I just finished reading Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death. Written in 1985, Postman is concerned primarily with the effect visual media (ie. television) has on public discourse. I expected to find Postman’s concerns and arguments a bit dated and worn. They aren’t. This book freaked me out. It is required reading for anyone interested in the social implications of mobile technology.

First, let me point out that Postman does not address the phenomenon of mobile information technology anywhere in his book. He couldn’t. The mobile internet didn’t exist in 1985. Still, his concerns about what gets lost when TV culture replaces typographic (ie. “written”) culture seem even more apropos to the mobile internet device age. You don’t have to read between the lines much to glimpse that we may be farther down the Road of Cultural Collapse than we would prefer to believe.

On the other hand, Postman does seem a bit ridiculous when he speculates in 1985 that this whole computer-thing might just actually be a bunch of hype.

Set that aside. Here’s what’s important to me about this book:

Postman argues that any pervasive communication technology is not only a tool used by people to convey a message, but that communication technologies also shape the types of messages that are conveyed to suit the particular needs of the technology.

This is pretty much classic Marshall McLuhan — “the medium is the message”. Postman goes farther. The medium is not only the message. The medium favors a certain type of message and precludes other types of messages. The technology creates biases, assumptions and mental constructs that shape the realities of the message sender and receiver. In fact, the very language of “sender” and “receiver” is a biased way of thinking about shared information.

Typographic culture requires careful thought, rewards deliberation and cannot help but exist in context with many, many other written documents. Typographic culture gave rise to the idea of history. That today is different from yesterday and that yesterday’s experiences, through good writing and good reading, can actually be more real to us than today’s experience. Typographic culture always conspires to make sense of things. It can’t be helped. Ideas, when written down, become fixed in a way that begs analysis, observation and careful consideration. In other words, typographic culture is logical.

Visual culture is fleeting. Visual culture rewards abbreviation, quick seques and high emotional impact. Visual messages by nature appeal more to our emotional selves than our rational selves. Visual culture prevents historical understanding. Visual messages, such as photographs and video, lift events out of their historical context and can only be experienced as something that is happening now. That’s why TV shows that depict historical happenings often have to label these historical visual interludes with text so we understand that a time-shift has occured. Visual images are immediate. They are fleeting and they exist completely outside of context.

I’m simplifying a bit here, but you get the idea. Visual culture is very, very different from typographic culture. Visual culture makes everything seem equally urgent and immediate so that, in the end, nothing is really truly urgent.

I think I’m loosing my thread here a bit. I wanted to talk a bit about how technology serves as metaphor. I will have to take another pass at that idea, I think.

For now, I’m thinking very much about the iPad and the ways in which it blends visual and typographic culture. I’m wondering if the iPad and other mobile internet devices can represent a healthy hybrid of sorts, something new, or, as Postman seems to suggest is inevitable, whether the iPad represents the complete subjugation of text to image. More on that later.

A few other threads to pull at in future posts:

• The telegraph represented the first major step into an unsettling, incoherent information environment where information no longer represented something personally meaningful, but becomes something akin to data where all information is equal. This precipitated the “ripped from the headlines” quality I so detest in TV news and news-esque shows like Law and Order.
• Postman presents the idea of actionable and non-actionable information and points out that much of what we are being offered as “news of the day” is actually quite useless to us and renders us completely incapable of meaningful action.
• The telegraph shifted the burden of sense-making from the sender to the receiver. The sender just reports “facts”. The receiver is left on his own to figure out what these “facts” mean or how they might be useful.
• The information environment created by the telegraph and photograph created such a glut of contextless information that the rise of Trivia Culture became inevitable to give us something to do with all the things we know of but don’t really know about. Examples: crossword puzzles, radio and TV quiz shows; Trivial Pursuit.
• “Each technology has an agenda of its own.” (84)
• “Television is our culture’s principle mode of knowing about itself. Therefore — and this is the critical point — how television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged.” (92)
• The television commercial is anti-capitalist. Adam Smith would have hated TV commercials for how they damaged the pure capitalist model.

Next Friday, a group of Tennessee academic librarians gathers to discuss ways in which we might coordinate and collaborate to build mobile-friendly libraries at our respective campuses. I am looking forward to this conversation very much. I am honored to be playing a small role in helping to organize the day’s agenda.

I spent most of my afternoon talking with Peter, my friend and mentor, about possible ways we might set up the agenda. Anytime you plan a 5 hour event for 20 or so people, there is a temptation to script everything out — offering a goal statement, bulleted discussion points and a predetermined conclusion at which everyone should happily arrive toward the end of the day. One possible outcome of such a meeting might be to establish a concrete action plan with specific assignments that everyone can follow in sequence to achieve the End Result.

There’s nothing really wrong with that. In fact, a lot of times, high organization is helpful in getting a group of people thinking in the same direction about a particular challenge or problem. Peter reminds me, though, that the opportunities before us are not really problems or challenges that require one-size-fits-all solutions. Academic librarians are faced with unique opportunities to create, experiment and improvise to figure out what works best for our local environment and our specific patrons.

A mobile-friendly library might incorporate many things: mobile-optimized websites, device agnostic eBook collections, mobile-optimized database interface designs, QR codes and other best practices for library service and workflow. In short, we need lots of smart people trying lots of smart things, failing well, learning and improving.

This is the fun part where everyone comes to the table, everyone is invested and has something to contribute. And so, rather than organize a day designed to get everyone facing in the same direction, we have developed an agenda designed to introduce a few potentially powerful tools (tablet management server/software and LibGuides Mobile Site Builder) and ask everyone around the table to think about what they might be able to accomplish in their own libraries with the right tools.

The work of the day won’t be simply organizing and assigning. The work will be capturing ideas and getting those ideas out to the entire system so everyone can pick up the ideas they like and leave the others for someone else to play with.

In other words, we aren’t only executing a strategic plan. We are developing a culture of collaborative innovation.

This is a reminder to myself: the best new things happen when smart, interested people get together and contribute their interests in an open, honest forum and then those contributions are collected and shared for the widest possible dissemination.

You can expect to hear more about this soon.

Action figures are Barbie dolls for boys. Its true. Took me 36 years to figure this out, but the fact is inescapable. I am father to a three year old girl. I play lots of dollhouse. I also play baby doll, Barbie dress up, and, staring today, Tinker Bell-Iridesca Flight School Sparkle.

Funny thing is, I don’t really mind all that much. Probably because I spent the formative years of my childhood playing with Star Wars “action” figures. I don’t want to underestimate the significance of the word “action”. My Star Wars guys were always getting maimed in freak explosions, laser gun battles, and light saber duels. They were always falling, climbing, running, flying and diving. They were forever rescuing and saving.

But, let’s admit it, they were also dressing up, pretending, walking around looking pretty.

Never really thought much about it until yesterday. I’m off two weeks for Christmas and so I’ve been playing a bit more dollhouse than usual. Getting a bit tired of it, actually. The doll house people are forever climbing stairs, having parties, taking baths, cooking, and pooping. I mean, let’s get real.

Yesterday, my mother gave me a very nice present for Christmas. A collection of Star Wars figures she found at a yard sale all gathered together in the generic Star Battles carry case just like the one I had when I was a kid. So, I got this collection of 14 or so “action figures” as a grown man and immediately the gee whiz, oh wow part of my psyche starts firing off. I’m transported immediately back to a place in my childhood that I’ve never really left behind. I just carry it around with me secretly where (I hope) no one can see.

So I get these dolls, I mean “action” figures and I start wondering what kind of fun Emersey and I can have playing with them together. I’m wondering what it would be like for Luke to crash the doll house party. For Darth Vader to cook dinner. For Chewbacca to take a bathe, and maybe, just maybe, if his long legs will allow, sit on the tiny little dollhouse toilet.

That would be terrific.

And then tonight, I’m flying Tinker Bell fairies around the house with Emersey and thinking about the Barbie dolls still in their packaging and I’m wondering what kind of a pop cultural mash-up is possible here. I’m no longer thinking about it as doll house, you see. I’m thinking, how can Emersey and I use all of this stuff to make a really interesting story? And once I start thinking about the Star Wars, Tinker Bell, Little People, Barbie mash-up, I can’t help but get a little bit interested in what’s going to happen.

So all of this is going on and I’m realizing that I’ve left behind the requirement that there be explosions, laser battles and light saber duels. I’m okay if Tinker Bell and C3P0 want to play dress up. Where’s the harm if Boba Fett and Dora the Explorer have a spot of tea?

Maybe it is a sign of my advanced age. Perhaps it is a new level in my personal evolution. Can’t say for sure. Just can’t pretend any longer that my action  figures are something they actually are not.

Action figures are Barbie dolls for boys.