Through most of April and May I experimented with a routine of daily posting on this site. Daily posting is a practice that has been recommended to me many times over by creative friends, and while it’s been an experiment worth doing, it’s not something that I’ll be continuing (for the moment, at least).

Certainly, one of the benefits of the daily posting schedule has been that it prompted me to have ideas on a schedule, and to put them down in a form that can be shared. This feels like something worth practising, if only as a reminder that creativity is usually available and actionable, even if a little effort is required at times. The main aspect of daily posting that hasn’t gelled relates to my sense of the tradeoff of quality that sometimes happens when the rules dictate that work needs to be shipped every day. I write this knowing that there is a dicey-ness (apparently ‘diciness’ isn’t a word; it should be) to such logic that can easily lead to a tumble down the slope of perfectionism—the whole point of this site, after all, is to share things that aren’t burdened by the need to be quite finished (emphasis on the quite).

In putting together the daily posts these last couple of months I’ve noticed two issues. First, the content has tended toward a sort of general survey of observations rather than something specifically tailored to to those of you I know are reading this. I like to work in a very dialogic way (I’ve written about this a little here), and very often my process hinges on iteration between independent ideation and finding opportunities to talk to people about these ideas before they are finished. I know almost all the people who currently get this newsletter in their inboxes, but the daily posts don’t seem to reflect this. This isn’t inherently bad or wrong, but I’m not sure it’s the strongest contribution the site can make that I also find personally satisfying to engage with.

The second issue I’ve noticed is that in finding time to put together the day’s post I end up diverted from the interesting-but-longer-term things that I’ve been working on—it feels like the time devoted to having post-worthy ideas has been taking up the breathing room of more substantial pieces I might otherwise post here at a more occasional rate. Although I’m generally happy with the content of the daily posts, I’m missing the depth that comes with longer work underpinned by more sustained thinking.

What do these observations mean in terms of testing a new process going forward? What is the practical utility of posting denser pieces less frequently? I think (and hope) it might have to do with more niche engagement, and opportunities for that engagement to spur the work.

Some time ago (for a much earlier pilot of this site on a different site) I was experimenting with the idea of a crowdfunded research project. As in all things, I’m quite inspired by what Andy Matuschak does in this space. Taking some cues from his approach, I drafted an explorative piece as a means of trying on the fit of the idea, and deciding on next steps for this site has prompted me to revisit some of this content. Previously, I identified four main benefits associated with a crowdfunded research model:

1. Reduction of extraneous commitments which reduce the time available for work on important problems
2. Related to the first point; provision of opportunity for intense sustained study
3. Capacity for more direct service to field (facilitated by the two points above)
4. Production of resources in association with the community most interested in their existence

I’ve included my original elaborations on these ideas as an addendum at the end of this article. The nub of my thinking right now is that there might be a kind of sweet spot between crowdfunding and crowdsourcing. Crowdfunding is appealing for the autonomy it offers—freeing up time to work is maybe the most important resource for getting stuff done. The problem is is that it sets up a transactional arrangement that I’m not sure is quite appropriate for the exchange of ideas in the way sites like Substack make possible. Crowdsourcing, by comparison, places more emphasis on the ideas of the ‘crowd’ than is quite appropriate in this forum.

What both models have in common (to my mind) is the option of some kind of reciprocal investment on the part of the reader in response to the material that is posted, including the sharing of ideas in response to what is read. This feels like something worth exploring, since there is potential for a mutual benefit in this sort of exchange. In some ways, whether a piece of writing generates a healthy response is also a useful metric for the quality of the work. In this model of crowd(fill in the blank), interactions ideally generate momentum, and in so doing, might even support the autonomy of the creator by adding positively to their capacity to keep doing the work in question.

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Elaborations on the benefits of crowdfunding for research

The content below illustrates some of my original thinking about the benefits of crowdfunding research from a few years ago (around early 2021 I think). I have edited the content lightly for reproduction here.

1. Reducing extraneous commitments

One of the truly useful opportunities to explore is a reduction in commitments that we might think of as takers rather than givers—things that don’t really add to the program of work in which we are trying to make a serious contribution. I’m a sort-of-independent researcher (and music-maker), in the sense that most of my work isn’t funded by institutions like universities, or through other private funding bodies. This isn’t to say that I’m not affiliated with institutions, but my current roles don’t support areas I’m focused on in my research.

2. Intense sustained study

By resourcing research and/or creative work in a way that makes it independent of the extraneous hoops involved in institutional employment, I think it might be possible to see much faster progress and domain-skill development through increased opportunities for deliberate practice. This seems related somewhat (I think) to the notions of publish-or-perish and impact. By reducing short-term pressure to engage with these aspects of academia, it might be possible to provide considerably greater scope for deep work to take place.

On the point of impact, a crowdfunded research practice might do something else as well—since by nature  it involves building a community, there might be opportunities here to make meaningful contributions that aren’t tethered to the limitations of the usual formalised conduits for publication. I’m certainly not suggesting that things like journal articles fall by the wayside. Rather, I’m excited about the idea that I might be able to complement a few meaningful journal papers with other materials (e.g. essays). I think that this could also be a great way to develop and test out other byproducts of research, like educational resources. More on this at the last point below.

3. Capacity for service to field

This, I suspect, is one of the subtler benefits that could turn out to have dramatic impact over time. Put simply, freedom to work (as I’ve talked about it above) would include increased opportunity to support the work that others are doing in a properly meaningful way. As a practical example, it means that when a colleague asks for some colloquial feedback on their project—or perhaps a series of extended discussions related to their work—these commitments can actually be made and kept.

Part of what I’m thinking about here has to do with sustaining opportunities for low-risk high-return interactions (e.g. informal working groups) that provide a very useful context for testing out and growing ideas. This is something that I’ve been inspired to think about more actively by my colleagues in linguistics, and I’m hoping we get to studying and writing about it in more detail soon.

4. Production of resources

I’ve put this one last because it seems like an outcome of the above, but really I see this as an integrated part of the process. A question I’m interested in exploring is whether crowdfunded research can actually support the concurrent production of resources that have some more immediately practical application in the world of the day-to-day. Educational resources are one example I’m thinking about here.

In part, I’m excited because this could also be an opportunity to share knowledge in ways that just isn’t currently possible through traditional formats (e.g. university courses, which are usually limited to a certain number per faculty). As an example, a medium-long term outcome I’m really interested in at the moment is something like the development of coursework focused on developing autonomous creative practice, or a course that develops fresh ways of applying social practice thinking to creative endeavour (e.g., music-making, or writing).

Prompts are getting a lot of attention at the moment, thanks to the AI boom. It seems worth noting, though, that prompts are a venerable old technology. They are good for real life too.

The practice of prompting is a handy lens through which to think about all sorts of common interactions—in principle, it has to do with providing some sort of stimulus in order to provoke a response. It seems useful to think about prompts as ways to test ideas; as little experiments.

An interpretation of a stimulus (the prompt) can be expressed in multiple ways, through multiple possibly legitimate responses. The testing of interpretations, and the expressions of responses associated with these, is very, very helpful for learning.

This post was retrieved from a past blog (and lightly edited in the process).

The thesis in the title of this post occurred while I was reading Cal Newport’s A World Without Email, which makes a great case for the problems posed by email technology in knowledge-work contexts.

Toward the end of the book Cal (citing Neil Postman) makes the argument that technological change is not additive but ecological. The quote is this (as transcribed from the Audible version):

Technological change is not additive, it is ecological. A new medium does not add something, it changes everything. In the year 1500 after the printing press was invented you did not have ‘old Europe plus the printing press’, you had a different Europe.

My line of thinking is this: To what extent does this kind of observation hold true for education? Or perhaps, rather than education, situations where the changing technology is the human body and/or human knowledge?

Thinking back on time recently spent with Dewey’s ideas, I’m inclined to think that an ecological take on learning (as per the use of ecological above) is a fairly reasonable proposition. In this vein, a useful topic to review in the future might be the distinction between concepts of learning and change.

Thinking about education (and learning, and change) as ecological rather than additive has interesting implication for educational design. Riffing off of Dewey, how might seeing sequential educational experiences as ecological rather than additive shift our approach to structuring those experiences?

With AI having its moment, I’ve been thinking about the value of individuality. Chatbots are now clearly exhibiting personalities of a sort—they are, for example, capable of quipping (or at least, generating something that we might perceive as a quip).

One of the curious things that might happen as the AI becomes more personable is that it becomes in some ways and not in others. How does its personality hold together, relative to its knowledge? One of the most interesting aspects of this is that the more personable an intelligence becomes, so too the less omniscient—the bots can’t yet deliver all possible responses to a prompt at once (because there are infinite possible responses). To deliver something in language is to choose one option from many possibly legitimate (or illegitimate!) choices.

This little essay has been languishing on my hard drive for a while; this seems like a better place to store it. A quick reminder too that I only send out one post via email each week, in a bid to avoid clogging anyone’s inbox—six additional posts from the week can be found here.

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I have been trying out a guiding maxim: Work with others whenever possible, especially when collaborations come about organically. This started as a loose research strategy, after I had had a gut full of solo work finishing my PhD—I missed being around people; especially the interested-chatting aspect. By organic I mean that feeling you get when you realise you’ve been chatting for three hours about some issue and you’re already looking forward to the next such conversation—usually these kinds of meetings lead to some mutual sentiment of ‘we should talk again’, and eventually, ‘we better write one of this down!’ 

I’m reminded of Neil Gaiman’s quoting of George R. R. Martin’s (who may have quoted someone else) impression of writers as falling into two camps: architects and gardeners. Allowing for the moment that writing and research have enough in common for the analogy to hold, I think it is reasonable to argue that lot of research is akin to architecture; things are, in general and for good reason, carefully designed—when some unforeseen issue disturbs the plan an alternative is engineered. This analogy can extend into other parts of research as well though, and I am pointing here mainly to the composition of research teams. In this respect, the architectural approach is one involving a clear division of roles and, often, some sort of hierarchy (e.g. project leaders, collaborating researchers, assistants). The reasons for this social structuring seem closely intwined with the broader context of research activity, and in particular, its institutional nature. 

I have found that I prefer the gardening approach. The kinds of collaborations I’m talking about here are not generally the product of fixed infrastructure, in the sense of committed grant monies or other formal schemes that set up guide rails around the project (including stipulations about its outcomes).

It is worth noting that architecture and gardening are heuristic concepts. I’ve identified the distinction because it has seemed useful in my own thinking, not because one is more objectively useful than the other. A point worth noting is that these approaches don’t really exist in the dichotomous ways I’ve alluded to—the gardeners have to architectural sometimes (especially if they want to be published), and vice versa.

My reasons for preferring the gardening approach include some of the following. First, I fundamentally enjoy and get motivation from working with others. Second, my own knowledge is far extended when I collaborate with somebody who has knowledge of things that I don’t. Third, the results take me into areas I might never have explored on my own, and generate problem conceptualisations that I might never have stumbled upon. 

I can imagine some well-founded critiques that might be levelled at this kind of philosophy. One concern might be for the legitimacy of the problems themselves—this approach involves a mutual exploration of ‘interesting stuff’, usually leading to the sentiment of ‘we should write about this!’ The ensuing writing project often serves as an anchor point for research. This means that problems are generated on the basis of the researchers’ extant knowledges, rather than through traditionally experimental means. I don’t think this is particularly controversial, given that the collaborators often hold scholarly expertise certified through PhD awards, but it does mean that the problems that surface as candidates for exploration aren’t really generated in an analytical way (at least initially). 

If we wanted to be particularly knowledg-ey about it we could think of the personal approach (that is, gardening) as some sort of epistemic experiment. These collaborations usually deal in some respect with things that have a relatively objective existence out there in the world. This, it seems to me, the main difference between research collaboration as I’m attempting to understand it here, and the more colloquial activity of hanging out. 

 The process is first and foremost dialogic. Sitting and talking a lot from a place of intrinsic motivation is a core part of the process. Over time, this seems to produce a very different kind of artefact to the architectural approach; it isn’t really clear at the end who wrote which bit, and most of the work is done synchronously, in real time, together. In fact, synchronous communication seems particularly important to the business of actually ‘doing’ the research. This can be exhausting at times (I have twice recently partaken in Zoom sessions lasting more than 7 hours), but it is rarely boring, and seems to lead pretty consistently to a flow state.  Cycles of synchronous discussion complemented with periods of marination seem mutually compatible.

I have a number of questions about the process that I don’t fully understand. Is there an ideal number of collaborators? Most of my work to date has involved duets or trios. In line with the gardening metaphor, is this kind of work seasonal? Just as agriculture is generally not an immediate-reward proposition, it seems like a long-term approach to production of work; quick turnarounds of work are not usually possible, or perhaps even desirable. How many projects can be logically balanced at one time? My calendar includes appointments stretching months into the future, and setting the next meeting has become a practice in and of itself. There seems to be some benefit to having multiple projects unfolding slowly over time, in the sense that this process affords some time for the epistemic soup to simmer, and sometimes interesting threads materialise between projects.