Rhizomatic Knowledge in Emerging Technology

The Library

Last week I did something for the first time ever in the six years I’ve worked at UNSW: borrow something from the library.  The reason I hadn’t seen a need to visit the library up until that point is not due to the depth or diversity of its collection or expertise of its staff, but rather in the currency of its catalogue relative to my field.

This was driven home to me when our friendly library liaison Caroline came to visit nine months ago.  In the interests of helping provide me with resources that would aid my work, she asked how many times I visit the library each session, and what types of books and publications I was currently reading.  I told her I hadn’t been to the local library – ever – and the sort of information relevant to me was not likely to have hit the printed page yet, nor would it for many months to come.

I’ve since realised that there are in fact a few invaluable Library services I hadn’t been aware of which I’ll be taking advantage of quite frequently I suspect – not the least of which are Interlibrary Loans for digital materials – but on a basic level the idea warrants some exploration, especially in light of one of the week two readings for CCK08, Rhizomatic Education: Community as Curriculum (free account required to access).

The Conflict

In the field of endeavour I research, emerging technology, the currency of information is measured in days or even hours, not months and especially not years.  Knowledge, truth, and concensus are very much moving targets subject to constant debate and exploration amongst the community.  Discussion is continuous and new information constantly emerges, meaning staying abridged to the trends and concepts requires virtually constant, synchronous attention to breaking news.

This inevitably places the field in conflict with the traditional structures of higher education in which relevance and accuracy of information are vetted in a carefully considered, very slow processes.  Importantly, these processes are seeped in historical precedence, and compared heavily against what the expert community has – through self-referenced validation – defined as “correct” and incorporated into the pool of recognised “knowledge.”

As important as these processes have been historically, the fact remains they don’t lend themselves particularly well to knew ways of thinking – and especially new ways of looking at learning and knowledge building.

The common reaction I hear when discussing a new online trend or tool is a call for further research into its efficacy and demands for quantitative proof in peer-reviewed, certified literature sources.  Given the culture of academia this is a very understandable reaction; however as the article on Rhizomatic Education discusses, this process breaks down at the cutting edge:

“Traditional curricular domains are based on long-accepted knowledge, and the “experts” in those domains are easily identified by comparing their assertions with the canon of accepted thought (Banks 1993); newer concepts, whether in technology, physics, or modern culture, are not easily compared against any canon….In less-traditional curricular domains then, knowledge creators are not accurately epitomized as traditional, formal, verified experts; rather, knowledge in these areas is created by a broad collection of knowers sharing in the construction and ongoing evolution of a given field.  Knowledge becomes a negotiation (Farrell 2001).”

In the case of emerging technology, finding one established “truth” is usually impossible since no canonical, comprehensive texts exist yet – nor may they ever.  The reality is distributed across a network of blogs, discussion forums, feed aggregators, Twitter posts, and instant messaging conversations.  It also can literally change from one day to the next.

In this context, defining knowledge requires a network-view that considers a myriad different sources and perspectives; and learning is as much about learning how to navigate through the network and making the right connections as it is in filtering and synthesising what they have to say.  The learning and the network cannot be separated from one another.

Rhizomatic Education

This field of endeavour would seem to reflect what the article calls a Rhizomatic Model of Education:

“In the rhizomatic model of learning, curriculum is not driven by predefined inputs from experts; it is constructed and negotiated in real time by the contributions of those engaged in the learning process.  This community acts as the curriculum, spontaneously shaping, constructing, and reconstructing itself and the subject of its learning in the same way that the rhizome responds to changing environmental conditions.”

As a member of the Grateful Dead once said, “When you’re on the avante garde, no one really knows what they’re doing anyway.  You just make it up as you go.”  Or in the context of networked learning – especially in emerging technology – “you can’t know what you know until you’ve realised it through connecting with others.”