Digital Impermanence June 12, 2009
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Opinion.trackback
I’ve been thinking about the issue of how the digital world changes information, and I find that, for myself, digital information is both more permanent, and less permanent. Much has been said about teaching our students about placing personal information online, and rightly so. On the flip side, we also need to teach our students how to make sure their work isn’t washed away like a sand castle with the next service interruption or lack of access to a particular site.
As a case in point, this morning I received the following email from Flowgram, a site that allowed users to create presentations from photos, web pages, and other files, along with audio and text annotations. This sort of sums up the idea that what I do, even in the digital world, may have a limited life span.
Dear Flowgram user:
Today is a sad day for us. We have decided to terminate the Flowgram service as of the end of the month (June 30th, 2009). The service received excellent reviews and had an enthusiastic core user base. However, we were not able to demonstrate (especially in these economic times) that Flowgrams would ever be prevalent enough for us to adequately monetize the business, either though ads or subscriptions. This is obviously very disappointing, but building the Flowgram platform was a lot of fun, and it was wonderful to see how many of you used our tool to express yourselves in a deep and meaningful way.
Although you won’t be able to play your Flowgrams after the end of the month, you can export them to video by clicking “share” from the website or “more sharing options” from the Flowgram player and scrolling down to the export to video section. It is very important, if you wish to keep your content, that you export to video and download the video by the end of the month. Please let us know at support@flowgram.com if you have any difficulties doing this.
Again, I would like to thank you for your support, for your Flowgrams and for your good wishes.
Best Regards
Abhay Parekh (Founder) and the rest of the Flowgram Team
I’ve heard the argument that we should be careful about choosing a tool that provides an option for permanence, a way to always save students’ work even if the specific tool goes away. After all, student work should be important, or we should be asking them to do something different. The linked podcast from Bud the Teacher was inspired by a conversation about the place for ‘free’ services in education. Free isn’t always the best option, and it isn’t reasonable to expect a free service to always provide access to our content, much like the Flowgram example above. It is a great point, but digital permanence is complicated, and not always desirable.
I think that digital permanence has a place, but I also think that digital impermanence does too. Change happens, even if we are not prepared for it, and that applies to the digital world as well. Temporary accounts, throwaway email, RAM, are all examples of impermanence. I think there is something to be said from approaching content as something that is fragile, that might disappear, that is special because it is here today and gone tomorrow. Sometimes the moment calls for being a moment, and not a permanent state. After all, why would a rainbow be spectacular and moving if it were always there?
I have an old computer in the basement. I’m sure it has some stuff on it that I should keep. I have a couple of hard drives in the closet. Probably need to check those too. But I also know that sometimes letting go of what I’ve created, what I’ve written, if it is truly important or moving, will come back to me. My content is a part of me whether it is etched in stone, or made from sand. Nature doesn’t like things to be too permanent. We need a season or process to break things down and start over. Sometimes we need to start over or growth isn’t possible. Wild fires seem terrifying when they happen, but the long-term health of a forest depends on periodic cleansing.
I think our digital footprint deserves a similar cycle of cleansing. I think there is a benefit to risking the loss of content by exploring a new tool, free or otherwise. Sometimes, like Flowgram, those new tools last only for a season, sometimes they become as big as Wikipedia. Getting in on the ground floor has its own rewards. Sticking with something that is safe and known can also lead to irrelevance, boredom, and end up as just another example of trying to control the learning process. Our learners also deserve the opportunity to fail spectacularly.
To sum it up, I think digital impermanence is okay, even desirable. I think we should encourage our students to try something new and unexplored, even if there is a risk of losing all the work. That which is learned becomes part of ourselves whether there is anything visible for others to witness. Learning is change, and I say embrace it. Dare your students to create rainbows.
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