-bowerbird

The Wikipedia page about Ivan Illich’s 1971 book Deschooling Society illustrates a vision for the future of educational technology. Illich rejected the institutional nature of schooling, and hoped for destructured, de-instutionalized future for education. The article not only explains Illich’s vision for a new educational system and it’s presence as an entry on the Wikipedia demonstrates the way his idea of decentralized, interest driven, “learning webs” are now a core part of internet culture. This presentation of his argument is itself a representation of how his vision has become a central feature of internet culture. Informal online learning communities like Flickr groups, fan fic sites, game forums, and DIY and crafting sites, offer further evidence of how unstructured, self directed “learning webs” are now some of the most important sites of learning in 21st century society.

Dan alludes to the scarcity of attention. In his book titled _The Economy of Attention_, Richard Lanham argues that an excess of information demands a new way of generating value. Since information is plentiful, the new role of the scholar is to help us focus, to create attention-getting structures. Lanham doesn’t offer the following examples, but the wide range of works developed by DHers can be valued as scholarship for an age in which information is plenty. Like silhouettes on a bright, white screen, an attention structure limits the flow in order to create value. Whereas the traditional scholar is confronted with a dark screen that needs to be enlightened, the DH scholar is confronted with a white screen on which she needs to introduce some contrast.

>> One potential solution on the demand side might come not from the scarcity of production, as it did in a print world, but from the scarcity of attention. @dancohen <<

The information economy has upended the scarcity model on which traditional scholarship has been based. Traditionally, the lone scholar must add to a scholarly universe that is incomplete. The corpus of ideas with which a traditional scholar is identified is finite. S/he is expected to have read it all, to known it all. New ideas and perspectives are hard to find. It takes genious to create or envision them. Someone with singular vision is needed to help bridge the gap between the known and the unknown, the near past and the distant future. What the scholar is a creater, a producer—someone who shine some light ahead of us.

The information age has turned that traditional relationship on its head. Digital scholars today do not face a future in which the existence of great ideas and novel perpectives are scarce. In an information age, there is an excess of great ideas and novel perspectives. Like a 24-hour gas station on the highway, the road ahead is well lit. The gap between the past and the future has been reduced to little more than a speed bump. From the standpoint of the web, the scholar is surrounded by so much information that s/he lives in an eternal present. S/he can’t possibly know everything about her field, and there are so many great ideas and novel perspectives from which to choose that s/he is confronted with a new scholarly exigence: how to deal with an excess of knowledge.

Dan alludes to the scarcity of attention. In his book titled The Economy of Attention, Richard Lanham argues that an excess of information demands a new way of generating value. Since information is plentiful, the new role of the scholar is to help us focus, to create attention structures. Lanham doesn't offer the following examples, but the wide range of works developed by DHers can be valued as scholarship for an information age. The growing number of ways in which to filter, connect, and visualize information are attention structures. They are forms of scholarship tailor-made for an age of informational excess. Like silhouettes on a bright, white screen, they are a model of production that turns the traditional model of scarcity on its head.