This is my new home page and the main site for Cognitive Flexibility Theory. I will soon be adding several more of my papers, and I will also be posting other thoughts and news.
For one thing, in the next couple of days I will post a reaction to Carr's recent article in the Atlantic. Needless to say, I saw much to disagree with in that piece. For example, his lengthy contention that because the origin of Google's search algorithm is mechanistic in ways that resemble Fredierick Taylor's old time-motion studies and the mechanization of work, Google therefore needs to be used in a mechanistic way is an out and out non sequitur. The nature of Google's search algorithms has little to do with the great variety of ways that Google can be used, especially for purposes of learning.
He says: "What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the work of the mind." Well, you know if you've read my writings of the last couple of years that Google can be used in very creative, non-mechanistic ways that might be better seen as fitting humanistic traditions of thought than mechanistic ones. Yes, where a Google search takes you is determined by a mechanistic algorithm, but how you search, where you go next, and what you do with what you find is completely unconstrained by that initial algorithm and need not involve mechanistic mindsets in the least. And, of course, we have data as well as ample anecdotal evidence that Google can make you "smarter" (in the sense of being knowledgable in deep and useful ways) about how you think about things, not "stupid" (quoting from the title of the Carr piece), and it can do so in ways that go beyond just allowing you access to more facts. Anyway, I have lots more to say in reaction to the Carr piece -- look for it here.
This page will also contain my column in Educational Technology called "The New Gutenberg Revolution." The full set of columns is temporarily off-line for some minor editing and updating. For now, you can see the most recent one, in which I take on Wikipedia as classically NON-Post-Gutenbergian -- I think you'll find it provocative. For previous columns, there are some excerpts posted below. I took a little time off from the column after the one about Wikipedia, but new installments have been written and the next one will appear in the November issue. That one will appear on this site in the next couple of weeks. Each new column will appear on this site the month before it is published in Educational Technology.
I will be inaugurating a wide-ranging blog on topics related to new technologies for learning and their impact on evolving ways of thinking. Look for it here sometime in late July.
One other thing: An article just came out in the NY Times about the future of reading online that quotes me a bit (see post below). I'll be putting up some responses soon, and I'll also have a couple of new papers on the topic of online reading comprehension and learning that will be available at this site in the next couple of weeks (in addition to the related work already posted here that the Times article linked to, as well as my Ed Tech Magazine column on the New Gutenberg Revolution, of course).
Always feel free to post comments anywhere at this site and to send your thoughts to me at rspiro@msu.edu
Rand Spiro
