Question 65 of 365: How do we get there from here?

As much as I try to get excited about of the journey, there is still a really big part of me that just wants to arrive. The point A to B stuff gets tiresome, and I just want to do be done with it. I wan’t to claim victory and not have to see everything through just to prove my point.

In essense, I would like to have a map already laid out and know what the mile markers are going to say. If StreetView can put together a viewpoint of the inside of stores, surely I can see my way to the end of the year or the coming collisions within my life, right?

In Maine they have a saying, “You can’t get there from here.” And I believe that this holds true for a lot of what I am trying to do in starting a new business or in starting a new school. The progression doesn’t seem logical. It seems as though we will have to jump over vast lakes that stand in our way. And if that is the case, what will those jumps be?

I would like to proclaim now that my ideas will be profitable within a year. I would like to proclaim now that education will be better because we have rethought it in this time and space. I would like to proclaim that the networks that I live in will be forever changed because I have taken part. These proclamations are not made out of hubris, but rather, out of passion for making them happen.

And yet, what jumps will let these proclomations come true?

I believe that the first jump will be because of a single person. I believe that a single person that I do not yet know will see what we are trying to do and decide that he or she wants to invest their time and money into breathing them to life. I believe that this person will have a unique perspective that I have never considered. He or she will be able to better see my goals than me and will be better able to articulate them to a wide audience. This person will become my muse for a while. He or she will make me want to work nonstopped to figure things out and prove my worth. This person will not wait for me, but will encourage me to keep up. And I will.

The second jump will be because of a technology that doesn’t yet exist. It will help me listen better to everything going on around me and let me iterate upon my ideas more efficiently becuase of it. This technology will focus my energy on creating something new rather than monitoring what I have already created. It will single-handedly change my discourse to be about making connections and sustaining them. It will change me too.

The third jump I will make to get from here to there will be because of a loss I will undergo that I cannot yet see. I will have to give up a very large part of my ideas or of myself in order to prove that I can go on. I will lose so completely that it will be hard for me to pick up the pieces, and yet I will. I will continue to pursue what I have always pursued: an authentic way to work and learn. And that is what will still be there. The loss will haunt me, but it will solidify my resolve to get things done and I will work even harder to make sure that what I have lost will not have been sacrificed in vain.

While these predictions are somewhat ominous, I think that they are completely true. I beleive that the only way that we can make true strides toward our vision of the way things should be is through loss, disruptive technologies, and supportive mentorship (not an exhaustive list, however). I shall have all three.

Question 36 of 365: How does distribution change the message?

There are new devices popping up all over that are shifting the ways in which we get our content. Blu-Ray players no longer just play the discs that the film studios produce; they connect to the internet, play music and let us rent movies from Netflix. The Boxee box creates hundreds of channels that were previously only available on your computer and serves them up on your TV, all nearly for free. For all of its hype, the iPad will circumvent the process of buying books, reading newspapers and watching videos. In effect, these devices and their like-minded brethren push the rigid forms of distribution into being pliable, even usable in this century. They offer content wherever we are. They are the reincarnation of the evening post, the movie reels filled with news, or the light bulb tickers across old buildings. The new distribution channels are making our content personal and letting us connect to it in ways that we never have before. We can be social without even leaving our couch. We can see the world (so long as it doesn’t require flash) from the palms of our hand.

While this kind of thinking is almost Utopian in scope, my question is whether we are not just shifting the ways that we consume, but rather if we are shifting what we consume as well. Is watching a movie on an iPad the same as watching it on a TV? Does streaming music onto your Boxee box change the song itself? Is the news, when read through a smart phone, the same news?

I would like to make the case that the very content we consume is changed by the distribution channels that it takes. In a conversation I had with @raventech last night, we discussed whether or not a hashtag on twitter could be the nexus of a movement. Could a single technology be the organizing force which pushes all conversations to be about changing the ways that schools and learning organizations operate? The distribution channel of 140 characters forces us to be on topic. It forces us to hyperlink and pivot fast between topics. There is no room for drawn out back-room deals to be made. Twitter is searchable and open. A hashtag can be archived and sorted for any information of value. This means that the message is fundamentally changed by the stream of tweets that it inhabits.

It is the same with more mainstream content. A song really does change when you can see the lyrics on screen. A movie really is different when you can speak directly with the director in a live chat (as some BD-live content has done). A book really is different when annotations can be searched and done collaboratively. These are not small shifts.

As many people in the media industries have bemoaned over the last few years, the old distribution methods are dying. If video didn’t kill the radio star, certainly Last.fm will (or at least the disc jockey). When distribution is actually distributed, no one person or company can actually own it. While the world may think Apple is making lucrative distribution deals with Marvel comics, textbook companies, and major publishing firms; they are really changing what a book is. They are changing the message of all books to be: read me… but also collaborate with me.

They, and nearly all new distribution forms, are causing us to question the very nature of the formats that we have held dear for so long. While the experts and the artists will always be the ones that we look to for their work, the ways in which we consume content are dictating to us to become more involved in the process of creation. We are not only creating well-informed (and advertising-saturated) customers. We are also creating customers that expect to have a voice, that expect to be social, and that expect to co-create.

This is what will save the dying industries. Not micropayments, not ad-support or blending video into newspaper layouts. The thing that will save newspaper, music, and film are engaging the audience in the means of distribution itself. When we feel like we own the content as a part of ourselves, we will buy as much as we can. And when the distribution channels truly become two-way, that is when their value will be irrevocable. We will just simply need the content because the content is us.

Everything as a feed.

I am now coming to understand feeds and rss as the muscles that move the web. They are the tissue that seems to push and pull all of the information that I care about. Unfortunately, many sites still do not open up their content to rss feeds.
 
Well, instead of waiting for them to open it up, I can take matters into my own hands and construct my own rss feeds using http://www.dapper.net. Much like greasemonkey, Dapper allows you to choose which ares of a webpage are important and then select them for inclusion in the rss feed (or exclusion on your browser in the case of greasemonkey). So, what does this have to do with learning?
 
Well, if I can make anything into a feed, then I can make anything on demand for others. I can make any webpage that was created before “web 2.0″ into something that can be fed into an email subscription, an aggregator, or a portal. This opens up all content to redistribution in a format of your own choosing. So, put everything at students’ fingertips. Aggregate everything. Seriously.
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