Ed in the Clouds

And so it is that a few of my conversations and things I've read or learned recently have conspired to lead me to write this post.  They seemed to have at least a common thread running through them, and I want to try and tease it out.  Because that's what we're all trying to do, isn't it: extract meaning from this never-ending stream of new stuff?  To filter all the data down to the subset we need, then turn that data into information and try and derive some meaning or understanding from it?  If not - if we're just standing in front of the fire hose seeing whose sponge can absorb most, then what's the point?

When I was sixteen, I got a mandolin for my birthday.  I loved it, and always meant to learn how to play it (and still do), but I know my limitations and how much of an investment that would represent for me.  According to Seth Godin's recent blog post, that's because my red zone is too big and my green dot too quiet.  Makes sense to me.  My fifteen year-old son picked up the mandolin last year and absent-mindedly started making lovely noises come out of it.  He can just do that - no red zone for him there (although it's very different if I ask him to tidy up).

It wasn't just the mandolin: there's learning Japanese, improving my artistic skills, learning to write code, writing that book and a host of other projects I've been able to shelve (not abandon but postpone, I kid myself) because the red zone was just too big for my lifestyle at that moment.  I've filled the gap with plenty of good - and even some worthwhile - stuff, but I still regret those unfinished projects.

It's a little different today: nowadays none of the things I come across are in and of themselves daunting: it's unlikely that a new web service is going to completely flummox me, but what does take time is to see how it all fits together in a way which improves my life rather than merely adding something new.  It seems to me that this management of the relentless flow is a skill which will be extremely useful for our students to acquire (at least until software solves it for us) and yet one it's one we all struggle with to a greater or lesser degree.

Mark Wagner talked at the GTA last month about the spectrum of information of sources available to us all today, from tweets to books, and their different gestation periods and degree of trustworthiness.  I realised afterwards that that's the model I had developed for managing the flow, and that I used different tools and techniques to suit the different 'info-cycle' of each.  For the transient and ephemeral world of microblogging, I'm trying to stop reading everything (like Bowie in 'The Man Who Fell to Earth', staring at a stack of TVs in order to absorb all of human culture) and become more Zen about it.  With the iPad has come a number of services which make visually attractive digests or magazines of those streams.  I still need to get a lot better at filtering, but it feels like I'm in charge again.  Same goes for the hundreds of links to interesting items which are generated every day: I use browser plugins for ReadItLater or Instapaper or a web-synching client app like Evernote, although increasingly I am seduced by the prettier front ends of the digests.  I'm aware that there's a whole area I don't use and know little about - social bookmarking - and regret not listening to Shelley Rodrigo's talk on it at GTA: I look at Diigo and del.icio.us every now and then but somehow never integrate it into my own workflow.  I'm trying to implement Henry Thiele's Inb0x Zer0 email management approach - so far so good.  Blogs and newsfeeds and podcasts get the magazine treatment, using Feedly and Pulse and NPR respectively.  Books can now be integrated into the mix thanks to the amazing scale of Google's global ambition.  I call it 'the mix', but in reality it's a series of different tools for different points along that spectrum: Threadsy and Flipboard are starting to blur the boundaries, but we're just getting started here.

What this makes me think is that we need a generation of software tools and services which does a better job of understanding our own workflows and time constraints.  Sometimes (although I can't remember such a time) I might have two hours to sit and read things thoroughly - the equivalent of how I used to devour the weekend newspaper from front to back.  Sometimes, I only have five minutes and need to 'speed-skim' just the headlines, just the nuggets.  I wish it were not so: this soundbite, Trivial Pursuit acquisition of stuff is not real knowledge or understanding, but sometimes it's all I have time for.  No, I need a trusted friend who's read it all for me and can present me with the 30-second, 5-minute or 2-hour version.  Roll on Web 3.0 and the semantic web...

This is hard, by the way.  Churchill was once asked by a journalist if he would speak on the radio, and how long he would need to prepare.  He said "That depends: if you want me to speak all day, I can start immediately.  if you need me to speak for two minutes, I'll need a week to prepare."