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TLDR 147

Too Long; Didn't Read Issue 147

Published: 2018-04-27 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome to Issue 147. This week we move from the balance to the bougie.

This week I worked on a lot of stuff behind the scenes. More good stuff coming soon.

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🔖 Key Takeaways

📺 Watch

This animated version of The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant by philosopher Nick Bostrom made the rounds online this week.

You can read the text of the fable above, and the moral as presented by Bostrom. Nick explains that the moral of the story has to do with death, and fighting aging.

I watched the video several times and tried to figure out the focus or theme of the piece. I thought it was more of a treatise or indictment of science and technology...but that was my opinion. What do you think?

📚 Read

Great post by Remi Kalir in Hybrid Pedagogy presenting a bricolage, or a construction of bits and pieces from diverse fields. This connection of the dots focuses on the intersection between technology and education in the current societal context.

As Kalir notes, "With learning environments and opportunities imbued with ideology, the labor of building meaningful learning must be reflective, both self-aware and self-critical, and also iterative." He goes on to consider the ways in which we build content online, and the possibilities that we might also deconstruct societal problems in the process.

As a sidebar, I'd like to once again note how much I loved writing from Hybrid Ped, and have a couple of pieces in mind to submit to them. I also appreciated the way in which Remi presented this piece as a form of digital bricolage by embedding quotes, tweets, and more in the submission. It motivates my own thinking about writing & creating online.

Facebook has been in the news a lot recently due to the Cambridge Analytica usage, as well as other elements. Part of this story also involves the recent aphorism that "if you're not the customer, you're the product."

In this post, Will Oremus indicates that the origination of this adage comes from this video. The short film from 1973 focuses on the role of the audience as product for another medium...television.

Oremus makes many important points...I urge you read through. I'll share one extended quote here:

None of this is to deny that "you are the product" is a potent line, or that it has value as a reminder that the interests of the mass media aren't necessarily the same as the interests of everyone else. It was especially trenchant in 1973, and its recent resurgence for the social media era makes sense. But it's 2018, and it's time for Facebook's critics to move past what has become a tired cliché. There's something nihilistic about telling people they're the product of a gigantic corporation and there's nothing they can do about it. "You are the product" paints us as powerless pawns in Facebook's game but gives us no leverage with which to improve our predicament.

In terms of full disclosure, I'm a hugger. It is often a point of derision as my Wife will comment it as I say goodbye to people as they leave our home. A couple of years ago, I was chatting with some close colleagues, and the topic of hugging came up. One of my colleagues suggested that hugging was weird, and that professionals should not hug.

In recent times, I've also been problematizing my perspectives and thinking deeply about the role of hugging as a social interaction. This long read helped me think through the ways in which hugging may be viewed in the #MeToo movement.

As a postscript, I asked whether hugging or shaking was more appropriate in current societal interactions. To my interest, most colleagues, all women, indicated that hugging was appropriate, depending on how you know the individual...and the context.

What do you think? Are you a hugger or a shaker?

Work, for now, is a fundamental component of our society, even though it may be killing us.

As we think about ways to help negotiate these spaces, I've slowly been folding stoic philosophies into my reading habits. As noted in this piece by Ryan Holiday, stoic philosophies focus on the individual in the marketplace, on a voyage, or in the public sphere. Put simply, they're mostly focused on the challenges of being "in the arena."

In this post, Holiday shares some basic guidance, and quotes to help you remain focused and balanced as you shuffle off to work each day.

As you muddle through work, or fight (metaphorically) in the arena, you hopefully find opportunities and structures that keep you balanced.

I honestly didn't give this much thought until I spent some time with a friend who was finishing up her dissertation and trying to figure out "what is next." I spent a lot of time indicating the options as I saw it. She indicated that she liked the online "brand" that I developed, and saw the value in that in her future. To that, she asked..."how do you stay balanced?"

This brought me back to my advisor who I often asked the very same question. His answer was always, "Do as I say, not as I do." This was an indication that he never slept, and was always grinding as well.

But, as the summer begins, and I soon have some time in my schedule to think, build, and launch new initiatives, I think about the structures I have in place to keep me level. As Aaron Davis indicates, "Life can get busy, when this occurs, should leaders stand aside or do we need to stop and recognize that sometimes leadership involves the support of wider support networks?"

How do you remain balanced? I have someone that would like to know. ;)

🔨 Do

First of all, the term bougie comes from slang and it basically describes someone acting as if their social status is higher than it actually is. This term popped up into the lexicon in our house a couple of months ago, and it now appears in tons of pop music and cultural references.

Now for the make of the week, I love the focus on printing out your bootlegged, "pirated PDFs" and binding them together. I've thought about binding up blog posts every year, and I have tons and tons of written pieces. Perhaps I'll take the time to bind my own content.

🤔 Consider

"I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself." — Audre Lorde

This week we move from the balance to the bougie. The poet and civil rights activist's words confront us with mortality's inevitability while asserting the importance of voice. Lorde reminds us that silence won't save us from death, so we might as well speak our truths while we can. In educational spaces, this challenges us to create environments where students find their voices rather than remaining silent—because the time we have to speak, to teach, to learn is finite and precious.

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Part of the 📧 Newsletter archive documenting digital literacy and technology.