CCK09 - When connections fail to form

I've been following the online course CCK09 - Connectivism and Connective Knowledge  for the past few weeks. I've encountered lots of sticking points while I sought to integrate these new ideas into what I already comprehend about learning, knowledge, networks, chaos and cognitive neuroscience. I'm thrilled whenever this happens. Getting stuck in the process of cultivating a new comprehension immediately gives me things to question, explore, challenge and rethink. Often it pays off more than adding "new nodes to my conceptual network" - like changing new links and adding more links to previous knowledge.

This morning I was picturing the problem of a new idea failing to associate with a current understanding. When a connection is not forming, I usually feel confused and lost. I may experience becoming suspicious of the new idea or defensive about my existing understanding. In Connectivism: Learning as Network-Creation (2005), George Siemens suggests the new idea might function as a rogue node with only weak links to it. He proposes that this pattern occurs to avoid cognitive dissonance within the current strongly linked nodes.

Framing the problem as "expecting two nodes to associate and form a link" also brings to mind Hebbian Learning that Stephen Downes values highly. While looking up Hebbian Theory on Wikipedia, I found that it explains dendrites forming and strengthening connections. At the bottom of the page, I discovered a link to Anti-Hebbian learning which explains neural connections weakening when they prove to be redundant. This associates in my mind with "unlearning" an oversimplified or naive understanding to grasp a more comprehensive and valid explanation.

I then came up with this diagram showing the new idea with a high level of centrality. I'm proposing that a new idea spawns an array of queries when the intended node does not associate and form a link. There is a potential for strong ties to form with other nodes which are shown elongated to suggest they embody sequential processes. Here are the four queries /processes that occur in my own conceptual network routinely:

I may associate the new idea
  • with lies, deceptions and mistakes which leads me to refute and dismiss it.
  • with exaggeration, grandiosity and fluff which has me getting a better perspective, putting the new idea in a larger context or disputing it's overstatements
  • with extreme positions, one-sided arguments or half-truths which leads to me framing it's claim along a gradient or in a four quadrant diagram with the missing halves
  • with useless, ineffectual or purely abstract ideas which alerts me to the dangers of collusion, lip service, propaganda or academic requirements 
It's very possible that a strong tie could be formed with any one of these alternative nodes. Any of these connections would maintain the new idea as a "rogue node". My current comprehension would be further justified and protected from cognitive dissonance.  The consideration of these queries is an essential part of my critical thinking and reflective practice.


Higher quality for less money?

How could it be possible that a disruptive upgrade to higher ed could be both cheaper and higher quality? It's easy to imagine once our minds are outside the academic box. Here's four ideas for how the higher quality could could be achieved routinely.

Expanded purpose space: When we're in a space to contribute and get value from where the purpose is clear and encompassing, we naturally act more resourceful. We take initiative and personal responsibility to get results. We look after others and see things all the way through. This is the opposite of how we act when we've lost sight of the mission, worry about wasting our time and suspect we've been bamboozled. We wait for things to happen, expect others to take responsibility, and go through the motions regardless of producing any results. If educators and learners share a space with expansive purpose, the outcomes will be much higher quality than what goes on in most college courses now.

Congruent with cognitive neuroscience; When we work with our brains, our brains are far more productive and capable of learning. We balance strenuous challenges with mental relaxation. We give our brains time to catch on and catch up with new information. We get plenty of exercise to provide plenty of oxygen and rest to make new neural connections. This obviously contrasts with the familiar sight of sleep-deprived college students who are stressed out by workload, deadlines, tests and grades. When educators and learners are both using their brains optimally, their creative problem solving, empathy for others, and productive conversations are far more likely.

Taught by peers: When we teach what we already know, we suddenly understand it better and want to learn more about it and with it. When others learn from us instead of some far-advanced expert, the material seems far more accessible, interesting and useful. This goes against the very expensive model of getting taught by faculty who get professionally rewarded for becoming more abstract, dense and boring. When everyone is contributing to the educating of each other, the cost comes down and the value soars.

Anecdotal feedback: When we get told how we're good, unique, valuable and resourceful, we become more oriented. We get a better idea what to expect of ourselves, how to contribute and what we can do to make a difference effectively. This undermines the system of objective test scores, numeric grades, and college transcripts that shows everyone how they compare on the same scales. When educators and learners both know where they stand with each other, the quality of contributions to each others' lives will exceed current expectations and experiences by a long shot.

These are not costly innovations. They are simply game changers that can reliably provide higher quality educational experiences and outcomes for less money.


Get past feeling intimidated

When envisioning innovations that could scale to be a significant game changer, it's easy to become intimidated by the incumbent system. The way things have always been done has become huge and very capable of squashing any little start-up. It's practices are culturally accepted and unquestioned by a majority of customers, journalists and opinion leaders. It's legacy gives it momentum to continue doing what it has always done. There is usually a long history of its own failed reforms, change efforts and attempts as enterprise transformation that prove it will never change. All that can add up to a self-defeating attitude among those hoping to innovate outside the box.

There are several reasons to take heart and dismiss the intimidating evidence. Incumbent systems:
  • are like battleships that cannot change direction with either spontaneity and maneuverability --  they cannot zig zag, turn on a dime or reverse their position
  • have so much on their minds they see any startup as a spec on the windshield -- not a real concern like the full agendas they have for their next three big meetings
  • rely on historical data like a car that stays on the road by watching the rear view mirror where "a bend in the road is the end of their road" they did not see coming
  • have been right about their predicting the appearance of more "white swans", they believe their own narrative fallacies and dismiss any "black swans" on the horizon
  • offer job security to people who don't rock the boat or call attention to themselves -- in spite of the evidence that those people are clueless and incompetent
  • make strategic decisions within the parameters of their industry structure and the crowded space of rivals playing the same game
  • assume sustaining innovations are good enough to get by and justify passing up opportunities to reinvent themselves
All these patterns create lots of space, freedom and maneuverability for innovating outside the box that constrains the incumbents.


Profiting from incumbents' sustaining innovations

During the dozen years I taught college, I witnessed a large number of sustaining innovations adopted campus-wide. The blackboards changed over to white boards while the overhead projectors got replaced by ceiling mounted video projectors. Numerous classrooms were retrofitted as computer labs. The library installed a broadband WiFi signal. Registration moved from long lines in the student union to online registration, wait lists and cashiering. Faculty created websites for each class taught outside the newly acquired LMS. Departments launched threaded discussion lists for internal bickering and resolution of contentious issues. Students were issued passes for the light rail trains that stopped at the campus every 10 minutes during the day and early evening. The list goes on.

Sustaining innovations like these keep the customers satisfied and the exceptional talent on the payroll. It appears to both constituencies that their personal commitments are not misguided by their own naivete or misled by deceptive claims. The institution is keeping up with the changing times and responding to opportunities to provide better experiences for the faculty and students. Adopting these innovations contributes to the longevity of the institution.  It makes lots of sense for colleges and universities to invest in sustaining innovations and scan the horizon for additional ones to pursue.

Sustaining innovations can be go either way as I've explored in MIT's OCW program done right and their TEAL program done wrong. When sustaining innovations are done wrong by an incumbent, the opportunities to innovate outside the academic box gain traction. The customers complain loudly and feel dis-served. The value proposition no longer works for them. The front line providers of the service take the brunt of the gripes and lose their own job satisfaction in the process. It suddenly looks misguided to remain loyal to the innovative institution. The demand for something new and really better grows from these seeds.

I'm familiar with four ways that incumbent enterprises bungle their precious opportunities to adopt sustaining innovations:
  1. Picking the low hanging fruit, making the thing that's too good already even better
  2. Over-selling the benefits, pedaling vaporware, over-promising and under-delivering
  3. Providing the form of an improvement without the follow thru, making a show of the acquisition
  4. Fueling the growing frustrations, neglecting major sore points, creating scandals by insensitivity to the level of pain
Any of these missteps are signs of the time to innovate outside the academic box. The market is ripe and the institutions are shooting themselves in the foot.


Leveraging an incumbent's sustainability

It's easy to assume that colleges and universities will be around forever. They've endured the phenomenal changes when the Medieval era was replaced by the Renaissance. They've existed under monarchies, dictatorships and democracies. They've continued to do what they do while we have advanced technologies beyond the wildest imaginations of visionaries a century ago. Academia appears very resilient and sustainable, like a climax formation of a hardwood forest on a mountainside that benefits from uphill runoff. The quantity and magnitude of changes during the long history of academic institutions have not disrupted their perpetual existence thus far.

Yet it's possible that this strength is academia's greatest weakness. It happens in ecosystems as I explored in The collapse of efficient forests. The sustainability may be achieved by a loss of redundancy, diversity and inefficiencies which enable radical adaptations and innovations. The system may become overly-dependent on particular environmental conditions that rarely fluctuate or disappear. The system may become extremely close-coupled -- which then transmits devastation throughout it's boundaries without buffers, disconnects or barriers. The adaptation to ongoing favorable conditions may become very short-sighted, presumptuous and susceptible to unforeseen developments.

If academia has gone this route, we would be hearing proclamations from college administrations and faculty like:
  • "Students are not customers and should not expect to be served"
  • "Instructions cannot be learned appropriately without instructors certified in the field of study"
  • "Legitimacy of preparations cannot be proven without diplomas and grade transcripts"
  • "Knowledge cannot be advanced unless it's achieved by professional authorities, experts and empiricists"
These statements assert that colleges and universities will be around forever. They assume academia will continue to be as sustainable and resilient as it has always been. They depend on students remaining as passive, ignorant and dependent on authorities as always. They presume that expertise will continue to be scarce while ignorance remains abundant. They reflect a close-coupled efficiency for the perpetual production of assignments, tests, grades and diplomas.

As I see it, very sustainable academia has left the door wide open to innovators outside the box to assume:
  • Students are customers and should expect to be served
  • Instructions can be learned appropriately without instructors certified in the field of study thanks to archiving expertise online, tutoring via webcams, and other e-learning approaches.
  • Legitimacy of preparations can be proven without diplomas and grade transcripts as games, simulations and immersive scenarios become proving grounds for competencies
  • Knowledge can be advanced by breakthrough insights into personal experiences, creative mash-ups and chaotic changes without the reductionist outlooks of professional authorities, experts and empiricists


Understanding the academic box

This week I've been making delightful progress on the chapter I'm proposing for a book on PLEs and on a framework for resolving conflicts with collaborative networks. Meanwhile, I've wanted to get back to the exploration I started here on higher ed innovations outside the academic box. First lets better understand how the academic box functions.

The academic box is an incumbent system that has proven to be very resilient and adaptable amidst dramatic upheavals in technologies, societies and governance. Academia is much like the consistent use of horse drawn carts and riders on horseback that endured from antiquity through the 1930's.

Incumbent systems develop sustaining innovations to compete with rivals, maintain their appeal to customers and fit in with contextual changes. Like the introduction of horseshoes, livery stables and burlap bags for horse feed, academia has incorporated many sustaining innovations such as parking garages, televised sporting events, and online course registration.

Incumbent systems are very complex and defiant of simplistic efforts to fix, change or redirect them. They demonstrate staggering amounts of momentum in their persistent direction that outsiders misperceive as "stagnant" or a "lacking responsiveness". The prolonged use of horses included fields of grain, feed and straw storage, shipments to stables, manufacture of bridles and saddles, iron smelting, horseshoe fabrication, manure recycling, enterprises that supplied fresh horses for long-distance travelers, training in horsemanship and much more. A change to lighter-weight fire wagons would not disrupt that very complex system. Likewise the introduction of campus IT departments, email accounts and course websites would not disrupt academia.

Incumbent systems are predicated on self preservation. They serve themselves first rather than serving special cases, needs or constituencies. They cannot embrace changes that weaken their chances of survival or undermine their stability. The system for the perpetual use of horses could not respond to business people who wanted their Pony Express messages delivered as fast as a telegraph signal, military who wanted their battlefield motive power to be as sturdy as a tank or carriage drivers who wanted to neglect managing feed supplies, manure, horseshoes and breeding.

Incumbent systems revolve around a central premise or strategy driver that organizes most activities without getting questioned. members of the system who defy that premise are instinctively shunned and stabbed in the back. They appear dangerous, demonic or traitorous to those devoted to the unquestioned premise. Like the highly suspicious inventors of steam and gasoline powered vehicles in the heyday of horse drawn carriages, anyone assuming academia is antiquated is presumed to have a screw loose by those inside the academic box.

As we'll explore in the next posts, all these dynamics of incumbent systems set-up innovating outside the box superbly.


Innovating outside the academic box

Last Friday I read the recent conference papers from what I had hoped was a breakthrough in college teaching methods. As I read through the papers, I felt the enthusiasm of each team of authors who had successfully generated more classroom engagement and enduring insights among their students. I was fascinated by the different approaches explored to inquiry based learning that revealed considerable creativity by the faculty. My initial reaction was very positive.

Upon further reflection, I realized how every every innovation was no different from my own previous creativity in college  classrooms or from any mentioned in the countless books I've read. They were, essentially, reinventing the wheel.

I then empathized with the authors of these conference papers as doing the best they could under their circumstances. I imagined that everyone of them was highly constrained in four different ways:
  • Each faculty member was torn between improving their teaching methods and their usual tenure seeking, publishing, citation gathering, and committee assignment obligations
  • Most of their students would be sitting in their classrooms expecting to be taught and graded, dependent on the presumed expert faculty to make wise choices for them
  • The time slots available for meeting together in classrooms, labs, theater spaces, etc were highly regimented in duration and frequency
  • The system that had enrolled the students and pays the faculty was designed, not to educate, but to qualify, certify and matriculate each enrollee based on their "academic performance" as indicated by the grades received
This constraint environment would induce "reinventing the wheel". Thinking outside the box would necessitate being outside the constraint environment. No amount of personal initiative, dedication or creative talent could overcome the limitations shared by everyone one of them. No better management, leadership or incentive structure could change the ways they are walled in.

Later that day, I saw how easy it would be to provide higher quality higher ed at a lower cost by educating students outside that pervasive academic box. I'll share where that thinking lead in the coming posts here.


PLEs for loss control

Personal learning environments have mostly been conceived as research assistants. They orchestrate the searching and filtering from the abundance of accessible online resources. While this serves academic purposes well, it does not always serve the learners. This morning I've been pondering again how the learners might be better served by PLE's. One possibility I've developed helps learners control the losses they experience while attempting to acquire new knowledge, skills and abilities.

What if PLEs could alleviate:
  • losses of curiosity and motivation to explore unfamiliar domains of knowledge
  • losing one's sense of direction, path to follow or way through a complex space of alternatives
  • the disappearance of one's creativity, inspirations and innovative ideas for self expression
  • losing one's ability to digest information and take it deeper than a superficial grasp of the facts
  • losses of confidence from realizing contradictions in one's understanding or insistence on a mistaken approach
  • losing one's patience with how long it takes for new approaches to sink in and get assimilated
  • losses of intended results, desired outcomes and successful strategies to become learned
Solutions for these kinds of problems could not be delivered "prepackaged". They are "skill sets" that each learner would cultivate with practice. The PLE could frame the expectation that these losses were brought under control, but not actually control the losses.


Questioning our active questions

Most PLEs I reviewed two years ago appeared to be conceived as digital dashboards. Like personal start pages, they aggregated one's personal selection of links and tagged bookmarks as well as subscriptions to feeds and keyword searches. My experience with organizing my own learning in this way has led me up to question the "digital dashboard" premise. Aggregating resources appears to inevitably result is too much information in need of a staggering amount of additional filtering.

When my personal learning is on a roll, I am much less concerned with managing my sources of information. The active questions I'm using are front and center. I'm questioning my questions in the following ways:
  • Am I asking the right questions to delve deeper into this domain and not miss the significance of what I'm exploring?
  • Am I asking enough questions to cover the range of issues and not dwell excessively on a few narrow facets?
  • Am I asking too many questions, scattering my efforts and raising my frustration level?
  • Am I developing new questions from patterns I observe in more familiar domains of expertise?
  • Am I changing my questions when I realize I'm losing my curiosity by relying on the same old questions?
These ways to question our active questions provide a different lens to look at the digital dashboard conception of PLEs. From this perspective, aggregating links and feeds looks like a street lamp fallacy. (After losing his keys in the dark, the drunk looks for them under the street lamp where he can see clearly). The digital dashboard is an obvious solution that does not solve what I see as the real problem. Questioning our active questions suggests the "real problems" include losing curiosity, barking up the wrong tree, accumulating too much information and getting stuck with the same old questions. There is no solution to those problems at the level of changing the feed subscriptions and tagged bookmarks. PLE's need to be re-conceptualized to "find the keys in the dark" and solve the "real problems".


Cultivating compatibility with PLEs

Too many academic and employment experiences turn learners off the possibilities of personal learning environments. When learners find PLEs incompatible with their own experiences, they might think a PLE is:
  • an absurd idea based on false concepts about how learning really happens
  • something that might work only for extremely self-motivated learners
  • somebody's head trip that is lost in the clouds and cannot come down to earth
  • an approach to learning that's unrealistic in most classrooms and jobs
  • a way to make the learner totally to blame for the content that does not get learned
  • a device to mislead learners into covering more material in the same amount of time
  • a set up to get gamed by a system of course requirements and grading
All these reflections on the "true meaning" of personal learning environments reveals a history of contrary experiences. The ways we get expect to learn, succeed, conform and meet others expectations are convincing experiences. We also pick up impressions from our siblings, parents and own employment experiences. We then believe we have encountered the facts of life or "the way things really work around here". We become skeptical about alternatives like PLEs.

If schooling and employment were breeding grounds for extensive use of PLEs, they would need to be based on different premises like the following:
  • The grasp of new domains of knowledge comes about when someone works with our misunderstandings, not when they lecture us again about that domain
  • Our thought processes only reliable when we've learned to think for ourselves, not merely think like we've been told is acceptable
  • The way to get jobs done more effectively is to rethink how it can be done, not simply execute orders without choices
  • The ways to improve our motivation and commitment come about from succeeding on our own terms, not yielding to conformity pressures
These premises occur naturally when we are working with people in relationships as mentors, coaches, colleagues, or friends. These same premises disappear when we're working against people in attempts to control, repudiate, oppress or dismiss them. This suggests that the difficulties with getting wide spread adoption of PLEs calls for an indirect strategy. The breeding grounds need to be created and maintained where compatibility with PLEs occurs naturally.


Prereqs to utilizing PLEs

I've decided to play around with the latest ideas in my head about personal learning environments to see if I have the makings of a chapter proposal for a new book on PLE's.  Here's the first installment in a series of explorations.

PLE's presume that the individual learners will be able to self-direct their own learning. That ability is sometimes conceptualized as "meta-cognitive" skills. Rather than merely thinking, self directed learners can think about their thinking. This power of self-observation enables them to:
  • catching themselves going round in circles or hitting a dead end when attempting to achieve a desired outcome
  • formulating better questions when their questions in use are "getting nowhere"
  • considering a different strategy to find what they're looking for rather than simply trying harder with the same strategy
  • inventing tests of what they've found to validate it as factual and/or reliable
  • rejecting previous knowledge once it seems over-simplified or even mistaken
  • valuing mistakes they make for showing them where they've been jumping to the wrong conclusion
  • discovering what missing in their understanding that misleads them when formulating explanations
I have been optimistically assuming that digital savvy youth are functioning with these abilities. They spend large amounts of time everyday using computers, handhelds, console games and social networking platforms without being told what to do. However, much of my recent reading is giving me a different impression. I'm now seeing the possibility that digital competence does not equate with the meta-cognitive skills to self direct one's own learning.
  • Hours can be spent online passively following links without any driving questions, curiosity or purpose.
  • The voluminous amounts of uploaded "user content generation" may be merely showing off without refining the creators' own concept or execution
  • The determination to get back on line may only serve the purpose of checking for the latest inputs from friends, followers and commenters.
  • Fascination with the expanse of digital media resources can be limited to a voyeuristic enjoyment of others disrespect, cynicism or flair for the dramatic.
  • Active use of online resources can be an avoidance challenges that are more demanding, difficult and serious.
  • Immersion in online environments can reinforce a premise that life is meaningless, lacking in purpose and deserving of being wasted.
Clearly these traits do not apply to everyone who might use a PLE. When these indictments accurately characterize any learners, they are incapable of self-directed learning. They are in no shape to critique, guide and redirect their explorations. They lack the prereqs to make use of PLEs.


Five back burners

I'm currently pulled in five different directions which defeated my writing a post this morning with any one focus. Here's what's cooking on my mind today:

Over the weekend, I started designing a multimedia presentation to summarize the 32 essays that explore Journalism 2.0. I'm planning to use the free, online Prezi software that puts all the elements on a single canvas.

I'm still working on a follow-up to the series on emotional baggage that will assist people in resolving their own issues. I'm finding a workbook format oversimplifies the complexity of all but the most basic form of baggage. I'm currently considering the use of some online interview software to deal more realistically with the complexity of anyone's unresolved issues.

Last week I learned of a call for papers for a conference next year that explores conflicts with P2P practices. Since my exploration of the Cynefin + TIMN frameworks, I've continued to develop more insights into the challenges and opportunities of peer-to-peer governance, production and property. I'm expecting to develop my proposal for the conference by writing out my scattered ideas here in a more coherent form than they current exist.

Over the weekend, I received an invitation to propose a chapter in forthcoming book on PLEs. It's been a long while since I've written any about personal learning environments. This morning I revisited what I had previously written, and captured my most recent thoughts. That proposal is due October first and may get explore here sooner than the other topics.

The exploration of Journalism 2.0 was originally intended to set the stage for my further development of ideas for disrupting higher education. There are significant parallels between journalism and academia, both professionally and in terms of disruptive innovations in their market spaces. That exploration ties in extensively with both PLEs and P2P practices.

It remains to be seen which of these will move up to the front burner next.


News as the same old story

Some people I've known cannot get enough news. They've left CNN on all day and stay close to the radio for news on the hour. They read their newspaper from front to back. I've often wondered what drives this behavior.

One obvious explanation is an "addiction to titillation". In a life devoid of purpose, significance and projects, there's a severe shortage of stimulation. The need for excitement becomes an insatiable appetite. The newer the news the better and breaking stories are best. News is thrilling if it's laced with violence, conflicts and betrayals. Editors who embrace the philosophy: "if it bleeds, it leads" are on the same wavelength of those who are starved for stimulation.

Another explanation has come to mind more recently, as I've recently learned so much about the psychology of prediction. We constant make and update predictions in order to rely upon them heavily. Our strong and incessant need to be right connects to our reliance on our own predictions. We're in constant search for "self confirming evidence" that proves we correctly anticipated what was going to happen. We're repeatedly saying to ourselves "I knew it", "what did I tell you?" or "what did you expect?".

When we're substantiating our predictions, it's not unexpected news we want, it's the same old story that thrills us. We want the world to seem familiar even if it takes a delusional construct to live under that impression. We maintain a strong bias that over-generalizes the "white swans" and dismisses the possibility of "black swans". We want things to happen that match what we've been predicting. We want to be right all along about this.

When the news does not match our predictions and cannot be dismissed as a fluke, our minds are in crisis. We're experiencing "cognitive dissonance". We've been abruptly pulled out of our comfort zones. We're dreading the consequences of appearing wrong, stupid, ignorant, gullible, naive or clueless. We desperate to get it right next time. We scour the news for what to cling to and make into our updated prediction.

Broadcast and print journalists had it "made in the shade" with audiences who consumed news for these reasons. They really could not get enough news to successfully hang in the comfort zones continuing to be right. They always needed more to keep their predictions updated and their need for stimulation satisfied.


Competing with "news about me"

With friends in Facebook, followers on Twitter and personal mentions in others' texting, everyone in the Web 2.0 world is getting news about themselves.  If they've uploaded something onto YouTube, SlideShare or Flickr, they may get new comments added.  If they start to get some buzz with something digital they've created, they can watch their rankings change by the minute on sites like Digg or Technorati."News about me" is much more thrilling than news about anybody else. Web 2.0 makes it perhaps too easy to be self absorbed, like Narcissus gazing at his reflection in the pond.

Journalism 1.0 did not have to compete with "news about me". It could report on the news about powerful, influential, political, criminal and famous people. Readers and viewers were satisfied getting updated on these people they knew of, but had no connection to. They felt like they wanted to be kept informed and journalism could fulfill that desire.

Journalism 2.0 is stuck with competing with "news about me". It cannot report on the latest for each individual subscriber and viewer. The premise of delivering news about high profile people is getting questioned. It's tempting for journalists to report on news about their work, as if reporting the news is news itself. They're hoping their subscribers feel connected enough to care about their struggles, imposed changes and hard work.

I suspect journalism will never be the same. It cannot compete with "news about me" and feeling connected to follower, friends, commenters and feed subscribers. It cannot deliver as it happens to a single individual. Journalism 2.0 will have to take a back seat to the seemingly real and really important "news about me".


If journalists could beg

When we're deeply invested in legacy practices, we want things to remain the same. We can't handle the ground beneath our feet changing. We expect a  large following while we continue to deliver what worked in the past. When followers evacuate our system, loyalists betray their prior cause and consumers change their minds, we get the irrational urge to beg. Here's some of the ways the professionals of Journalism 1.0 might beg for a return to business as usual:
  • Please believe in ink on paper. Put your trust in the printed word while viewing "talk as cheap" and "conversations as unreliable".
  • Please believe in established authorities. Put your faith in people with power over you who can tell you want to think. Dismiss those "johnny come lately"s".
  • Please believe in getting your news from a trusted source. Forget scattering your attention and following a diverse range of voices.
  • Please believe in being kept in the dark while the work goes on behind the scenes. View transparent production processes as lurid exhibitionism.
  • Please believe in others' assessment of "what is really news". Stop being the judge of what is news to you and what good the news does for you.
  • Please believe in getting your news from a closed delivery system. Mistrust news that is generated by collaboration, crowdsourcing or peer to peer processes.
  • Please believe in continuing the pretense of being well informed by news clips, articles and serials. Question the value of the online cacophony.
When we news readers and viewers stop believing, the magic that thrilled us goes away. The business model quits working. The value proposition no longer makes sense to us. The urge to beg us to return to what we believed sees the real problem. But there is no turning back the clock.


Changing frames of reference

Any incumbent enterprise relies on cultural frames of reference remaining unchanged. While the meaning remains the same, it will still make sense to do the work the way it's always been done and for the buyers to consume what is produced for the same old reasons. Slight improvements (sustaining innovations) won't upset the consensus trance. The frames of reference in constant use can remain unconscious, unchallenged and implicitly understood.

This reliance on unquestioned frames of reference becomes obvious when the frames starting changing culturally. We can suddenly see the frames of reference like:

  • efficient mass producing for mass consumption as if we all want the very same blockbuster things without customization or collaboration
  • delivering expertise from certified authorities as if information is scarce and difficult to verify
  • storing information with ink on paper that cannot be searched, copy/pasted. tagged, linked to or archived for free
  • expecting huge start-up costs in plant and equipment will limit competition as if the tools of digital production and distribution are capital intensive too

When the frames of reference change, it feels like the ground is no longer under our feet. We don't have a leg to stand on when arguing against the change in frames. The basis for succeeding has changed in ways that make "trying harder" seem futile and senseless. The kind of changes called for seem too deep to consider rationally.  Most are too frightened to "go there" or to 'get it".

This is a problem for any industry, media or governance structure affected by the emerging digital culture. It's a very big problem for journalism report on the changes and to make the changes also; likewise for mass media, higher education, military strategies of nation states and the centralized governance of local social services. The changes on the horizon will simply make more sense than continuing legacy practices. The new frames of reference will provide new ground to stand on and which enables us to feel good about what we deliver and consume.


Generation gap in journalism

Every generation thinks the previous generations got it wrong. The world obviously still sucks thanks to the elders' priorities, values and goals. Each generation finds a way to go to an opposite extreme that creates a generation gap and failure to communicate on the same wavelength. Each generation seeks to change the world for the better with their youthful optimism, new technologies, disregard for prior assumptions and freedom from burdensome, legacy practices.

As I've been exploring all these facets of Journalism 2.0, I've been wondering how Generation Y will change what the news is good for and what amounts to "real news" by going to some opposite extreme. Here's my latest theory about the generation gap in journalism:
  • Journalists have presumed they need to be informative so that informed citizens can make better decisions when voting, shopping, relocating, and participating in gatherings. As information becomes increasing ubiquitous and free, this premise no longer makes sense. Journalism makes more sense as entertainment news, regardless of whether it's covering media, politics, economics, war or the planetary ecosystems. News should be thrilling, not frightening, heavy or boring.
  • Parents have presumed that everyone has to get a job, build a personal brand, make big bucks, and acquire lots of tangible goods. The influx of freely shared digital goods makes so much seriousness appear obsolete or misguided. It makes more sense to chill out, hang out and zone out, especially when parents are ranting. News ought to be light-hearted like the latest buzz about celebs, fashionistas and the latest releases of film or music.
  • The previous generations don't get how to live life as if playing a game. They appear to be stuck on the same level, facing the same obstacles and scoring the same points year after year. It's making much more sense to take one's game up a level, challenging different obstacles, exploring different paths and trying to score in different ways. When elders claim this lacks direction, goals and dedication, that proves the gamer approach to life is right on. News ought to feel more like 'game cheats" that understand the games being played really well, and then show readers how to be more aware, clever and successful.
  • Elders are trafficking heavily in fear, anxiety and paranoia as if the world is going from bad to worse. Journalists are helping them feel like helpless bystanders and continually persecuted victims. This will not make the world a better place, duh! Journalists ought to be reporting on visionary leaders, grassroots projects and notable improvements that provide readers/viewers hope, encouragement and conviction that things are going from good to better.
Each of these changes in journalism could meet the next generation halfway. That much is easy. However it takes a complete turnaround on the side of the incumbents to face this opposite direction. It will appear to the elders like losing ground, admitting defeat and succumbing to the enemies of their own generation. The next generation will watch as if it's more thrilling, game-like, entertainment news of the world becoming a better place.


Unavoidably bad decisions

When I was a jet setting management consultant two decades ago, I noticed a pattern that made no sense to me at the time. When a business enterprise began to show signs of failing, the leadership started making one bad decision after another. It appeared the top executives sought to hasten the demise of their enterprise, while claiming to do everything to ensure it's survival. The kinds of bad decisions I witnessed repeatedly include the following:
  • Driving out or terminating those with the most talent, domain expertise and smarts essential to success
  • Rewarding and recruiting agreeable sorts without a clue how to solve the problems and keep the customers satisfied
  • Dismissing bad news passed on first hand from customers as acts of betrayal by the messenger, not important messages
  • Throwing money at bad investments, showy improvements and futile endeavors while neglecting the core of the enterprise
While there are always a smattering of bad decisions being made as up-and-comers get more experience with their set of challenges, at some point the pattern emerges. The quantity and quality of bad decisions becomes pronounced. I believe this pattern has begun to reveal itself in print and broadcast journalism.

Since I first noticed the pattern of bad decisions, I've researched how it can happen to consistently, why it's so alluring to those caught up in it and what makes it so difficult to avoid. Here's a few dimensions of what I've learned:
  • When our minds are making decisions about dangers, threats or enemies, we skew the evidence, over-react to provocations and cling to legacy practices out of desperation.
  • When situations are stirring up a lot of anxiety, guilt feelings, and self-incrimination, we uncontrollably take our frustrations out on others regardless of the consequences.
  • When we're afraid of going out of business, our fears serve as self-fulfilling prophesies as we become blinded to alternatives, wary of creativity and opposed to nuanced assessments.
  • When we feel we are under siege from critics, whistle blowers and nay sayers, we stick to our own kind, find fault with those who disagree and blame others for our problems.
These "cognitive mechanisms" suggest we don't have a chance of escaping our own downfall once we lock into it's perceptions. The decisions we make will be bad for the business, changing situations and the trust others have invested in us. We lose revenue, direction and our following in very short order.


Exploring new business models

As Journalism 1.0 fades from the economic landscape, Journalism 2.0 is actively exploring new business models. The term "business model" has endured some semantic drift lately. It's coming to mean "revenue mechanism" or even worse "model for extracting shareholder value from commercial transactions". This over-simplification ends up with what Umair Haque calls "thin value" or "value destruction". The business model plans to operate profitably by taking money from, rather than making money with, constituencies that expect to be served and satisfied.

Business models also have another connotation derived from econometric models. It's often assumed models include anything that can add a row or column to a spreadsheet and exclude anything that cannot. Business models signify "quantitative models" to most. Having been an architect, I view quantities as something assessed after traffic patterns, sight lines, daylight cycles, spatial arrangements, user needs and much more. I've been very accustomed to modeling qualitative dimensions of projects.

Thus the term "business model" means something different to me that has become increasing complex in the past few years with so many excellent books adding new dimensions to the design of business models. I believe business models should answer divergent questions of individual experiences like the following:
  • How has the customer experience been modeled to see the enterprise through the eyes of the beholder and frames of reference of the end user?
  • How has the experience of employees been modeled to understand how frustration levels could build up and then get released as hysterics, conflicts or quitting?
  • How has the experience the customers have of employees been modeled as energizing virtuous cycles or depleting vicious cycles?
  • How has the experience of leadership been modeled to realize where leaders appear weak, ineffectual or out of touch with changing circumstances?
A list of these kinds of questions could go on for many pages. My point is to reveal how subjective and qualitative dimensions ought to be modeled. For the value provided to be meaningful on both ends of any transaction calls for understanding each participant's experience.


Moving down market - Not!

In the model of disruptive innovation, we're advised to move down market from incumbent enterprises. Moving up market offers sustaining innovations for the established enterprises who can usually defeat any new entrants. Up market spaces contain valued added services and products that support premium prices. Down market spaces contain products and services for non-consumers who feel overcharged, under-served or even dis-served by the incumbent offerings.

Incumbents view down market opportunities with disdain. They appear "cheap" in the worst sense and very much lacking in specs, quality or features. Think what symphony orchestras must have thought of the first vinyl records or AM radio broadcasts of orchestral performances. Incumbents think it's pointless to compete with market entrants who stoop so low and lower the bar of respectability. This assumption makes it possible for "little guys" to get started and scale over time.

In Free - The Future of a Radical Price, Chris Anderson explored this moving-down-market strategy for newspapers. He contrasted The Village Voice which lost readership when it switched to free circulation with The Onion which has scaled to national distribution and video supplements after starting out with free circulation. In the first instance, an incumbent sought to move down market. In the second example, the upstart innovated disruptively in the down-market space.

In the model of disruptive innovation, we're also advised to completely separate the upstart from any affiliation with an existing enterprise - no separate wholly owned subsidiaries. The incentives, unwritten rules and democratic decision making of a successful enterprise will extinguish any disruptive innovation. Imagine how difficult it would be for a baseball team to play in a stadium with a gridiron and goal posts, but no home plate.

In What Would Google Do?, Jeff Jarvis explored his failed attempt to get local bloggers to contribute to the Newark Star Ledger's online edition. Meanwhile a blogger launched a local news blog for one small city (Montclair) which attracted a flock of contributors and local advertisers. Once again, an incumbent tried to move down-market and an upstart began in the down-market space.

Following both pieces of advice from the model of disruptive innovation, I've concluded that "moving down market" is a set-up to fail. Start there or forget it. Incumbents cannot go down market successfully and they sabotage their own brands when they try.