Getting started...

After a fair bit of grief and last minute panic, I’m in the final stage of review. I hope to have my final copy for editing and typesetting available within a week. My publishing goal of September 15, 2006 is still reasonable.

What is it about publishing in physical media that make the experience unnerving? I have blogged publicly on elearnspace and connectivism sites for years. I rarely worry about spelling mistakes, incongruent thoughts, or poor grammar. In putting this book together, I have become obsessed, self-doubting, and anxious.

There is something final about physical media. In writing online, I view my activities as more malleable. If I make a spelling mistake, I can change it. If I say something particularly incoherent, I can clarify. In a book it feels permanent.

To combat this sense of permanence, I have decided to place the book into a wiki for readers to comment, interact, argue, and tell me where I am wrong. It takes some of the edge off of the writing process…

What is an author's duty?

I am continuing to work through comments and suggestions from individuals who offered to review the draft of Knowing Knowledge. The feedback, from a very diverse group of people, has been excellent.

I attempted to duplicate knowledge through my form of writing (not only the content). As a result, the book does not read like a traditional book. The content has been created as a sequence of fairly individual thoughts. I took this approach for several reasons: 1) it duplicates knowledge itself (chaotic, miscellaneous, linked) and 2) it loosely follows a style Marvin Minsky used in his book Society of Mind (I was impacted by the stand alone nature of thoughts in his text - allowing readers to "write" themselves into the content through reflection and connection forming).

I received a review this morning (I won't list the author's name, as I did not state I would use comments publicly) that made me stop and think about an author's role in writing. The individual stated that my proclamation of allowing readers to form their own connections was a dereliction of an author’s duty - namely sense making. I'm still trying to work that through in my head (it's an intriguing point). Is an author's main duty to make sense for readers? Is it to open doors? Is it to present a preformed world view? Is it to invite the reader to dialogue…to think…to reflect?

Sense-making is undoubtedly a key activity in our world today (much of confusion and insane amounts of information). The real question - and I still encounter this in my classrooms - is who is the sense maker: the author or the reader?

Product and process...

While working through Knowing Knowledge, I spent a fair bit of time reflecting on knowledge products and knowledge processes. Most of us like products - they are clear, defined, structured, and ordered. A book, a magazine article, or a newscast are examples of products. The ideas and concepts have been put together for us by "experts". Our role is one of consuming the product.

There is nothing wrong with product views of knowledge (much of our cognitive effort is focused on meaning making (or derivation) - a task which is easier with products). The challenge arises when we encounter an environment where less and less of our knowledge work is product-based...shifting more to processes. The morning newspaper (product) has given way to a mess of emails, web-based news sites, and RSS feeds (process). We have an ongoing need to stay current (imagine the absurditiy of someone writing a book of stock prices on NASDAQ - due to the rapid fluctuations of share price, global market conditions, increased competition, fickle consumer demands, the book would be obsolete at the end of the first day of writing. I think more and more of our knowledge is like "stock market knowledge" - our task is to stay current of numerous factors that impact what we know now).

Getting back to Knowing Knowledge - my goal with the book is to start a process, not present it as the product at the end of a process. Once the book itself is complete (in a few weeks), it will be available in a wiki for others to add their thoughts and views. Particularly, case studies, practical experiences, etc. In my idealism, I hope that others will see the book as an invitation to a process of co-creation. As stated in a previous post, the wiki of the book should be available in a few weeks...