Oral tradition placed value in the process of knowledge retention and carried with it demands for trust and authenticity in society’s information and its delivery. Griots and bards and intellectuals were tasked with record and knowledge transfer, an arduous task requiring training and memorization. Some early texts existed not to be storehouses for our information but to serve as mnemonic devices to aid individuals in the memorization of the information for eventual dissemination to communities and discussion among equals.

The emergence of the mass produced book increased the ease in which information traveled but reduced the importance on the trust, authority and authenticity of the information. Trust and authenticity are not core characteristics of printed word as a technology, unlike oral tradition. The book additionally signaled a rupture in the respect for the process by which the information was obtained and stored. The mere presence of the inanimate form of information overtook the need for a live being to deliver it. This dissociated people from the process of creation and shifted the focus from one of cultural heritage preservation to that of enlightenment through increased information collection.

The further dissociation from the process and reduction in weight placed in trust and authenticity of source has continued with successive technologies such as television, radio and now the internet. “If it’s on TV it must be true” never applied in oral tradition as the people delivering the information carried with it authority and responsibility to deliver histories stories and parables to keep society cohesive and strong.

The recent wide spread emergence of value placed in trust and authenticity is one that we should all embrace. It is a way of filtering the gross amounts of information freely available at our grasp but more than that it is a return to some of the positive traditions that formed the basis of oral tradition, mainly virtue, truth and the need for authenticity in our information and our interactions. Increasing the value of authenticity in our society could eventually result in a return to the importance placed on process. If we begin to look at things like credentials and methodology of research when determining what, as a science writer, should be covered, we can begin to set metrics for value that are based not on sensationalism but on true fact and necessary information dissemination. Approaches in similar industries which consider process and synthesis of past knowledge as metrics of quality are what create real thought leaders, those that can tell us what we know, how we know it and where to go from here.

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Take the course for a test drive:

As mentioned, Society in the Information Age examines the role of technology in our current society. The course will explore shifts in the realms of politics, religion, commerce, and personal relationships. We will also discuss our changing perceptions of property, privacy, authority, journalism, knowledge and identity.

In any honest examination of technology, positive and negative effects become apparent. It is rare that any new technology is met with ambivalence and this is because the introduction of any new technology results in winners and losers. This has always been the case even as far back  as the story in the semester begins, at the end of oral history and the beginning of the book. By starting at the beginning, we’ll focus on what was an incredibly disruptive technology to society and use that to enumerate the absolutes of any technological change. Moving forward, we’ll focus the same lens on the components of the personal computing era, the popular explosion of the internet and use these two movements to highlight the true meaning of Marshall McLuhan’s seminal statement “The Medium is the Message.”

At that point we’ll have brought ourselves up to the present, one in which our society is inextricably linked to technology. One in which technology shapes our actions and our thoughts. In the second section of the course we’ll explore these changing perspectives. In one class we’ll discuss the idea of property and ownership, the free licensing of works of music, prose or even science. Ownership will be addressed in the context of the music industry, with examples given in piracy and sampling, still prevalent even twenty years after the 2LiveCrew sampling lawsuit. Next we’ll address a relevant issue in a university setting: plagiarism. With hordes of information so freely at hand everywhere nowadays, and some of it our own personal data we’ll then explore privacy. Important questions will address the value of privacy, social networking, government information gathering, and the permanence of information on the internet. A loss of privacy must have an equal and opposite reaction and we’ll explore that reaction in the form of an increased value placed on authenticity. This authenticity will be discussed through one disingenuous (lonelygirl15) example and one honest movement (Cluetrain Manifesto) that’s tranforming how we do business and interact online. Oddly enough, in a later section we’ll see how this authenticity has resulted in the emergence of businesses with a “happiness” model built into their core missions.

The second half of the course will address ways in which our lives are now different as a result of technology. The first topic will be social networks, online and offline. We’ll discuss what your identity online means as a member of a community and how individuals are forming their own communities of practice formed around their own interests, guerilla knitting groups and hardware hackers and people who meet for things called barcamps that have nothing to do with drinking. We’ll talk about the music business and why there will probably never again be anyone as big as Michael Jackson but that’s ok because we’re all rock stars now. From pop stars we’ll move on to political stars, with Howard Dean as the first candidate to use the internet in his campaign and next the varied internet strategies employed by John McCain and Barack Obama. We’ll outline how Obama effectively used Long Tail for fundraising and organizing. Next we’ll look at how religion has fared in all of this, the varied views of technology from the world religions and new methods of worship.

If the previous sections seemed to shed a positive light on technology, the next section will address some of society’s concerns for technology’s negative connotations. Some critics are heralding our society as one that is being dumbed down, hopelessly dependent without understanding the basics of our technological slaves. By returning to the discussion of the wealth of freely available information we’ll examine how we learn and how we value information vs. hearsay. We’ll also briefly discuss AJ Keen’s book “Cult of the Amateur” where he decries the internet generation for it’s lack of respect for experts and open acceptance of faulty information. More concerns will be raised as we explore the life on the screen, including those who spend too much time separated from society using technology, violence in video games, cyberstalking and the media habits of the technologically addicted.

The final month of class will be spent addressing what’s coming next, in technology and our bodies interfacing with it. First we’ll have a discussion of the future of manufacturing and how you’ll be able to print anything you want just like on Star Trek. More Science Fiction topics will be addressed with discussion of cyborgs and artificial intelligence. We’ll play with some current examples of virtual and augmented reality and ask ourselves how this might further shift our perspectives and bend our lives. After talking about cyborgs, robots and artificial intelligence it’s only fitting that we close the semester discussing the resistance, what it looks like, and how you can join.

Society in the Information Age meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:00pm to 2:20pm in Duncan Hall 1064 on Rice University’s campus. Any non-Rice community members wishing to sit in on the class may contact me.

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What’s this course all about? Well, it’s a multi-disciplinary course addressing art conservation and engineering. That means that the students will be asked to critically examine art techniques as well as apply the decision based engineering design process. Taken from the course description:

The objective of this course is to apply the engineering design process to pressing problems in art conservation. One half of this course will focus on the history and practices of art conservation at modern museums.  The other half of this course will utilize the engineering design process by applying the art conservation knowledge to develop innovative storage solutions for the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

Each week, students will be briefed on a specific issue relating to the art conservation world, starting with the history of conservation leading up through modern times. Students will be given a unique and private insight to the inner workings of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, including behind-the-scenes access to their storage and conservation facilities. Museum officials will discuss the hidden portions of the museum and the day-to-day of the modern museum. Art storage experts will address the handling and storage of our cultural heritage. Students will learn the properties of materials used in art and the properties of materials used in its storage and preservation. Local conservators will guest lecture, providing unique perspectives on conservation principles in practice. A living artist will provide a perspective of their background, creative process and conservation concerns for their art. Finally, students will learn preventive conservation in long-term art ownership and cultural heritage disaster and damage preparation.

Each week’s art conservation topic corresponds with a step in the Engineering Design Process, a decision based system for developing new products or solutions. One case study will be presented per week that highlights the relationships between the art world and the engineering world. The art conservation lectures and the case study will provide the framework for a semester-long project where student teams will address their own unique conservation issue. Each team will select a piece from the MFAH’s private collection and then develop an innovative storage solution for that piece, culminating in a product design presented at the end of the semester. Through the engineering design process student teams will gain an understanding the problem in context, learn the current solutions, develop design criteria, brainstorm solutions and develop a product. In class activities that foster increased creativity and non-traditional thinking will help to arrive at unique solutions for the semester project.

Students will apply a digital workflow over the course of the semester, resting upon web 2.0 tools to transparently document and research the topic of conservation. Students will have their own blog where they will post recaps of the week’s information, progress reports for their semester long project and relevant information pertaining to art conservation.

Engineering for Art Conservation (ENGI/HUMA 240) meets Tuesdays and Thursdays on Rice University’s campus in room 119 of the Humanities building. If you would like to audit this course as a community member, information can be found on Rice University’s cashier’s website. To sit in on individual classes (syllabus will be posted shortly), please email me at mwettergreen@rice.edu.

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Student activities will include class instruction, design work and preparation for an upcoming course. Students will collaborate with the instructor and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston to develop custom archival solutions for priceless works from the museum’s permanent collection. Over the course of the internship a salon-style discussion series will run addressing unique facets of this design problem and multi-disciplinary approaches to civic issues, presented by members of the community. Students will additionally assist the instructor in the development of a course addressing civic engagement from a multi-disciplinary standpoint. Students will be taught engineering design approach, rapid prototyping, use of online collaboration and documentation methods. Student will have the opportunity to attend a summer course on entrepreneurship and will present the results of their summer internship in a professional forum.

Undergraduate students in any discipline or department are eligible and invited to apply. This is a full-time, 8 week summer program commencing in June providing a $4,000 stipend and put on by Rice’s School of Engineering in conjunction with Rice’s Center for Civic Engagement. Four positions are available.

For more information please contact the Instructor, Dr. Matthew Wettergreen (mwettergreen @ gmail.com). To apply for this internship, please email a resume, a brief personal statement and why this internship is of interest.

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Individual
Bioengineering is at its essence a multi-disciplinary approach to problem solving for biological issues. Those basic tenets have been applied as an individual in both my professional and creative life attempting at a well-rounded academic and cultural education. While at Rice University studying bioengineering for bone defect repair, aspects of architecture, clinical plastic surgery and industrial design were combined with more standard bioengineering aspects of mechanical engineering, materials research and imaging modalities. The incorporation of these fields resulted in novel designs and solutions supported by engaging and dynamic presentations and graphic design telling a story easy to understand for the lay person. Continued discussion with the architecture school resulted in students and professors incorporating the ideals of bioengineering into their architecture projects, including concepts of scaffold ingrowth, duality/singularity between host and body and symbiotic relationships between construct and program interaction. As an instructor, classes were run with equal parts teaching and learning, instructing the students on CAD methods and then employing the students to teach others to accomplish the tasks. Outside of graduate school, I applied this multidisciplinary approach to producing live events incorporating art, music, and film accessible to lovers of any art medium.

Caroline Collective
This multi-disciplinary education and approach to problem solving has been applied at Caroline Collective, founded in June 2008 with Ned Dodington. Taking the belief that being well rounded as an individual can be a platform for discussion and interaction with other similar like-minded people, Caroline Collective’s goal is to positively impact the cultural landscape of Houston. Our programming develops community-based education models and creates opportunities for individuals and groups to be more successful incorporating seemingly disparate disciplines of technology, music, film, arts and non-profits. We’ve demonstrated that each community has unique challenges but those challenges can be met with similar methods: listening to the needs of the members, incorporating equal parts teaching/learning and arriving at a solution incorporating all of the facets of the problem. Since October we have been running a monthly series called Bandcamp that is a community-focused teaching program to educate musicians on the path to success in their career. A similar community focused meeting, Artcamp, was held last month. In developing sustainable methods to address the art community’s challenges we collectively arrived at the decision to create a Houston Arts Wiki and to hold a day long Houston-wide art fair to introduce all of the resources and arts groups in Houston. We have recently launched a bi-weekly series of business classes with a partner startup, Werkadoo, that teaches independents in any discipline the skills they need to manage a successful independent career. Several companies are forming underneath the umbrella of Caroline Collective pooled from the complementary talents of the members and community groups that inhabit the space.

Community
This transparent and multi-disciplinary approach to problem solving on a community level is akin to the Long Tail effect online. People with niche interests meet to discuss commonalities and find that challenges and interests are parallel rather than perpendicular. Coworking is the physical manifestation of that and Caroline Collective one of many staging points for that interaction in Houston. In Houston you can witness technology focused individuals attending arts events and arts focused individuals attending technology focused events. Communities are experiencing greater engagement, richer relationships and more accessible resources, all due to the framework of a multi-disciplinary approach to solving collective problems. Opera in the Heights is exploring incorporating technology into its performances and digital archiving. Two new coworking spaces have opened based on Caroline Collective’s model, one in the Village focusing on green companies and one in Katy opened by the Houston Technology Center; another is slated to open in the Woodlands. The passive belief that all groups can contribute to and provide solutions to individuals’ problems and the active incorporation of those ideals has resulted in greater collaboration among community groups and greater insight to addressing community and societal challenges.

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