Should Ed Tech be Revolutionary?

Everything is Miscellaneous is a new book by David Weinberger that deals with classification. Now that sounds really boring, but as his Google Tech Talk video from May 10 shows, it can be both interesting and funny (Everything is Miscellaneous video).

Weinberger isn't so much saying something new, but is putting it together in a way that will make sense to many as he looks at classification from Aristotle to the Dewey decimal system to "folksonomies" created by tagging and popular usage on the Web. Told with humor, he argues that we are moving away from traditional authority as the basis for organizing knowledge to a new "public negotiation of meaning." The line between metadata and data is blurring as we enter a "third order" of knowledge organization, making possible multi-dimensional and infinitely connected ways of sorting and linking (mash-ups) not possible when arranging physical books and media. In this new world of knowledge in which millions can contribute, authority no longer has the same level of control.

Okay, that isn't nearly as funny as he was, nor does that cover all the territory in the 57 minute video. But the part that most interests me isn't what he said, but what this line of thought suggests. As someone who has looked at communication through the eyes of many social science disciplines, from journalism to anthropology/linguistics to history and sociology, I have always been fascinated by the way new communications technologies have spawned social change and even revolutions, toppling kings, empires, religions and other human institutions. As powerful as established systems may be, there is also a countering force in popular voice, beliefs and mob action when amplified by a new communications channel that every now and then, pushes a system over the edge. During such times, authority loses control over the belief systems that are a key to sustaining existing social relations.

For example, the birth of the U.S. can be seen in part as the result of new printing technologies. The distribution of broadsheets that were often biased and even incorrect had a powerful effect on popular opinion. Radical ideas could be spread faster than they could be squelched or countered by royal authority, even when the partisans got it wrong or intentionally mislead. Print gave these revolutionary writers a reach greater than their voices (and there were some great orators among them). Print had power as the broadsides were passed from hand to hand and village to village, so many could access the rhetoric and reports. The words swayed enough of the population to result in revolt against English domination and the eventual independence of the colonies.

Communications technologies have changed the world in the past. Could we be seeing the beginning of a new revolution against authority and institutions based on networked, digital communication technologies that remake the way large numbers of individuals can see and understand our world? How might this new popular form of knowledge organization impact existing social and political structures? Could it create a new "tipping point"? In at least one other current book this shift in relationships based on new ways of organizing knowledge and social relations came into focus. I recently finished reading Tapscott's and William's book, Wikinomics, about how social networks and Web 2.0 tools are impacting business by enhancing knowledge management and global collaborations that alter the way corporations operate. Not the best written book ever, but a really interesting collection of case studies of new practices and the fall of traditional institutions locked into old ways of doing business. It suggests that a major realignment is underway, but it may be too soon to know if it is a revolution.

So what does this have to do with educational technology, you might be asking? Perhaps we should be thinking bigger about the relationship between technology and education. Many practitioners and scholars have commented on how little impact educational technology has on schools. But if, as Weinberger suggests, authority is shifting, the basis for formal education founded on disciplinary expertise and traditional knowledge definitions is likely to be impacted in ways that we haven't even begun to explore. As he points out, the way we have created the walls between subjects is artificial--a binary scheme to classify a complexly attributed universe--necessary in the past where organization was physical and knowledge was captured in physical media. Now we have rich digital data and multi-level emergent schemes from the semantic web that can be explored from many individual points of view. When students have more knowledge and capability to explore it at their fingertips than the entire school holds, and they have the ability to contribute rather than just consume, what is the role of the teacher? This is an impact far greater than determining if technology enhances achievement or has value in classrooms. Is it possible that educational technology should be thinking of itself as a revolutionary discipline?