Recommend a book to a friend

Posted on 1st June 2015 by NomadWarMachine

IMG_20150406_120743[1]This popped up in my inbox today, with the suggestion to recommend a book I have read to an online friend. So that got me thinking about the sort of books I’ve been dipping into recently. To be honest, the types of fiction I read are trashy crime fiction like this, not the sort of thing I’d generally recommend to anyone other than my dad and my brother, who I know both share my lowbrow tastes in fiction.

My favourite book at the moment is this knitting book – I am gradually working through the most gorgeous into socks for myself like this pair that are too beautiful to wear. I already shared this with an online friend, though, and I am not aware of others who’d be interested.

I’ve just started reading a biography of D&G that is interesting. I don’t know if anybody’s interested in that – Simon recommended it to me, actually. And I have Pioneer Girl sitting on my knitting chest. I love this book because it shows a grimmer side of pioneering than the Little House books which I loved as a child.

But the book I would most recommend, if you have not read it, is the wonderful Where The Wild Things Are. That’s the sort of book I feel like reading today.

Will that do, Kevin?

Posted in #rhizo15, Reading, Rhizomes | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Don’t push your metaphors too far

Posted on 30th May 2015 by NomadWarMachine

Among the long list of fallacies we teach in level 1 philosophy is one called weak analogy:

This fallacy consists in assuming that because two things are alike in one or more respects, they are necessarily alike in some other respect. From here

It’s one that students usually spot easily in class when we are playing “spot the fallacy”, but it is still made more often than it should be.

For example: in D&G’s ATP we are given the rhizome as a metaphor for a type of thinking. So it’s a metaphor. That means that there’s a type of thinking that’s a bit like a rhizome, and we can talk about whether that’s useful, and how they resemble each other. But I don’t think that metaphors are things that can be right or wrong, and I really don’t think that you should blame the person who suggested a metaphor when it’s not a perfect fit.

So don’t say that D&G are being bad scientists when the botanical structure does not fit the particular facet of thinking that you are attending to – D&G were never doing science in the first place.

There are, you see, two ways of reading a book; you either see it as a box with something inside and start looking for what it signifies, and then if you’re even more perverse or depraved you set off after signifiers. And you treat the next book like a  box contained in the first or containing it. And you annotate and interpret and question, and write a book about the book, and so on and on. Or there’s the other way: you see the book as a little non-signifying machine, and the only question is ‘Does it work, and how does it work?’ How does it work for you? If it doesn’t work, if nothing comes through, you try another book. This second way of reading’s intensive: something comes through or it doesn’t. There’s nothing to explain, nothing to understand, nothing to interpret. It’s like plugging in to an electric circuit. I know people who’ve read nothing who immediately saw what bodies without organs were, given their own ‘habits,’ their own way of being one. This second way of reading’s quite different from the first, because it relates a book directly to what’s Outside. A book is a little cog in much more complicated external machinery … This intensive way of reading, in contact with what’s outside the book, as a flow meeting other flows, one machine among others, as a series of experiments for each reader in the midst of events that have nothing to do with books,as tearing the book into pieces, getting it to interact with other things,absolutely anything … is reading with love. That’s exactly how you read the book. (Deleuze, 1990/1995, quoted in Elizabeth St Pierre 2004)

So, that’s how I read D&G.

Posted in #rhizo14, #rhizo15, D&G, Learning, Rhizomes | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Thanks for #rhizo15

Posted on 27th May 2015 by NomadWarMachine

So I guess this is the end of the official #rhizo15 thing. Some of us talked about thanking Dave for hosting this crazy party, and some of us thought we should not thank him at all, because that was not what this experience was about …

But I want to thank Dave for bringing us together and facilitating this awesome conversation. Some folk gave me suggestions about what I could include, and I’ve randomly dipped into Facebook and Twitter as well as looking at some blogs to choose some of my favourite images and sayings. So here’s an artefact from me.

Posted in #rhizo15, D&G, Learning, MOOC, Rhizomes | Tagged | 10 Comments

Google Docs and ANT

Posted on 23rd May 2015 by NomadWarMachine

I use Google Docs a lot. It makes it easy for me to find and edit things I am writing no matter which computer I find myself using, and it is also easy to share documents with others and collaborate on multi-author pieces. When it’s all going smoothly I don’t even think about it – I just use Google Docs as a blank page on which to write. But when it goes wrong I curse.

As I wrote here a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been looking a little bit into ANT (Actor Network Theory) for an upcoming conference presentation that some of us are involved in. I’ve been mainly looking at a paper by John Law that I find easy to read and understand. Note, as he says, that ANT is not one theory, rather it is:

a disparate family of material-semiotic tools, sensibilities, and methods of analysis that treat everything in the social and natural worlds as a continuously generated effect of the webs of relations within which they are located. Law, 2008 (Draft here)*

So I’d suggest that if you don’t get on with Law then you try another writer. However, the main points for me are that:

  • Objects are part of social networks. As Law says: “It is obvious to most engineers that systems are made not simply of technical bits and pieces but also include people” (ibid). This means that they can form causal relationships with us – what they do, or are, can have an effect on what we do, or feel.
  • Most of the time we ignore (we “black box”) a lot of our environment because we cannot concentrate on everything: “an actor is always a network of elements that it does not fully recognize or know: simplification or “black boxing” is a necessary part of agency”.
  • Often it’s not till things go wrong that we notice how important they are to what we are doing (my point in my earlier post).

So how does this apply to my experiences with Google Docs? Well, sometimes it all goes wrong, and then I am all to painfully reminded on how much I count on the technology to be seamless, and reliable, and accessible – in ANT terms, I stop “black boxing” it.  Some examples:

  1. I was writing a conference abstract last year. I left it open on my home PC, did considerable edits on my work PC, and managed to lose them all by saving the earlier copy on my home PC without syncing (not sure what went wrong, but I think that’s what I did). This was, needless to say, only hours before the deadline. PANIC!!
  2. Typically, when we write as a swarm, we make many, many comments on our work in progress – in fact the comments are often more important than the text. This is great when I am using a PC with a browser, as it displays them alongside the text and I can click onto a comment to see which part of the text it links to. However, in the evenings I move to a sofa and my Google Nexus tablet or Moto G (i.e. Google) smart phone. Now, when I try to use Google Docs it presents comments as numbered footnotes at the bottom of the page. This makes it functionally unusable for me, so I do not use Google Docs in the evenings. As my swarm in transnational, this means that I often miss synchronous editing. Maybe there is a way of changing the interface that I have not found, but if there is then it’s not for a lack of trying. [Edit: it turns out that the android app is better than I remember it being, so if a doc is already in my G Drive I can use it.]

So – there you have it. ANT tells us that objects are part of social networks, though we generally ignore this fact as it is not necessary for us to function. My experiences with Google Docs suggest that ANT is right when it says that.

* I annotated a pdf (from my Google Drive) of the published (2008) copy of Law’s paper using a tool called Hypothes.is. The annotations can be found here. I used Greg’s instructions to do this.

Posted in #rhizo14, #rhizo15, ANT, Learning, Rhizomes, Writing | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

Collaborative Sestina for Rhizomatic Learning

Posted on 21st May 2015 by NomadWarMachine

(Sarah)
Rhizomatic learning is very subjective.
It’s up to you, not up to Dave, what gets to count.
The important thing is not to worry, but be content
to mess around, mix it up – play
around. Be warned – rhizomatic learning can be invasive
and you might find it affects your regular practice

(Maha)
So you wanna know about theory versus practice?
What counts as practice? Isn’t that subjective?
Theory can be invasive
but which kind of theory counts?
rhizo-practice is the fun we have when we play
Focusing on connection not content

(Nick)
I wanted to learn but I wasn’t content
with the dull monotone of the usual practice,
I felt that I needed new spaces to play
and explore my own paths, though they might be subjective.
So I found for a metaphor, a fresher account,
a resilient notion that’s clearly invasive.

(Autumm)
Who determines what is considered invasive?
And could this be more than plants? Animals? Could this be content?
Earworms, forking ideas, blogs turn to radio. Count
how many times it breaks and heads off. Practice
connecting someone else’s thinking to your subjective
And don’t forget how important it is to play

(Tania)
The pulse of the rhizome we feel as we play.
To us it’s energizing, to others invasive.
Unleashed we reach into unexplored spaces always subjective
And what is created and must surely be content
is reshaped constantly as is our practice.
To whom the ideas belong does not even count.

(Wendy – Bill jumped your claim)
(Bill)
Two. Four. Six. Five. Three. Count
Not the hours. Instead, play.
Perfect will not practice
Make. Explore. Invade. I’ve
Switched freedom for content,
My subject, the subjective.

(Lisa)
Questions (beyond counting) are more invasive
than answers. We learn through playing with content
and share a practice that is inherently subjective.

Posted in #rhizo15, Learning, Poetry, Rhizomes | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Cinquain for Rhizomatic Learning

Posted on 21st May 2015 by NomadWarMachine

 Rhizomes
Invasive things?
That depends on the type.
Some need nurturing so they thrive;
others choke.

flickr photo shared by Internet Archive Book Images with no copyright restriction (Flickr Commons)

(purists might say this is not a true cinquain. I’ve just gone for the number of syllables, so bite me) 😛

Posted in #rhizo15, D&G, Learning, Poetry, Rhizomes | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Haiku for Rhizomatic Learning

Posted on 21st May 2015 by NomadWarMachine

By Игоревич (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

What’s rhizo learning?

A chance to play with new things.

Don’t worry ’bout mess.

Posted in #rhizo15, D&G, Learning, Poetry, Rhizomes | Tagged , | 1 Comment

#rhizo15: An Invasive Species?

Posted on 14th May 2015 by NomadWarMachine

In this week’s #rhizo15 question, Dave Cormier asks if rhizomatic learning is an invasive species.

Depends

 

(This is inspired by Keith, btw.)

 

Posted in #rhizo15, D&G, Learning, MOOC, Rhizomes | Tagged , | 8 Comments

Introducing the swarm

Posted on 13th May 2015 by NomadWarMachine

A swarm of stars: flickr photo by NASA on The Commons http://flickr.com/photos/nasacommons/9460789390 shared with no copyright restriction (Flickr Commons)

 I used to refer to myself as “One of Eight” in emails regarding my tutoring. Back in 2009 (or thereabouts) the University conceded to pressure from the trade union and put we lowly teaching assistants on a proper pay scale with increments and yearly pay rises and everything. It was a big thing to have pulled off and, as a bonus, the letter to tell us about it contained the phrase:

you have been assimilated

Cue the inevitable reference to the Borg. We were a team of eight, so the handle was obvious.

 

I keep thinking about the Borg when I reflect upon the collaborative writing that I have been participating in since rhizo14. We’re a diverse group from (as we are proud to tell folk) a range of countries across the globe, and we are all strong-minded, opinionated people who somehow manage to reach consensus without falling out with each other. We’ve played with various ways of describing ourselves, and seem to have settled on calling ourselves a “swarm”.

Fractal bee art: http://flickr.com/photos/tommietheturtle1/15543891763 shared under a Creative Commons (PD) license

I think that it’s important to remember that this is just our attempt at finding an appropriate metaphor, and not to dig too deeply into it (Dave made a similar point about the rhizome story recently and told us to pay LESS attention to it and just squint sideways at it, or something.) We are not bees, or ants. Sorry to state the obvious, but sometimes this needs saying.

 

I think a difference between our rhizoswarm and the Borg is that we will come together for the purposes of writing a paper or a presentation and seek to find words that represent what we feel we want to say, while at the same time never speaking on behalf of the swarm in the rest of our lives. When we’re not collaborating I read others from my swarm saying things that I would not put my name to, and I am sure that they feel the same about the stuff I write. This is not because I think that they are wrong, but because we each have our own voice and our own interests. we’re not just a collective, we are individuals as well.

More on this later.

Posted in #rhizo14, #rhizo15, Rhizomes, University | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Be careful what you “black box”

Posted on 12th May 2015 by NomadWarMachine

I often describe my job as a learning technologist as “trying not to break things”.  Folk respond to this with a nervous laugh, because they are fairly sure it is a joke that they don’t understand, but there’s a serious point to my description.  Keeping technology running smoothly is an achievement – and making it invisible to users, so that they do not have to think about how to use it, is an art.

I don’t know much about ANT (Actor Network Theory), but a friend described it to me as being relevant here, in that folk often only notice tech when it goes wrong – otherwise we “black box” it (ignore it as something they don’t need to think about).* I think that’s a fair description of a lot of people, and I think that this attitude to tech as something they can ignore is one that should be challenged in our web 2.0 world. However, that’s a rant for another day. The point that I want to make here is that when something is functioning well we often don’t notice it, or realise how important it is to our everyday lives.

There are some things that are a lot more important than learning tech that we also often forget about until they are threatened, and that’s our fundamental human rights.  Jeremy Waldron says somewhere that rights typically only come into focus when they are threatened, otherwise we ignore then (we “black box” them, in ANT terms).  The poor and the vulnerable in our society are already well aware of how the Tory Government are eroding their basic moral rights to liberty, autonomy and welfare. Now they propose a step further – the removal of the protection of the Human Rights Act from all citizens. We should be very afraid of a government who wants to do that. I think that it’s time that we all reminded ourselves of the history of the Human Rights Act and consider seriously the implications of living in a society with no regard for the values it protects.  Scottish MSPs agree.

* This will eventually turn into something for one of our #rhizo14 presentations, hence beginning to think here about it.

Posted in #rhizo14, Politics, Rhizomes, Technology, University | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment