A Proposal for an Institution of Higher Learning

This is not necessarily an accurate reflection of my beliefs, but an interesting thought experiment. I asked myself the question, “What does my ideal school look like?”

The postulate here is that the real value that the individual gets from an institution of higher learning is inspiration and empowerment, which is best attained through community collaboration and discussion.

In order for students to be empowered and inspired, they need to be freed from their studenthood. They need to become collaborators. In my institution, a mix of people of all ages gather around a table to discuss. There are no teachers. Sometimes someone brings a topic to the table. Maybe it’s necessary for mer to deliver a lecture in order to fully introduce a topic, but the lecture should always be followed with discussion. These discussions must be held with small groups, so that the air is casual and everyone is comfortable speaking. Also, small discussion groups force people to be engaged because it’s impossible to fade into the background.

Building a community is extremely important for creating meaningful discourse (no small talk, no formalities). Thus, my institution has mandatory on-campus lodging. There are regular social events that encourage everyone to get to know each-other on different levels and to have discussion outside the classroom. This is another opportunity for collaboration and inspiration. The construction of this community must be supplemented with visiting lecturers and collaborators. Variety of opinion is very important and must be actively sought out.

Spaces are very carefully established with purpose and these purposes are respected. There are spaces for discussion and collaborative work. There are spaces for socialization and recreation. There are spaces for quiet, solitary study and work. The atmosphere in discussion spaces needs to be casual to some extent. Relevant jokes and pop culture references can and should be made. However, the goal of endowing spaces with purpose is to avoid the potential for a group of friends to allow discussion to become unfocused. Usually it is the teacher that demands this focus. With no teacher, the group must self-enforce, and establishing purposeful space is helpful to this end. Discussion spaces will sometimes have an established topic before discussion starts. Other topics may come up, but they should be captured in writing and revisited later.

In keeping with Free Culture ideals, course materials are recycled whenever possible. Special attention is paid to avoid reinventing the wheel (though recontextualization can be useful, ie writing about an unoriginal idea but with the intent of reaching a new audience). Lectures, slideshows, and essays from sources like TED talks and MIT’s OpenCourseWare
(or anyone else’s OpenCourseWare) are commonly used to frame discussions and introduce ideas. Similarly, when someone prepares a lecture for the rest of the community, it is recorded, openly licensed, and published online for other institutions to use. Also, a special emphasis is placed on the study of the great books because of their brilliance and because of their importance to an understanding of popular culture and society.

An emphasis is placed on work (defined as the tangible product of working, like the way artists use it), rather than examination. In fact, there are no examinations or grades. However, in order to encourage people to take their work seriously, deadlines are set. They are set by individuals or groups who decide to take on projects. They are set just soon enough to be uncomfortable. Goals are right on the line between unattainable and possible. Peers are encouraged to dive in to a project headfirst, not quite knowing where it will go. Failure is seen as common and important for learning. Sometimes failure can be just as motivating as success. Projects are shared with the community, which is very useful for inspiring others to take on new outlooks and to start projects of their own. The community helps its peers to critique their work and debrief on the successes and failures in the process. Of course, all work is published online with an open license that allows redistribution and remixing so that others can benefit from it and time is not wasted reinventing the wheel.

In some ways, this proposal is just for a glorified book club. But I hope that these ideals (and others that result from reflection on this piece of writing) can be integrated into existing communities of learning, and that, with some work, new communities (or subcommunities within an existing institution) can be created with the intention of at least partial implementation of this system.

Certainly, as we move closer to a Free Culture, this system becomes more feasible.

Proprionormativity

In my last post I touched on heteronormativity. At Free Culture Conference 2008, I came up with a new word: Proprionormativity.

I am sharing this because language is power. Having words to succinctly express ideas is extremely empowering to the individual, and extremely useful for any sort of movement. Queer children are tortured by their sexuality until they learn what “gay” or “queer” means, giving them the tools to make sense of their identity.

I think there are similarities between the free software and free culture movements and the gay rights movements (and I’m hoping to reflect on this in another post at some point), but there are also important differences. I say this simply to assert that I don’t claim that proprionormativity is directly related to heteronormativity. I’m simply borrowing the idea.

Examples of proprionormative statements:
“Downloading movies online is illegal.” (assumes that videos are published with closed licenses)
“Windows or mac?” (disregards other operating systems, most of which are open-source)

Surely we Free Culture activists see open source software and openly licensed (ie Creative Commons licensed) media as useful, perhaps even essential. But do we as a society see open licenses as “normal”? How does our language either support or challenge proprionormativity? Normality has both to do with statistics and with internalized impressions that become manifest in our language. I argue that we can expedite the movement of openness into a realm of statistical “normality” by using language to assert a social normality (recall that heteronormativity is a real issue despite the statistical “abnormality” of queerness).

One might argue that openness is always going to be abnormal while copyright law is an opt-out system (as it currently is in the US). However, despite the way that the law is constructed, it is extremely common to opt in to copyright. Individuals and corporations almost always include copyright declarations with their work. There is just as much action involved in including a copyright declaration as there is in attaching a Creative Commons license. However, there is less choice involved, because people don’t understand that open licensing is a viable option. This is precisely why we must use language to combat proprionormativity.

Careful attention to our own language, and gentle correction of the language of others can provoke a paradigm shift in the way that we view creativity and technology. Right now, the assumption made by the lay person is that the more valuable mer work is, the more important it is that ze control the rights to copies and derivatives in order to “secure profits”. But we know that allowing people to share and remix only increases the value of a work, and that creators can make monetize openly-licensed work. Through the careful use of language that challenges proprionormativity, we can progress society to a point where the average creator sees open licensing as “normal.” Once the artist is made aware that open licensing really is an option, the choice is obvious.

Just Words

President-elect Barack Obama talked about words earlier this year.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“You should totally come to this event, there are going to be lots of cute girls.”

I have no reason to be personally offended when people make statements which assume that I’m heterosexual. In fact, I do identify as heterosexual in most contexts. But I know that this assumed heterosexuality is counterproductive to society as a whole. The message sent is that there is something fundamentally off or odd about being queer.

I sometimes accuse people of making statements that are heteronormative. Some people rebut point out that, given simple statistics, heterosexuality is “normal.” I would remind these people that they’re not likely to ask someone of unknown religiosity which local church they go to, despite the fact that Christianity is statistically “normal.”

Relatedly (and, in my opinion, more interestingly), when describing a singular, hypothetical person (or a person of unknown gender), we have a dilemma. “They” is grammatically incorrect, he/she is too long, and “one” is too cumbersome, often requiring sentences to be restructured. Most people just use “he” without even thinking about it. Even women. Indeed, this is traditionally the most grammatically correct option, although it’s probably the least politically correct. “When a person checks a book out from the library, he agrees to return it within two weeks.”

I’ve developed the habit of using the pronoun “she” to describe hypothetical people. I first noticed this being done by Cory Doctorow a couple years ago. A number of other great speakers and authors do this. This practice is brilliant because of the way that it stands out. The listener or reader notices how unexpected the use of a female pronoun is, then, if she thinks critically about it, she notices how absurd it is that male pronouns are so much more acceptable. “He/she” is more inclusive (and perhaps more PC) than “she,” but it doesn’t challenge the audience to reflect on the issue.

Last week, I decided that I’m going to take this a step further. I’m going to start using Ze. It’s even louder than “she” in it’s call to the listener to reflect on the message sent by pronoun use. I anticipate plenty of queries from friends and professors, and I’m excited and prepared to have those conversations. I also anticipate that adopting this practice will take quite a bit of time (to be honest, I have yet to become fully consistent with my use of “she”). While I’m still developing the habit, I see myself being accused of simply looking for attention or trying to sound smart. Well, you have to start somewhere, and anyway, the dialog is always useful. The exercise of altering word choice forces both speakers and

These are just words. But words have both implicit and explicit meaning. Word choice sends a message, and most of this message is processed and internalized entirely subconsciously.

You can either play in to the dominant paradigm, or you can challenge and subvert it. You can make the world a more open and accepting place where everyone, not just white heterosexual men, is “normal.” You can fix it, even if it ain’t broke.

Doing Things

I recently read this post by Merlin Mann. His name is fitting; he is just a man, and yet his brilliance borders on wizardy. His ability to keep things in perspective is truly inspiring.

I like to do stuff. Especially making stuff. Lots of stuff. Different stuff. But important stuff. Yet I don’t do enough of this stuff. It’s easy to get caught up in schoolwork and other activities that the System expects us to participate in. School is certainly important and valuable for most people, but it’s important to keep perspective. I already wrote about finding empowerment within myself. Emerson wrote about Self-Reliance.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the things that I do now, what I want to do for the rest of my life, and how my priorities are ordered.

I like writing. Sometimes the essays that I write for class are neat. I played with stream of consciousness writing last year, and I want to keep experimenting with that. I want to write more essays on this blog. I believe that writing helps clarify my thoughts. Giving language to ideas makes them much more useful.

I like artwork. I remix clothing. I make sculpture with cheap and accessible materials like paper, tape, and marker. I take photos and use Free Software to edit them. I like asserting the accessibility of the tools for creation and expression. I like remixing things that we interact with every day so that they tell a story and become a unique work of art.

I like programming. I develop the web. It’s my day job. I like making websites that are pretty and useful. I’m focused on creating websites that empower users to create and update the content themselves, without the help of a web developer (see also Web 2.0). I want to write more Open Source code that people will actually use and build on.

Merlin’s post helped me form a clearer idea of what I want to Do, and it got me thinking about what I can do to Make Things Happen.

I would consider myself a Renaissance Man. Most people would say that, as a college student, it’s time that I start picking and choosing and focusing, for fear that i should become a “Jack of all trades and expert of none.”

But I think that having varying interests is important because information and perspective gained in one field helps form new ideas in other fields. Plus I really like all of the stuff that I Do (or, rather, love Doing but don’t Do enough). I can’t keep up all of my hobbies simultaneously. But I can still pursue all of them indefinitely. I can rotate pursuits, getting really into my photography for a week and maybe doing some web development while I let my sculptural work lie fallow for a bit. A kind of Hobby Crop Rotation.

But I’m having trouble doing anything at all in this new college community where I’m trying to stay on top of my schoolwork and make friends and carve out my Space. I need motivation. Inspiration.

So I came up with a few ideas. Today, I’m launching one of them: Marathons. For a period of X days, i’m going to do one Y per day. Some will suck. Some will be awesome. Some will be well thought-out and formed, and some will be thrown together at the last minute. I have a theory that there’s not necessarily a correlation between the amount of planning ahead that I do and the brilliance of my work (don’t tell my prof when I actually started that midterm paper). It has more to do with my mood and whether or not I can get into the zone. I work better when I approach something casually. Sometimes I can get to a place where the stuff just pours out of me and time passes without me noticing (see also Mihály Csíkszentmihályi and Flow).

So here it goes.

This is Blog Week. A post a day for 7 days. This is day 1.

No

So I’m a college student now. I’ve heard “No” quite a few times in the past couple weeks. It’s not necessarily an angry thing. But I still hate it. I hate “No.” As an improvisor, I’ve learned how to say “yes,” and even “yes and.” I learned that humor doesn’t have to involve “no.” As an increasingly socially aware person, I am very sensitive to “No.” I want people to be free and explore and experiment and be themselves instead of being “No”-ed into a mold.

I participated in a phone bank for the Obama campaign. I called some 15-20 numbers and didn’t get a single positive response. New Hampshire residents have apparently been baraged with propaganda from both sides because their votes are so important. To these people picking up their phones, I was just another solicitor. They were not happy to hear from me. “Don’t call here with that crap.” “No, I don’t know who I’m voting for, but if I keep getting these calls I’ll know who I wont be voting for.”

I applied for funding for my trip to the Free Culture conference. I tried a few resources. I wrote a proposal. I got “No”s.

I took three placement exams. “No” advanced placement for any of them.

I tried out for the two campus improv groups. I was sure I was going to get in, until i saw how many other talented improvisors there were in my freshman class. “No.”

I really really hate “No.” I like “Yes.” I like “Yes you can.” Encouragement. “I think that what you are trying to do is extremely important and valuable, even if i can’t help you with it right now.”

I don’t take “No” well. It’s a character flaw. I get depressed and want to quit. I realize that I’ve been lucky to get a whole lot of “Yes” the last few years of my life. I don’t think there’s going to be as much “Yes” from here on out. I want to be on the forefront, making the change. So, in a way, I don’t really want “Yes.” I want to get right in there with all of the “No” and stand tall and fight.

I’m going to work with friends to start a new improv group. I’m going to the Free Culture Conference, even if I have to pay for my travel out of my own pocket. I’m going to kick ass in my intro-level courses and use my exta time to Get Things Done. I’ve registered to vote in New Hampshire, where my vote will really count, and I’ll make sure that all of my friends do the same. This is important stuff. I’m not going to let the “No” slow me down.

My strength can come from my self, not from receiving “Yes.”

What do you call…

a person who just got shot with a tranquilizer gun and who favors government systems that emphasize equality over personal freedom?

a calmunist

however, if we had been playing the alliteration game:

sleepy socialist
lethargic leftist
maxed-out marxist

Metaphors

warning: emo 16-year-old poetry. not for the feint of heart. may trigger gag reflex.

Then I was alone. Or maybe I had been alone for some time. Maybe I was always alone. I was insufficient. But how should I have known? I put so much into this. Now I understood the poems. The song lyrics. It is like you’ve lost part of yourself. Better to have loved and lost? Why didn’t she just let me in? I should have seen it coming.
Confusion. Pain. The kind where it hurts to stand still. Even sit still. The smiles were fake. Nothing was for sure. No, I don’t want to right now. Yes, I am losing interesting in things I once enjoyed. No, I am not clinically depressed. I don’t want to talk about it. It just wasn’t ready to come out yet.
It was getting harder to hold it in. Some spilled out on a piece of clay. It seems in my frustration I broke my plate in half. It’s a metaphor. That felt good. I made more metaphors. They went over everyone else’s heads. They helped me get my head straight. I could articulate. This was good.
The hole was being filled. Then it was over. No, it’ll never be fully over. But I don’t need the angry music anymore. Smiles dont make me sad anymore. Still alone. But this time it’s a good kind of alone. The old interests return. I’ve gained some new. Like my metaphors. I sit in front of a fresh piece of clay. There aren’t any metaphors inside this one. No more overflowing liquid to pour out. Not even a drop to squeeze out. I guess I should be happy. At least smiles don’t make me sad anymore. Better to have loved and lost?

Carpe Noctem

some people do drugs. or they vandalize. maybe they watch movies. together or with friends. sometimes it’s videogames. it’s like a high. it’s being free. it’s a deep, penetrating happiness. it usually works best with other people. you become completely relaxed and carefree. you can run faster at night, barefoot, on a really big, really open, field. “giddy.”

yesterday we played tag. then capture the flag. then sardines. during our last game of sardines, we were able to keep something like 8 people hidden in one spot. everyone played along. faces down in the dirt, breathing slowed. you gain a consciousness of the whole. similarly in capture the flag. like fish, with their lateral lines. “hive mentality.” you see one person go, and you go also. one person draws a defender out, and you move in. sometimes it’s way out of sync, but then sometimes, for a brief bit, everyone thinks together. it’s beautiful.

PS- i’m going to write more.

New Photos

I haven’t been taking many photos recently, but I’ve still been learning stuff. I learned a little bit about cropping when I assembled my arts portfolio that I sent off to colleges (I’ll publish it here eventually). Today, I started experimenting with post-production photo enhancement. It’s crazy how much more colorful you can make a photo with just a few clicks. To the point where the original suddenly looks like it’s b+w. Photos of tuscan summer landscapes suddenly become photos of the same landscapes during spring.

I’ve uploaded a few neat ones to flickr. I also gave some old ones a cropping and coloring facelift, but re-uploading to flickr would be redundant. I’ll install some better photo publishing software once i set up my new web server.

More Airport Security Stuff

I really like this article. It links to this one, too. These are kinda neat.