00:00-00:02 Well, hello Gardner, it's good to talk to you. 00:02-00:15 Hello, Alan. It's been a while, a couple of weeks. I was down with the Creeping Crud last week and I guess actually the last time you and I have done a podcast was in Barcelona. So that's been, I guess, I don't know, three, four weeks now? 00:15-00:18 Yeah, on top of Abbey Road Studios in Barcelona. 00:18-00:26 Yeah, I listened to it a little bit, but the audio quality was surprisingly good for the very distracting and noisy surroundings. 00:26-00:28 I know. Well, it made for the ambience. 00:28-00:40 Well, and I gotta say, it's nice to be home, but it just doesn't quite have the same character as being on that rooftop in Spain where it rains mainly on the plane. 00:40-00:47 Well, and where we fell down was, we didn't take any pictures that document the moment, so people just have to take our word for it. 00:47-00:53 Oh, right, we could be faking it, just like that moon landing you and I did about ten years ago. Do you remember that? 00:53-00:55 Yeah, that set you built in your living room was great. 00:55-01:03 People just can't take this on faith, you know, and I got some land down in Florida to sell. It's good stuff. 01:03-01:10 All right, so this week was the Marshall McLuhan doubleheader. How did it play out in Baylor? 01:10-01:23 Yeah, you know, it played out very well. We had an ACE facilitator, Lance Grigsby. Lance works in the online teaching support unit in the electronic library, 01:23-01:33 but he's a bit of a ringer, you know, he was one of those English majors you hear so much about, and he also is a musician and spent blogging, 01:33-01:45 I think pretty spectacularly, through this seminar. If you are following along with some of the Baylor blogs, you'll know that Lance has been one of the most open and I think one of the most, 01:45-01:55 I don't know, really almost poetically insightful of our bloggers and has done some terrific work. 01:55-02:03 So in a lot of ways he was a perfect match for Marshall McLuhan, not because he found it any easier than the rest of us. 02:03-02:11 McLuhan is a notoriously difficult read, in part because he doesn't always argue consistently, but you know, there you go. 02:11-02:20 But I think Lance was very well attuned to bringing out what turned out to be a really spectacular set of nuggets. 02:20-02:32 So he was using Prezi for that and would move from one of these wild Harry McLuhan quotes to another and had picked out a number of them that were especially challenging. 02:32-02:44 And it turned out that the rest of the group had been very thoughtful, had read very carefully, and they could engage readily with the nuggets that Lance pulled out, as well as offer some of their own. 02:44-02:54 And for me, the big lesson was we were pulling out things that we knew were interesting, but we didn't quite understand them. 02:54-03:06 But we had a hunch that something might be there, either because it linked to something we talked about before, or because it linked to something that we could sort of tell was new media-ish. 03:06-03:16 And that's a great lesson that you bring stuff up for discussion, not because you have an idea of what it means, but because you may not have an idea of what it means. 03:16-03:26 And if people are really honest and they're kind of, I don't know, I used to describe very Washington students as scrappy and game. 03:26-03:38 And I think that applies to any good group. If they're really willing to be kind of game for this, then a lot of good things can happen, and the people at Baylor were. 03:38-03:48 So we had a really rich discussion. It was a discussion about media. A couple of people in the room had, of course, it was a discussion about media, but I'll elaborate. 03:48-03:51 Can you give me a sample, a taste of what one of the good nuggets was? 03:51-04:03 Sure. One of them had, well, one that comes to mind is one that Lance brought up, but one that Steve Reed, who's the fellow from Truett Seminary, brought up, and a member of the AMCC Lab. 04:03-04:18 I'll just put that out there. And Steve brought up the one about only serious artists can approach technology with impunity because only they understand the ratio of senses. 04:18-04:26 And actually, Lance had brought up another quote like that a little bit earlier. So it had to do with sense ratios. 04:26-04:47 And people were very curious about that. What does that mean? And I was able to help out some in part by pointing to the fact that McLuhan is thinking of a poet named William Blake when he writes that, because Blake has a number of things to say about sense ratios in a very kind of crazy poetic way. 04:47-05:02 He was called Crazy Blake when he was alive. But the idea is that when stuff is coming into you in your experience, it's coming into your senses. And sense ratios has to do with the proportion of information coming in through the various senses. 05:02-05:17 So if you have your eyes closed, the ratios shift dramatically because now you're hearing more, you're feeling the air against your skin more, you're more attuned to smell, you're more attuned to, well, what a taste, yeah. 05:17-05:33 And if you then open your eyes and plug up your ears, same thing. So McLuhan's point was that as technology changes, it actually has the potential and typically will shift the ratio of the senses. 05:33-05:49 When Gutenberg and Print came in, we got used to thinking in a lot of information through our eyes and the forms of printed words. But when various other kind of media begin to be dominant, those sense ratios shift. 05:49-06:02 And only an artist or serious artist who's really thinking all the time about sense ratios is going to be able to think intelligently about technology. That's McLuhan's point. 06:02-06:12 And one of the illustrations that came up was, you know, the average person would say, well, it's a picture of Jesus Mary and Joseph. It's a Madonna and child, you know. 06:12-06:22 It doesn't matter whether it's a cartoon or a sculpture or an oil painting or an acrylic painting or a photograph, it doesn't matter. It's the same content. 06:22-06:40 And McLuhan's point is, well, no, actually, it's the same content in a certain sense. But the way it affects us, the way we are able to think and experience ourselves in relation to it is going to change, 06:40-06:47 depending on whether it's in a movie or it's a photograph or it's a charcoal drawing or an acrylic painting or so forth. 06:47-06:55 And it was great because as we thought about it, it was, you know, lots of examples came to mind. 06:55-07:01 And even Prezi itself started to get really interesting in a kind of a medium and message way. 07:01-07:13 And it probably didn't hurt that I had talked about this very topic with my students a few weeks back in my first year seminar while I was in Barcelona. 07:13-07:23 And I'd actually, after, I have to say, after five times teaching that essay, I finally hit upon a way to kind of, you know, make it come to life and explain it. 07:23-07:29 And the poor folks who were in there before, they got a good, I think, a good approach to McLuhan. 07:29-07:35 But this time, I felt like I really had a way to think about it that was very vivid and would work quickly. 07:35-07:43 So I tried that out on my colleagues in the faculty staff development seminar and seemed to work. 07:43-07:45 So I was pleased with that too. 07:45-07:49 So we had, I think, a very, very rich discussion. 07:49-07:57 Great. I was just wondering, I was thinking in terms of that sense ratio, for some reason, I started thinking about, you know, I don't always agree with it, 07:57-08:03 but some of the stuff that Nick Carr has been writing about, how we're processing information in this flood of data. 08:03-08:07 And does that have something to do with sense ratios or is that something different? 08:07-08:09 Well, it's a little bit different. 08:09-08:11 Well, it's the same and it's different, I would say. 08:11-08:21 It's the same in that Carr, I think, is right, neuroscientists have backed this up, that when we are in a different technological environment, 08:21-08:25 our brain changes because of those changes. 08:25-08:28 And some of those changes are going to have to do with sense ratios. 08:28-08:35 I think Carr is more alarmed, not because we're getting more information in through our hands or our eyes or whatever, 08:35-08:41 but because he thinks we're getting the information in in a way that does not encourage deep reflection. 08:41-08:47 So if we're not sitting down absorbed in a book, which is a particular form of technology, 08:47-08:55 we're not going to be able to get to the deepest and most complex ideas that our brains are capable of. 08:55-09:00 Instead, we're going to be hunter-gatherers of the mind, which his point is, 09:00-09:09 that's actually a little more natural to us given our evolution, but it would be too bad because then we give up a real intellectual accomplishment 09:09-09:14 that has been responsible for a lot of things we value over the last hundreds of years. 09:14-09:19 Now, McLuhan would say, "Yeah, you're going to have trade-offs. 09:19-09:25 The important thing is to be as aware as possible of the trade-offs at every step of the way." 09:25-09:36 And McLuhan is particularly harsh on the trade-offs with print culture because of the way it encourages a certain slavish linearity. 09:36-09:44 We believe that there is a point of view that must be explored thoroughly instead of multiple points of view. 09:44-09:46 We need to get into a bigger picture. 09:46-09:53 I think McLuhan would say that the ultimate goal is to have what he calls a kind of mythic consciousness, 09:53-10:00 where you get really information coming in on all channels and you see higher unities. 10:00-10:07 And he's very skeptical that print technology encouraged us to find those higher unities. 10:07-10:17 In fact, I believe he does argue that print culture actually took us out of a kind of mythic consciousness in some respects, 10:17-10:21 and we didn't know it because we weren't thinking about media. 10:21-10:23 We were just thinking it was all content. 10:23-10:31 Could you get a sense from your discussions, kind of which of the two essays maybe had more of an impact, 10:31-10:36 or maybe, or the flip side is which ones were more difficult to grapple with? 10:36-10:42 Yeah, I think that the excerpt from Gutenberg Galaxy was more difficult for people to grapple with. 10:42-10:46 We didn't really get into that very deeply. 10:46-10:53 Part of that was because of some of Lance's choices, which were very good ones, I have to say. 10:53-10:59 He had found a later collection called The Medium Is The Massage and had brought that in. 10:59-11:07 It was a collaboration between McLuhan and an artist, and some of the stuff in there very clearly has connections, 11:07-11:14 and I think there are even some quotations in there from earlier stuff, but it's a later work and it's got some different things in it. 11:14-11:19 So what we did was spend a lot of time talking about The Medium Is The Message, The Medium Is The Massage, 11:19-11:30 but primarily this idea that content distracts you from what's really happening around you technologically, 11:30-11:38 that you think, well, it doesn't matter if you say it in a poem or a song or a picture or TV or movies or on the Internet, 11:38-11:45 it doesn't matter because you're looking for the content, and McLuhan's point being the content, as he says, 11:45-11:51 is the piece of juicy red meat that distracts the dog, the watchdog, so the burglars can get in. 11:51-12:00 We also talked about how technology is an extension of the self, and this comes in from the Gutenberg Galaxy as well, 12:00-12:03 and that became very interesting. 12:03-12:09 Again, we were thinking more about I think The Medium Is The Message, but the extension idea, 12:09-12:17 we had one fellow in there who's a film and digital media scholar who had read McLuhan at the beginning of his graduate training 12:17-12:25 and had understood that McLuhan was trying to get to a fuller sense of a kind of theory of media than anybody had, 12:25-12:29 and so it was obviously groping around in lots of ways, 12:29-12:35 but the illustration I brought up was that of the hammer in the hand, 12:35-12:41 and that's the one that I tried with my students a few weeks back, and it seems to have stuck. 12:41-12:49 It seems to have been just crazy enough, but just useful enough to keep McLuhan's thoughts alive as we've moved along. 12:49-12:55 So what I said was, and we were in second life when this was happening, so it was a very interesting context, 12:55-12:59 and I said, "So if you pick up a hammer, what do you have?" 12:59-13:05 I said, "Give me the absolute bare bones most obvious answer," and they couldn't do it at first. 13:05-13:11 They said, "Well, you have a tool, or now you're going to look for a nail, or you can build a house, 13:11-13:17 or you have the capability to blah, blah, blah," and I said, "Those are all right answers, 13:17-13:23 but they're not getting at the most basic reality that McLuhan wants us to start with." 13:23-13:31 And after a while, one person just was bold to be as basic as possible, which is very hard to do. 13:31-13:36 It's very, very difficult to get to the absolute basic most obvious thing and start there. 13:36-13:41 And I think it was a "she," she said, "Well, you have a hammer in your hand." 13:41-13:46 I said, "Right. You pick up a hammer, you have a hammer in your hand." 13:46-13:53 Right. That's the basic level we need to start at, because what McLuhan would say is, 13:53-13:56 "Well, looked at one way, you have a hammer in your hand." 13:56-14:03 Looked at through the light of his media philosophy, if you're truly understanding media, 14:03-14:09 you don't have a hammer in your hand, you have a hammer hand. 14:09-14:12 And they all thought about that. 14:12-14:19 And the same thing happened in the seminar last week for the faculty staff development discussion. 14:19-14:26 They could immediately see it. They were like, "Oh, right, because you've changed the hammer, 14:26-14:32 it now has human agency to direct it, and you've changed your hand, 14:32-14:36 because you're not just looking at flesh and bone, but you've got this extension 14:36-14:41 that gives you superpowers, really, compared to what you had before. 14:41-14:45 If you've ever tried the hammer in a nail with your hand, you'll know what that's like. 14:45-14:51 So what you have is something that neither one was separately, but you have a new union. 14:51-14:56 And if you think of it that way, it's not a hammer in your hand, it's a hammer hand. 14:56-15:01 I think you can start to get at some of the stuff that McLuhan was interested in, 15:01-15:06 that sense that these media really are extensions of ourselves. 15:06-15:10 They're not just tools. They become part of us. 15:10-15:13 They're part of them, and there's mutual change there. 15:13-15:19 That's really powerful. That gets to the way it's so much of that "technology" is just a tool. 15:19-15:22 Well, you know, does it not? I mean, there it is. 15:22-15:27 And I remember, you know, it's so funny. 15:27-15:31 You can read this stuff, and I've said good things about McLuhan before. 15:31-15:37 I know I have, but it was that day in my hotel room in the Hotel Cologne, 15:37-15:42 there in Cathedral Square at Barcelona inside on the computer in Second Life, 15:42-15:46 and at that moment the hammer hand thing came. 15:46-15:53 And, you know, Douglas Hofstetter would say, it was just, you know, my neurons had been 15:53-15:57 bounced around so much that I had a different collision, and that's good. 15:57-16:00 It also means it's useful to read this stuff over and over. 16:00-16:04 But there it is, and I'll just share this with you because it was so striking to me, 16:04-16:10 just before we started the call tonight, one of my bloggers in my first year seminar 16:10-16:18 just wrote a really interesting blog piece that has this title. 16:18-16:22 After writing this, I honestly can't think of a title that sums it up. 16:22-16:24 That's a great title. 16:24-16:29 And this writer, who goes by the pen name Colorblind, writes, 16:29-16:35 "My colleague Fast Skiers said in his blog that this is hardly a computer class anymore, 16:35-16:39 but more of a class about perspective into the world and media. 16:39-16:47 After Thursday's class, I am full caps, seriously inclined, and full caps, to agree." 16:47-16:50 I can honestly say, Colorblind writes, 16:50-16:55 that over the past two weeks, the way I look at everything has changed. 16:55-17:00 I am typing on this computer, therefore it is an extension of me. 17:00-17:08 I am using it, it is using me, we together are producing something that I could not produce alone. 17:08-17:12 The simplicity of my life has been turned upside down. 17:12-17:21 I no longer am a single unit, but everything I pick up, contact, hold, use, etc., is a part of me. 17:21-17:30 I am not sure I have completely grasped this shit, but I am surely further along than I was when we had this discussion in Second Life. 17:30-17:32 Wow, talk about channeling. 17:32-17:38 I think that's like the Woody Allen thing, you just pull McLuhan in and have a conversation with him. 17:38-17:41 I am telling you, there it is. 17:41-17:52 Then my curiosity goes to the next level, which is, so what was it in this student that not only yielded this insight, 17:52-18:07 but was allowing this student to recognize three weeks ago in Barcelona that He/She wasn't there yet. 18:07-18:14 This was really confusing, this person was lost, and yet knew that something was going on, 18:14-18:20 knew that there was a really interesting idea here, and just stuck with it. 18:20-18:25 Because that, it seems to me, is part of the secret sauce about learning. 18:25-18:34 You get a feeling that just tells you, look, I trust Dr. C., 18:34-18:39 I trust that Marshall McLuhan is in this book for a reason. 18:39-18:46 I may not like what I am reading, I surely don't understand it now, but there is something here, 18:46-18:53 and if I just hang on and keep thinking about it, something may emerge. 18:53-18:59 What's emerged, of course, is that, and this doesn't happen in isolation. 18:59-19:04 I mean, this person is in a class, I am leading the class, the class is starting to lead the class, 19:04-19:11 the discussions have been rich, I goosome along, many people in the class are blogging and starting to make connections 19:11-19:14 with the things that have come before. 19:14-19:24 The blogger, this person was referring to, Fast Skier, in the recent blog post said, 19:24-19:31 this is a class about media, and I am starting to see how these essays are connecting. 19:31-19:35 I am starting to see these ideas come back again. 19:35-19:41 What is it about preparation for learning that makes you ready for that to happen? 19:41-19:45 You can be ready for that to happen, and you can be in a lame class, and it won't happen. 19:45-19:49 Or you can be in a great class, but you are not ready for it to happen, 19:49-19:52 and it will just all seem useless to you, or superficial. 19:52-19:58 But what can we do in education to get the quality of the learning experience up, 19:58-20:09 both in the way we frame the encounter as educators, and the way we help students, colleagues, whomever, 20:09-20:13 to be ready, expectant, and kind of joyful about it. 20:13-20:17 I mean, this person didn't have a breakdown, this person didn't get angry, 20:17-20:24 this person didn't say, what's the use, I'm going to drop the class. 20:24-20:30 This person said, no, there's a lot of cool stuff going on here, I can't quite get it yet, 20:30-20:32 but I'm going to hang in there. 20:32-20:38 And then if you do that, and your colleagues are really working with you, because it takes a village, 20:38-20:43 then it will pop, boom, there it is. 20:43-20:50 And you may not even know what to do with it yet, but you get that growing sense, ah, this is interesting. 20:50-20:55 Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a little bit of faith in a general sense, and trust, 20:55-21:03 but I was just thinking, this person or people have to have very small examples of this experience, 21:03-21:07 and then every time it happens again, it just builds itself. 21:07-21:13 And I think we have to find more ways to get people into a place to have this experience of sticking with something 21:13-21:14 and getting an insight. 21:14-21:20 Yeah, that's it, and recognizing that you're just going to get a little bit at a time. 21:20-21:25 And I think there's another, I mean, until you get to the day where suddenly you have the big aha, 21:25-21:26 and that's cool too. 21:26-21:30 I mean, both of those are really potentially very pleasant situations. 21:30-21:36 There's one where every time you're like, hmm, hmm, and I love that part, the hmm part, 21:36-21:37 that's great. 21:37-21:40 And then the aha part is great too. 21:40-21:45 Oh, there was something that made me think of, there was an idea in my head, 21:45-21:49 I really wanted to go there, maybe it'll come back to me. 21:49-21:54 Well, let's talk about what's happening on the networks lately. 21:54-21:59 Well, you know, I think a lot of things are happening on the networks. 21:59-22:07 I don't know how much I want to go into some of the, some of the less positive things that I'm observing. 22:07-22:11 I think probably it'd be better to maybe try to work through some of that in a blog post. 22:11-22:21 But it's interesting to see at this point how people across the network are starting to see some connections. 22:21-22:28 And it's interesting to see that some people who have read bits and pieces of this before are finding it a richer experience 22:28-22:30 the second time around. 22:30-22:31 People haven't read it before. 22:31-22:35 Some of them are very puzzled but hopeful, which is great. 22:35-22:41 I think people were, I think people were really jazzed to read Nelson. 22:41-22:46 Very spirited, very direct. 22:46-22:49 It was not a very technical reading. 22:49-22:51 So I think people kind of got onto that. 22:51-22:56 I was kind of surprised nobody took Nelson to task for saying, you know, no curriculum. 22:56-22:58 A couple of people commented on that. 22:58-23:09 But I had a couple of people in the summer, our last spring who were really quite annoyed, I think, with Nelson for being, for insisting that self-directed learning is all you needed. 23:09-23:19 And I think people were intrigued by the notion of the laptop in the personal dynamic media essay. 23:19-23:24 I wish, I continue to wish that more people picked up on the meta-medium part. 23:24-23:30 One person in the Baylor site did and there were some really keenly observant blog posts across the network. 23:30-23:37 But as you say, it really isn't about, well, what's the form factor for the personal dynamic, you know, dynabog. 23:37-23:43 It really is about that imagination gap that Alan Kaye talked about. 23:43-23:51 In a comment on your blog, I might add, Mr. Wonderful, that was an extremely envy-provoking thing. 23:51-23:53 My congratulations to you. 23:53-24:00 Well, yeah, it was just like nice to sit back and watch this intelligent conversation play out on my blog. 24:00-24:02 So yeah, that was fun. 24:02-24:04 Yeah, I guess so. 24:04-24:07 I didn't have anything to add. I just wanted to see it go on. 24:07-24:09 Well, but that's cool too. 24:09-24:14 I mean, that's one of the best teaching moments you can have when you're doing this framework. 24:14-24:19 And you just happen to be there and now you just get out of the way and let it rock. 24:19-24:32 Yeah, well, you know, and I was thinking though, you know, about the network is that, you know, and you've already talked about this, you know, having done this several times through that, you know, the people we've asked to facilitate this are going about it for the first time. 24:32-24:40 And so it's not, you know, you've got a couple of years of AAA and Major League play under your belt. 24:40-24:42 Well, that's true. 24:42-24:53 I would say that even though I had very little idea of how it was going to all going to add up the first time I did it, you know, the first time was one of my favorite times. 24:53-24:59 It was in the summer and I mean, the point is that so now I remember what I was going to say. 24:59-25:04 If bring the right head to it. 25:04-25:09 I was talking about, you know, how smart you are, whether you've read any of this before. 25:09-25:17 I hadn't read nearly any of this five years ago, which is a shock to me and a shock to people when they meet me there. 25:17-25:18 You hadn't read any. 25:18-25:20 No, I hadn't. 25:20-25:24 It just had not come up, which is, you know, my loss. 25:24-25:32 But the idea is, even the first time, even when I was just groping along, there was a spirit in the group. 25:32-25:41 And I guess that's the thing that I really wanted to come to here with regard to, you know, how do you make something like this work? 25:41-25:46 Part of its expertise, part of it is having done it before, no doubt. 25:46-26:01 And because my training is in really working very closely with texts, I have a lot of skill at this late date in my young life in getting a group of people to really engage with the text. 26:01-26:04 I have some tricks up my sleeve about how to do that. 26:04-26:13 All of that said, I said the other day in my first year seminar that what I would like them to remember most about the experience is each other. 26:13-26:20 And I mean that not just in the sense of the personalities involved, but in the way people are good colleagues for each other. 26:20-26:36 So in every case, the most successful classes have been where someone who kind of gets the clue and steps in and says, hey, I know this is wiggie crazy stuff, but this is interesting. 26:36-26:40 And let me share with you a few things that I can see here. 26:40-26:52 Or people are really tripped up about Engelbart, for example, someone whose mind is kind of an engineering mind could come in and say, yeah, well, look, I mean, this is kind of interesting here. 26:52-26:57 And, you know, we end up just helping each other and being good colleagues for each other. 26:57-27:11 And, you know, at the end of that post that I was reading from just a bit ago, the writer colorblind says, ultimately, I want to thank you guys. 27:11-27:16 Now, I love that because I'm in there, but it's all of us, right? 27:16-27:22 And the writer goes on to say, my mind has never ever been taken to these places. 27:22-27:25 No, I'm sorry, my mind has never even been taken to these places. 27:25-27:29 And I can't say I always understand what we are talking about. 27:29-27:36 But the fact that I am thinking about them at all is a step up for me at least. 27:36-27:45 And I think there's something in that that testifies very strongly to the need for the group to be helping each other on the journey. 27:45-27:47 You got to believe that the journey is worthwhile. 27:47-27:48 And if it isn't, that's fine. 27:48-27:49 Go take another journey. 27:49-27:51 There are plenty of them out there. 27:51-27:57 But if you're on this one, you know, there are going to be places where you're going to hit the wall. 27:57-28:00 There are going to be places where everybody's just like, I don't get it. 28:00-28:04 But typically, somebody in the group can help. 28:04-28:17 And if the group is kind of prepped, you know, and the leader understands how to help the leaders in the group to emerge when that's needed, 28:17-28:19 then I think you're going to have a richer experience. 28:19-28:20 It's hard to do. 28:20-28:21 I mean, I know that. 28:21-28:26 But I think that's really a good place to be. 28:26-28:27 That makes a lot of sense. 28:27-28:34 But I've been thinking too, and this kind of came up with what Cindy Jennings said last week in our podcast. 28:34-28:40 You know, a real key element is this face-to-face group meeting component. 28:40-28:42 Her group, you know, she put out the option. 28:42-28:44 Do you guys just want to do it on this line online? 28:44-28:47 And they said, no, we want to get together. 28:47-28:55 It may not be required, but I think it's a powerful piece of what you've designed in these seminars. 28:55-29:10 I believe it could happen online, but I think having all the personal interaction that you have in a physical space in an open discussion seminar does a lot of the drawing together, the weenies of it all. 29:10-29:22 Oh, I couldn't agree more, and I think that it's very important, it's crucial to have a strong sense of the local face-to-face community to make this work. 29:22-29:32 The thing that takes it even farther, I think, is that online component, and of course we have a discussion forum, which is not getting used terribly much. 29:32-29:34 I'm not exactly sure why. 29:34-29:48 But this time I've become even more convinced that while the discussion forum is a great thing, and I hope it does get used, that it really is the blogging that is making the difference when a difference is being made. 29:48-30:03 And one of the things I'm going to do this time with the folks here at Baylor when we meet on Wednesday is to emphasize not only the importance of everyone blogging, because my folks here have been pretty faithful about that. 30:03-30:10 But I'm going to emphasize the importance of reaching out to other blogs and linking to them and commenting on them. 30:10-30:27 And in fact, I may take a page from your book, CogDog, and say, "So in the upcoming week, blog one paragraph and one paragraph only, and spend the rest of the time that you would have spent writing a blog post going out and commenting on other people's blogs." 30:27-30:36 I think it's crucial to do that and to do the linking, and then you experience the richness of the blogosphere. 30:36-30:53 But yeah, I really do think, I mean, when I've watched the folks at my site blogging, and I've watched the folks at Monterey, Houston, MacLennan, you know, the places that are really, really active with the blogging, 30:53-30:59 I can just tell that this is sinking in more deeply than it would be otherwise. 30:59-31:05 And you know, I was thinking about this today, people want something transformative. 31:05-31:14 I'm sure there are other ways to do that, but they will all require this kind of commitment, and they will all involve this kind of uncertainty, 31:14-31:24 because you can reverse engineer it, and you can say, "Okay, I want transformation, but I don't want to invest much time, and I don't want it to look like things I've never seen before." 31:24-31:29 Well, that sounds ridiculous when you put it that way. That doesn't sound like transformation at all. 31:29-31:32 It sounds like a quick run past things you already know. 31:32-31:36 Now, that can be very useful, but it's not transformative. 31:36-31:41 If it's going to be transformative, you know, it's like travel to a foreign country. 31:41-31:46 They will speak a different language, the money will be different, and the food will be different. 31:46-31:49 That's kind of what you're up for. 31:49-31:59 Same thing here. If it's really going to be transformative, you're going to have to understand that this is not all going to fit in to the paradigms you already have. 31:59-32:01 That's what transformation means. 32:01-32:07 You're going to have to grapple with a lot of uncertainty, including uncertainty along the way about whether it's even worth it. 32:07-32:13 You can come to your own conclusion about that. Absolutely. That's part of the journey, too. 32:13-32:19 You're going to have to spend some time, and you're going to have to confront things that are unfamiliar, 32:19-32:27 and are not just unfamiliar, but unfamiliar in the way that could make you uncomfortable. 32:27-32:31 We all say, "Oh, I'm up for new things," but it's really... 32:31-32:36 There's new things that kind of fit in with your package of how I do new things. 32:36-32:44 There are really new things where you find that this is not anything you've ever seen or thought about before in this way. 32:44-32:53 Then you really do have to say, "Well, do these people know what they're doing? Have they really been thoughtful about it? Have they had success with it before?" 32:53-32:56 You may still decide, "It's just not for me." 32:56-32:58 That's fine. I can respect that. 32:58-33:09 I don't think that transformation comes with a little skin in the game, and it's pretty much what you already know, because it doesn't, and it isn't. 33:09-33:20 I don't know. In a way, I think about that as a core educational issue, where always there's got to be this and that. 33:20-33:29 At any given moment, you really could come up against something that just baffles you or even maybe repels you, 33:29-33:35 and you may have lived that for a long time before things come together. 33:35-33:42 They may never come together, but I kind of knew the first time I read "The Eastland," 33:42-33:48 that there was probably a reason it had caused such a fuss, and everybody was so interested in it. 33:48-33:54 I didn't get it right away. Heaven knows, I probably don't get it now, but I get it a lot better than I did then. 33:54-34:01 I have a lot richer understanding of it, and you kind of have to go with stuff for a little while, 34:01-34:09 unless you're going to conclude that a significant number of people in the world are simply nuts and making it all up. 34:09-34:15 I don't know. That seems improbable to me, like saying they faked a moon landing. 34:15-34:20 I just think at some point you've got to say, "No, I get it. A lot of people say this is important. 34:20-34:23 I've got to kind of go with this for a little bit, see where it goes." 34:23-34:32 Then what harm? As one of my colleagues at Baylor says, "If it doesn't work for you, you live, no knives were involved, it's good. Go forward." 34:32-34:33 I have a metaphor. 34:33-34:34 Go for it. 34:34-34:36 Bungie jumping. 34:36-34:39 Yeah! Yeah! 34:39-34:51 I admit I went to the place in New Zealand and I didn't do it. I have regrets about doing it. 34:51-34:55 That bit about you said, "Yeah, I'm interested in trying new things." 34:55-35:02 That's not saying you have to do every crazy, risky thing in life, but to me, we're asking people to go bungee jumping. 35:02-35:16 Well, I think that's right. We are asking that. It's a pretty strong bungee court. We all have each other. 35:16-35:25 As you point out, I've done this a bunch of times. We got Christina Engelbart on the line and I hope I'm able to share that Skype session.