Brian over at the Ubiquitous Librarian has an excellent summary of a talk by Vinton Cerf given at Georgia Tech. A lot of bullet points there to stimulate your thinking about what might be ahead for this world when it comes to technology.

At one point there’s a mention of illegal downloading of movies that briefly hints at the supplementary, bonus material found on DVD. Cerf suggests rather than having the material sit on a DVD to place it on the Web.

The first thought that came to my mind - and nothing original here - was the relationship between archival materials and much of that DVD bonus material, which are essentially documentaries.

Again, it raises the question that I often ponder when it comes to digital libraries: how do our digital collections support the development, the remixing (if you will), into new digital content?

In our advocacy of digital media we often say that one of the great benefits of digital text is that the book becomes a living object, that readers can respond with comments, authors can interact with readers, and togetehr the resulting dialogue will be richer than the stale pages of a printed book. That’s a lovely concept.

But what if the author doesn’t want to engage in a dialogue with readers? Of course, no one will force anyone to do so. I suspect that when a lot of authors finish writing a book, then they’re finish with that topic. They want to move on to something else, research another subject. They may be sick to death and be repulsed by having to moderate comments.

Yet, we all know that most scholarly books are never read. I’m a librarian and I’ve seen those circulation statistics. So, why would the number of readers of networked books be any higher? These online books are now novelties and attract a lot of attention but that always will not be the case. Sure, there will be some Internet trolls but when thousands of networked books appear every year, then the readership for each work is likely to be low and manageable. Authors may be thrilled to learn that there is actually someone reading their writings.

Still, I suspect that some authors will not want to take part in a dialogue about their networked book. In that case, can it still be called a networked book if the author doesn’t participate in the discussion? How do readers respond to a networked book if the author is not responsive? Do the readers then view that specific networked book with less validity? Or, does the networked book then take on a life of its own, fostering a new community that is interlinked with other networked books and researchers exploring the same field of study? What happens to a networked book when the author dies?

Undoubtedly, as with printed books, the dialogue resulting from the networked book will go on long after the author’s involvement, either from lack of interest or physical incapacity.

I also suspect that there will be some authors who will get so carried away with the ongoing discourse surrounding a networked book that they never get around to completing another. (Will some futuristic tenure committee set quotas to prod junior faculty into producing a greater number of networked books?) Or, can one’s lifetime of research be embodied in an ever changing, evolving networked structure that has no analogy to books?

For some authors there may be a point where a particular networked book becomes so popular that an author may have to step away from the dialogue in order to pursue other research. In those cases, will the networked book site be closed to comments and considered complete or will the site continue growing without the participation of the original author? Perhaps there are opportunities for graduate assistants to take over the moderation of the dialogue.

There are a few interesting discussions about Apple’s iTunes U initiative are worth reading.

Jon Udell stresses the limited accessibility of podcasts to non iPod/iTunes users. More importantly, he talks about the importance of doing more with the course feeds than just listening: linking, tagging, blogging, playlisting….That is the kind of intellectual activity that Stanford wants to encourage, isn’t it?.

CogDog is skeptical of iTunes U also but points out the reality of many institutions:

On the other hand, our community college has NO infrastructure in place for every day mortal faculty to put rich media online. We have no streaming servers, no podcast publishing platform available for all of Maricopa. We are not Michigan, Stanford, MIT. And we are considered more advanced with technology for community colleges. The current strategy is dumping video and audio files on the web server (and at some of our colleges they have small disk quotas). So the option that Apple may host stuff, a lot of stuff, for free, and more than just lectures, but student work, digital video, is tantalizing. I cannot fully ignore it. Yet.

Gardner Campbell critically examines the perceived merits of iTunes U: “wouldn’t be nearly so concerned about iTunes U if I were more confident that folks in higher education saw it for what it is, and if Apple’s iTunes U campaign weren’t so much of a piece with its larger campaign to make truth, virtue, individualism, and innovation into corporate brands.”

D’Arcy Norman writes a very pragmatic posting that the alternatives to iTunes U, at this time, are not so simple.

Tama’s eLearning Blog points out that iTunes U could be a useful service but shouldn’t be the only hosted service. Tama also picks up on Udell’s concerns:

iTunes U is thus somewhat at odds with the ease that a lot of social software provides when having conversations across posts, podcasts and other digital flotsam. Sure, that might be a good thing for some people (I know that locking podcasted lectures behind a university-specific interface will ease the concerns of many academics about the intellectual property), but it’s also important for any university podcast system to be linkable and accessible for content that they want to make publicly available (also an important part of good university PR). iTunes U doesn’t cover all our needs, but it can be part of the podcasting solutions. Just not the only part. And, as always, we should be working toward finding/thinking/creating the next step…

In a postscript to iTunes U Gardner asks and answers, “Will institutions, especially starved-for-cash public schools, be willing to fund home-grown open alternatives when they can make money on a home-branded, outsourced, turn-key operation like Apple’s? I doubt it.” In a comment to this posting, Brian Alexander asks a legitimate question: “how come academia hasn’t come up with this on our own?”

Coming from a totally different direction, Mills Kelly at edwired writes about the increasing number of history courses being podcasted and the concerns of some teachers:

When I talk to colleagues about podcasting and ideas like iTunesU, some are intrigued, but most worry that podcasting a class will lead to significant declines in classroom attendance. After all, if a student can listen to/watch class without attending, why would he (or she)?

This anxiety is important, but not for the reason given by those feeling anxious. What’s really at stake here is a bigger problem…if students will choose to skip class and just listen/watch, then isn’t there something wrong with the class? If our classes are so dull that a student might just as well access them while on the treadmill or the bus, then I submit it’s time to teach differently.

Technology planning
I have my doubts as to whether iTunes U is the right platform for universities to adopt in their long-term use of digital media. (Indeed, that’s an understatement). iTunes U is both the beneficiary and result of technology planning (or the lack of it) in higher education.

In many cases, the decision to use iTunes U will come from a senior administrator who had a persuasive visit from Apple reps. (I’m reminded of being at an institution when a VP in computing made the decision that the university would use the IBM Digital Library Software to create a digital library; no input from the library, the decision was just based on good sales tactics by IBM).

Yet, many of us also have been on year-long technological task forces and planning groups in universities that didn’t result in anything. Universities have the bad tendency to overly examine a topic, developing the best conceptual solution, writing a grant to develop the grandest standards-based technical solution, and - five years later - still be no further ahead.

Technology planning is largely about deciding where an institution needs to focus its resources. If anything, iTunes U can get an institution kick-started down the path of distributing digital audio content.

The danger of iTunes U is that university administrators might become complacent and assume that Apple will solve all of higher ed’s issues with digital media. Universities, especially those adopting iTunes U, should be actively examining the long-term future that digital media will play in teaching, learning, and research. Yep, that sounds like one of those infamous technology planning task forces. But the discussion needs to be taking place within our institutions. And that discussion needs go beyond just podcasting course lectures, that’s only the beginning. There’s all sorts of content, both audio and video, that universities should be developing. There are all sorts of uses of that content that universities should be exploring.

As Udell asked, there needs to be more discussions about the types of intellectual activity that can be facilitated through digital media; more specifications as to what technological capabilities are needed to realize those activities. Maybe iTunes U will evolve, maybe Apple will eventually abandon it. Regardless, the distribution of digital media content created within higher education and the use, linking, and re-mixing of that content is not solved solely through iTunes U.