Prof. Teemu Leinonen (Media Lab) is to be applauded for an exceptionally interactive lecture (by Finnish and TKK standards), but I feel that a number of opportunities were missed; importantly he (or the audience!) failed to raise or address a number of crucial questions. Teemu challenged all in the audience to blog and comment the lecture so....
First of all I would really have wanted a clearer agenda for the lecture itself; or an attempt to arrive at some research agenda. Now it wasn't clear:
- if a learning society is something to strive for. I sensed that Teemu and the public feel that the answer is yes, but I'd like to see some good justification for this goal, even though I do not disagree.
- that a learning society is emerging irrespective of the wish of "the people". This is another, and not contradictory, view of the topic. If one holds this view it makes sense to study (in a bit of anthropological fashion) the phenomenon and analyse how we can deal with both the opportunities as well as the threats of it.
- what problems need to be solved on the road to a learning society. I.e. view the construction of a learning society as an engineering problem. That seems to have been another view, and apparently in-line with Teemu's own research work, but then: which are those issues that need to be solved, which should be solved by engineering (technology), and which by society measures (law, regulation, business models)?
Let's explore the topic a bit more from the aforementioned different points of view and see if we can seduce Teemu or others into coming up with a truly interesting call for action: to join research, put up barricades on the streets, or something else.
Although Teemu made some attempt(s) to define a Learning Society it remained a bit unclear which entities are actually learning something. All the people in the society ? Or just the participants or users of a particular social network ? Organisations such as enterprises, schools, governments ? Or society itself at large? Modern internet/web technology makes it fairly easy for many, many people to obtain, discuss and augment information. And, to a perhaps lesser degree, knowledge. I think that what is new here is the possibility for vast numbers of people to do this, and in a timely fashion.
One could argue that until very recently a lot of information and knowledge was consumed, discussed and augmented by scientists, through scientific journals and conferences. For those scientist and for science Web 2.0 does not encompass a completely new paradigm, but rather offers a set of very convenient tools. Scientist have already been living in a "learning society", albeit that that society doesn't contain vast numbers of people. New systems, for example Wikipedia, enable anyone with an internet connected web browser to become part of a similar society. But don't expect to get a Nobel prize any time soon for your Wikipedia article.
For society at large it should be beneficial to involve as many people as possible in creating and augmenting information and knowledge, especially if they and even more people would use it for the greater good. One obvious problem is to separate the wheat from the chaff, as many people crank out enormous amounts of content. Lot's of potential research here: methods to search, rank, collaborate, and assess all that information.
When mere citizens publish content at large a number of other issues race their ugly faces. Teemu showed a really nice video that highlighted (amongst others) things such as: identity, authorship, copyright, security, privacy, reliability, trust, etc. An introductory analysis of the impact of "Web 2.0" on, or the requirements for changes in, even one of these aspects would deserve a lecture on its own, but it would have been nice to hear a couple of examples. If only to illustrate the need for different approaches, and hence skill sets. For example copyright issues largely need to be addressed by laws and business models, there is more than enough technology around it. Whereas for identity and privacy issues reasonably good protocols and expression languages exist but easy-to-use tools and services are missing.
Finally, I think that learning how to effectively participate in a learning society is quite a significant challenge. Fairly advanced social skills may be required; a recent post on TechCrunch hints at the kind of skills required. Perhaps for a "learning society" to really take off it must somehow "bootstrap" those social skills ?
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2 comments:
Brilliant post. Some comments from Teemu L.:
You wrote:
"I would really have wanted a clearer agenda for the lecture itself; or an attempt to arrive at some research agenda."
I agree. I personally think that the phenomena – learning society – is so complex, multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary that defining clear research agenda is very difficult, if not impossible. It is a great example of a set of wicked problems (Nelson, H. G. & Stolterman, E. 2003; Rittel, H. 1972) – something that are incomplete, has multiple solutions and every formulation of a problem is at the same time an attempt to solve it. Design thinking is often “playing” with wicked problems. For instance, according to Nelson and Stolterman (2003), ordinary problem solving is reactive to unwanted state, while designing is about creating a positive addition to the present state. The designer cannot assume that the "perfect design" is there, waiting for someone to discover it. Instead, the design is achieved by intentional action. Coming from the field of design, I was trying to bring this up in my lecture.
You wrote:
if a learning society is something to strive for. I sensed that Teemu and the public feel that the answer is yes, but I'd like to see some good justification for this goal, even though I do not disagree.
With references to Donald A. Schön (1973) my humble analyses of the modern life is that “change” is a fundamental feature and to survive we must have social systems (remember that all IT/ICT/technological systems are also social systems) that can learn. We must be aware of the changes, adapt to them and use design thinking to solve problems related to them: not to expect that we can simply fix things (ordinary problem solving) but aim to have a positive addition to the present system. This naturally lead us to ask some deep ethical questions – asking them is also crucial in a learning society.
You wrote:
"that a learning society is emerging irrespective of the wish of "the people". This is another, and not contradictory, view of the topic. If one holds this view it makes sense to study (in a bit of anthropological fashion) the phenomenon and analyse how we can deal with both the opportunities as well as the threats of it."
Social systems – such as societies never “emerge” by themselves. They are man made, although based on culture that is slow to change. Studying the opportunities and threats of learning society would actually be a sign of a learning society: reflection-in and reflection-on action. :-)
You wrote:
"what problems need to be solved on the road to a learning society. I.e. view the construction of a learning society as an engineering problem. That seems to have been another view, and apparently in-line with Teemu's own research work, but then: which are those issues that need to be solved, which should be solved by engineering (technology), and which by society measures (law, regulation, business models)?"
I think I already answered to this question above. Actually I think that we will end-up to huge problems, if we think that finding the road to learning society is a matter solving problems in an ordinary way. Aiming to define what are “engineering problems” and what are “regulation / business model problems” is exactly this. The problems related to learning society are wicked problems (see above). With this definition, I am not claiming that engineers and regulators are not needed to solve the problems. They are. However, their problem setting will not put us to the right track. We need much more holistic thinking on the issue.
“Rolling up our sleeves and doing something” is great and definitely something I respect. However, doing something in sake of doing something is stupid. Lets think, talk, study, argue and define the problems – when we have the definitions of the problems we will have the solutions in our hand, too.
You wrote:
“Although Teemu made some attempt(s) to define a Learning Society it remained a bit unclear which entities are actually learning something. All the people in the society ? Or just the participants or users of a particular social network ? Organisations such as enterprises, schools, governments ? Or society itself at large?”
My answer to this question is simple: all individual people, all the social entities including organizations, enterprises, school and the government (do your homework!). From this we will end-up to see that the society itself at large is learning – is a learning society.
You wrote:
"Fairly advanced social skills may be required; a recent post on TechCrunch hints at the kind of skills required."
Thank you for the link – great hints for tech. networking.
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