(As part of my research methods class, there is a weekly reflection assignment based on the textbook with the same title as this blog post. I will be posting them here to document my process.)

What question concerning the social world would you like to investigate if you were absolutely guaranteed you would not fail? Be as ambitious and wide-ranging in your thinking as you want.

I want to investigate the way music intersects the different dimensions of human experiences. This is an old rant and sounds perhaps a bit frivolous; more like a day dream than a research or investigative agenda. Yet, the musical dimension of our existence — history, culture, philosophy, art, sciences, engineering — gives me an entry point in exploring just about anything in this world. In the context of the social science, and perhaps more specifically in the tradition of information science and related fields, I want to investigate the nature musical knowledge. There may be some philosophical and critical reflections, but on a practical level how is music knowledge classified and in what context? How is musical knowledge generated, stored, transmitted, and forgotten? What role do Information Communication Technologies play in transforming the assumptions, or challenge the ideas of ‘tradition’, that we associate with music? What are, if such things exists, the universal and the particular ways in which humans interact with and respond to music (or perhaps simply sound in abstraction)? Are there design, development and implementation considerations for systems that handle the delivery of music-oriented products and services? How do differing world views affect our perspective on any of the questions above? (Perhaps I am getting philosophical afterall.)

What kind of questions might you want to spend several precious years of your life investigating? What kinds of things about the world worry and provoke you? What would you like to know that you don’t already know? Most important, what kinds of questions do you find interesting enough to get you out of bed in the morning with energy and excitement, at least on most days?

• What are the recent innovations in music education involving ICTs that serve long distance students? (For the purpose of mapping the individuals, groups and institutions that share similar or related interests and world views.)
• What is the information seeking behaviour of someone who wants to learn an instrument in the context of ICTs? (For the purpose of understanding emerging learning or information weeking behaviour in the context of music education.)
• How can you mine and reorganize the incredible amount of learning  resources online that relate to guitar? (For the purpose of improving the level of information access, as well as the quality of information accessed.)