Open Source

Sorry this is coming later rather than sooner but all this nice dialogic stuff is really taking a hit from all the non-nice non-dialogic stuff that is going on today. Every time I sit down at the computer I end up looking at Truthout or the New York Times and get into a funk. Another casualty of modern communications. All news all the time means all war all the time.

But I have to close the writing I've done on Bohm by getting back to open source. I think one key thing to consider about Big D Dialogue is that while it has some specific characteristics that Bohm considers important it shares in spirit many things with other movements and philosophies. We've discussed Quakers and Tolstoy, but in the light of computer mediated communication how can you not see the link to Open Source?

Open Source as it has evolved is counterintuitive, much like Dialogue. According to all the rules of project management, and that scripture of computer development, The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick Brooks, it should not work. Programming needs consise and detailed teamwork, good communication and architecture. Brooks believed that the effectiveness of a development project was hurt by adding more people. Brook's Law, which works most of the time, states:

"The complexity and communication costs of a project rise with the square of the number of developers, while work done only rises linearly."

So, a project with two programmers manages to get twice as much work as one but are four times more difficult to manage. Four programmers are 16 time more complex to handle but only provide four times the work, so a project with 100 programmers is, well, a problem.

This is "standard" software development, as done by IBM, Apple, Microsoft and others. it also explains why software development is seen as so grueling despite the fact that there are only a handful of different data types and seven control structures. Programming is not hard; communicating setting goals is. It is better to work a small team of programmers to death than hire a larger number of programmers. Of course this probably also is true for most things, like the FBI, a school district, a film crew or an architecture firm. A small group of people working hard and managed like crazy might be more effective than a larger group most of the time. But then how do you explain Linux?

Linux was developed by thousands of people without a boss. It works. Some people swear it is better than most commercial operating systems. While I don't have a strong opinion on this, it is good enough to be used for just about anything, and there is no annoying Microsoft paper clip asking you if you need help writing a letter. It's fine. It's stable. It works. But why?

The bible of Open Source is a document called The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Raymond. You can also pick it up at Amazon if like me you don't want to lug a machine on the subway. Raymond respects the ideas of Brook's Law. He doesn't say that they don't apply. He just says they don't apply to Open Source.

Basically he says that you can build something with a process like it is a cathedral, with elaborate design and a master architect guiding the process, or you can throw yourself into the chaos of the bazaar where no one is in charge and people exchange ideas freely. It's not a place that most CIO or CTO types would be comfortable in, but it does have something in common with traditional intellectual life. You try out ideas and you solve problems. And no one is in charge.

Raymond goes as far as to say that Open Source is good because everyone can read the code. Secrecy is the enemy of quality he holds. If everything can be debated, re-written and subjected to criticism by anyone and anybody can submit a better idea for consideration than something better will result.

Open Source didn't really work when it was seen as something heroic. The Free Software Foundation was more defined by what it was against than what it was for. It was, to a large extent, more ideological than practical. With Linux there is an embrace of pragmatism. You do not have to believe that "Information wants to be free" to use Linux or believe that Microsoft needs to be destroyed. You use it because you want to solve a problem, show off or have fun. One of the interesting things is that the final product has no "owner" and the work is suprisingly consistent. People stay on tasks and finish them.

More later.

Nothing to do with the class, but....

ASSOCIATED PRESS Washington D.C. April 20, 2004

In a new book by Bob Woodward on the decision to go to war with Iraq
President George W. Bush stated that he did not ask his father,
George H.W. Bush, for advice on the road to war. He stated that he
had all the advice he needed from "his Father in Heaven."

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Washington D.C. December 2004

As a prelude to his second term President George W. Bush announced
that according to advice from "his father in Heaven" he is issuing
new policy directives to his cabinet that are guided by his understanding of the Bible.
As Leviticus 21:20 clearly states that no one with vision defects "may approach the altar of G-
d" laser eye surgery is being made a mandatory Medicare and Medicaid
procedure, a new benefit costing billions of dollars a year. Also, as
per Leviticus, the Agriculture Department is no longer allowed to
provide subsidies to farmers who plant two crops in the same field as
that is an abomination in the sight of the Lord. The Defense
Department has been told that uniforms can only be made of 100%
cotton or 100% wool, as blends are also an abomination. There is
still some discussion on the composition of body armor. It has
already been decided that all military personnel can grow their hair
as long as they like, so long as they are issued the jawbone of an
ass and a slingshot. In other DoD news Secretary Rumsfeld has
confirmed that Saddam Hussein is not anything like Hitler, but he
does seem to bear some resemblance to the Anti-Christ according to a
panel of experts provided by Bob Jones University.

President Bush also announced that he supports the proposed
constitutional amendments proposed by Senator Orrin Hatch (R- Utah)
legalizing slavery as long as race or ethnicity are not considered a
reason, only nationality as is consistent with a reading of Exodus
and Leviticus which states that slaves can be from neighboring
countries. Migrant workers would greatly benefit from such a policy
the senior senator from Utah announced on the Senate floor. Governor
Jeb Bush(R- Florida) exclaimed that it could allow for increased
immigration from Haiti on humanitarian grounds. Canada has announced
that it will be recalling its ambassador for consultation.

President Bush has also announced that the mayors of cities that
allow same sex marriage will be stoned. The Mayor of San Francisco,
Gavin Newsom(G), made clear that he only performs weddings stoned, so
that this should not be a problem.

Back to Work and Speaking of Open Source...

It's been a tough week, so I've lost some momentum here. One thing I've been musing on is that while Bohm has specific methods for his conception of dialogue there are other analogous ideas that share the spirit of dialogue and even some of the methods. The most obvious was the Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers, who do something very similar to Bohm's methods of dialogue, but in the context of religion. Bohm would probably be happier with something that didn't have a Christian ideology behind it, but the methods and even the larger goal of solving the world's problems are there, as is the leaderless conception of group activity. Then there is Tolstoy's conception of history, which like Bohm's is about the collective expression of purely personal feelings and spirit and a certain contempt for mere technical solutions. There is a great sense in Tolstoy that all of our behaviors and motivations individually is the great subject of history. In Pierre, the central character of War and Peace, we have a person who comes to understand something deeper as he rejects a Cartesian view of the world and acts on his feelings. There is no method of dialogue yet an understanding of it.

Now we turn to Open Source, which is a technical arena for solving problems. It's much like dialogue in that it is leaderless, but it is focused on technical problems and solutions. More will be written about this later, but nearly everyone is aware of Linux, the operating system that is providing a real threat to Microsoft's dominance of that market as well as humanizing the complex UNIX technology. More to follow.

Tolstoy & History

It is, I must say, pretty strange to have a class on computers where you end up talking about the Quakers and Tolstoy. Dialogue will do that to you.

Bohm's dialogue seems to say that all of us together are more that the mere aggregate of indiviiduals. There is some kind of community experience in dialogue that can transcend mere personal experience and lead to a new way to see the world. After some reflection I could only think of Pierre.

Pierre, if you remember, is this superfluous individual who finds himself in the middle of the War and Peace and by the end of it understands something important that he didn't before. What he gets is that all of us are part of history despite ourselves. The people who think they are in charge really aren't. History is the actions of all of us, and each of us is preoccupied by our own problems and concerns and act on them in a big, random mess that only looks like it is part of some human plan. Pierre manages to find himself at the heart of the decisive Battle of Borodino, at the decisive point and yet all he experiences is chaos because that is really what is going on. While Napoleon thinks he is in charge the real decisions are out of his control. He is more in the dark than Pierre because Pierre is actually understanding the experience as it really is. Napoleon is a deluded fool, who while unleashing great violence and destruction only believes he has a plan of action and command over his men. Pierre, lost and stripped of his social status, is the wiser man.

At that battle the various officers scoff at the old Russian general Kutuzov who, rather than plan elaborate strategy instead worries about the spirit of his soldiers. He falls in prostration before the icon of the Holy Mother of God to the embarrasment of the sophisticates because he has faith in something outside of his own cleverness; he trusts the peasants, not the plans. The only thing that is real is the very human experience of the individual, which is both bigger than and subsumed in the great current of history. It is the decisions and character of many people who will make history, not those remembered by the historians. In the end Pierre understands this. He is no longer a superfluous "gentleman" but another traveller on the road away from Moscow.

War and Peace might just be the greatest book ever written, but Tolstoy's view of history is, in any case, exceptional. It's alot like dialogue. The air isn't dirty, the water polluted or a war being fought because of some damn fool plan. It's because of decisions we make fragmentally, often unrelated, based on our own poor understandings and emotions. Pierre is at least honest to admit he is lost; that he doesn't have a clue. He starts to trust in others and admire those who enjoy their scanty dinner, rub their hands when they are cold and express themselves simply and openly. Pierre and the old General Kutuzov are the towering heros of the book, not Napoleon, the Tsar or the other clever fellows who think they know everything. They are the heroes because they are humbled by and open to experience.

Did Bohm read Tolstoy? I'm sure he did. What I find interesting for us is that Tolstoy's theory of history is a refutation of most of our objections to dialogue. I think that they might just have something to say to each other about what is wrong in the world and how to solve it.

Dialogue and Friends

We spend a small part of our class discussing Bohm's idea of dialogue. It is, on the surface, fairly counterintuitive. Doesn't the world need bosses? Organizers? First Principles? That seems obvious to most of us, but then is it true?

Dialogue say in a nutshell two fairly simple things. First, that we need to have a more consequential view not of our actions, but of our thoughts and understand that they aren't separate from our feelings and our body. This is fairly problematic for many of us because we are deeply invested in a Cartesian world view that puts on a pedestal the concept that thinking is over the body and rationality is something that we can rely on for understanding the world. This commitment is deep and long lasting, but it of course isn't true. The body and the mind work together; our feelings do influence our ideas.

Secondly there is the idea that communication itself, using a reasonable sample of people, will lead to deeper understanding and is sufficient for providing a basis for solving some complex problems. This idea is very revolutionary on some level, but then it also isn't. It is, after all, something that has deep roots in the Common Law as it developed parts of the world that were under British influence and is, after all, what we saw historically in old Athenian Agora, in the peer jury system and the famous New England Town Meeting. It is also enshrined in Karl Popper's philosophy of the Open Society. While large systems might need an executive or organizational function there are precedents that have been shown to work quite well with such a communicative bias.

In religion the Society of Friends, otherwise known as the Quakers, stands in clear contrast, though not opposition, to the Catholic Church. There is an executive function in the form of a clerk, but the Society operates on the function of leaderless meetings. No meetings, no Society. The Church, on the other hand, operates on strong organizational and hierearchal principles, with a Supreme Pontiff (a role assumed directly from the Pontifex of the Roman Empire) overseeing bishops who in turn have absolute authority over their flock through priests. The Pope (the working term for the Pontifex) claims absolute authority and infalliability for his decisions.

The Catholics educate and guide their flock (the term itself is pretty illustriative) through documents called catecisms. Catecisms have questions and answers. "Good" catholics can answer the questions verbatim. You have to believe the answers too, and the points are pretty absurd, like the composition of the Trinity. The Friends have guides for faith and practice too, but they are based not on answers to questions, such as the virginity of Mary or the ressurection of the dead, but are more concerned with the idea of keeping communication open, such as the idea that you have to reject violence, have regular meetings, and respect the individual as capable of having unique insights as gifts from God. (more).

What is interesting is that the Quakers are organized into groups by the frequency of their meetings; there are Yearly, Monthly and Weekly meetings. There is an inverse hierearchal relationship between the frequency of meetings and their relative importance. Yearly meetings write the Faith and Practice document. The idea that individuals have unique contact with the divine and that this has to be built into the structure is certainly dialogic.

Have to go now, but Dialogue also has important similarities to Tolstoy's idea of history and the Open Source software movement.

Simulation

Somehow I am afraid that I don't get it sometimes. I've been laying low in this blog because I have to work out some ideas concerning computers in education. Many of my classmates are strong advocates of computers in education. So am I, but I also think we might be selling them a bit too hard, especially those that simulate reality, like games. It doesn't help that much of the arguments for computers and simulations can often call on the ideas of modern cognitive science to develop a principle of education called constructivism. I like constructivism quite a bit, but I'm worried anyway.

In another class I just had to read a brief critique of radical constructivism by Kurt Reusser, who hails from the University of Zurich. It's interesting to say the least, especially since he starts by mentioning Comenius, one of those gentlemen whose name is carved into the exterior of Horace Mann who was an educator in Prague in the 17th century. While I remain a constructivist (and a radical one) at heart I think it too often fails to take into account the culture of education. Here the ideas of Bildung and the concept of pedagogy really come into their own. Constructivism is an excellent theory of the mind, but it sort of is like saying you can teach driving through a better understanding of the internal combusion engine or the way a drive train and gears work. When you teach driving it really doesn't matter what your conception of a car is, and it matters less when you teach someone how to drive. You are more concerned with the factors external to the car, like what to do when you see a pedestrian or a traffic signal. You really have to worry about other drivers more than the other cars! While I think constructivism is more than that in our field, I think also that the failure of computer technology to make the dramatic changes that the advocates expect isn't because they have an inadequate theory of the mind, but because they have an inadequate theory of the school. Most technological ideas are in fact good ideas and they can certainly be made to work with enthusiastic teachers, but they can just as easilly fail. We have to think of the road, not the car.

Of course another big fallacy is that we do like to think that school should be fun and that kids need to be entertained. Computers are, or course, fun, while books are boring and old. As one who actually doesn't mind programming computers and who actually took Java without it being required for two semesters I have to say that the idea of really working on a computer being an entertaining form of education is one that I think is pretty bizzare. Challenging? Yes. All-consuming? Sure. Fun? No way!

I am sure if you asked a woman if she had fun or was entertained having a baby she would be very offended, yet most women I know who have children and can have another want to have the experience again and consider the birth of their child a major milestone and achievement in their lives. I think the same can be said of accomplishing something significant in school, and I think most kids would like to find something important to do with their time rather than be entertained. Teachers aren't entertainers, rather they are midwives for wonderful ideas, great accomplishments and beautiful lives. If you are going to use a computer, make sure it is for this.

With this in mind, I think the best thing you can do with kids is not have them play with software, but make software. Have them use computers for powerful explorations, but not simulations. They can use spreadsheets, programming languages, electronic mail and so many other tools to make their experience worthwhile and challenging. They can give birth to new ideas. Eleanor Duckworth of Harvard has said that you have to keep things complex; you have to honor the difficulty of ideas. I do too. And this is where the real radical constructivism comes in.

Other Thoughts

Back to the real world. I'm sure most readers are aware of the present problems in Iraq. It is a mess for sure, but much of it I think is based on simple ideas. The good guys versus the bad guys. I think the current occupant of the White House grew up watching John Wayne movies and that is where he learned how to be a political leader. Imagine if he played video games!

Back in ancient Greece an exiled general from Athens wrote one of the greatest books ever, the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides chronicled how the great city of Athens, a powerful and beautiful city that produced some of the greatest thinkers and heroes ever known and which created democracy in the midst of a world of kings came to ruin through arrogance and stupidity. This book was a staple of classical education, but when you read it today you realize that it means more today at a time when it is ignored by contemporary education. It is a book we all should read in the light of the current war and as citizens of a democracy. I am sure the last resident of the White House read this book just as I am sure that the current resident did not.

So, in terms of education, back to idea of the road instead of the car. We are all on that road. It is our shared culture, values and ideals. While we think we are rugged individualists who can go anywhere seeing ourselves as Sport Utility Vehicles, in truth we need the road. The road isn't a simulation or a video game; it isn't always fun or go places we want to go, but if you are lucky you will read Thucydides because he is there, as are so many other things worth knowing. If you value the road you will help preserve it, and you might help it lead others to where you wish them to go.

Course Management Systems

Course Management System isn't as much a technology as it is a marketing tool. Technologically they are little more than a core database application with some features thrown in, like sombody else's chat applets and discussion boards. Blackboard, the market leader, is actually built on an open source SQL database product. It ain't rocket science. It's business.

WebCT, the Pepsi to Blackboard's Coke, was built by computer science faculty at the University of British Columbia to cash in on the Internet boom. Blackboard, which just happens to have Arthur Levine on their board, was started at Cornell by some students. Neither one is all that technologically sophisticated on closer look, but business is business. Many colleges were developing products that were at least as good, but the commerical imperative has knocked many of them out of contention. Blackboard killed Prometheus by buying it away from George Washinton University to strangle it into oblivion. Death by acquisition. There will be no Dr. Pepper or Royal Crown Cola if our friends at Blackboard can do anything about it. Coke for everybody!

Blackboard will be going public soon with an IPO and has in place a significant business relationship with the Ministry of Education in China. WebCT was picked up by Universal Learning Technology, which then adopted their name. Both companies intend to transform education by making their stockholders rich. The problem with that is that transformation doesn't just mean turning sh*t into gold; it can also mean turning gold into sh*t. Not all transformations are good ones. The CMS business is also turning out to be not as lucrative as initially though back during the bubble, so now Blackboard wants to do everything, such as run the big administrative databases used for registration and financial aid. They want to Super Size their offerings to college administrators.

Will this work? Both Coke and Pepsi screwed up by not anticipating Snapple. No matter what Bloomberg says, Snapple is no better for you than Coke, but it did bite into the market. I think blogging software and the like will probably threaten CMS systems with something that they didn't anticipate. Also, hackers are an ornery bunch. Some computer science students in love with Linus Torvalds will come up with something better.

And there is another problem. Meatspace still has something going for it over cyberspace. People once thought that our higher education institutions would be clobbered by Blackboards of the world and that we would all flock to Western Governors University, Fathom, or the University of Phoenix in cyberspace. Well, meatspace has the advantage that you can get away from your parents, try some recreational pharmaceuticals, go to the Ani DiFranco concert at the student union and get some pretty strange tatoos and piercings in a city where nobody knows you. Try that on the Apple in your room at home with mom wondering what is wrong with you. One of the biggest outcomes of the Internet for universities isn't the ubiquity of CMS technology, but the boom in new student centers and recreational facilities to make them more competitive. And another big change? Snack bars with decent coffee in the library. Never would have happened without the Internet. Latte anyone?