The Project Begins Anew

Last Thursday I met with Professors Gideon Burton and Daniel Zappalla (who taught my Digital Civilization class last winter) and another student from that class. We talked about our motivations are for writing this ebook (because that strongly affects how much effort we'll invest in it.) We also talked about the direction we want to take with the book. Most of my posts on this blog will not be a meeting recap, but this meeting may be the most important and the discussion was so interesting that I want to record it.


My motivations are that I want the experience of writing a book, I think this project will look great on my resume and maybe lead to some professional connections. I also wanted it to be a memento of the class experience last winter, but that isn't a factor anymore. (That's not very relevant to our target audience.) I didn't say so at the meeting, but I also want to work with Profs. Burton and Zappala more. I'm glad that they would collaborate on a project with students. I am eager to contribute what I can,--my best--and learn from them, learn with them.

The Game Plan

The plan so far is to have a series of chapters with the same general format. It might start with a historically grounded anecdote illustrating a tweethis [that's a thesis condensed to 140 characters or less]  and move into an essay on the subject. Then we'll include a historical anecdote illustrating the antithesis (antitweethis?) and a treatment of its merits. The chapter will conclude with a synthesis of the best points from the argument and may even be a projection of what the future will look like when the digital revolution has finally won the victories that it needs to, when the tectonic forces pushing against each other on digital matters have finally made a harmonious peace.

There are three tensions that we'll consider;
1. openness vs. control
2. participation vs. isolation
3. natural world vs. artificial world

Additionally, we will consider the tension between tradition and agility (the ability to break from past systems in order to improve and adapt and what wisdom there is in remaining attached to legacies) but Dr. Zappala thought this tension would naturally emerge in our writing. Perhaps there are still more tensions to identify and grapple with.

I'll be thinking about potential chapters and tweethes during the course of this week, especially with regard to the tensions mentioned.

Also Interesting...

Professor Burton asked this question: If you were going to redo the General Education curriculum what would you include? Ideas were:

• Entrepreneurialism
• Computer Science (there is already a movement to add it to the panthenon of liberal arts)
• Media literacy
• Production awareness (knowing the small parts of a process and how they combine to make a product)