I have in John Naughton’s own words, spent the best part of two hours 'bouncing' about Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web in search of a vital fact relating to this H800 task (no.3) concerning the Gutenberg, books and libraries; I failed, though I had a joyous time first in my own blog (started 1999, has the information I require, not tagged, poor archiving, couldn't find it, read loads of other stuff I'd forgotten about), then via Google and too often in Wikipedia, all to find out something on the Bodliean Library that is in a file in the shed and in my head (somewhere).
On visiting the Bodliean in the early 17th century I believe this person said that if he read all the books then held he'd know everything or some such. Do we suppose that the 3 million+ entries in Wikipedia are the sum total of world knowledge?
Never mind
Any answers?
Blogging for me ended 25 years of keeping a journal in a hard back book. The complete undoing of my life with books will be further undone with the purchase of an e-Reader (a Kindle, I get one tomorrow).
There could be no libraries without books and people to read them, nor universities that gather around the library’s finite resource. With the digital ‘liberation’ of books will traditional libraries and universities go the way of the OU too?
Hyperbole is symptomatic of invention
Prof. Gilly Salmon and Martin Weller, who have authored modules of the MAODE, are guilty of it. (Give me another two hours and I'll quote them and add references. I’ll do so in my OU BLOG).
I could in time drill through a year of reflection on great innovations from the book to the telegraph, courtesy of H807 ‘Innovations in E-learning’ and some extra reading I did over the summer on radio, film and TV, Edison and the phonograph and light bull.
Exaggeration reflects a human quest from improvement, and good sales talk.
It may distract thinkers from considering the wider consequences of technology change – though I suppose we are no better able to stop the future as Luddites exactly 200 years ago.
I won’t go along with some 'Law of Technology' unless there is some scientific and statistical evidence proof attached to it. It’s hardly Newton’s Law of Motion. I do buy the bell-curve elaborated fully in Roger’s seminal ‘Diffusion of Innovations.’
Nor do I buy Naughton’s idea that childhood ever ended at seven or twelve or fourteen.
All to be discussed elsewhere perhaps? The H800 cafe or OU Blog. My wife used to think I'd never grew up; I think I have in the last few months. I'm 50 in September. My late grand-father told me to 'enjoy it while you're young.' He's not around to see that I stretched his advice by a couple of decades. He left school at started work on his 14th birthday; did his childhood end that day? I've just been reading about Lady Anne Clifford. When her father died she was 15. Her battle and wishes to secure her inheritance started that day. This is 1605. She'd had a governess and tutor. Did she grow up that day or age 13 years 2 months when she joined the court of Queen Elizabeth? Journalist are generalists. They don't need to stick to facts, or cite sources or even stand up to peer review.
Is this the dumbing down of the OU or education's necesary slide into informality?
A product of the age, where we Twitter and network, forum thread, then use the same style to write assignments.
Innovators do it because they see a need and feel a desire to come up with an answer
For some it makes money (Bill Gates, Thomas Eddison) for others it does not (Tim Berners-Lee). Academicsdo it for reputation, and status (and indirectly salaries/stipends pension), whereas entrepreneurs do it to generate wealth.
The problem they solve both is a turning point at least, where one story ends and another begins.
H.G.Wells thought we’d all be flying around in lighter than air dirigibles rather than aeroplanes – predictions are fraught.
He got it right plenty of times though.
We may think that social networking has exploded upon us all of a suddent with Facebook. A BBC radio series on the history of Social Networking took as back to the 1970s. It reminded me of Minitel in France. There was (and still is) MySpace, remember. And Friends Reunited? Are you there yet? More like Friends Disjointed now.
To develop and maintain relationships in a fractured world but it is the personal relationship that we want with those who govern us that is having radical consequences for people in nations like Tunisia, Iran, China and Egypt in this linked in world.
Are you Linked In? Will it work so well with 300 million signed up, as it does with 90 million? Does it work? What is it for? What are the unknown consequences? I'd better not say it, that would spoil the next decade.
Remember all that talk of the leisure time we'd had? Longer holidays and three day weeks because our lives would be so much easier to manage? Instead of working 9-5 we work through our sleep (indeed if you've read my early entries you'll realise that I rate rather highly my mind does for me once I am asleep).
Enough
Sleep
(Which will be a new challenge with a Kindle on the pillow)