In the first half of the semester we were introduced to Susan Delagrange’s “Wunderkammer,” – and more importantly, her essay about the revision process for that piece.
Her essay, “When Revision is Redesign,” taught us about a heuristic process – Enabling us to discover or learn something for ourselves.
She said, “...a key to innovative thinking and problem-solving is maintaining ambiguity for as long as possible. Designers must preserve ambiguity so as not to exclude avenues of thought or experiment that might later prove productive. Learners too must preserve ambiguity, as premature certainty shuts down the process of inquiry and exploration that often leads to more sophisticated, more interesting, more generative knowledge."
She used the visual effect of the Wunderkammer as a physical place, creating what she called a “richly furnished imaginative space” – something that would get us to wander and explore.
And that was something I carried into my midterm.
-----> For the midterm project, I posted a series of images laid together with quotes from our readings. And when I wrote about them, it kind of came out as slam poetry. I wrote it as I spoke it, and practiced it out loud – hoping that when someone read it, they would be able to hear my voice, or that they’d be inclined to read it out loud to feel the words.
TO PARTICIPATE.
I was learning by doing the project –– and the revision process – rewording and editing – helped me fine-tune not just my words on the page, but all of my thoughts around the pieces we’d read so far this semester. Finishing the midterm gave me a product I could be proud of, and helped me really digest what we’d been learning.
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The theme I’m getting at concerns internalizing in our memories. To embed our personal knowledge into culture to have some effect – it requires participation.
Nowhere did that seem more important to me as in the legal issues surrounding copyright infringement and information, which we touched on with John Barlow’s “The Economy of Ideas.”
He taught us the difference between INFORMATION and DATA:
-----> “Even when it has been encapsulated in some static form like a book or a hard disk, information is still something that happens to you as you mentally decompress it from its storage code. But, whether it's running at gigabits per second or words per minute, the actual decoding is a process that must be performed by and upon a mind, a process that must take place in time.”
We are the ones who give life to data, turning it into information. And we are the ones who must carry that burden into culture if we want to see change.
So for my final project, I am creating a website that will become an action center – a hub for a collection of organizations that fight with and against lawmakers and lobbyists who are addressing Internet Freedom and cyber security.
-----> Organizations like:
The American Civil Liberties Union
Electric Frontier Foundation
The Internet Defense League
Demand Progress
As Barlow said, “Law adapts by continuous increments and at a pace second only to geology. Technology advances in lunging jerks......real-world conditions will continue to change at a blinding pace, and the law will lag further behind... This mismatch may prove impossible to overcome.”
But is my hope that by creating this website, where people can learn to participate, I will be able to provide a useful tool for those like myself who want to be part of the movement to help the law catch up to real world technology and culture.
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