Matthew Allen

Upcoming Workshop

A Question of Boundaries: What Next for the ‘Edgeless University’?

(Workshop details)

I will be organising and facilitating a workshop on the impacts of network technologies on universities at the Oxford Internet Institute in May, focusing on a critical appraisal of the notion of ‘edgelessness’. Here is the extended abstract and plan for the workshop:

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In 2009, the UK Demos Foundation released a report, The Edgeless University (Bradwell, 2009), exploring the impact of digital network technologies on British universities.

Subtitled, ‘Why higher education must embrace technology’, its author, Peter Bradwell, argues cogently for both the opportunity and necessity to remake higher education according to the new realities of a world relentlessly connected, digitised and increasingly distributed in time and space away from centralised locations.

Re repurposing Richard Lang’s insights about the edgeless city, in which the functions of the city occur, but the form is now more fluid, dispersed and without the clear boundaries which have previously helped define ‘the urban’, Bradwell proposes a shift in higher education analogous to that within the popular music industry: technologies will not ‘do away’ with universities but, to prosper, those institutions must change systematically and with a “coherent narrative” to embrace digital networks.

While much has changed in terms of the funding, politics and general cultural climate around higher education in recent times, nothing has changed to make less the threat of conservatism in the face of global knowledge networking, nor to reduce the opportunity which universities have to become central to the new forms of knowledge and learning which the Internet and related technologies demand.

This workshop will explore practical opportunities and problems that confront academics and institutions of higher learning in light of Bradwell’s prognosis for the technology-oriented future. The focus for the workshop is to ask:

what exactly should a modern comprehensive university do that will unleash the creativity of students and staff and maximise the potential of distributed, edgeless learning while, at the same time, also making the most of the physical spaces which will remain critical markers of ‘a university’?. In other words, how can we utilise digital technologies and networks to fashion ‘new’ edges — temporary boundaries, if you like — that assist us in making education a collaborative, collective experience?

Format of Workshop

The workshop will be 1/2 day, including lunch:

• Introduction / overview (30 minutes – Matthew Allen)
• Open discussion: what are the key changes needed for enhanced, engaged teaching and learning within the edgeless university paradigm? (30 minutes – plenary)
• Groups work on the key changes proposed, examining critically its validity, refining it and making sense of the likely outcomes (30 minutes – sub-groups)
• Lunch (45 minutes)
• Report back and group presentations and discussion, including consideration of the need for edges to be re-introduced at times (60 minutes)
• Conclusion, including overall response (15 minutes – speaker TBA)

Tomorrow I move out of my comfort zone in presenting on the uses of online learning in higher education. I am at the University of Newcastle and will, in the morning, give another version of my presentation on Web 2.0 tools for online learning at university (search for “Matthew Allen”). This presentation will be fine: it has worked well before but is very didactic and controlled.

In the afternoon I am giving a “blogshop” which is my neologism for a workshop-involving-blogging. It involves co-present, computer-mediated interactions in which the users (aka labrats) will join and participate in a collaborative blog just for the period of the workshop. The blogshop is called ’5 Steps Towards new-fashioned online learning’ (at http://knl.posterous.com ).

Amongst other things, the blogshop is going to involve Todaysmeet back channelling, identity creation and management via Gmail (for Posterous and Slideshare) and exploring another ‘top 10′ Web 2.0 tools. I’ve already been extolling the virtues of Posterous, Slinkset, Mind42 and others. Now we are going to start exploring:

• Chartle (Chartle.net tears down the complexity of online visualizations – offers simplicity, ubiquity and interactivity instead)
• Flexlists (With FLEXlists you can create simple databases of anything you want, with every field you need.You can share the list with others, invite them to edit the list or just keep it for yourself)
• Groups (Roll your own social network)
• Moreganize (Moreganize is a  multifaceted organisation tool. It is suited for both professional and private use and is especially convenient if a larger group of people needs to get organized!)
• Planetaki (A planet is a place where you can read all the websites you like in a single page. You decide whether your planet is public or private.)
• Qhub (Qhub is a platform you can use on your blog or website that allows your audience to ask questions and get real answers, it doesn’t just help answer questions it allows a genuine community to develop around your site.)
• Scribblar (Simple, effective online collaboration Multi-user whiteboard, live audio, image collaboration, text-chat and more)
• Spaaze (Spaaze is a new visual way to organize pieces of information in a virtual infinite space. Your things, your way.)
• Squareleaf (Squareleaf is a simple and intuitive virtual whiteboard, complete with all the sticky notes you’ll ever need. Unlike the real thing, our notes don’t fall off all of the time.)
• Survs (Survs is a collaborative tool that enables you to create online surveys with simplicity and elegance.)
• Voicethread (With VoiceThread, group conversations are collected and shared in one place from anywhere in the world. All with no software to install.)

(all quotes from the websites concerned)

Posterous rocks. I am now too wedded to the flexibility and power of WordPress to change my main blog, but I think Posterous really has a great ease-of-use factor that, if you want simplicity, recommends it.

The substantive point is this:

developing people’s ability to engage in innovative online learning design is not about the software per se: it is about their ability and attitude to work with the cognitive engineering available via the web to create interactive learning experiences (where interactive implies interactions between computers and humans, as well as humans themselves). Therefore the blogshop provides, I hope, an experiential learning activity: learning by doing, while thinking, and communicating about that experience.

Contact me if you want to repurpose, reuse or otherwise mashup the knowledge networked learning blogshop – it’s creative commons

On 15 November, as part of the Making Links Conference, Marcus Foth and I organised a workshop entitled Research for Action: Networking University and Community for Social Responsibility . Participants included researchers and activists, based in both universities and community organisations, and the following is a broadbrush summary of some things I learned from participating in a great day (with apologies for any errors in interpretation of what went on).

(Posted before the final discussion, so I can concentrate on that plenary)

Acknowledgment of the great people who spoke today at the bottom.

Some of what I discuss is:

• There is no one model for cross-sectoral collaborative research organisation
• Research projects change; research is projection
• The grant or article is not the motivation
• The silent partners of research
• Who is the researcher?
• Research and action have different timeframes
• Learning / Education and research
• Research, knowledge work, networked ICTs
• Show me the money

There is no one model for cross-sectoral collaborative research organisation

Three (or more) models of research for action (drawn from contributions from Kath Albury, Marian Tye and Helen Merrick)

• the collaborative project, articulating complex array of partners around a specific issue, involving funding, participants and university researchers
• the choreography – diverse bodies in motion, all in relatively simple partnerships, but the overall result is complex
• the personal is professional – passion in life underpins research and living. There’s no ‘group’ out there except one to which researcher already belongs.

All three models involve aspects of the other.

Difference between research as a specific search for new knowledge (more or less applied), for which a partnership might be needed or which must be used, and research as a state of mind or view of engaging with the world. Research collaborations could be one or the other or lead from one to the other. Just be careful about keeping clear what is needed and possible.

Research projects change; research is projection

The research project does not exist extant of the collaborative partnership: the project must be regularly reframed to suit the shifting circumstances that are exposed by doing the research. The shifts in circumstances can be both organisational (ie changes in the way the partnership is being operationalised) and also epistemological (what you ‘know’ changes). The project is a ‘projection’, a throwing forward or imagining of where the outcomes will emerge and how, rather than a fixed container.

The grant or article is not the motivation

Researchers who are employed within universities should not approach the collaborative community partnerships by saying ‘what is the grant I can get; what are the publications I can generate IF I make this link’. Rather, they should ask ‘what is the social, knowledge benefit that can be achived FOR the people who are in action’. The consequences (grants, publications) – the currency of academic success – can follow from the productive partnership rather than being the reason for its existence. At the point when the partnership (not the academic) will benefit from such ‘academic’ successes then they can become part of the explicit doing of the partnership’s work. While this statement might be seen solely as a moral stance which admits to the requirements to understand the aims of social research for action, it is also a pragmatic statement of efficiency: seeking the grant, thinking of the article will not actually create the conditions for partnership.

The silent partners of research

Research collaborations between community organisations and academic researchers always involve ‘silent’ partners whose needs and expectations must also be considered. For example, a silent partner for an academic might be her Head of School who manages her workload and thus, even while not present, is still involved in some way, involved in the sense that this person influences the research almost without knowing it. Community organisations represent, but are not the same as, the whole population that is their collective: these people too are silent partners. Governments, funding bodies, the media who might report on research are all silent partners too. I advance this idea simply to suggest that one of the ways in which trust and explicit sharing of expectations and needs can be done more effectively is if the speaking partners articulate, to one another, the silent partners who might, nevertheless, influence that project.

Who is the researcher?

Research for action implies that the identity of the researcher is not as clear as in traditional research collaborations (between the normatively academic researcher and the group who has a problem they can’t solve). Researchers, from the academy, should perhaps be research coaches who empower the researchers already working within the community by simply refining the attitudes so that they come to see their work as research. Similarly, the community workers may be doing the research by simply doing their job: the research outcomes might first occur within the community and only then become extracted into ‘research forms’ that are conventionally understood as research. The academic researcher, in this case, is a follower, or observer. The academic researcher might also be the solution to the organisation’s needs!

A related point: whether something is research is also contestable – and ‘doing research’ has its own politics: if it suits a community organisation to be ‘doing research’ then academics can help reframe the work in that way. Researchers, from universities, often need to suspend their desire for research outcomes to recognise instead their desire for involvement. Such a step might actually be quite liberating and productive for it frees academics from some of the more foolish ‘research management’ games which the formal assignment of the title ‘research’ can entail.

An additional point, picking up a different meaning of ‘who’: there is a big difference between researchers who are established institutional academics, emerging academics, doctoral students and so on.

Research and action have different timeframes

One theme from the workshop – timeframes are different for ‘research’ and ‘action’. These timeframes can come into conflict in several ways  – time taken to prepare the research (funding, ethics, clearance); time taken to publish results (scholarly journals): these are not very ‘active’ in the sense that a pressing problem require more urgent action. At the same time, while not invalidating the need for action, research works because it doesn’t jump to conclusions: the suspension of judgment opens the space to discover something new; the time taken can be productive of the civic intelligence that research can build (it is very process oriented). Maybe one answer is to run the research project as action in parallel with the research project  research and pragmatically map out the points of overlap

Related point: the disinterest of the researchers is paramount within the scientific paradigm; the degree of disinterest actually operating in many social realms might be much less than ideal but disinterest itself remains part of the conventional discourse of research. In many community research projects, interest is the mainspring for both initiating the research and the research methods chosen. I make this point because the apparatuses of research that take the time (ethics clearance etc) are often design to ensure / embed the ‘disinterest’.

Learning / Education and research

I am unable to make a clear statement on this point yet, but it seems to me that the collaboration for many, between university researchers and community organisations, is a collaboration between systemic learning (the outcome of research) and individual learning (becoming educated): researchers, on their own, discover knowledge that might or might become learned; but through links with community organisations – where the research comes from that organisation – enable action that is for the knowledge to become learned. Apologies: this doesn’t make much sense yet. But, to bring order to these thoughts: consider ‘popular education’ as the basis for knowledge production questions and activities (thanks Dan!).

Research, knowledge work, networked ICTs

In relation to ICTs and networks, many of the projects identified during the workshop involved social media, digital stories, creative online media, politics of information, expliciting networking and so on. These kinds of projects produce some interesting effects in relation to research. First, they generate textual materials which then serve as the research object; but, more importantly, they remodel the knowledge production process. In the end, research is about producing knowledge: where the tools or means of production (as well as the maintenance of social conventions about what counts as knowledge) remain the hands of a narrow elite, then everyday people cannot ‘do research’ because they are excluded from the knowledge-work apparatus. But now, ICTs, networks, creative digital technologies, make people researchers in the sense that they create, share, mashup and reflect upon knowledge. Once again, research becomes a tricky word: is it the meeting point for academics and community and political groups? Does the shared work of understanding what ‘research’ is (when it is now spread across society in different domains) create the basis for the productive partnerships?

Show me the money

(Apologies: it is not just money). What mostly connects community organisations and researchers within universities is the desire to achieve something new, which changes lives, but without all or most of the resources available to achieve them. To conclude this summary of what I took away from the workshop: partnerships make sense where the work necessary to achieve the partnership achieves more than simply using that time in other productive ways. Researchers and social activists and community developers just don’t have time to waste: but they don’t have enough resources to not contemplate how working together might save them time. Similarly, a researcher might need community organisation to secure the money; a community organisation might need a researcher to get funding. Only when those interests align can they two collaborate to ‘steal’ from those who dispense the funds – normally governments and corporations with other agendas, limited money and requirements that can be met by alliance.

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Thank you to:

• Doug Schuler (see also my summary of Doug’s keynote)
• Kath Albury (UNSW)
• Marian Tye (Curtin U)
• Helen Merrick (Curtin U)
• Tanya Notley (TTC)  – one example, http://www.informationactivism.org/
• Tim Norton (Oxfam) – one example http://3things.org.au/
• Dan O’Reilly-Rowe  (USyd) – one example http://global-action.org

The Internet Turns 40: Midlife Crisis or Grand Challenge for Computer-Mediated Communication?, Lecture at the Oxford Internet Institute, Professor Steve Jones

Disclaimer: liveblogging

Steve begins by reminding us of his first experience with computing – PDP 8e – 64K memory, $100,000 to buy another 64K; also reminisces on PLATO (programmed logic for autoatic teaching operations) – PLATO, Steve says, contained the kind of affordances that we use now – chat, group and personal notes and “a lot of talk about music”. PLATO is 50 years old. Why did PLATO have chat? Because people used it in a large room and users didn’t want to walk across the room to say something to each other. It had games!

Personal memory: I first used computers aged 17 at Grace Bros – a department store – in their massive mainframe installation (lots of IBMs); I recall playing adventure, Star Trek, and just being utterly fascinated with what these ‘thinking’ machines did

One of the main drivers of research into CMC in the 1980s was commercial – businesses looking to see what the use of computers for email, messaging, groupware might do for organisational and business improvement – eg Sproull and Kiesler (. “It was taken for granted that computers were being used for interpersonal communication”. By the mid 1980s, there was more awareness of social uses – e.g. did it replace ‘around the watercooler talk’. Business were, still, interested in productivity increases. CMC / f2f communication comparisons were essential. A critical question related to the inherent properties of CMC influencing the choice of this medium over others.

Now turns to Pew survey from 1995: only 32% of users (a small number) in this year as surveyed said thet would miss the net ‘a lot’ if it was not there; “few see online activities as essential”. Steve says that 15 years later, online activities are “inescapable” – not just essential. The Pew Internet Life Project commence some years later – 1999. This research actually missed the adoption curve through the late 1990s. Data – 2000 – 46% adults used; now 75% adults use. Critical change? – MOBILE.

I like Steve’s comment re ‘inescapable’ – this really demonstrates the social adoption and diffusion of the Internet because it is no longer a choice, for many people, whether they engage online. Rather, society creates the expectation for them and therefore produces a socio-technological imperative for access

Steve now moves on: what is Internet research? Based on submissions to New Media and Society and what is seen elsewhere, it is primarily sociology and psychology in its basis, with desire to quantify and use empirics to explore who is online, what do they say, what do they do. Asserts that this is an effect, in part, of tenure system, grant system, ethics systems and how the media likes to report on simple ‘what is happening’ data. Yet it is also an effect of the technology – Internet developments drive our research focus “who is studying IRC? who is studying Twitter?”.

In Australia, curiously, there is probably a lot more theoretical work in Internet Studies because there is so little money available for research, there is less emphasis on sociology as a discipline – and more on cultural studies, media and communications is based in pragmatics or cultural studies and not psychology. I would argue that Australia lacks the research which Steve says dominates in the USA. However, I completely agree that Internet scholars often move too quickly to adopt a perspective on the latest development, rather than to continue on with the still-legitimate and important older forms. Web 2.0 is a good example; and, for me, the shift to Web 2.0 is driven by the same imperatives for institutional success and, for us at Curtin, the need to link our research into updating our teaching program.

Steve Jones wants to move beyond text and word: discusses Electronic Visualisation Laboratory, which has run since 1973. What happenes if we think further into the future around the question of visualisations? He discusses CAVE and 3-D interactive dimensionality. One critical outcome: these EV environments give users control over perspective – unlike the art gallery, magazine etc. First major change in our visuality of perspective since Renaissance.

Steve is doing an interesting thing: he’s reminding us that the crunchy heart of early Internet research was all that great stuff on CMC and CSCW from the 1980s-e1990s. Then, as I read it, he is implying that the differential world of communication and media now is about rich, immersive visualisation (and least it is coming and can be glimpsed – rather like CMC in the 1980s) and perhaps we need to be thinking about the communicative modalities of these environments

So what are the challenges for Internet research (these are the challenges emerging from advanced speed/data/display/visualisation technologies)

they are about the extraordinary challenges of differently augmented reality – eg very large displays; immersive displays and so on. How to interface with (say) a 12 foot long video wall? Think about changes in the rest of society – a decade ago, universities were seen as exciting for giving ethernet-based broadband in the dorms; now that is nothing new. if we are now going to teach in interactive environments, in these conditions: interaction is different; time difference cannot be overcome like space; sound works oddly through these interactions

So, in Internet studies: we need to look ahead using qualitative approaches focusing on our research objects using a notion of product, place and commentary; Steve skips over some interesting stuff to emphasise, again, the importance of ‘human’ kinds of immersive enviornments – e.g. interacting with avatars online where the avatars are informational beings. Also shows Photosynch application to show how photos can be computationally stitched together to create ‘overall’ images. (See the Ted Talk)

In conclusion:

Visualisation, Interaction, Collaboration, Immersion (from Costigan,2000) – Steve Jones says it is about us being immersed in the data landscape as much as being immersed in VR – eg, like we become part of the net.

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Discussion

Question about videoconferencing. Steve replies that younger users, by anecdote, are happy or unselfconscious about being on camera; yet he also notes that older users (the grandparents on skype) are equally disinhibited once motivated by the desire to connect with grandchildren. Notes too – the students he refers to – game design students using technology across UIC and Moscow State U – are motivated to ‘show’ because of the very visual nature of their collaboration.

Question about social use / research vs commercial. Difficult for the base researchers at EVL to ‘get’ the applications which this work might lead to – it’s like we can imagine the future, but not quite how to ‘productise’ it?

Digital Education stream, session 3 at Realising our broadband future summit
(Ideas and thoughts, not full blogging)

Recapping: We have already had two sessions on digital education which have focused on the blue-sky possibilities for education because of the coming NBN, and then the reality check – what might get in the way. My general conclusion about these sessions was that there were no big ideas, really, because a lot of what the NBN brings is not NEW, but just scalable and increased reach, enabling everyone to get it. The reality check also indicated that the problem might be the overemphasis on technology, whereas policy and structure and systems are the issue. So what will be the next steps?

Access and equality are very important issues for education in the imagined future of high-speed connectivity. Education is deeply about social advantage, building opportunity for all. One of the important opportunity factors: teachers are not given the opportunities in the classroom to utilise technologies well. Technologies used outside the classroom (flickr, messenger, etc) work, they work for her, and they are centred on her. Technologies like this used in the classroom are not available, not easily available, or have different kinds of access requirements. (This supports some of my ideas in the LINK project – bring education into the world of the Internet, not bring Internet into classroom).

The next steps appear to emphasise the professional development of, and support for, teachers to become sophisticated users (in part by bringing to the classroom their own tech skills); but, without the reliable excellent access of broadband, this cannot be done scalable and efficiently – training would not work for all, and many would be frustrated.

Some lessons to be learned from ICT and learning in higher education (thanks Tom Cochrane from QUT!):

• Unis made mistakes – they thought ICTs would deinstitutionalise them and change them; and they thought they could monetise content – both wrong
• what worked was the use of technologies to solve existing curricular problems in ways not able to be done without technology – eg simulations
• what also worked was the development of e-research (but bringing with it new problems of lack of literacy for high-quality researchers).

. What are the next steps, based on Cochrane’s reading of the development of ICTs and universities?

1. reformation of curriculum to match changes in other sectors
2. improvement of capability development among academics
3. definition and refinement of new pedagogical applications and tools
4. importance of connectedness with international communities of students
5. tackle the legal and regulatory blockages to education

Wilson, NSW CIO of Education – demonstrates that many important steps are already being taken in terms of systems and technology. He would identify the challenge of “shared vision” parents, admin, teachers etc. He identifies political and moral conflicts of “acceptable use” as a major hurdle. He points to the challenges of media scar reporting and the impact that it has on politicians.

I would, therefore, conclude that one of the infrastructures to be built, along with the pipes, wires, and so on, is the cultural infrastructure of acceptance and curiousity and enthusiasm about the exploration and use of the online environment. Such cultural infrastructure would involve empowerment of students, and the adoption of a more robust libertarian approach which is, indeed, the culture of the net.

The next steps, listening to the speakers, sound quite a lot like jumps over complex hurdles and through difficult obstacle courses.

Realising our Broadband Future
Disclaimer: live-blogging

Smarr, Conroy, Thomas, Tucker and McDonald

Larry Smarr, CITIT
NBN best example of inventing in the future of the country; uses the standard rhetoric: “level playing field”, “global environment”, “citizens competing”; like one of the speakers yesterday (Cole) compares Australia and USA with Australia better. “Have early working prototypes” of the applications; it will take “a lot of working through” to get to the next level. “We are at the end of a long era, the era of copper”. This future-proofs the network. Points to the role AARNET might play, because AARNET is working at 100 x the speed of the NBN.

Stephen Conroy, Min DBCDE
Conroy starts with the selling job. Characterises the critics as those who think we already have broadband, or that the market should just sort it out. Compares them to people who criticised the introduction and expansion electricity networks by government in the 19th and 20th century. Public role of government is to build a platform, onto which the market then builds applications. Refers back to the conference: what day 1 shows is that the future of high-speed broadband is not just downloading movies faster. It’s about education, health and so on. Picks up on the economic benefits; the community benefits etc.

Key message: investing in broadband is about investing in health, education, regional centres, energy efficiency and so on. It will be “Australia’s first national open-access wholesale only..network”. “we remain confident it will work on a commercial basis”. Critics are wrong for just not seeing the vast array of flow-on social and economic benefits. The return on the wholesale network will be more like a utility return, NOT like that of a vertically integrated market. Case is “compelling” and “encompassing” -[new word! encompassing!]. It is very strongly linked to globalisation and international competition, according to Conroy. (Which then is referenced to the 16th location, and 3rd most expensive data from OECD).

“Despite the myth, high-speed broadband is not accessible to all Australians”. Cites telstra exec – 50%+ cannot get 12 Mbs in Australia. Also emphasises the fact that the Internet generates major advantages for regional areas – and yet that is precisely the area of Australia least well-served by current infrastructure (backs up this argument by discussing how Tasmania is poorly served).

Abigail Thomas, ABC
“What difference will the NBN make in our everyday lives?” she asks. “What will ordinary people be doing? How will they get their information? How will they entertain themselves?”. New media bring something new, but build on past media. Uses the analogy of filmmaking – started out as ‘film a performance on a stage’ (new+old); then became something different (new+new). Explores these ‘new things’ via some examples and innovations in new media, showing how media will be very important for the NBN but not media as we know it. Essentially, the presentation makes clear that media will drive NBN takeup but not just movie and TV watching / downloading – more interactive experiences such as multi-story line TV (‘cubic’ TV), multimedia-style presentations of historical documentary (for school research) AND, more importantly, has democratising upload possibilities far in advance of what we see just emerging now. The emphasis here is on user control – eg non-linear, or self-created, or game-style choice oriented, or collaborative online.

Tucker and McDonald
Marketing of homeloans discussion.

Interesting history of Aussie Homeloans interaction with new media for marketing – showing from 1995 through to now. 2002 – company had bad brochureware website (and didn’t even own domain name!) “but it didn’t matter”. 2007 – “awakening” at Aussie to realise how significant the networked digital environment might be. They realised 28% of business coming from online; but only 18% actually completed the website process. So had to have a digital strategy.

Commentary

There’s now a link between the NBN and new (different) ways of working. earlier rhetoric around broadband was similar, but I think there has been a shift now to emphasising that we can’t know what happens next, but that we must change. Climate change is probably the main difference now between this rhetoric and early 2000s

Conroy’s speech is a very finely tuned pitch, not to the audience (one imagines they are already convinced), but to ‘the people’, via the media who will no doubt report it. It identified the criticisms which are most likely to be launched and then answers them. It also makes two significant interventions. First, it emphasises that the return on investment for NBN is utility / wholesale business, and NOT comparable to a retail / vertically inttegrated company (such as telstra). This move implies that there will be cost savings in the lower profits to be made, in the long run. The second intervention, which is apparent yesterday also, is to de-couple the NBN from specific applications and services. Just as the NBN will be a layer-2, non-service foundation, on which the market builds competing and specific applications, so too, the argument FOR the NBN relies now on the claim that the specific applications (health, business, education etc) will come from the market, because of the level-playing field of the wholesale network. This logic is astute, if a little vague, because it completely undercuts the ‘but exactly what is it for?’ counter-arguments. These arguments are still interesting, but they are ruled out of the specific debate about the NBN; the arguments are now emphasising the broader, infrastructural issues.

Thomas, from ABC, presents a sophisticated argument through simple narratives – stories of imaginary characters. Is this what is missing? There has been insufficient imagining of the future from the perspective of the everyday user – too much ‘gee whizzery’ and talk of economics and nation building. Does the argument for NBN need to fill the gap between the political spinspeak and the everyday desires of the audience? How can we create the ‘audience’ for the NBN – that is, the people who invest in it desires and dreams and seek pleasure through their sense of ‘being’ this audience regardless of what they actually?

Contrasting NBN arguments from technologists vs those of Thomas’ media oriented presentation: people are already very familiar with the idea of remote, electronic entertainment and will readily accept and explore new versions and indeed contribute to their creation. however, there is still a strong ‘sense of presence’ around things like health and education (especially children’s education) which makes it a lot harder to convince individuals of the benefits of telepresence in these spheres, even though people happily involve themselves in online transactions like banking. I would argue that media will be the uptake driver for broadband – but, as Thomas says – just not media as we know it

Big reality check: Aussie Home Loans example shows that business (a large business, with a lot of online business – 28%) didn’t realise until 2007 (!!) that online marketing and selling was critical to its business and that old-style websites didn’t work and that the whole strategy needed to change. Even in a business that is entrepreneurial, digital marketing took a while to take off.

(Comments and ideas from session at Broadband Summit)

The MCEECDYA Program of reporting, National Assessment Program: Information and Communication Technology Literacy, provides evidence about the literacy of students. The 2008 report, not yet available publicly, shows that students in Years 6 and 10 of Australian schooling are not involved in a lot of “creating, analysing, and transforming” of information via online tools (what I would term cognitive uses of the web) and are primarily interested in using the net for chatting and searching for information. It will be interesting to compare this report (which is clearly in the social media period – 2008) with the previous report, from 2005.

Discussion of research infrastructure: main question – what is the interface with NBN given that the emerging Australian research network is already a lot faster and so on than the NBN? I am wondering if this is relevant to NBN – in the same way thet BHP Billiton builds its specialised network, so too would the Australian research community. It perhaps suggests that we need to be thinking about ‘networks’ not just the NBN.

An excellent presentation of problems in school:
Six key points

• Old models + new tech not solution

• No leveraging of open systems
• Risk management needed (not risk aversion)
• Personalised learning
• Costs are increasing
• importance of gatekeeping

See how the problem set is formed at the intersection of multiple domains of control and expertise – technologists, managers, teachers all work at different angles to the central problem and sometimes don’t have sufficient interaction. (Raju Varanasi – good presentation, from NSW Centre for Learning Innovation). And, the solution to this interaction matter is policy. Infrastructure is not the issue – it is policy.

A summary of the ‘reality check’ on digital education. The reality check is: don’t focus on the technology, think policy, professional development, cultures of use, legal matters AND students themselves. Technology gets in the way, if it is made the centrepiece; it should be invisible.

“the problem with students is that their life and learning will be going down a different [digital network] track” – they will choose this path because it is part of themselves and identity, so if schools don’t change students will not be engaged. (Watson, The Learning Federation)

Education is a very contested zone of debate since it involves the attempt to manage the future very directly by creating the people OF the future (our school students). Visions, hopes and fears get played out through the way people characterise the school system. Moreover, education is one of the remaining obvious places where the experts tend to be derided (teachers vs parents, bureaucrats). It is also a place where control strategies get explored and demanded, principally on the basis of the failure of children to be adult enough.

(This session doesn’t report on speakers directly but provides comments, summaries and ideas)

Realising Our Broadband Future
digital education stream

Very large bandwidth to big school, computers for everyone, digital resources are the focus (Moo, CIO, NT)

Watching a terrible Microsoft glossy promo video: does this company not realise how bad these things look? Sure, it’s a ‘vision’ not reality, but what it assumes is a class infrastructure – 100% middleclass. Plus the sort of ‘perfection’ they imagine for devices and software is, to be honest, just a wee bit farfetdched given M’Soft’s record on such things. Oh wait, maybe this is a glimpse into the 23rd century.

Part of the problem here is that technologists assume (as always) that the technology solves the problems. That the technology is what’s missing to make education better. Equally, there is a kind of rationalist determinism here, too, hidden in the technological determinism: computer science sees the problems as ones of knowledge and information and data, that there is always a rational answer to a human need which will appear, in the modern mode, if only it can be addressed.

Equally, some of the Microsoft hyperbole fails to account for the way teachers have already implemented the underlying pedagogic and other ideas which are apparently ‘allowed’ by technology, without that technology. Clearly, some technologies improve and extend and make easier some pedagogic approaches, but the experimentation comes from the teachers and students in action, from which a technology need emerges.

There continue to be significantly outdated ideas about education from many people, especially senior bureaucrats and technologists. These people imagine education is like it used to be. However education has moved on and some of the problems which the technology is meant to solve have already been solved or are simply not there any more. At the same time, some problems remain – systemic problems caused by time, space, age of children, the nature OF the system. These problems might be better seen as problems of the school system itself – they cause technology to ‘fail’ because technology is not designed for such uses. (NSW CIO of Ed talks about hotswappable computers if it breaks, just have another).

Schooling has to include, for many good social reasons, the collocation of people into places at specific times. This should not be forgotten. But the Internet, when fast enough and wide enough, enables those locations to connect to other locations in a manner that allows distributed activities to solve scale and reach problems (Hagen, CIO, Qld Education). “Build the damn thing and get out of the way”.

Certain issues, like health and education, are framed by political debate to demand attention to equity and equality of access and opportunity, especially where they relate to the spatial location of users etc. From some perspectives, innovation almost demands inequality – it has to be leading edge and thus mostly unaccessible, not usable or apparently not relevant to the majority. From the teachers’ perspective – the innovation comes from below and thus the system’s insistence on equity impedes.

I also reflect on the way education is seen as being in a problematic state – falling behind some presumed state of required competence in, learning through and exploitation of digital connectivity. Asking if broadband infrastructure can solve this, or similar, doesn’t really ask the right question. The problems is as much caused by the ‘transitional state’ we all live in – caught between pre-digital and digital worlds; our awareness of this transitional state is as much the cause of ‘the problem’ as problems themselves. This does not mean we need do nothing: but first we need to recognise what the real problems are.

Realising our broadband future
Disclaimer: Liveblogging

Second session of the 2009 Australian Govermment summit on broadband, http://broadbandfuture.gov.au, featuring Craig Mundie (Microsoft), Vint Cerf and David King (Google), Samantha Hannah-Rankin (Auspost), Nick Gruen (Gov 2.0).

Mundie, Microsoft

Broadband access is not simply about infrastructure but also inspiring social and economic innovations. Discusses the way devices are going to change and become embedded in our everyday life, through user interfaces involving gestures, facial signals and so on – “entirely new relationship between computers and people… pervasive and intuitive system that works on your behalf”. [A relatively underwhelming piece of gee-whizzery]

Vint Cerf, Google and Father of Internet

Investment in NBN needs to be carefully managed – not just edge connectivity, but more impact at core and the backhaul. Cerf emphasises the importance of end-to-end principle and the requirement to avoid constraints within the system once a person gets access. Cerf calls it “permissionless innovation”. Also bear in mind that we need to help people to see why they should use the new ideas which might flow, potentially, from the new infrastructure. Cerf comments on the lack of competition within the USA – Australia’s approach is “quite stunning” in separating the network from the services. “new kinds of competitive applications” can emerge without constraints. Cerf notes that high-speed widespread networks enable Australia to connect economically much more easily with the rest of the world, not just within Australia. Ponders that there might be multiple and different fibres passing or near premises. Cerf sees this as a benefit, not a problem.

David King, Google (You Tube)
Why talk about YouTube in this kind of forum? Great case study of what more bandwidth can do. YT is good for culture and politics, media and moneymaking. Note the importance of link to other technologies – cameras are cheaper now, easier.

YT is growing steadily. Example of business link: marketing of music via videos. But, more than that, YT creates new business – people want to put music into their OWN videos and the originator of the music shares in the revenue when this happens, as well as adverts to sell. Example: home film maker puts short demo up on YT, ends up getting major studio contract to turn demo into real film.

Reach: – global audience like no other platform (eg Sarah Boyle 300 million views = #1 on album charts)
Rights: – scalable, automated, choice-laden system for video management (inlcluding archive of video!)
Research: – people can understand who and when and where people watch videos. (e.g. Mr Bean popular in Saudi Arabia, discovered this via YT)
Revenue: – 38% of media consumed online, 9% of ad revenue

Hannah-Rankin, Australia Post
AusPost view – NBN establishes capacity for digital services the same as traditional postal analog services (security, confidence, etc of communication). Need to establish familiarity among consumers and services so they know why and how to use NBN. Auspost is about equality of access.. everyone can use it; trying to bring a similar apporoach into the future via the NBN.

H-R claims we move from massification from customisation, classic link of postmodernity and IT as the sequel to modernity.

[H-R utilises standard language re interoperability, unlocking potential value, confidence, synergy and so on: this is part of the problem. The language of 'IT implementation' is not the language of politics, culture or real business, even though we depend ON that language]

“Compelling consumer-centric solutions”

Gruen

Simple definition of Web 1.0 – email and website (point to point) – vs Web 2.0 – multi-channel and networks. Emphasises that Web 2.0 is NOT fancy technology. What broadband brings is “higher speeds and ubiquity”. What is Web 2.0? “I’s about culture change” (Draws on O’Reilly).

See The Government 2.0 Taskforce reports at : http://gov2.net.au/

• Collaborate
• Improvise
• Share
• Play
• users build value
• be modular
• Build for value, monetise later

- this stuff makes government VERY nervous.

Before 2000, Gruen says as an economist, that he thought governments built public goods. But, in Web 2.0, the private sector builds public goods [well, you might say THAT about the internet!]. So government needs to catch up to this approach.

“Organisation without organisations”

“low-cost social formations”

“low-cost experimentation and startup”

“turbocharge the market for reputation”

Key point – identity needs to be STABLE. We don’t need to know WHO you are, we need to know you are the same person you were before and will be in future. And, once we start to get identity stable, online, then reputation can be built, attached to identity

A final key point from Gruen re Government 2.0 work: it’s about data, of which we have masses, visualised in new ways, leading to understanding, acceptance and so on. I would add that the visualisation and management of data involves the need for lots of bandwidth – which further provides an reason for NBN not previously or commonly discussed.

Brad Wearn, CIO BHP
Presents case study on BHP Billiton’s use of broadband comms within their massive Pilbara operation. Straightforward discussion of infrastructure re railroad control system. Like a mini version of NBN since it includes fixed and mobile.

Commentary

An array of presentations, all of which appear to be part-advertisement for the the business behind them, part advertisement for the possibilities of broadband, and show a diversity of ways of addressing the possible audience. Microsoft: a smoke and mirros performance that owes more to science fiction than the realities of social change; YouTube: a presentation that embodies why YT is successful – clear and precise and in the language of the audience; Australia Post: presentation laden with biz-speak from the IT sector which, fundamentally, is a plea for relevance from a threatened organisation…or is that too harsh?

Gruen is such a literate and capable analyst of and proponent of Web 2.0 and its relationship with governance. His linking of the economics of public goods to the development of Web 2.0 style architectures and systems (the private is the public, reversing the way that the public tried to become private) is critical to grasping the entry of the internet into mainstream. Many internet commentators have been saying for years that the internet is explicable as privately created and owned public goods; now this idea enters the mainstream. He also is fearless to utilise the government’s own failings (eg in copyright of goivernment documentation) to demonstrate the change needed.

It is often difficult to extract from the presentations the precise reason why they speak to the need for NBN, except insofar as the NBN achieves some other aspects of Internet accessibility rather than the obvious one of speed. In fact, they are starting to suggest to me that the emphasis on speed is irrelevant – it’s about access, first of all; it’s about reliability and soiphistication in the infrastructure; it’s about competition to drive services, not supply of access; it’s about the transition to the ‘ubiquitous utility’ model. Sure, speed matters in relation to some aspects, but there are deeper cultural matters here.

Should we also be considering the diversity of uses as including fundamentally different things? There is a strong move at the moment to try and aggregate many kinds of use (games, business services, ehealth etc) into a single whole – similar to the claim of the entirety of “social computing” in recent EU report – to claim the need for NBN. But, realistically, we know the Internet is now like a road system with 100s of lanes, moving in concert but sometimes not interconnected – it’s not a single superhighway but a dense twisted set of layers and tunnels and so on. From a technical perspective, no problem with aggregated; from a selling / managing perspective – we need multiple messages to different kinds of users. (Comment sparked by Wearn’s comment re latency).