The Glass Bees

Cover of Ernst Jünger's The Glass BeesWith my no-internet, hippie-like vacation to Montauk behind me now, I can return to the bava and continue the excruciating futility that is my life online. I enjoyed the time away because I was able to do something I hadn’t done in too long, i.e., read a few books that have nothing to do with a course I was either taking or teaching. One of the books I read that has me both excited and scared is Ernst Jünger’s 1957 novel The Glass Bees (Gläserne Bienen).

I got this novel back in 2000 when it was re-published by the New York Review of Books, and it sat on my shelf for almost eight years. And I am now convinced it had to sit there for that long. For this book wouldn’t have meant half as much to me had I read it before my full-fledged, self-obsessed foray into the land of the lost, a.k.a the internet, almost four years ago. I happened upon this novel last week when I was searching for something to read on my shelves. I was immediately drawn in by the fact that Bruce Sterling wrote the introduction, whose talk on “The Internet of Things” I had recently listened to. I took this as a sign that the lattice of coincidence was in full effect, and I decided to give it a go.

Sterling’s introduction immediately grabbed me, his description of Jünger’s novel as anachronistic in the most uncanny of ways is perfectly put when it comes to the social and economic realities of this dark, visionary novel. This quote from Sterling’s introduction (which you can read in its brief entirety here) made me realize that this isn’t just a novel I should read, but one I need to read:

Jünger perceived that industrial capitalism is a ridiculous game, so he proved remarkably good at predicting its future moves….[He] understands that technology is pursued not to accelerate progress but to intensify power. He fully understands that popular entertainment comes with a military-industrial underside.

This passage brings into sharp focus a scary reality that often gets overlooked (or is it intentionally downplayed?) in educational technology, namely that the Utopian, blue sky ideas of technology as a singular harbinger of possibility and liberation ignores the cold and all-consuming role that capital plays in the shaping of technology as means of control. Now I understand that this struggle is by no means unilateral, and that for every instance of technology as a means to consolidate power for capital, there is another instance in which that same technology can be used to undermine the fallacious logic of capital’s vision of progress.

So the question that this book (as early as the introduction) immediately forced me to consider is where do I stand in this equation. More specifically, how do I understand the work I am doing in the field of EdTech when in comes to the intersection of progress, power, and the voracious appetite of capital to co-opt and re-package the labor of others as its own, patented, insanely expensive, proprietary product?

This line of inquiry came into sharper focus when talking to Brian Lamb and Keira McPhee at Freddy’s Bar in Brooklyn soon after finishing the novel. After my vociferous and impressionistic explanation of the ways in which the novel was not about technology, but the relations of power and capital through an idea of technology as a figure of progress, Brian suggested how this wasn’t unlike BlackBoard’s newest product announcement, their “Next Generation” of Learning Management Systems, BlackBoard 8.

What is BlackBoard doing? Well, they are taking the experiments and innovations of thousands of people and re-packaging them as their own, unique contribution to the educational world of Web 2.0. And why are they doing this? Well, to survive as a LMS, but that survival is not necessarily dependent on a technology or an innovation, rather it is a means of taking the imaginative experimentation of others and wrapping them up as a product that can be bought and sold like a pair of shoes. The insanely irresponsible advertising for BlackBoard 8 suggests that Academic Suite release 8.0 will “enhance critical thinking skills” and “improve classroom performance.” What LMS can do this? What Web 2.0 tool can do this? This is total bullshit, how can they make such an irresponsible claim? These things are not done by technology, but rather people thinking and working together. Our technology may afford a unique possibility in this endeavor by bringing disparate individuals together in an otherwise untenable community, yet it doesn’t enhance critical thinking or improve classroom performance, we do that, together.

And this move by BlackBoard to commodify the labor of others is exactly the problem with the idea that educational technology “is about the technology,” which Gardner exclaimed in his swan song presentation at UMW’s Faculty Academy.. It was a great talk, but an insistence that what we do is about the technology and not the community around the ideas is a dangerous one. The two go hand-in-hand, and I am sure Gardner realizes this, but; (in fact, this was a poor reading on my part, a full apologies toGardner for my being so caught up on a phrase and not an idea —an ongoing problem I have 🙂 ) in my mind the technology is often the means through which the communal acts are traced, recorded, and archived. The learning happens not as a by-product of the technology, it is, or rather should be, the Raison d’être of the technology. The teaching and thinking happen within the medium of texts, videos, film, images, art, conversation, game playing, computers, etc. Technology may provide new ways of delivering and accessing this information, and mark the basis of many a medium, but the idea of a community and its culture is what makes any technology meaningful and relevant.

This is why the idea that “it is about the technology” makes BlackBoard 8 so troubling to me. If it is about the technology, then capital can quickly recognize this fact and co-opt all the hard work by so many to move outside of the taylorized vision of educational technology grafted upon our institutions. If the technology is what is important, than what do we say if a faculty member or student notes that Bb can do what del.icio.us can, or can “mash up” YouTube, Flickr, and Google Earth maps like WPMu, or can make content at long last open, or has a slick AJAX interface, then we what what can we say about the technology?

BlackBoard will leverage their relative omnipresence to gouge schools everywhere into using their tools because they can, and they’ll sell them up with all the administrative, vending machine, and surveillance cameras one could dream of. This is what we are missing. BlackBoard makes an inferior product and charges a ton for it, but if we reduce the conversation to technology, and not really think hard about technology as an instantiation of capital’s will to power, than anything resembling an EdTech movement towards a vision of liberation and relevance is lost. For within those ideas is not a technology, but a group of people, who argue, disagree, and bicker, but also believe that education is fundamentally about the exchange of ideas and possibilities of thinking the world anew again and again, it is not about a corporate mandate to compete—however inanely or nefariously—for market share and/or power. I don’t believe in technology, I believe in people. And that’s why I don’t think our struggle is over the future of technology, it is over the struggle for the future of our culture that is assailed from all corners by the vultures of capital. Corporations are selling us back our ideas, innovations, and visions for an exorbitant price. I want them all back, and I want them now!

Enter stage left: EDUPUNK!

My next series of posts will be about what I think EDUPUNK is and the necessity for a communal vision of EdTech to fight capital’s will to power at the expense of community. I hope others will join me.

Also, sorry this tangent went so far afield, I am currently working on a Wikipedia article for The Glass Bees, which hopefully will fill in all the gaps I left here. But in the end, you should really just read it!

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157 Responses to The Glass Bees

  1. Seminal edupunk:

    “Both the exchange of skills and matching of partners are based on the assumption that education for all means education by all. Not the draft into a specialized institution but only the mobilization of the whole population can lead to popular culture. The equal right of each man to exercise his competence to learn and to instruct is now pre-empted by certified teachers. The teachers’ competence, in turn, is restricted to what may be done in school. And, further, work and leisure are alienated from each other as a result: the spectator and the worker alike are supposed to arrive at the work place all ready to fit into a routine prepared for them. Adaptation in the form of a product’s design, instruction, and publicity shapes them for their role as much as formal education by schooling. A radical alternative to a schooled society requires not only new formal mechanisms for the formal acquisition of skills and their educational use. A deschooled society implies a new approach to incidental or informal education.

    If you replace the certified teachers with the Blackboards of the world, you start to see the connection. It’s a confusion of needs and skills with products and processes, the ultimate perversion of industrial and post-industrial society.

  2. Shannon says:

    So glad you were able to get some reading done on vacation because it definitely has generated some great thoughts! (dare I say genius? heh)

    There is so much to respond to here and Mike’s reference to Illich’s “Deschooling Society” is exactly on point. Now you have got my brain reeling again, definitely some blog posts brewing.

    I hope this is a start of a bigger conversation, you are a rockstar!

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  6. Scott Leslie says:

    I am not sure which I fear more – the gaping hole in my life that happens when The Bava goes quiet for a while, or the spasms running through my body as I read the posts when it resumes. edupunk – all day and all of the night. kick out the jams, mf!

  7. Tom says:

    I could be wrong, but I think Gardner’s point had to do with the etymology of the word technology.

    The word technology comes from two Greek words, transliterated techne and logos. Techne means art, skill, craft, or the way, manner, or means by which a thing is gained. Logos means word, the utterance by which inward thought is expressed, a saying, or an expression. So, literally, technology means words or discourse about the way things are gained.

    source

    If I’m right then you two are aligned pretty perfectly.

  8. Reverend says:

    @Mike: I’m finally reading Deschooling Society, and I am impressed. More soon. Does it strike anyone else as odd that Illich was a devout Catholic (a priest even), same as McLuhan (save the collar), why does that seem so strange to me today?

    @Shannon: I’ll be looking for that post 😉

    @Luke: Up.

    @Scott: Motor City 5 do fit the bill here. OG punk, time to bring back the heat.

    @Tom: That’s a good point, and I think you’re right. I probably should have waited before invoking Gardner’s talk here. Maybe it was to try and shield my own discussion of UMW Blogs where I say it is not about the technology about 10 times 🙂 The etymology has its place, and re-establishing and imagining new meanings from traditional ideas is key, and Gardner does it beautifully. Glad to know we are in alignment, and it will learn me to blog befor I re-watch the talk!

  9. Martha says:

    My read on Gardner’s inspiring final note at FA was the same as Tom’s. I think “technology” is a word that’s become horribly loaded and misunderstood — and I’m as guilty as the next person of perpetuating the misunderstanding.

    Gardner’s words reminded me that there is a more fundamental meaning to the word that we need to be pushing ourselves and others to understand.

  10. (racing through rich post to the end)

    Edupunk!

    The 1980s flashbacks are coming on now.

    …but I wonder if I should put forth my family’s living with peak oil blog as an example.

  11. Reverend says:

    @Bryan

    I would love to see that Peak Oil blog, sounds very EDUPUNK. Perhaps we could create a band, kind of like Reagan Youth, but call it BlackBoard Youth. There could be all kinds of rivulets and tributaries. Hey, you already have The Damned covered 🙂

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  14. Grant Potter says:

    Never Mind the Bb – Here’s The Edupunks. The emotive power of your ideas in this post resonates with me. Well done.

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  16. Alec Couros says:

    I need to get in on this, brilliant ideas … will be taking a closer look at edupunk when I’m back home.

  17. Reverend says:

    Alec,

    very cool. Brian Lamb spoke the world of you when we met in Brooklyn, and I can;t wait to learn more from you. I think I over reacted on your Howard Zinn post, and that is my bad. I have been known to over react 🙂

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  20. Jen says:

    Sung to ‘Anarchy in the UK,’

    I….wanna be…….EDUPUNK!

  21. Reverend says:

    @Jen,

    Can we set up a jam session for that via UStream, or do we need to wait for next year’s NV?

  22. Jen says:

    I’ll write the lyrics if you sing. I’m not singing on camera.

  23. Reverend says:

    Jen,

    You got yourself a deal 🙂

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  27. Rudy Garns says:

    I’ve been taking a lot on my campus about “vendor-centered learning,” trying to capture the concerns so nicely expressed in this post and connected to the idea of an edupunk movement. Not only are these systems watered-down and limited in scope, but once you’ve bought into a proprietary package it’s difficult to use anything else. Institutions want to defend their investment and are reluctant to endorse, or even explore, alternatives.

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  29. Gardner says:

    For what it’s worth, Tom and Martha are right about what I was saying. I used the phrase “it’s about the technology” to be deliberately provocative, of course, and to get us to think about the messages we unwittingly send when we say “it’s not about the technology.” Technology happens when human beings intervene in any natural process. Those interventions can be good or bad, of course.

    Why does it seem strange to you that Illich and McLuhan were both devout Catholics? Illich had his issues with the church–he finally left the priesthood, as I understand it–but he was certainly motivated by a belief in truth and an ethics that transcended context and culture. That’s not to say that one must believe that Illich’s truth is *the* truth … but I do feel that the vision of an Illich or a McLuhan or an Errol Morris must begin with an epistemological decision about whether or not there is truth, or a transcendent ethics. I know you and I disagree about this point.

    Illich’s words matter a great deal to me, as you know. When I first read “Deschooling Society,” I felt electrified every single moment I had my eyes on the page or screen. Mike’s quotation above is to the point–but I wouldn’t call Illich an edupunk. I’d call him a thinker, a minister, an inspiration. A foundation. Not a punk.

    One more thought on Illich. In my view it’s vital not to stop with “Deschooling Society.” One *must* go on to “Tools for Conviviality.” The goal of the just society is to enable eutrapelia, a graceful playfulness. I’m not sure “punk” can stretch to the idea of “graceful playfulness.” If it can’t, I don’t think it can get us there.

  30. Reverend says:

    Gardner,

    That was my misreading, and hopefully I rectified it appropriately. Sorry!

    The strangeness I refer to is in many regards in relationship to their epistemological search for truth upon a “grid” of transcendental faith. And I guess I am re-examining some of the conversations about this very idea you and I have had for years now. I am trying to imagine the notion of faith, truth, and ethics as yet another way at this intellectual mapping of important framworks on the world, and how their faith played into this. I have been so privy to a certain amount of ethical and moral relativism and the importance upon language in context, that sometimes I am blinded by my own theories.

    So my sense of “strange” here, is really like a sudden pause to think about my own sense of relativism and context in new ways. Both Illich and McLuhan are thinkers whose ideas, while not as familiar with as many, are ever more fascinating and inspiring.

    So take this as a “graceful” reconsideration of some of my assumptions, and using this space as a tools for both conviviality, but also struggle and intellectual tension. I think conviviality gets at some of the needs, but not all of them. And I do think there is a time and place for strong disagreement, struggle, and subversion—but they may not be so exclusive from the idea surrounding conviviality as I think.

    So, I also must think more.

  31. Gardner says:

    Dear Jim,

    Fair enough!

    Gardo

  32. jjulius says:

    As a part of the instructional technology establishment at my institution of 35K students and 2K+ instructors, I encourage those faculty who are ready for wikis, blogs, social networks, folksonomies, mash-ups, and so on to go there. I get excited when faculty figure out or are open to wildly unexpected things to do with PowerPoint (or Keynote, google docs, slideshare, Captivate, etc.).

    Yet I also believe that the vast majority of faculty (and, frankly, students) just aren’t there. And, while some of that huge chunk of humanity will get there, realistically, many of them never will. So, when they look to “the institution” (@Rudy Garns post above) they will find support and encouragement to use the tech tools that their peers are using: Blackboard, PowerPoint, eInstruction clickers, etc. But we are going to be talking about using them in ways that de-center the classroom. Move the instructor out of the center and move the subject, the student, the community into the center. Elevate meaningful student interactions and authentic engagement and diminish the dominance of the sage.

    For the faculty that dive in to this journey, there is a cycle. Elements of this cycle include trying out technologies, doing better assessment of learning and course design, and deepening understanding about the nature of learning and what it means to create environments and experiences for learning. Having Blackboard right there for them, ready to try out discussion boards when they previously just posted grades and documents, is for so many a first step. For some it’s the only step. For quite a few, it leads eventually to a realization of the limitations of a “learning management system” and a readiness for all that is possible with a DIY web 2.0-ish solution.

    “The institution” will never go Edupunk, by definition. Once next generation BB (v9, not 8, by the way) comes along and moves “the institution” a little closer to web 2.0, edupunk will just be further out in virtual worlds or whatever else is on the edge. We will continue to see the coexistence of instructors who remain low-or-no tech, those feeling that Bb and PPT are enough, and those who are ready for something more. Similarly, we’ll have faculty who will continue to insist upon teaching as they were taught, those who are willing to try out the occasional student-centered pedagogy, and those who are reinventing the academy. (And you can mix-and-match across the previous two sentences.) I will do my best to keep all of our faculty pushing their own boundaries – wherever they may be.

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  36. MariaD says:

    Lately, I’ve been mostly observing much more decentralized educators than you have: homeschoolers. It is quite instructional to compare notes. Some of the phenomena, such as the desire for a neat package (be it soft or curriculum) apparently have very little to do with belonging to institutions, and everything to do with being a human at a particular time in a particular culture. Still…

    Here is a very punk idea, and I hope I can express it somewhat meaningfully. A school or a class is an organization, not a network, of we judge by the ways it’s put together and administered. This topic is about software supporting network ways of living and thinking: low failure costs to promote trying many different things, low group organization costs to easily bring people to think and work together, open architectures and easy integration, and all that. How can we integrate these ways of thinking in terms of network with our basic unit of humanity being “a class of students” – a cell in a corporation?

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  43. Suzanne says:

    I work at the same institution as jjulius and quite closely with him in fact. I share his sentiments and MariaD’s too. The organizational perspective is sobering and needed.
    At heart and in deed I’m post-edupunk. I get jazzed working with faculty who can figure out what to do with the cool tools on their own. I try not to publicly diss BB, I take it as a utility. I hang out on the bus twittering from my Iphone; I can do amazing things with PowerPoint. I’m likely gonna end my premium SL account, I’m gladly homeless and all I do there is play. Edupunk is dead.

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