the “Mountaintop” speech and where assassins bullets made a great man a martyr the following day.)

Dr. King shall always hold a place of honor in the American Pantheon. Democracy Now has done great service today in honoring his memory by playing parts of several speeches.

I was especially struck by the importance of history, and the idea that the thugs that enforce order do not know history and while they might know physics, they do not know trans-physics. Human History is more than an unfolding of physics. Physics (here) is force, and those who govern with only guns, batons, and dogs, and water-cannons and fear and threat and not with understanding of history and appreciation of social progress (and the potential to slip) are but shallow “leaders”.

Dr. King’s lessons are important for us today, not just as record of where the nation has come from, but how far we still have to go.

The “Beyond Vietnam” speech, offered a year to the day before his murder forces a reflection on our nation’s presence on the world stage. Dr. King’s message was evolving. Social and economic justice are deeply entwined.

Having grown up post-Dr. King, after the many victories of the civil rights movement, I often reflected upon the meaning of injustice in the present day. Surely racism and other categories of injustice still exist, and we live with the effects of prior unjust policies, but when injustice no longer has sanction of government the strategy for addressing it must change. The injustice of person over person along categorical lines sanctioned by the state seems fairly distant from our (my) day-to-day life. It doesn’t mean it isn’t occurring. Indeed, on the world stage we are deeply enmeshed in this sort of thing, we’re just fairly insulated from most of it.

Here we are in 2008. What is injustice today?

How we choose to live together, how we conduct ourselves in our homes and neighborhoods, and our nation’s conduct upon the world stage, these demand reflection.

Are we on the right side of history? How can we know unless we know history? Our methods demonstrate we are not on the right side of history. We accept the necessity of force, the exigency of torture; we suspend due process.

If we justify these methods out of fear of failure, we have failed. We as a people will be so much stronger if we stand by our principles.

Dr. King concluded his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” with an indictment of the lovers of order over justice. The stumbling block and frustrating impediment to human social progress is the

moderate, more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is an absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice…

Dr. King’s wisdom is grounded in the ecology of community. There is an ecology to the history of peoples and nations, an ecology of human knowledge and right conduct, and a general ecology of human practices on this Earth. Our economic and social bonds, the practices by which we perpetuate an unsavory and unhealthy order must give way. We can choose health, but it must be an active choice.

One Web Day in Chicago

Saturday, September 22nd, 2007

Today (September 22) is One Web Day! Last year I had my act together, and wasn’t dealing with a series of family health matters and together with Dave Chakrabarti conducted a series of interviews leading up to One Web Day. The videos are worth watching… most of the interviews followed a simple convention, and were intended to explore how we use the Internet in our daily life… and my personal favorite part of the questions was when we ask people to describe the Internet.

Listening to people describe the Internet in their own terms and what they actually do with it opens an important space: there is such variety in the Internet, the really interesting things are not the new web 2.0 techniques or the hype surrounding them… it’s the actual interests that people bring to the ‘Net from their own life. When people speak about what they do others are prone to say “wow, I didn’t think about how that might be shared online, but now that I think bout it it makes sense!”

Which is to say there are tons of things online that we probably don’t think about but which pertain to the interests of others and it has become a tool in so many subcultures and obscure pursuits, allowing tremendous variety of community interests (and forms).

With the importance of the Web to our modern life, its use and potential in the full range of human experience and endeavor, it is fitting that we reflect on it’s governance and the basic communication freedoms which we should not take for granted.

This week Chicago played host to the fifth of six public hearings on media ownership convened by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Chicago Organizers did an excellent job in spreading the word and offering testimony.  The phrase “media ownership rules” here reflects an older way of thinking…  the various media – Cable, Broadcast TV and Radio and Print media need to be understood in the context of the Internet and the communications policy and infrastructure that supports it.   We live in a blended world…. the lines are blurred.

I didnt get to offer testimony, but it was quite clear that the people don’t buy the arguments favoring further relaxation of the ownership rules.  The people want the FCC to enforce the rules of the commission.    I’ll try to write more about the hearing later, but concentration of media ownership, and ownership of our communications backbone and last/first mile are clearly related issues, and we need to move towards more local ownership, production and control.  The FCC, and for that matter ICANN need to hear that message.

think about such things

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007

A friend shared Philippians 4:4-9 with me today:

4Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!

5Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.

6Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

8Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

9Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

Think about such things, put them into practice.

Chicago Report on Digital Excellence

Saturday, June 16th, 2007

The long awaited report from the Mayor’s Advisory Council on Closing the Digital Divide was released Friday June 15th at the Community Media Summit convened by the Benton Foundation and the Community Media Workshop under the title The City that NetWorks: Transforming Society and Economy Through Digital Excellence.

Digital Excellence is both means and end for Chicago as the City of Excellence. The Chicago Digital Access Alliance (CDAA) had a large hand in bringing this vision into the public sphere. We’ll turn a critical eye to the details of the report, as is our duty, but for now we celebrate it’s release and the vision that has been established, and we offer our deepest gratitude to Julia M. Stasch for her service to our city in chairing the Mayor’s Advisory Council and shepherding this visionary and historical document.

Stay tuned for analysis and response.