Invert the notion of Web 2.0. Take all the principles we love and understand about Web 2.0 (or whatever you want to call it, or not call it) and apply them to the way we think about our own thinking.
The mind works like the web, with continuous dynamic linking, aggregating, associating, categorizing, mashing-up, referring, and so on and on and on. The web is doing more and more of this for us, which may be both good and bad.
Generally speaking, there are two ways to take advantage of the web. The first is to simply let the web do that stuff for us, taking what it refers us to, and then turning around to produce things that are most likely to be referred to/by others, one link and one interaction at a time.
The other way to use the web — the way I’m advocating here — is to exercise our own cognitive capacities, to cultivate intellectual competence by managing the massive information cascades, using our minds to select, aggregate, associate, and create.
Our understanding of our own minds has historically tended to be led by technology. In the past century psychology has gone from talking about atomic and mechanical functions (still evident in sayings like, “the wheels are turning,” “blowing off steam”) to talking about digital computing (inputs, outputs, algorithms, processes) and will eventually learn to speak the language of cloud computing.
So there are roughly two ways to learn from the web: using the emerging metaphors to improve our theories, and using the actual applications to improve our practices.
Practice by subscribing to too many RSS feeds. Then subscribe to more. Write something every day that links to a dozen different sources, learn to digest, synthesize, and recompose.
Practice by reading challenging articles that take forever to read. Then read longer and even more challenging ones. Write something every day that integrates three totally different articles or essays, learn to digest, synthesize, and recompose.
The web enables us to rise to those challenges; it provides us with unprecedented tools and resources (which we’re only just beginning to learn how to use to their full advantage — just as it takes time for programmers to learn how to take advantage of new processing power). As we struggle through those challenging articles we have the benefit of instantly available definitions, elaborations, and simplifications. It takes practice to learn how to use them effectively.
I was going to call this post “Back to Basics”; the internet was originally developed as a research tool to help share and advance knowledge, and I’d love to get back to that. We’re doing a lot of sharing and advancing, but sometimes I can’t figure out exactly what we’re sharing or where we’re advancing.
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