Reading is Such a Bohr

[Niehls Bohr] meant to teach us, as have other wise people, that it is better to have access to more than one profound truth. To be able to hold comfortably in one’s mind the validity and usefulness of two contradictory truths is the source of tolerance, openness, and, most important, a sense of humor, which is the greatest enemy of fanaticism. -Neil Postman (The End of Education)

I recently had occasion to assign to my students of Media and Popular Culture a selection from Neil Postman’s “The End of Education,” in which the above quote is featured. The selection, an Introduction and Chapter One, is something I consider both profound and empowering for students, and yet there seemed to be something missing in the class discussion. Now, I’m not oblivious to the type of game that students play in order to get by at universities (or other types of schools), and I expect there’s a healthy mix of students who didn’t read, didn’t read closely, read but only because they had to write a response, and of course read and enjoyed, but don’t feel comfortable speaking up in class.

The thing that was missing, beyond the aforementioned obstacles to meaningful discourse, was outside-the-book-research. For all the powers of information access we enjoy, not a single student could tell me who Niehls Bohr was, and when pressed not a single student had bothered to simply Google the name. I’ve taught Academic Reading to students in the (not too distant) past, and have always made a point, when discussing critical reading, to teach the methods. I’ve taught about previewing, skimming and scanning, writing in the margins and note-taking, and the supplemental use of web searches in finding deeper appreciation for the subject matter, including the background of the author and any references of the sort described here.

Is it that my students weren’t sufficiently trained and/or familiar with the type of reading experience I’ve mentioned? Perhaps. Were they just lazy? Maybe. I suspect that both of those things are true to some degree, but I also suspect that the problem lies at the heart of our education system. These students, you see, come from a culture of schooling that emphasizes testing and a fact-based relationship with the subject matter that favors textbooks and memorization. They’re more concerned with “what they have to know” rather than having a transformational experience through the subject matter. The outcome of the journey is accreditation and vocation. There’s nothing wrong with getting your passport stamped or rounding oneself into a desirable hire, but I suspect that the number of requirements in the system, and the culture of testing, is to blame for the perceived lack of interest in using information tools to enhance the experience of learning.

To return to the quote at the start of this post, the sentiment expressed seems to be among the top percentile of important lessons that an education can bring in a world of close-lived tensions and volatility. In an environment where selective exposure is a real issue, holding comfortably in one’s mind the validity and usefulness of two contradictory truths is a life skill worth pursuing. When exposed to that sentiment, and asked to deal with it in public, my students held back…at least at first. (They do a great job when brought out of the shell.) When distracted by the 1000+ things that they’re distracted with in life and online, how does one punctuate important truths in a way that makes schooling meaningful again? The first step is, of course, to encourage the value of reading. The second is to teach the methodologies associated with question-making and critical reading, which include the positive enhancement of reading possible through information technology. This is a current point of discussion in journalism schools, but overlaps in 1000s of important ways in discussions of schooling as well.

For the record, Niehls Bohr was a physicist and philosopher famous for modeling the atom, among other things, and for his humanitarian work in protecting European Jews from the rise of Nazism. Bohr was a philosophical father of complementarity (which informs the Postman quote further) and designed a Coat of Arms to be placed on his grave featuring the taijitsu, or yin and yang, to illustrate his commitment to a particular scientific and worldview.

‘Electric Circus’ XLVII

Marshall McLuhan would have loved Super Bowl XLVII. Not that the Canadian had a particular taste for American football, but rather because this Super Bowl spectacularly featured a break down in the medium. A local transformer blows after several hours of hype and pomp, and the field is largely thrust into darkness.

Every time there are televised political debates, I repost a video of McLuhan on the Today Show in 1976. The debate between Ford and Carter featured a break down in the microphone amplification which thrust the circus into silence. McLuhan famously says in his Today Show commentary, “With the breakdown in the technology the audience finally got in on the act.” This is a popular McLuhan refrain, which can be best understood in combination with his assertion that all environments are invisible, like water to the fish.

When the lights go out, so do the microphones in the play-by-play booth and the TV audience sees the man behind the curtain, if only a glimpse.

If only the whole thing would have happened during Beyonce’s halftime show, we would have been treated to an even more spectacular revelation of the circus, but the show went on and in its own technicolor dream coat fashion wove a spell over its audience.

Truly a shocking development. Are you not entertained?

No really, the map is not the territory, people.

Disputes between nations over territory is nothing new. It’s the stuff of ancient wars, tribal conflicts, and modern diplomatic headaches. Kashmir is a high profile example, as is the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea, to say nothing of Israel/Palestine. Part of those conflicts are actually horizontal, where the spaces in which people live, work, and negotiate their culture make up the basis for the fights. Other parts are political, where the symbolic importance of the territory takes over, even trumping the strategic considerations or resources.

The Pacific islands that the Chinese call the Diaoyus, and that Japan calls the Senkakus, are the source of a very interesting cultural battle that has spanned a couple of generations now. “There’s oil in them thar hills” and so a fight has persisted over the claim to the small islands populated by crabs and sea birds. There are several such conflicts between China and Japan, as well as between South Korea and Japan, and Russia and Japan. Lots of symbolic value is placed on these conflicts in the general populations of the nations in question. In Tokyo, for example, one might observe ominous black trucks outfitted with megaphones and sign placards that announce the demand that the Sakhalin and Kuril Islands be returned to Japan. These are far right wing nationalists that find their business entangled with organized crime. Tough, uncompromising, racist, and loud.

China’s rise has prompted new waves of anti-Japanese protesting, and sometimes violence, to the extent that pictures fairly frequently make the evening news in Japan. This morning, as I was enjoying coffee and the Huffington Post, I came across a story that shows how anti-Japanese fever makes its way into the culture of everyday people in China. It’s a perfect example of Alfred Korzybski’s famous aphorism “the map is not the territory” because…well…it’s about actual maps and territory.

One of the hottest items currently sold in Chinese bookstores are maps of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands claiming them as Chinese territory. The notion that people would be so swollen by their nationalist fever to purchase such maps en masse is testimony to the power of symbols in culture. First, those islands bear little importance to anyone in either nation in any practical way. Yes, there are resources that could be exploited and so they have market value, but for two economies of such large scale it’s unlikely that whatever’s there would make any noticeable difference in the everyday person’s lifestyle. Second, it’s not like the islands are going to suddenly host portions of either nation’s population, since they’re just craggy outcrops in the middle of nowhere. This whole thing is about politics, nationalism, and the resurgence of ancient regional pissing matches.

For people to be so invested in the idea of the dispute is comical, were it not so aggressive and violent. I can’t speak to the extent to which the population of China is wrapped up in this symbolic exercise. I know the Sakhalin dispute in Japan is a concern, but only a fringe minority drive black trucks through Tokyo after all. I won’t take sides in the present dispute except to say that rising nationalism is always worrisome, especially when it occurs in parts of the world with large populations.

So, remind yourselves China, when you think about buying a map to show your fever for the cause, it’s not the territory. It’s not the islands, and it’s not the power dynamic between nations that can only be resolved by mutual understanding and compromise. It’s just a picture on a piece of paper.

Facebookus Interruptis

With a hat tip to my friend Alix Howard, news that a hostage taker in Pittsburgh has been “live-blogging” his own evolving situation has crossed my desk. My first thought was that we’re seeing a 2012 version of Dog Day Afternoon with Al Pacino, but the media ecology thought that immediately came behind the pop culture reference was this Neil Postman quote from 1974:

I might add here, in case you are interested, that in the competition among media for people’s attention, the telephone wins hands down in just about every context . We even have testimony to the fact that the act of love can be terminated instantly by the ring of a telephone. In Media Ecology, we call this telephonis interruptis. Less serious but equally revealing is the fact that on two occasions in the past year, bank robbers in the actual process of being surrounded by police took time out to answer phone calls placed by curious reporters . One of the bank robbers actually said, ‘Could you call back later . I’m busy now.’

Our hostage-taker is just following the rules of the dominant cultural practices as shaped by the communication environment of the 21st century. I’d be curious to know how compelled he feels about updating his status during the ordeal.

Don’t Worry It’s Just Like the Internet

Some time ago I posted a video of Neil Postman talking in 1985 on PBS about his thesis for the book Amusing Ourselves to Death. In the course of his discussion, Postman notes that USA Today, the nation’s most successful daily paper, had shifted the news sensibility in its daily press run to reflect the new imagistic expectations of an American public more accustomed to interacting with information via television. More graphics, colorful pictures, shorter articles, etc… He even notes that the news box on the street looks just like a television, assuring customers that there’s nothing to worry about, it’s just like TV.

This morning, USA Today announced a “reboot” of their format (interesting and vert telling word choice) for the first time in a generation. To look at the new paper, one is immediately struck by how much the paper looks like a website. The original notion, that a newspaper would take the sensory experience of television was remarkable, but the new iteration is more remarkable still. Websites, which took newspaper as their content, are now seeing newspapers take websites as their content, which represents the odd reversal of a newspaper taking a representation of a newspaper as its new form. Don’t worry it’s just like the Internet.

 

The Word is Not the Thing – Tom & Jerry Edition

Polish mathematician and founder of general semantics Alfred Korzybski famously wrote that the map is not the territory. More directly, Korzybski added, “the word is not the thing.” We construct the reality of our perceived world and then proceed to live by the definitions dancing around in our heads. Language offers us the opportunity to share meaning and build culture, but it all begins with the translation of sense and thought into words.

In the spirit of “the word is not the thing,” I give you this clip from Tom and Jerry:

The relevant bit begins at 1:30 when Jerry falls into a bottle of “Invisible Ink,” at which point he actually becomes invisible. The writers of this episode of Tom and Jerry are relying on a clever language play where the ink isn’t just invisible, but so are the things that come into contact with it. Blue ink does turn us blue, and black ink turns us black, so it stands to reason that invisible ink would turn us invisible, right?

I should note that in its best years Tom and Jerry used little or no spoken language at all. The musical score did most of the “talking” and in this particular episode, while Jerry’s invisible, the camera movement even gives the illusion of Jerry’s movement through his environment.

Didn’t See That Coming – Ichiro Edition

Over the last several years, my fascination with social media, including most of my foray into blogging and tweeting, has been related to the sports world and the notion of fandom in that sense. A lot of the lessons I’ve learned about these forms of media, and how they change and work us over have come from my own personal obsession with sports culture, banter, and the sense of community that arises from the passion fans feel for their favorite teams and players.

My early blogging days began with a move to Japan and an unhealthy obsession with Daisuke Matsuzaka, who I’d hoped would join the Yankees. It continued on with a general writing habit fueled by my Nippon Prospectus column at Baseball Prospectus, and has evolved (devolved?) into a lot of tweeting about sports in general, and especially basketball as fate would have it. My more serious academic pursuits have always involved education, politics, and public discourse and the intersection of media and communication with each. Sports, however, have been the primary testing ground for my most intense experiences with social media.

One of the things I’ve learned over the last several years, with the advent of Twitter most notably, is that news breaks early and often with respect to the wheelings and dealings of sports franchises. A rumor becomes a confirmed story in the blink of an eye and nothing is ever a secret for long before everyone in “listening distance” knows about it. Journalism, in general, works this way in the 21st century, where information and disinformation spread like wildfire before the traditional legwork has had a chance to take place. The long slog of the confirmed story, with multiple sources, is over. The rush from the source to the phone to the typewriter to the typesetter to the press to the truck to the corner paperboy is a long-since-departed process of news.

The things I’ve learned via social media about the trades, signings, injuries, and other matters important to fans is staggering. The number of times new information has flooded my various timelines as I click ‘refresh’ every 10 seconds is both extraordinary and slightly disturbing. A glimmer of breaking news for a sports fan can become several days of obsessive message-checking and web-hunting and one that promises great reward to the real fanatic. I’ve been both participant observer, in the academic sense, and slightly sick-in-the-head fan from time to time.

Ichiro Suzuki, the lifelong Seattle Mariner and Japanese cultural icon, was traded today from the floundering, last place Mariners to the high-priced, first place Yankees. My Yankees. It’s beside the point that I’ve never been an Ichiro fan, or that more than occasionally I’ve been a detractor. I was thrilled at the news, and what’s more, completely taken by surprise. Nothing had been reported in the slower, traditional forms of mass media about the Yankees, the Mariners, or any potential movement for Ichiro, the face of the Mariners franchise. Nothing had been floated in the various rumor mills on the internet. No one had speculated that it was time for Ichiro to move on, or that he’d even want to for that matter (at least in most of the popular press), and then it was done.

Sources inside professional sports franchises, or with agents, tend to leak information about even the most minor moves, so something of this magnitude flying under cover is really a rarity on the order of flying pigs. Not a peep was heard until the ink was dry and Ichiro was being fitted for the Yankees road greys, number 31. Being a fan, with a history of Yankees and Japan-related social media work, especially, this story would have dragged me along the fast moving road of speculation and nuance and breaking news had it taken the normal course. As it were, this was a reminder of an age rapidly passing us by, when fans woke up to the morning edition and some spectacular and surprising news about a change in the team. It didn’t follow the typical mode of information flow in this world of ubiquitous messaging, but rather it seemed quaint and nostalgic if only for a moment, and ought to be a warning of sorts that some things are best kept secret in a world of information overload. Just like Christmas.