This time with a Meme: "Does Information Really want to be Free?"

The meme I am going to go with on this one is the Purdue Owl (or the online writing center in general).

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/

How does an online writing center change the nature of how information flows in a writing center?

The information available from the Purdue OWL is far more scripted and static than the information possible in a face-to-face site (if we define a face-to-face site as one designed by the original architects of writing center pedagogy: Harris, Bruffee, Kail, Trimbur, North, Grimm).   The Purdue interface presents in a square with a scripted and finite menu, whereas the traditional on-site writing center is arranged in a series of circles (round tables),  and because the consultants are listening beings, there is infinite potential in what can happen in those conversations.

A highly scripted site, like the Purdue OWL, slows down the flow of information, or at least changes its nature, because it controls what can and cannot be discussed.   The issue then becomes not just about information as "free," (because the Purdue OWL is open access), but how the proxemics, speed and the structure of the information shapes the impact of the message.

Because the Purdue OWL presupposes what questions students will ask, it instantiates a set of values about what is important to know, whereas an on-site writing center has room for the spontaneity of casual conversation.  In an on-site space, the consultant has to be ready for the conversation to move in an infinite amount of directions since there is only a loose script that the consultant follows and there is no script that the student follows.

The tutorial in an on-site writing center makes me think of a ping pong game: you don't know (beyond the limits of the table, the court or the actual rules of the game) where the ball will be placed when it comes flying back at you. So you pay attention so you can respond as quickly and effectively as possible.  The impromptu nature of a writing center conversation means that the conversation can be nimble,  can move very quickly; but as a result, it may not have a lot of impact (it is a low pressure and low stakes environment).  The more structure something has, the more impact (like a fire hose as compared to a garden hose, or an SUV as compared to a Mini-Cooper).

Even in an online writing center that is interactive, but asynchronous (like the one that the Western E-Tutoring consortium hosts for WSU http://www.etutoring.org/), there is more time for the consultant to respond, more time to craft a message.  The more honed and crafted a message, the more impact it has the potential to have. 

But here's the rub:  Writing centers are based on the theory that the student is the authority (the WC ostensibly seeks to move the student from a vision of him/herself as subordinate of a education to a vision of him/herself as a writer with a voice to challenge and change the status quo).  The WC enacts this theory by having the consultant ask prompting questions that build upon each other depending on what the student says in response.  In other words, the main communication skill for a consultant in an on-site space is listening.  In an online space the consultant does more reading and writing--(listening in an online space looks like absence more than it looks like presence).   The more writing the consultant does, the more it changes the relationship so it appears the consultant has more authority.  So it is a conundrum.  The main thing is to recognize that it is different;  the configuration of the space changes the message.

Information is never free (even in open access like the Purdue OWL) because everything  has a material instantiation with constraints; the best we can do is make sure the spaces we create for the visions we have are consistent with our original principles.  

Does information really want to be free?

I found the article "Does Information Really Want to be Free? Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the Question of Openness" to be wonderfully written.  The topic in also incredibly provocative.

Does information really want to be free?   I don't think information wants anything.  Having information as the subject is an anthropomorphizing of an abstract concept, a reinforcing of a trend where "Human agency is muted, and technology becomes the revolutionary figure" (Christen 2877).

Gregory Bateson said that "Information is any difference that makes a difference."  He categorized everything else as noise.   Since different things matter to different people differently, whether or not something is information is entirely contextual.  It's not really information if there is a "lack of an adequate historical context within which to anchor these systems" (2878).

When language is concerned, there is no such thing as true open access.  You have to know the language, you have to be invited to understand the vocabulary, you have to have a handle on the whole complex symbol-system.  No matter how open something is, it is open to misinterpretation if you do not understand the cultural systems that created it.

Even from the generous perspective of knowledge as a "non-rivalrous good" (2878),  this generosity is not realistic when we still employ competitive tactics in education where language learning is concerned.  Language itself is not considered free to trade--after all, most of what we do in writing instruction is evaluate it for levels of competency, rank it relation to often-arbitrary standards, and exclude dialects and discourses that could add verve, color and perspective--so how will we make knowledge free to trade if we have not yet done that with language?

The "information wants to be free" rhetoric reminds me of the posthuman "utopian" idea that suggests that once information is liberated from its corporeal body (from whatever binds it to a material structure) then it is free to liberate us from all those cumbersome restrictions.  But everything needs a boundary, a body, to contain it, to give it limitations.  Limitations are usually created as representative of a set of values.  When everything is free it is unattached to a set of values, a discipline of respect.


I do, however, agree with Noam Chomsky, who (in his delivery of the Potter Memorial lecture) at WSU in 2005, argued that information created on state time (funded by state dollars) should belong to the state and not to the individuals creating (discovering, inventing) it. 

If we thought about information in social and moral ways rather than in economic ways (Christen 2875), it could be possible for more information to be absorbed into an intellectual commons, or at least possible for more equitable discussion to occur relative to that information.  But we don't.  In this culture, information is not even free when the state has already paid for it.

This obsession with ownership has over-taken public education (particularly in the university) where the comprehension of information is deemed of less importance than the giving of credit to the person who first (or best) articulated it.  But again, it depends on who that person is.  If the person is a state-supported scholar, the information is so valuable that we all-but tape dollar bills onto our in-text attributions.  If the person is (was) an indigenous artist, well, then that work should be in the free museum and belong to everyone. (Read sarcasm here, and also read that this thought evolves from Kim Christen's assumed perspective.)

For me Digital Resource Management and the issues it grapples in the management of subaltern resources, is a microcosm of the larger truth that culture-controllers, by having a voice in what is and isn't important in people's historical records, use technologies to script who people can and can not be. It is crucially important to be aware that what has been decided as "public domain" (or not public domain) has not been a consensual or communal process. The decisions have been made by people who have the economic clout to control, highlight or subordinate resources in ways that best benefit them.

"The framing of the digital landscape promotes a type of historical amnesia about how the public domain was initially populated.  In the United States, the rise of public domain talk is linked to Westward expansion and the displacement of indigenous people" (Christen 2897).

This image is hard to see and the resolution gets worse when it is enlarged, but it is the "information" of small pox being sprinkled on a set of "free" blankets

In other words, while many try to de-historicize notions of public domain (what is so precious it must be sequestered, and what is so mundane that it can serve as staples for the collective), it is important to realize that this selection process is highly historicized and we should not pretend otherwise (Christen 2880).

Information is like intention.  You can have a lot of it; you can manifest a lot of good things with it. You can make a big old destructive mess with it.

Wisdom is knowing what to do with what you have, it's not about what you have.   Wisdom is not free.

"We live in an age when the growth of the Internet has made it easier
than ever to gain access to information and accumulate knowledge. But
information is not the same as meaning, nor is knowledge identical with
wisdom. Many people feel engulfed by a tsunami of facts in which they
can find no meaning" (McGrath).

Spring 2015 Research Questions from Trevor Owen's blog

Ideal Goal
My overarching goal is do something that makes a difference.

Academic Goal To be able to better understand, and to effectively communicate, the degree to which excessive dependence on digital technology reduces human cerebral practice with proprioception, exteroception and interoception.  (I love those terms.)

As part of that larger academic goal, I am interested in investigating and exposing the degree to which the over-use of technology, in and around childbirth, has the potential to cause both short and long-term emotional and/or physiological problems in mothers and children.

Realistic Academic Goal: 

I am interested in doing a rhetorical analysis to show how the conversation in medical science (in peer-reviewed journals such as Medical Hypothesis and the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics) about the safety of digital imaging in pre-natal testing (specifically ultrasound) is very different from the conversation in the rhetoric of the popular media and in medical sites (such as WebMD, advertising for imaging services and hospitals).   (This disconnect between contemporary medical research and the rhetoric of current medical practice is also apparent relative to C-sections and the use of drugs in labor augmentation and pain relief.)

Embedded in this disconnect is the question of :

Who has the most authority to speak about medicine?

Hypothesis: It is not the researchers who are producing the current science who have the most authority; it is the for-profit institutions that are delivering the services.  This is no doubt related to who has access to popular avenues of information distribution, and the best ability to package the information in a consumer digestible  form.  (It is also, I imagine, related to liability issues for practitioners, who no longer have the option of being wrong, so they opt for the most current technologies to do the work, because for some reason technology is never wrong.)

My conceptual framework is as a 2^nd wave, presenthuman feminist* teacher-writer who is interested in cooperating with (and translating), rather than contesting, the partial perspectives of both narrative and empirical stories. 

*I do not agree with Donna Haraway that the goddess is dead (Cyborg Manifesto 301), and I do not agree with Haraway that the Posthuman Cyborg is a feminist liberator (Cyborg Manifesto 302), but I also do not believe that the goddess (as a metaphor for empowered and embodied womanhood) is more important or more powerful than her metaphorical ontological consort.  (I think that using an incrementum to weigh gender-worth is ridiculous; it's like using an incrementum to weigh the worths of hot and cold.)

My previous scholarly investigations, first-hand observations, and lived experience situate me to understand that unmediated  (and un-medicated) childbirth is far safer than the current media rhetoric suggests, and that techno-birth is far more dangerous than current media rhetoric suggests.  My previous scholarship (some of it conducted last semester in 597 as part of my final project) confirms this hypothesis.

I also want to investigate the degree to which a "rhetoric of risk" around childbirth not only encourages reliance on costly (in more ways than one) technology in this culture, but is being spread more and more throughout the 3^rd world. 

Two research questions are:

• What is the best way to reveal the disconnect between the rhetoric of for-profit institutions and the information currently being published in peer-reviewed journal studies in medicine? My specific focus is on the use of technology in childbirth, specifically the use of digital imaging such as pre-natal ultrasound as standard practice.
• What is the best way to communicate this information to childbearing couples? [Because no matter how effective I am in packaging this work for the field of Composition and Rhetoric, not enough people are willing to read--or are able to understand--the impenetrable discourse in the scholarly stuff we write.] 

My methods will be to:

• Find, Read and Document the birth and breast-feeding conversation in for-profit sites (WebMD, imaging services, hospital protocols).
• Find, Read and Document the medical research conversation about birth and breast feeding (peer-reviewed journal-based).
• Find, Read and Work from sources that investigate similar questions (like the work of Mary Lay, Marika Siegel, Amy Koerber and Robbie Davis-Floyd on the rhetoric of birth, pregnancy and breast feeding).
• Drink wine, make soap and play ping pong regularly to avoid letting this project take over my life.

The validity concerns I have are that:

I am highly emotional about this topic, and that compromises my ability to be systematic about studying it.  My tendency is to just want to scream-- and that isn’t persuasive.

Much of the data that I have unearthed--particularly about the relationship of autism to the over-use of technology in childbirth--is new, and it is based on correlation rather than causality.  

I have trouble implementing any systems consistently (even recipes) and that compromises my ability to be systematic about approaching any topic.

What do I want to gain from the course that will help me in the pursuit of this research?  Most specifically, I'd like to learn more about the expectations of the genre.  I am a writer, with the majority of my education occurring in the 20th century.  I am not opposed to learning the conventions of producing text (performing text) in digital space, but it is new to me.  I have access to 21st century support systems to figure some of this out, but I am hoping to learn what the expectations are for arranging evidence in digital space (since it is not exactly linear in its presentation) and what constitutes evidence.  Also, what are the most productive or persuasive venues?  What are the citation or copyright rules for linking to stuff?  How do you create a web-site?  Yes, I am also interested in the theoretical-conceptional frames, but I challenge conceptual frames that tout a utopian vision (I think we should leave that to missionaries and not to scholars).