Text and Hubris

Over the Christmas break I began a concerted effort to reduce my use of Windows. I did this because I configured a Windows 8 laptop for a family member. I’m not going to rant about the UI. It may suck, but it isn’t impossible. I am going to rant because the default setting was to force a logon through MS Live servers. Now, I was able to create a local account, but that wasn’t really what Microsoft wanted. In the end, my family member ended up signing into Live because they wanted to use some of the tools in the Metro UI. In that sense, Microsoft succeeded. Their entire goal with the Metro UI and Windows 8 is to push users into their store ecosystem. They saw the money that Apple was making with iTunes and that is why Windows 8 exists. In every argument regarding Windows 7 versus Windows 8, the Windows 8 protagonists inevitably note the similarities between the OSes. They’re right. Losing the start menu was stupid but it doesn’t change the OS that drastically. Windows 8 is, in terms of use, a minor update from Windows 7. The major changes that exist, exist so that Microsoft can sell products through the OS. There is no benefit to the user, whatsoever.
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It’s a little strange to be posting here again, but it sort of feels like I am coming home.

I like that.

There is an intriguing conflation of identity involved in such a feeling. If this site, a non-place in a virtual space, feels like home and home is both as a source of refuge (safe at home) and a source of origin (I returned home), then what am I? I suppose I am a blog-author construct that you interpret through the text and design of this site. This site which, in some sense, acts my locus for performance. This is my home stage.

Later this month, I will be too far away from my home stage. I will be attending and presenting at a conference where I will discuss the importance of digital literacy in today’s composition classroom. Mainly, I hope to encourage a more solid examination and, ultimately, a rejection of the term digital native. Simply put, using Facebook and growing up online doesn’t make one a digital native. It does not provide any true skillset nor does it give a person the ability to modify their digital space in any tangible way. Digital natives should be comfortable and free in their home space. They should know where the hidden settings are or how to alter their space to suit them in particular ways. Too often, this power is absent (or, worse, forbidden by law) in modern technologies. Instead, a user performs a set of carefully controlled and scripted actions. These actions disappear into a black box and then pop back out on the other side with little indication of what happened or why. Despite the assumptions and expectations of many, today’s “digital native” has little-to-no understanding of the technology that shapes their world or how they can use that technology to take control.

This is a not just a sad fact, it is a tragedy. The best thing we can do is provide people of every age with the knowledge and power to take control of technology. I do not believe in the wholesale rejection of technology. I see so much potential and possibility in the technologies around us. I still believe in their transformative power. I just believe that power belongs in the hands of the people. Digital literacy is important not just because it helps students to become better workers but because it provides them with the tools they need to take control of their world and to shape it in the ways that they see fit.

A year ago, I was in Seattle. I was working with highly trained and highly intelligent people helping them create and support the products that power the very core components of much of our online space. Because of the cost, these products were only available to and used by multi-billion dollar companies. These products affected millions of lives but were so hidden from view that no one really knew they were there. I was only helping make the black box darker and I knew it.

Today, I sat down and showed a student how to manage her sources for a research paper using Zotero. I showed another how to save a hundred dollars by using LibreOffice. In those few hours, I felt like I accomplished more than I did in a month at a Fortune 100 company. I know that some of the open source products we use exist because these large companies that continue to bankroll them, but I also know that the large companies bankroll them because they produce better results than could be obtained by closed architectures. Even better, these technologies help real people every day. The fact that companies can also use them is merely a byproduct and that, if you ask me, is the right way to think about technology.

For the past five years, I have found my passion for technology to be on a slow and steady decline. There are numerous reasons for this: the shift in focus from empowering users to empowering corporations, the rise of consumption gadgets, the use of technology to isolate and control user behavior, and the ongoing attempts to strangle creativity growth through abusive and idiotic patent and copyright lawsuits. All of these are part of a shift in technical development that poisoned the well for those of us who started in the field because we loved making tools for people.

In none of my last few jobs did I actually make things easier for anyone. My entire job was focused on making sure obscenely large corporations continued to make all the money they could. Even when I did do work for a smaller government operation, I found that the regulations and guidelines made progress not only difficult, but nearly impossible.

So I plotted my way out. I left an incredibly lucrative position that was slowly killing me, a city I absolutely love, good friends, and one hell of an awesome apartment to move north to a small town and college on the edge of a giant lake. I am here to teach, to learn, an to write.

While I am still in my first few weeks in this new place, I have discovered something rather intriguing. I have found my love and respect for technology slowly starting to grow once more. I find myself discussing ways to use technology to help students create projects and understand the material. I am looking at ways to best use the existing tools we have in the classroom. In short, I am using technology to help real people, to create art, and maybe–just maybe –challenge a small portion of the existing status quo.

I don’t expect it change the world, but it may change me.

I haven’t had a chance to go over this yet, but I will tomorrow. Considering the rapid change in the EPUB spec and the willingness of many distributors to enforce DRM on their files, I can see a lot of risks in using EPUB for digital preservation. That said, it is an open specification and as long as the files free from DRM developing and maintaining software to read the files (essentially a form of html and css) should not too difficult.

I will add more later after I go over the report. In any case, it is good to see that some thought is being given to digital preservation.

EPUB for archival preservation | Open Planets Foundation.

The Way Things Work | TechCrunch.

I normally avoid TechCrunch, but this is worth reading.

Once again, the question comes down to what are you willing to sacrifice? At a certain level we all just replace the hardware but the hardware was always ours to do with as we pleased and we were free to run and create the software we wanted or needed. There is a real struggle underway to prevent that from happening and it is being sold to us as a positive.

It’s not. It limits our access to our physical propery and that is never okay.