wallpaper animals

I'm playing with YouTube's API at the moment as part of a paper I'm writing for the TRAILER project. TRAILER has created some rather ungainly tools for collecting information about informal learning. However, it has forced people to use these tools for at least one day (as part of 'user training'), and despite the fact that (frankly) a day was enough for most people in terms of using the tools, a significant amount of data was collected. Basically, users were asked to find resources on the internet that they felt reflected their own skills, and to tag them as indicators of their skills.

Perhaps not surprisingly, most people tagged videos. From an extremely long list of competencies ("competency" is a classic piece of Eurotwaddle which has resulted in very very long lists of pretty useless information! - Rabelais would love it!!) the user must select terms which describe how the resource reflects their skill. It's hardly surprising that there was little interest in continuing the torture. But nothing we do online these days is without some kind of consequences, and I'm interested what might be revealed about us through this simple activity.

There are some interesting situations. If the competency that I choose for a resource is in some way unexpected or surprising, that is more interesting than if the competency I choose is consistent with the general expected reaction to the video. How can I know the general expected reaction? Well, we can do some data mining on the video resource to analyse comments, descriptions, related content, etc. So the YouTube API becomes useful. Basically, if the entropy of the competency term is low in relation to the entropy pattern of the analysis, there is little of interest. If it is high, then something unusual is going on. So that's the first interesting thing... We have a way of saying "so-and-so is weird!"

There are deeper comparisons to be made here. Because a surprising competency may itself be mined, and a comparison done concerning the common information content between the mined competency term and the mined video data. But this isn't so interesting unless the user goes on to select another resource.

When they do that, a similar process can take place, but additionally, if the competency term is different, a comparison can be made between the common information content between a previous resource/competency match and subsequent ones. It is not inconceivable that patterns of information transfer might be discernible from this process.

Typically, in a process of online engagement, we hone-in on things. Our first submissions are not as good as later submissions. In these cases of learning, we would expect to see information transfer from previous taggings and subsequent taggings: terms with low entropy in earlier submissions will take more prominance in later submissions. This would reflect an increasing ability to predict the fit between one's idea of a competency and the match with a resource. Having reached a peak, the information transfer will die-off once the pairing between resource and competency has been satisfactorily established. If no extra information can be added by selecting a competency, then there is no sense in doing it.

But what's really going on here?

When we do data mining, what usually happens is that key terms are identified. The rest is noise. In fact the rest is redundant. What I think is that 'key terms' are reflections of 'expectations' set up by a resource (a video, a piece of text). These "expectations" determine the theme: they help us to predict the course of the action. Ultimately, they help us determine what things mean.

I also think that expectations are "prolonged" in some way. Our expectations do not change with every new piece of information, with every new moment in a video. But what keeps them active? I think the answer to this is "redundancy". The 'filler' is essential to the maintaining of the meaning of what is happening. We might remove the 'filler' to save time or computer memory, but we do so to invite other humans to reinvent the filler for themselves.

A competency statement is a highly compressed piece of information usually completely free of redundancy. In articulating how they might meet a competency, a learner has to create redundancy around the competency statement. In normal life (outside the European Commission) we call this a "story". A video is an entity with high redundancy which is an example of someone else's "story". In claiming someone else's story, a learner is effectively trying to superimpose a 'compression' of that story as their competency claim. Their compression is open to interpretation. That means that others may see this and recreate their own redundancy (story) around it (possibly compressing the meta-narrative of the learner's use of these particular tools!).

But the process of assigning a competency statement to a resource is also a way of trying to articulate the 'expectation' contained within that resource. But competencies don't relate to resources; they relate to people!! Seeking to associate a competency to a resource is a process of seeking to articulate one's own expectation of oneself. The demand is very ambitious: we ask people to identify what is meaningful in their lives. No wonder they struggle to do it. In fact, in many cases something else goes on: learners seek to articulate their expectations of the system they are using!

This is where the ungainliness of the tools can be important. Computer interfaces tend to be redundancy-free. It is for the user to create their narratives through an interface. When users are introduced to a system, they are also introduced to the system designer's narrative. The designer's narrative frames the meaning of the tools and the expectation of the users. Within those expectations the designer will introduce the expectations of competencies, each of which might have its own narrative which the designer is unlikely to know (only the designers of the competencies will know that!). The user will generate their own redundancies (stories) about the expectations of the system and the use of the tools, but this narrative will be disconnected from the narrative they are challenged to write about how they meet particular competencies.

In the system, a competency is claimed against a resource. The resource has 'expectations' and 'redundancies'; the competency is 'expectation', but it can be mined to show it also has redundancy. Between these patterns of expectations and redundancies, the learner must find their own redundancies around the expectations of the competency statement. But this is the hardest thing of all: in the process, they may well come to their own understanding of what the competency statement expectation is.

The process of generating redundancy is a process of creativity. The difference between the highly competent learners and less competent learners is the difference not in their ability to claim competencies, but in their ability to generate redundancies.

I'm hoping (perhaps vainly) that fiddling with big data APIs like YouTube, there might be a way of scaffolding the generation of redundancies through the kind of processes that TRAILER is trying to encourage... But might the disconnect between the "narrative of the system" and the "narrative of the purpose of the system" always get in the way? To what extent is this a bigger problem in our techno-educational institutions?

Our idea of a computer is the idea of a machine based on Von Neumann architecture. Computers have memory and instructions for reading and processing data in memory which is indexed in some way. A computer contains an essential separation between memory and processing. The idea of 'workable' computer, even with new technologies like quantum computing, is very much about achieving a Von Neumann architecture. With that we know we are looking at a (faster) computer. Some cognitive psychologists, in looking at this idea of a computer, think that we human beings are also computers: we have memory (short and long-term) separated from neuronal processing in some way. Many other psychologists (more thoughtful ones!) think this is silly - but it has a powerful hold on the popular imagination - and more importantly - on funding councils. It is an idea difficult to challenge because computers are tangible artifacts in the world and they are clearly useful: their apparent utility has a mesmerising effect on all of us.

There are many reasons for thinking that there are workable alternatives to Von Neumann. Not least that we haven't found it in nature (despite the psychologists assertions). In the superimposition of Von Neumann onto human behaviour, more questions have emerged than answers - questions which scholastic philosophers have better responses to than modern-day psychology. Memory, in particular, is an elusive concept.

So what if there isn't a distinction between processing and memory? What if memory and processing is effectively the same thing? To think about this, the essential concepts that I've been using are 'structure' and 'action'. Both processing and memory are "structurally determined". What this means is that a form, which is a structure, determines action. Insofar as action can change structure and is determined by structure, the structure itself can be seen to be memory: a record of state. Memory doesn't have to be 'read' because it causally impacts on action because it constitutes structure.

Let's say that a structure is formed by a series of 'recursions'. Action, in this sense, is a process of selection from a number of possibilities. The possibility which is selected may be (for the sake of argument) that part of the structure which has the deepest level of recursion. For action to impact on structure, then the consequences of an act are to create the conditions for structural change. This in turn changes the possible actions that might be taken next.

One more thing to say about this is that obviously actions are not chosen at random, and structures do not grow at random. Structures grow to acquire form - a process which demands continual action and the continual reproduction of the conditions for growth. The context within which a structure grows is a context of other structures. It makes sense that the consequences of action are to affect the circumstances of structural change is other structures, which in turn will act and transform structures. What this means is that at root in the processes of growth may be a process of "communication". At least, this is my thinking, and the those involved in the fast-emerging body of work around "biosemiotics".

Let's look at this in a very simple way: So a structure may be represented by a series of strings:

3452232232
03342222236

03342223
34522322322
73422224832
0334223463635
033422223383
03342234639
222532326652
22253214
222537
222532326656
2225311
0342232322
2225362223
22253232615
222532326658
223329

The longest of  these strings (0334223463635) represents the deepest level of recursion of a particular possibility of action (or a "strategy"). Because that strategy has the deepest level of recursion, it will (in my model) be selected. All the other strings represent strategies which cannot be thought through to such a deep level. Beyond a certain point something is forgotten. Consequently, those strategies are not chosen. Importantly, the forgetting in the growth processes of those strategies determines the choice of the 'longest' strategy.

The consequences of an action are to produce the conditions for growth of either this or another structure. Let's say that an action produces a substance coded with the imprint of that strand (0334223463635) which, if it encounters another structure with similar strands will cause that structure to grow, which will in turn act, which will in turn cause more substances coded with this particular code. Here we have a feedback mechanism leading to the uncontrolled growth of a particular "strategy". Another way of saying that is that each structure increasingly is able to anticipate the communications of the other structures. The anticipation is encoded in their own structures. But just as in biological growth, there is no reason why particular structural conditions might determine larger-scale transformations and patterns in the production of catalytic substances which cause growth to emerge in particular ways over time.

So here, structure, anticipation, memory are tied up with each other. But in what way is this a computer?

The issue that faces us in answering this question is the issue I raised at the beginning: we think of a computer as a Von Neumann computer. With the separation between memory and processing, there is a further separation between human beings and machines: machines are extensions of human agency, like hammers. A non-dual computer adopts a non-dual integration of human beings. The structural emergence of the non-dual machine results from communications; the human being can become part of those communications. What this means, in fact, is that the human being becomes a level in the recursive patterning of growth of the machine. Human being become part of the processes of growth and the emergence of actions and decisions. The principal goal of this relationship is harmony, insight, play, interactivity. The objective is that decisions taken in the context of non-dual machines are decisions whose coherence with organic patterns have been playfully, convivially and harmoniously explored.

The non-dual computer is the machine of grace: which is probably what makes it all so difficult! But now that the results of the Von Neumann machine have delivered us such bewildering data, the time might be right to refocus on the process of decision and the fundamental nature of 'listening' which is so important to getting things right. It is ironic that the Von Neumann machine always turns out a 'right' answer (logically) but that in our immensely complex data-rich landscape, dreadful and destructive actions seem to result.

Maybe I'm just getting suspicious, but I'm beginning to wonder whenever a social media firm offers me new 'facilities' what is really driving the innovation. After all, there is little competition between social network services (Facebook is Facebook, Twitter is twitter), and despite a few attempts to make Facebook like Twitter, or Googlemail like Facebook, there seems little point to tweaking interfaces from a user point of view. In fact, users usually come off worse because they are not in control of the interfaces. The lack of control over the instrumentation is very interesting because this is precisely the point behind the Personal Learning Environment. There we argued that open Service Oriented Architecture could be used (through APIs) to allow users to coordinate their own interfaces. To some extent this is reality in many mobile apps (and Windows 8) which integrates across social platforms. However, for the majority of people, engagement with gmail is through gmail.com, engagement with Facebook is through Facebook.com, engagement with Twitter is through twitter.com. So changing the instrumentation matters to people - on the whole, I find it irritating.

But in the light of our increasing awareness of the power of analytics, we can also ask "what does Google gain by changing the instrumentation, adding categorisation tabs, etc?" The answer is "quite a lot". Gmail's new 'tabs' allows users to categorise their communication. This is presented to the user as an added organisational facility to help them manage their lives. But surely Google don't feel that people will desert Gmail if it doesn't have 'tabs'? They know people are hooked-in already. So what else is in it to add this feature?

The answer is that this 'user facility' for self-organisation is also means of capturing powerful metadata about personal communication. It may not be that big a deal for the user as to which emails they decide to put under which category, but with the size of Google's userbase, this becomes a powerful piece of metadata which can reveal patterns of usage and personal priorities which can feed directly into their own analytics services for companies and marketing.

Google's business is the prediction of the behaviour of its users. It has found a way of giving 'free' tools which people are attracted to, providing free storage services which are powerful, all as a means to getting people to reveal their intentionality. Google can play with its interfaces and tools as it seeks to 'tune' the data it harvests and the analytic services it provides. This appears to be the dominant business model of the 21st century data company. Amazon are playing a very similar game, as are Twitter and Facebook. The key is to find something that everybody wants (in Amazon's case, books; in Google's, search and storage), and then sell it at low cost (or give it away) as a means to harvesting data on what people like, what they think, etc. It is the commercial colonisation of private life.

My last post was about oppression online. This is it! What is remarkable is that we don't feel it as oppressive. But then again, it wasn't that long ago that we thought that banks were trustworthy. The information bankers are mining our private lives and making profits out them. The online education providers are likely to play a similar game (because it is the only game that appears to make financial sense). We have little choice but to play along: the world is changing in such a way that online engagement with these services is mandatory.

The best we can do now is to not lose sight of what is really happening, and to be ready for the consequences when they finally arrive.

The presenting to a learner an online system to learn from is often an oppressive act. It is dressed up as a way of saying "here is a way you can help yourself", but it is also a way of saying "I cannot afford to talk to you individually. Don't bother me and go and do this instead." Much of our information environment has emerged through lack of care. The difference between letter writing and sending an email is more than the difference between media. It is a difference in the nature of concernful action. Lack of concern leads to oppression in the way that real people are replaced with flattening statistics. Decisions taken in the light of information consequently flatten people. So the question "how are you oppressed online?" is an important question.

The difficulty in answering it is a symptom of how much our lives revolve around information and how unaware we have become about its impact on us. Perhaps this isn't new. After all, the role of newspapers in forming 'public opinion' has been well established for at least two centuries.

Information is constraint on behaviour. It doesn't constrain behaviour in the way that material constraints like a lack of food, housing or money might constrain us. But it does constrain us in more subtle ways, leading us to think certain things, and to act in certain ways. When information becomes propaganda, it can be very powerful indeed.

Understanding information as constraint doesn't fit very well with the ethos of social media. Social media communications tend to be represented as a communicative freedom. "No longer do we have to be mere consumers of media: we can contribute to it too!" But this is a bit of a myth.

The issues are complex. The act of contributing to social media is an act subject to informational constraints that would surround any act. The result of an act of contributing to social media is also an act of contributing to  other peoples' informational constraints. There are a number of things we can point to in this process:

1. social media appears as communicative freedom, but there is little to emancipate people from the constraints they are subject to when posting new data;
2. social media provides a platform for manipulating mass opinion to act as a 'super constraint' which feeds back on itself (e.g. thousands of people 'like' x on Facebook);
3. PRISM tells us that social media can inform higher-level powers of key points where strategic interventions may have most effect in constraining behaviour;
4. PRISM also indicates how the mining of data is a process of converting information into cash through mass analysis producing accurate forecasting services which in turn reveal the most effective intervention points for directing behaviour.

It has been alleged (and denied) that the University of Aberystwyth has a problem with governance, as reported on the BBC today (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-23301526)

Since new vice chancellor April McMahon took over the role in August 2011, 11 members of staff have been suspended and 13 have had their employment terminated, it has been reported.

Martin Wilding, president of UCU at Aberystwyth, said staff were "literally looking over their shoulder," adding there was a sense they were under "constant surveillance".

Whilst the allegations may be unfounded, there are patterns to the story which look familiar to other stories from other Universities (I wrote about these here: http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/disappearances.html). What is alleged by the union is a "dictatorship". On the VC's side, this may be a mark of strong leadership in challenging times: it is not inconceivable that there is virtue not vice in the VC's actions. But the experience of  those on the receiving end is one of fear - or, perhaps as I suggested the other day (see  http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/the-reign-of-terror-in-universities.html), "terror" as they try to hold on to their jobs. It is this experience - the experience of ordinary staff - which matters in the end whether or not the allegations can be proved or disproved (the power relations involved make proof very hard to find!)

The alleged 'disappearances' sound shocking, but the disappearance of staff is quite common in the corporate world. There are famous examples, like Steve Ballmer's claim to sack one in 15 staff every year (see http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/29/05/2007/40816/should-hr-advise-managers-to-sack-poor-performers-or-help-them-improve.htm). Fear in corporations can work as a management tactic. Where the primary motive is profit above everything else, and hard work is the way to achieve it, fear can do the trick. But inevitably it will select a particular kind of employee: the ambitious grafters who dig deep for the corporate goals.

There's little doubt that many in government, and some in university management believe this same method of selection of staff through a regime of fear can work in universities. The 'lazy' academics should be rooted out. Only the top-performing research contract-winning, student-pleasing academics should survive. Unfortunately, few of the great academics of the past upon whose laurels the idea of the University rests fit this mould. It's often the 'lazy' ones who do the best work - maybe because they spend most of their time dreaming. Grafting often only get you so far.

What appears to be necessary is an ecological diversity of personality types and talents: dreamers and doers are needed in equal measure. I used to think it was the case that fear itself was inimical to the pursuit of truth and knowledge.  Ironically, however, it can sometimes be the case that oppression creates the conditions for creativity: the genius writers, composers and scientists of the Soviet Union are a classic example, as indeed is the flourishing of theatre in the police-state of England in the 16th century. It may be that the pursuit of truth, knowledge or creativity is driven by the desire to conquer fear, and that a heightened fear may in fact cause greater creativity. (Given this, one might expect some surprising things happening in some universities at the moment!). But whilst fear may stimulate creativity, it can become an "ecological disaster".

Management by fear is dangerous not in the sense that people become frightened, but in the fact that it can destroy the intellectual diversity in the institution. Intellectual life does not take place in individual heads: friendships and networks play a fundamental role in the development of ideas. Fear cuts into the network like a knife, excising inconvenient parts which "don't fit", oblivious to the consequential loss of diversity of communications and emerging lack of trust.

Another deep problem with management by fear is the fact that it inspires a revolutionary reaction by those subjected to it. Whispering campaigns for the downfall of the management team can be as destructive as the management actions themselves. Quickly things can get out-of-control - particularly if the communicative richness is removed. What might be hoped for is not revolution but enlightenment; not violent overthrow but gentle evolution. The reason (and the  hope) for this lies in the fact that management by fear is itself driven by fear in managers. Management under these circumstances simply acts as a mechanism for redistributing risks borne by managers onto the shoulders of ordinary academics. Evolution can occur through the gradual identification and acknowledgement of the root-fears in managers.

This can only be achieved through critical engagement and reasoned argument. This isn't easy because the sources of managerial fear are very complex. My hope is that greater awareness of the social ecology within institutions will eventually lead us to see that management by fear is rather like chopping down rain forests. Seeing this could lead to a re-evaluation of what drove the desire to chop down the "rain forests" of the university in the first place. Eventually the managerial narrative might be changed.

The ecology of institutions is both synchronic and diachronic. There are moments in its diachronic unfolding where the ground must be cleared so that new growth can begin. Such moments might feel very much like a "reign of terror" for those exposed to them. The key is to make sure it doesn't get out-of-control. That is the difference between a virtues of a gardener and a the vices of a vandal.