Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

Reading as a Participation Sport

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A few things have been pushing my thinking even more about reading and writing in digital environments, and I thought I’d throw some kind of random thoughts together here mostly to capture them but also to see where writing about them takes me. So apologies in advance for the thin threads and varied directions this may go in.

First, let me say I love my iPad…as a reading tool. I’ve been telling people that when the new OS comes out here in the next couple of weeks, my “grade” for it will go from a B- to a B+ just for the mere ability to multitask through many open programs, which is the major frustration I find with the device right now. I hate having to close one app down in order to open another up because it’s just so different from the usually six or eight programs and 30+ tabs I have running at any given moment on my MBP. But having said that, I absolutely love reading on the iPad. It’s light, it’s thin, it glows. Yeah…I’m having a moment…

To that end, I seriously don’t know if there’s a more useful app than Instapaper. Now, when I’m working on my laptop and my network floats up some interesting piece to read, I just “read-later” it in my browser and the article, stripped of all the ads and extraneous junk on the page, syncs right into my iPad for later, leisurely, comfortable consumption. And…for somewhat comfortable creation. (Btw, here is the RSS feed for my Instapaper saves if you want it.) With a little work, I can share out those pieces to Twitter, capture chunks on Evernote, save them to my Delicious account, all of which will get oh so much easier when the OS updates. But there is no question that  reading no longer just means consuming. It’s all about pulling out the most salient, relevant pieces and doing something with them that potentially makes other people more knowledgeable as well.

Second, there has been a great series of posts on my new favorite blog at the Neiman Journalism Lab (Harvard) regarding the use of links:

Why does the BBC want to send its readers away? The value of linking
Why link out? Four journalistic purposes of the noble hyperlink
Making connections: How major news organizations talk about links

Now I know most of these have a journalistic bent, but I think they have relevance for any of us who write in this linked world, whether it’s blogs or Twitter or whatever. In fact, I might argue that conversations such as these should be happening in fourth and fifth grade as we begin to help our students understand the value of public writing. I mean it might just be me, but I would love my kids to have an understanding of the value of links in writing in terms of how they can be used in storytelling, in keeping the audience informed, in enabling transparency and their value as a “currency of collaboration.” Isn’t that an inherent part of the online writing interaction that we should be teaching?

Third, back to the iPad for a sec. I love the fact that this morning, Clay Shirky’s new book Cognitive Surplus landed in my Kindle app, ready for me to read. I just finished Switch (highly recommended) and now I have two abridged, annotated, digitally marked up versions of recent books in Evernote that are fully searchable and remixable and sharable (within limits, of course.) I’m becoming more convinced that I’ll never buy another paper book again if it has a Kindle version.

And finally, I bought the Wired Magazine app for the iPad on Monday ($4.99) and it’s, um, pretty darn cool. It’s also another small step in the way we read; embedded videos and audio, amazing graphics, interactive buttons to push. I found it much more engaging to read…that participation thing again. Not that it’s the reinvention of print, but I would have loved to been in some of the brainstorming and idea sessions when they created the interface. It is beautiful and functional. And soon, according to the developers, it’s going to get more social as well, more opportunities to do “connective reading.” Not saying I’m going to subscribe to Wired this way, but when textbooks are made for the iPad in this format…could be very interesting.

I know most people shudder when I say this, but I’m more than ok with letting go of the paper reading world at this point. I’m much more interested in exploring these digital spaces, their opportunities and their drawbacks (as Nicholas Carr has been espousing of late) than watching my paper books grow dust on the bookshelves.

You?

Clay Shirky Interview

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Well, despite some technical issues (Skype video not working behind the NYU firewall (go figure) and just a complete drop of my Internet connection about half way through) here are the 2-part archives of my (or should I say “our”) interview of Clay Shirky along with the at times compelling chat conversation from UStream. (Apologies to those whose questions I didn’t get to; learning…) I’ll compress my thoughts into a later post, but on par, I found the interview itself and the process of doing it pretty interesting. I hope to have some more of these lined up in the coming weeks.

Would love to hear your feedback. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Here is a liveblog of the session from Christy Tucker.

LATER UPDATE: Here are MP4 versions of Part 1 and Part 2. Looks like these links break from time to time; keep trying. And no idea how long UStream will leave them up…

Part 1:

Part 2:

Waking Up With a "Cognitive Surplus"

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So it’s official. Clay Shirky is my new hero, right up there with Lessig in terms of spelling things out in ways that just make so much sense, and that actually cause butterflies in my stomach when my brain fully wraps around an idea and owns it. I loved his book, Here Comes Everybody, and I love the book blog almost as much, especially when he writes stuff like this.

Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan’s Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don’t? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn’t posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it’s not, and that’s the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it’s worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.

It’s an amazing essay that positions this shift just right, that we’re waking up from a collective TV watching bender that has created a “cognitive surplus” that’s just waiting to activated, and that we’re seeing the beginnings of that right now in our ability to participate. And that changes everything.

This is something that people in the media world don’t understand. Media in the 20th century was run as a single race–consumption. How much can we produce? How much can you consume? Can we produce more and you’ll consume more? And the answer to that question has generally been yes. But media is actually a triathlon, it ‘s three different events. People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share.

It made me think of George Siemens’ recent post where he writes about being unable to state clearly exactly what it is that’s happening right now.

While people have always been able to do this, the scope and ease of collaborating and (hopefully) creating a multi-perspective information source is now greater than before. It just feels different to me. Like we’re still going through many of the motions I recall going through in the past with regard to information creation/sharing…but something fundamental is different. Can’t quite put my finger on it…

Shirky might say we’re shaking off the hangover and discovering a larger purpose for what we are creating and sharing. It feels different because it’s starting to feel like an expectation, not simply an option. As Shirky says

Here’s something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here’s something four-year-olds know: Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won’t have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan’s Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.

Great, great essay. And lots of butterflies.

UPDATE: Just saw a tweet from Arthus that led to the video of Shirky’s talk. Cool!