innovation3

PART 3
December 8, 2007

One of the things I saw over the last few years in the Roman Catholic church I attended when I was young is how many gray heads were sitting in the pews during mass on Sunday. What was going on? How will the church have to change to enlist youth in religion?

I have been speaking over the last few month about the digital shift occurring in our youth. We see that in the electronic devices they use and have access to each day. How will schools have to change to keep up with this shift to enlist youth in education?

An then again… what are the implications of Weinberger’s observations and theories?

Last night I collected my computer and Logitech laptop camera to attend the David Weinberger dinner and lecture I mentioned in my December 5th blog post. When I arrived at the dinner which I had assumed was going to be a small, intimate dinner with the author and some friends, I was surprised to see over a hundred people in their 60’s and 70’s feasting on a buffet dinner. I learned that the dinner was part of a Friday Forum lecture series.

I was out of place, not because of my age, but because of my computer. Once again (this happens everywhere) I was the only one with a black leather computer case. The digital shift is not ubiquitous yet.

It was a pleasant meal with some friendly people, but I wanted to engage with the author about his thinking and this wasn’t going to be the forum for that kind of an exchange. The organizer for the event did introduce me to Weinberger. I told him I was looking forward to his presentation; “you have put words to what I have been thinking,” I said to him. Weinberger replied, “Good thing your thoughts aren’t copyrighted.”

I was the first to leave dinner; I wanted to get to the lecture hall so I could test out the internet connection and prepare for my Ustream.tv broadcast. Although I still hadn’t figured out how to archive a broadcast, I still wanted to try; sooner or later I will find out and the experience with broadcasting will get me ready for my EduCon 2.0 presentation on January 26, 2007, Claiming what we Imagine.

I fired up Firefox only to get the “no connection screen.” I fittled with with “View available Networks” and found that they was a wireless connection in the air, but when I tried to connect, I got a message asking me for an ID, password, and room number. Frustrating, but it happens everywhere, either there is no connection or their is a connection for only the registered users. Obviously, with no connection, no Ustream broadcast.

People from the dinner and many others (totaling I’d guess 250) shuffled into the lecture hall. Most were in their 60’s and 70’s ~ no one had a computer but me. David Weinberger was introduced with words of praise that must have come from the reviews of his new book. He began his presentation and wow! It was almost exactly the same presentation he gave on Google. See PART 2, December 6th below. How ironic! Here is a Fellow from Harvard’s prestigious Berkman Institute for Internet & Society speaking about how accessible knowledge on the internet is for users and I’m sitting in a presentation for the second time! I found out later on his blog that the presentation is his “stump speech” for his new book.

Did he assume no one would Google his name and find the presentation video and watch it before the Friday Night lecture? Did it not occur to him to even make the connection between his online version, the presentation I was watching and an internet literate audience?

I am grateful to have access to his ideas online and it doesn’t seem to have dampened the enthusiasm for him as a speaker with the “digital immigrant” generations. Will we realize that a monster is growing among us?

• Digital natives are the result of our world’s cultural and economic inclinations.
• Inertia is preventing us from changing to digital habits (ubiquitous internet access?).
• Digital natives are not showing up to analog institutions: churches, education, Friday Night lectures.

PART 1
December 5, 2007

Well, maybe not an invitation to the actual dinner, you know how digital is its own reality, an digital invitation. I am going out to dinner Friday night at 6:00 p.m. with David Weinberger and some other folks from the scientific community in Woods Hole, Falmouth, Massachusetts, USA. After dinner Mr. Weinberger is giving a lecture, 7:30 p.m. in case you are in the area, to the general public, “Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder” on Friday, December 7.

I am inviting you to ask questions, provide Weinberger quotes or anecdotes, links, videos, or anything else in any format that comes into your “digitally disordered” mind to prepare me for my meeting with him. I will use whatever you give me to prepare a montage to represent you at the dinner and lecture. Not sure if this has been done before, but what the heck, that’s what innovation is all about! Reminder, I’d like to keep the focus on K12 leadership and learning, but am willing to consider including other issues if they seem relevant.

email: drichards(at) gmail (dot) com
twitter: dennisar
skype id: drichards1

P.S. I will ask him if I can UStream the lecture if that seems possible, but I need someone to coach me prior to Friday’s lecture.

PART 2
December 6, 2007

To learn more about David Weinberger, I googled his name with the word video: “david weinberger video,” and found this Google video of a presentation he did.

Google Tech Talks May 10, 2007

ABSTRACT

David Weinberger’s new book covers the breakdown of the established order of ordering. He explains how methods of categorization designed for physical objects fail when we can instead put things in multiple categories at once, and search them in many ways. This is no dry book on taxonomy, but has the insight and wit you’d expect from the author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, Small Pieces Loosely Joined, and a former writer for Woody Allen.