In my last post I wrote about how much noise was generated in my email from just five newsletters. I have always thought that curation by others would help create a signal, but it appears to me that just a few degrees of separation creates a botheration of beautiful, curatorial noise. Of course, I could always choose to create quiet. That seems a cop out, an abdication of what I consider part of my duty as a “concierge” for my readers and my learners. Take two more examples in my Sunday email.
Audrey Watters’ Hack Education Weekly Newsletter (HEWN)
I am not critiquing this newsletter. I am trying to look more reflectively at how I ‘consume’ its hyperlinkage and how I curate those links for others. And I have to say that I do it mostly willy nilly. If it interests me, I bring it into my network share spaces and if I don’t it disappears in the Google of my email. I do have some filters. I might find something that I know an online buddy might be interested in. I might find a link that I know I am interested in and it heads to other choice database black holes (Diigo/Zotero/Pinterest/Scoop.it/et al). Those give me the semblance of control as I promise to return to them later for reconsideration. I think of this as filtering after the fact. I mean, really, I found this shiny object and can’t possibly give it up.
My best filtering comes ‘before the fact’. What I mean by that is that I create a guiding question that is as specific as I can make it. For example, I am working with my students right now with a research question on how, as a farmer, I can take a two week vacation. The question provides keyword filters that get me going in various search spaces online and off. It is a guiding filter that changes as I curate what the keywords bring to me. I use a template to gather the information in one spot and then I make sense of it.
That kind of curation is from the inside out rather than vice versa. But I still have a whole curatorial life that is trying to come to terms with the FOMO that drives me to bring ever more info into my curatorial spaces, from the outside in. Information like Katexic provides:
What does this mean? As someone who hopes to teach students how to gather, make sense of, and share with others, it is very important to be clear about this thing that is a hyperlink. Is it some stupid thing that does something when you click it, like a light switch? Or is a hyperlink much more than a thing, with meaning in and of itself, social and psychological and spiritual?
Because I live in nature on a farm in the hills and hollars, I am always comparing the work of my discipline with Nature. Is my relationship with the hyperlink an organic one much like the relationship that a tree has with fungi? Or is it just a wannabe organic relationship? Is a hyperlink a symbiote? IDK. The rising complexity of the hyperlink intertwingled with my own life along with the idea that no hyperlink is more than a few degrees of separation from any other makes me think that a complex system is arising from the simple initial condition of the hyperlink. Like flocking behavior in birds or schooling behavior in fish.
If it is organic and symbiotic, then what is that relationship doing to us and our brains. Is the hyperlink jumping the brain’s blood barrier and infecting our neural systems in ways that have a deep epigenetic effect right now? IDK.
I do know that I have grown uncomfortable with the massive collections of hyperlinks that accrue to me from newsletters. I feel obliged to curate them. I feel that by doing so I am only adding to other folks’ duty to view and curate further. Noise on top of noise, the ultimate digital Babel. What to do? IDK.
Permalink //
I have been questioning recently the “learning in an age of abundance” discourse. Your post “Frenetic Standstill” and this one makes me think that we need to go back and reclaim silence, contemplation, unfocus and deepened dialogue. I went back and read two posts: Persistent Clutter http://tachesdesens.blogspot.fr/2014/05/persistent-clutter.html and Book-keeping http://tachesdesens.blogspot.fr/2015/03/book-keeping.html.
If you have a moment or two maybe we could consider conversation and find time to picnic.
Permalink //
Picnicitude soon. Thursday or Friday Morning?
Permalink //
Fridays can work. Will DM
Permalink //
Your voice rose through the ‘curatorial noise’ and is echoing in my thoughts – intertwingularity on the rise! I have a need to call back!
This week, I’ve been chasing down the digital rabbit hole, listening to reverberations and nuanced rhythms. Your ideas and links are not noise adding to the din I’ve been hearing, but a subtle tone that rings true. You’ve asked a good question – “Is my relationship with hyperlinks organic and/or symbiotic?” How do we/I teach others to beware the lure of the link, the siren song of a link-filled newsletter or the drum beat of tweet bait when this is my own challenge? What are some ‘noise cancelling’ strategies?
I’m sure it will take more than a #silentsunday or #picnictude to reclaim silence, but may be great places to start.
Helen
Permalink //
I love that ‘noise cancelling’ strategery. Would love more talk about the ‘going about’ of that in a way the draws from each our own marrow. Thank you, Helen.
Permalink //
I live on both sides of this coin.
I use hyperlinks often in my newsletters, blog articles and Web site pages. I am opening my readers to a much wider understanding of the issues I write about than they could learn from me alone. I do this intentionally.
Howeve, I am often frustrated by how links in articles I read draw me deeper and deeper into the unlimited well of ideas that you and others point to.
The frustration comes from knowing how rich such deep dives are, but also knowing how much of my time they take, much being carved away from other priorities.
I resign myself to this.
Permalink //
Daniel and Terry I suspect you both come up against a quandary that I am asking myself.
How best to enable people to benefit from curated knowledge/ways of working without paralysing them with masses of links, pathways,connections, or simply getting them to follow in our own traces, routes, plans, routines etc. Particularly when they are just expecting to be given a route from A-B and/or are not used to making their own ways, are not curious, and sulk when not being spoon fed.
Permalink //
And all of this while walking the minefield of capitalist wage slavitude and …yes, you have said it, man.
Permalink //
Or, if you’re like me and tend to research/analyze things to death at the best of times, it’s easy to get sucked down the rat hole. Maybe that’s part of the struggle for students? They don’t know when/where to stop, or how to sift, so get overwhelmed and give up?
To me, lack of curiosity and desire to be spoon fed is a different conversation from curation. Maybe they are linked? I don’t know. I feel it’s more our education system (USA) has used/is using the read/listen-recite-regurgitate philosophy so persistently that kids give up being curious at a young age.
Permalink //
I don’t think they give up their curiosity everywhere, just in those spaces where they realize that it is a strategic mistake–like most classrooms, boardrooms, and any room with a person standing at its head.
Permalink //
It is very much a felt thing and one of discrimination. I want to do more filtering before the fact than after the fact. I want to dwell more within your work and your intention. I promise you I will.
Permalink //
Hmmm. Seeing the links as a bare list outside of the context (and bounding) of the individual weekly newsletter is a whole different thing! But that’s exactly what is partially lost in the web format…and part of why I avoided it as long as I felt I reasonably could. Pluses and minuses, as always!
Permalink //
I meant no violence to the metes and bounds of your newsletter. As you know it is among my fav weekly readings. I am struggling with how to curate this mess I have made for myself. Thanks for all the great work you do and I trust you will keep on. I am counting on it. Thanks, Chris.
Permalink //
Oh, no worries! It’s just interesting to see the links that way. I’ve started maintaining (experimenting with) a Pinboard account for links from the newsletter and that’s made me think (yet again) about some of this from my own curatorial side, for myself and for readers, the unanswerable questions of boundedness, tags, connections, ephemerality, etc.
I’m pretty committed to Katexic just for myself, which has been an evolution in itself. I don’t even know how many subscribers I have…in fact I’ve gone to great lengths *not* to know by deleting those notifications unread, a script to hide the count on the website, etc. Which is another aspect of all of this, of course…our conception of audience & obligations.