[digital citizenship: the internet, society & participation]

Today I attended a presentation given by Karen Mossberger (Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago) on Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society and Participation. Overall the presentation was interesting however I don't think the data told us anything really new...but it certainly backs up what we already surmise. Poor people and African-Americans and Latinas/Latinos has less access to computers and the internet and this filters through to less participation in public life (voting was one of the examples). The definition of citizenship put forth was that by T. H. Marshall, basically you need to participate to be a full member of a community. Citizenship is also a "developing institution" according to Marshall. So how to develop citizenship through digital means...well, Mossberger didn't really talk much about this. She concentrated on providing statistics which empirically show the digital divide. It was pretty apalling. In this day and age (here I am, using a computer, on the 'net, blogging) there are people who are too poor, or without sufficient education which in the States seems to mean you're not white...the statistics were incredible. Of course there are poor white people but apparently they are not on the 'net because they're not interested in it. From Mossberger's research, African-Americans connected internet/computer literacy with better jobs etc....and the statistics back this up. The issue of broadband access also came up. Sure people can use computers (for a bit) at a local library etc...but interestingly enough there are certain neighbourhoods where there is no DSL access (i.e. no affordable access) to the internet...only cable. That's another deterrent. I would have been interested to know what the statistics *really* meant in terms of "going online." Was it for checking bus times? What about banking online and using SNS? Mossberger at the end suggested it was more for *entertainment* purposes....but I guess what we're looking at here is not just issues of access (of course) but issues of literacy. *How* to properly navigate that content/information. Mossberger's latest project, results to be publishes as we speak, looks at Chicago neighbourhoods and notes the use of internet. I wonder what that will show. Two things aside from the presentation that I would like to share here.

1. There were 18 people at the presentation today. 16 in the audience (then the speaker and the introducer). Out of the 18 people 7 were women. All were white.
2. Mossberger made this comment at the end re: twitter: "I don't care what movie you saw lastnight. I don't have time for this." Actually, I think twitter (like mobile 'phones, especially if we're talking about financial cost) has it's uses. Just look at how the knowledge of swine flu is spreading/trending via twitter....

Of interest to those working with participation policies, internet access, excluded groups or web 2.0 in general, check out Mez's great article at Futherfield: The Sound of Reality Lag: Versionals are the New Black. See also Mark Pesce's post on Digital Citizenship (scroll down for a comment by Mez).

[ghosts in the machines]

Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network.

The report has now been covered in an exclusive story by the New York Times' John Markoff. Download the New York Times story here http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/technology/29spy.html

Researchers at the Information Warfare Monitor uncovered a suspected cyber espionage network of over 1,295 infected hosts in 103 countries. This finding comes at the close of a 10-month investigation of alleged Chinese cyber spying against Tibetan institutions that consisted of fieldwork, technical scouting, and laboratory analysis.

Close to 30% of the infected hosts are considered high-value and include computers located at ministries of foreign affairs, embassies, international organizations, news media, and NGOs. The investigation was able to conclude that Tibetan computer systems were compromised by multiple infections that gave attackers unprecedented access to potentially sensitive information, including documents from the private office of the Dalai Lama.

Who is ultimately in control of the GhostNet system? While our analysis reveals that numerous politically sensitive and high value computer systems were compromised in ways that circumstantially point to China as the culprit, we do not know the exact motivation or the identity of the attacker(s), or how to accurately characterize this network of infections as a whole. One of the characteristics of cyber- attacks of the sort we document here is the ease by which attribution can be obscured.

Regardless of who or what is ultimately in control of GhostNet, it is the capabilities of exploitation, and the strategic intelligence that can be harvested from it, which matters most. Indeed, although the Achilles' heel of the GhostNet system allowed us to monitor and document its far-reaching network of infiltration, we can safely hypothesize that it is neither the first nor the only one of its kind.

As Information Warfare Monitor principal investigators Ron Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski say in the foreword to the report, "This report serves as a wake-up call. At the very least, a large percentage of high-value targets compromised by this network demonstrate the relative ease with which a technically unsophisticated approach can quickly be harnessed to create a very effective spynet.These are major disruptive capabilities that the professional information security community, as well as policymakers, need to come to terms with rapidly."

Download the full report on 29 March 2009 at http://www.infowar-monitor.net/ghostnet/

[new media, romance and evidence]

"Mobile phones, BlackBerrys, emails, social networking... Never before has it been so easy to cheat on a partner. But has technology made it simply too difficult for philanderers to cover their tracks?

*****

In today's world, to function as an effective member of 21st-century society, we have to engage with a bewildering array of electronic gadgets, few of which we fully understand. We stomp digital footprints all over the place, and the unforeseen result of engaging in the information age is that it is becoming harder to have secrets – and, as a result, it is harder to cheat on each other.

Day-to-day actions, such as taking the bus to work and buying a magazine on the way, used to be ephemeral. But today, every journey, every communication, every penny spent, is logged and stored. As we move through life, we leave millions of specks of electronic evidence. Stored on hard drives and mainframes, this data acts like specks of DNA sprayed across the bedsheet of cyberspace. It's all there waiting to incriminate us."

Read the whole article at the Independent.

[job opportunity - creative industries research fellow]

Creative Industries Research Fellow

Policy & Research

Contract:
Three days a week (or equivalent), Six month initial contract with possibility to extend for further six months

Salary:
£40,000-£50,000 (pro-rata), plus benefits

Closing date:
5pm, 13 August 2008

Location:
London

Core Purpose of Role:
This role will involve researching and writing analytical pieces on the creative industries and helping Hasan Bakhshi, who leads NESTA's policy development and research on the creative industries, to manage NESTA's ambitious programme of research on the Arts & Innovation.

The position will suit an analyst who wants to combine a NESTA research fellowship with their academic research or freelance work on the creative industries, or someone who is seeking a secondment, as we can be flexible on the exact pattern of working hours in the week.

To apply:
To apply, please email or post your CV and covering letter to recruitment@nesta.org.uk, or Tanya Holland, NESTA, 1 Plough Place, London EC4A 1DE.

For further information and to review the Candidate Brief and Role Profile please visit our website at
http://www.nesta.org.uk/creative-industries-research-fellow/.

NB. Interviews will take place on Wednesday 20 August.

[nlab social networks conference - panel discussion]

Panel Discussion Rounding up the issues of the day with Steve Clayton, Roland Harwood, Chris Meade, Vijay Riyait, Andrea Saveri.

"All our relationships are built on favours...ultimately that's how you make money." (RH)

Distinguishing between the social media platform and the activities, sometimes these issues are conflated (AS)

Emergence of new infrastructure for businesses and on top of that the ways we support client development etc...(AS)

Questions:
How to bridge the gap between all the technical skills and the person/client/community. How do you bring the benefits of social netowkring to more people more of the time?

It is clear that these tools have benefits. It is time to get a little more political (CM) - it's about sharing information and succeeding globally.

Vijay notes that there aren't really many of these kinds of conferences engaging small businesses particularly out of London. We need to get out there and connect with business groups etc... Creative Coffee Club then fits in really well with this idea.

Question:
Caroline from PCM Creative - If you could only keep two social media platforms what would they be and why?

Twitter because it's fascinating and Facebook. Niche social networking is important but the grander interactions with people you don't know are it (RH)

Chris thinks it's a good idea to have only one that can do all sorts of things. That could be more exciting rather than another thing appearing and another thing we need to learn.

For Andrea it's delicious and news aggregator that tracks all the blogs so that she can stay in touch with a whole community of people.

Facebook allows Vijay to connect with colleagues and clients which as a small business helps develop a social relationship which helps build trust.

Question from Karl Craig West: He explains that his clients should use social networking but they come back saying "so." Why should small businesses get into social networking, where's the business incentive.

Vijay: How many people run a small business (half the delegates). How do you get your business (networking). Vijay says social networking can only help. The value in getting to people.

Chris reminds us what Jim said, that online social networking lets you do more for less. What about the tailor who went from "zero to hero" (RH) and Jim Benson solving a problem within 25 minutes after asking the twitterverse. That's got to be important to a business.

There are ways to expand markets, to get that kind of reach with social networking. Also where you need expert knowledge. Using social media to participate in channels where you can get that kind of information (AS).

David Terrar: it doesn't matter what the business is, there are always tangible benefits. Dell using the platform to talk to customers etc... There isn't a killer feature other than collaboration.

Michael: consensus that social networking is worth investing in but isn't it a bit oversaturated and actually aren't consumers way more savvy? Consumers know there's an agenda behind it.

Chris Meade says this is why it's important to pick one kind of platform and stick with it. It's better that people have a focus and know what they are after. Vijay reminds us that there are companies who began a blog under the pretense that it was written but a real, unaffiliated person. We need rules on transparency.

Toby Moores: One question we haven't yet addressed is the dramatic shift in landscape, the fact that India and China are producing more grads than we are producing children. So doing the innovative bit of business is going to shift so the value of social media is amplifying that process. How much do you believe that social media will be adpoted and support this shift in landscape?

Andrea thinks it will. It is a collaborative, open, social platform. It supports emergent swarm activity. But right now China has the greatest number of bloggers around so she wouldn't underestimate their involvement in the creative side of business.

Could we live without the web? RH says we assume it'll be there forever in the shape it is now.

Vijay says the whole thing about social networking is allowing people to be creative, letting go of some of that control. We know big businesses will adopt it but will smaller businesses?

Question from Andrew (?): what is really different with social networking? Moved from relationship marketing to meeting needs of the customer but today, social networking enhances that relationship, makes that conversation much better. Forces traditional thinking businesses into rexaming the way they do business if they have come from a "command and control position." But the younger businesses will do things very very differently. Suggestion from Andrew to FSB and BusinessLink to do some case studies to move this into the real world and out of academia (note: this isn't an academic conference!). Note from Sue: Shani has been working with Creative Coffee Club to do exactly that.

just found social cash - a way to magically monetize?

[nlab social networks conference - andrea saveri]

Andrea Saveri on The Future of Work: Amplified Individuals, Jobs & Organizations

Institute for the Future - founded in 1968

How to forecast the future, applied to business, government and non-profits

Think about the future though aware of the present

Amplified individual uses twitter to get information out. Thinking of global events and tweets becoming quick and powerful ways to sort, filter and disseminate information.

Amplified individuals are also highly collaborate - work with others to collectively solve problems, tap into an contribute to the intelligence of crowds. Re: businesses this might expand staff without necessarily hiring new staff. Through social media can actually attract people to you to provide people to you without hiring somebody.

Wikis - a great example with wikis on just about everything. Imagine being a small business, putting up a wiki page about a new process, technique or technology you're inviting other people to contribute to that knowledge base. Identify your own need (HR: you get other people to scratch your itch).

Prediction Markets - imagine what it would take for small businesses to do their own market forcasting, accessing intelligence from a broad community about a focused question. See: http://us.newsfutures.com/home/home.html

Another way to use sociology and collective action might be to bring in ludic concepts. Gaming allows different kinds of associations and people get interested in solving puzzles etc...

Amplified Individuals are highly improvisational. Andrea tells us about a group of work-from-home people who band together to work in a real space and share infrastructure and resources.

Amplified Individuals are also highly augmented. They employ systems, tools, and hacks to enhacne cognitive abilities and coordination skills. This is particuarly important for small businesses as they are likely to fill many hats, the kinds of techniques and practises to enhance memory, attention etc...is important.

See chumby - way to control information. Have a look at the chumby website. Totally into social media, they have a section where the audience (are they really called customers?) can upload (via flickr) their own photos or videos (via youtube)
of a chumby: http://www.chumby.com/pages/showoff.

Key Characteristics:

moddable, influency, ping quotient (measure of your responsiveness to other people's requests for engagment, your propensity and ability to participate), protovation (fearless innovation in rapid, iterative cycles), open authorship (creating content for public consumption and modification), multi-capitalism (fluency in working with different capitals, eg. natural, intellectual, social and financial), longbroading (thinking in terms of higher level systems, cycles, the bigger picture, can you rise above and look at the higher-level system), signal/noise management, cooperation radar (ability to sense, almost intuitively, who would make the best collaborators on a particular task)

Why Important for Small Biz?

This really does amplify scope for info. Individuals have the motivation and know-how to create new strucutres and processes that bypass traditional constraints

Key Ways:

Economies of sociality

Asymmetric power

Responsive resilience

New market niches

***Questions

How to monetize the individual? Go to that multi-capitalisation skill. Understanding of the relationship between building social captial and reputation might be a way to convert that into monetising. What do you give away and what do you charge for? This is a real area of fluidity right now. We shouldn't think about monetisation alone...we should think about other kinds of capital.

If you're talking about micro-businesses and the amount of time that should be spent on this kind of social networking/web. Andrea: it's not just a chunk of time...what is it that they're doing on the web. Are they participating in a discussion related to their job...that would be related to their work. The question is why are you going out there? You need a good reason for using that kind of technology, a way to enhance the staff that actually makes them more productive.

[social networks & identity]

This article by Scott Monty on his social networks and what it means for his identity fits well with the upcoming NLab Social Networks conference.

"I've been getting a lot of requests for friends on various social networks lately. You probably have been too - there seems to be an explosion of interest lately, particularly on Twitter.

I'm generally encouraged by this, as it means that the space is continuing to grow, rather than to wane like some short-lived fad. But at the same time, it can make life a little more complex or cluttered if you're not ready to deal with it.

But social networks are inherently different from each other. How you use one may not reflect how you use another, nor will contacts be consistent across every one of them. I thought it might be instructive to share how I think about my social networks - particularly focusing on how I consider friend requests in each. I've linked to my profiles, if you'd care to connect with me on them.

Facebook
Ah, Facebook. One of the most visible and recognized brands in the social networking space, where "friend" is a verb. For me, Facebook is a combination of business and social contacts.

I'll immediately accept a friendship request if I know you or follow you on another network. But that's not to say I'm exclusive in my friending. If we don't know each other, just introduce yourself and - most importantly - give me some context as to how you know me.

LinkedIn
I use LinkedIn as my professional social network. Like the old three-ring binders of business cards that I kept, LinkedIn is my real-time virtual collection of business cards.

As you can imagine, my requirements for LinkedIn are a bit more stringent. If you'd like to connect with me on LinkedIn, we should have met or at least have had some meaningful interaction. I'll also accept introductions via people I know.

Twitter
Twitter is probably the loosest of all of my networks. I generally like connecting with more people there because I enjoy the exchange of ideas, links and quick personal interaction that it allows."

From Marketing Profs Daily Fix.

[business+social networking]

Thinking about our current plan for NLab (tracking social networking in business) this video seems to give a good background on what businesses need and how social networking can help:

(of course there's ecademy linked in - with 11 million members and the more recent jump up etc...)

[folksonomy and thomas vander wal]

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of listening to Thomas Vander Wal share with us his charting of folksonomy, from its beginnings to future possibilities. He began with his definition of folksonomy (which funnily enough, Vander Wal noted, Wikipedia gets wrong):

When Vander Wal spoke about the important aspect of folksonomy, that it is a "social" activity, he reminded us that in a pre-networked world, networking was walking your floppy across the office!

The "f-word" (as Vander Wal puts it) allows "regular" folks to categorise or structure information in a way that is pertinent to them (i.e. personalised).

This aspect of personalisation has important impacts for the business sector in that it allows businesses a view of their product from the customers' point of view. Again, Vander Wal gave us a funny example of how tagging can affect your product by showing us cd available on amazon.com (see here) and how it was tagged:



You wouldn't want your product labelled as "talentless" would you...?

So, with the help of folksonomy, businesses can move from their "top down" approach to a more open and realistic understanding of their product (or at least how it is perceived).

Vander Wal concluded his talk with an excellent visual representation of what he sees happening in certain social networking arenas:




People/users/taggers are moving from employing tags as descriptors for solely personal use to, the other end of the spectrum, where tags seem to be jumping off points for dialogues and stories (that's the bit I'm personally interested in. Especially after noticing on flickr how some photos start so many stories).

As Vander Wal says:

"The people using the tools, including enterprise need to grasp what is possible beyond that is offered and start asking for it. We are back to where we were in 2003 when del.icio.us arrived on the scene, we need new and improved tools that understand what we need and provide usable tools for those solutions. We are developing tag islands and silos that desperately need interoperability and portability to get real value out of these stranded tag silos around or digital life."

NB apologies for the not so great photos! Annoyingly I forgot my camera (such was the excitement to attend the presentation) and to hand was only my blackberry...

[I was part of the herd...]

that went to hear Howard Rheingold and Mark Earls talk lastnight at NESTA's hosted session on Mass Collaboration.

It was fully booked.

Howard kicked things off with some tales of collaboration, or rather lack of: politics is about "your side winning," and biology is war.

But, over the last few years Howard explained that he's been tracking the emergence of a "new narrative; one in which competition is still central but no longer all encompasing and shrinks just a little bit to leave room for some of the new knowledge that's developing over a wide variety of field about complex interdependencies and cooperative arrangements."

Howard went on to talk about three "mythic narratives" one of which was the prisoner's dilema in which (more or less) the prisoners need to cooperate in order to win. (For a little blurb on this see here).

Then Howard brought up his second mythic narrative, the tragedy of the commons (see G. Hardin, Science 162, 1243 (1968).) Basically, human behaviour is dog-eat-dog and when there's something like, oh, let's say a nice green pasture, people will keep adding one more sheep to the field in the end "desertifying" it as Howard says. Moving from that idea that humans inherently want to maximise their own gain, Howard referred to Elinor Ostrum, a political scientist, who asked important questions of groups who did not deforestlands or over fish etc...how did some of these communities manage their resources? Or, in Ostrom's words:

"The central question in this study is how a group of principals who are in an interdependent situation can organize and govern themselves to obtain continuing joint benefits when all face temptations to free-ride, shirk, or otherwise act opportunistically."

What Ostrom found was that in each of the groups that successfully managed their environment, there was a set of 8 design principles including "clearly defined boundaries, monitors who are either resource users or accountable to them, graduated sanctions, and mechanisms dominated by the users themselves to resolve conflicts and to alter the rules." The principle Howard focused on is that of "altruistic punishment." To explain the point he Mark {oops, typo: it was Mark's story!!} told us a little story about an honesty box in the coffee shop and if that honesty box had a "pair of eyes above it" then people were more likely to be honest and pay for their coffee... (Read this article for a more recent theorising of community behaviour by Elinor Ostrom, et al in Science).

Mark Earls began by being "outed" as having a background in advertising though his own beginning to the presentation included a quote (seemingly) not about branding or commercial gain but from African philosophy, Ubuntu. Mark explained the quote, and he did say he was explaining it as "he" understood it: "a man is only a man with and through other men." Yeah...what about women? At least the translation might seek to collaborate with the other half of the community; women! I googled Ubuntu as soon as I arrived home, hoping to find out a bit more about this philosophy. Instead, I was reminded that Earls is all about branding because Ubuntu, of course, is the name of that new

"community developed, linux-based operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. It contains all the applications you need - a web browser, presentation, document and spreadsheet software, instant messaging and much more. Ubuntu is free software."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu defines Ubuntu as having "to do with what it means to be truly human, to know that you are bound up with others in the bundle of life."

Anyway, that invocation of African philosophy came back to Earls during the question/answer session.

Funnily enough, in a presentation about collaboration Earls asked the audience members to collaborate by doing a "Mexican wave." That was erm...fun. With audience members busy scribbling, typing, clicking, and videoing away, we had to be asked twice and indeed, needed to practise. Here we are trying to collaborate:

Earls further exemplified (to me and Jo Howard who later asked him a question about this) an undercurrent in his theorising that doesn't really seem to be about collaboration but more about power. For one, he created a divide between "us" (northern europeans) and "them" (non-northern Europeans) Plus one image he used in his ppt really stood out for me, an image of a young woman pointing up into the sky with the words "bigger boys" at the top.

Earls said he uses this excuse himself, that "bigger boys made me do it." But why not use an image of himself pointing up? Why an image of a woman? The image was related to a story about a handful of "loonies" pointing up into the sky being enough to make passerbys also look up as they're "covinced" they've missed something...this is an indication of how easy it is for other people to influence us.

Again in question time this binary opposition was picked up and someone asked Earls about aligning the west with a more combative approach and the east with a collaborative one. Interesting. In his answer Earls refers to Richard Nisbett's book The Geography of Thought which is based upon explaining these dualities. I like Razib's review at the Gene Expression where he says

"Nisbett's book is worth a read, at least if you are a business-person or a marketer, but he really does not present any new axiomatic constructs that shift anyone's paradigm."

Maybe I just happened to be more aware of binaries or the invocation of "otherness" because of a sign I had spotted in a shop window on the way to the NESTA building:

There are always "others"...


Earls did use some good words though: exogenous, neotenic mutation, Axolotl.



Look at the technologies being used:

NESTA has put up the podcast from the evening: http://www.nesta.org.uk/assets/mp3/11-09-07/howard_rheingold.mp3 and http://www.nesta.org.uk/assets/mp3/11-09-07/mark_earls.mp3.

[microsoft surface = our networked future]

I know what I want...NOW!

This is from the site's source code:

"Surface is the first commercially available surface computer from Microsoft Corp. It turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, interactive surface. The product provides effortless interaction with digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. In essence, it’s a surface that comes to life for exploring, learning, sharing, creating, buying and much more. Soon to be available in restaurants, hotels, retail and public entertainment venues, this experience will transform the way people shop, dine, entertain and live."

Woah.

And yeah, I know there'll be some critque out there...seeing as Surface is only coming out in the winter of 2007 and won't be (initially) available to the public...but still - it's a cool idea.

[google is good for business]

from slashdot:

"News.com ran an article earlier in the week talking about the somewhat strained relationship between newspapers and Google. Google's stance is firm: 'We don't pay to index news content.' Just the same, newspapers with an online presence are starting to reconsider their relationship with Google, the value of linking, and the realities of internet economics. Talk of paying for content, as well as ongoing court cases, has observers considering both sides of the issue:
"While some in newspaper circles point to the Belgium court ruling and the content deals with AP and AFP as a sign Google may be willing to pay for content, Google fans and bloggers interpreted the news quite differently. To them, it was obvious that the Belgium group had agreed to settle--even after winning its court case--because they discovered that they needed Google's traffic more than the fees that could be generated from news snippets. Observers note that with newspapers receiving about 25 percent of their traffic from search engines, losing Google's traffic had to sting."

"Google's position about paying newspapers to index headlines has never wavered. "We don't pay to index news content."

[transliteracy colloqiuim - summing up session]

xposted at PaRT and the IoCT Blog

While everyone has an hour to work in their groups, refining the definition and characteristics of transliteracy, I'll add a bit about our summing up session. After lunch everyone had a chance to share ideas and ask questions to the panel about presentations or about the idea of transliteracy in general.

Read more »

[semantic web failure?]

Two days ago I blogged about the negative reactions My Space elicits by limiting personalisation (specifically in the case of adding particular widgets to My Space profiles). Interestingly, Stephen Downes sees this kind of mentality as securing the downfall of the semantic web. "The Semantic Web will never work because it depends on businesses working together, on them cooperating."

Read on:

"And I'm saying the semantic web won't work. Can't work.But how do you explain that intuition?And I was thinking about the edgy things of Web 2.0, and where they're working, and more importantly, where they're beginning to show some cracks.A few of key things today:- Yahoo is forcing people to give up their Flickr identities and to join the mother ship, and- MySpace is blocking all the widgets that aren't supported by some sort of business deal with MySpace- the rumour that Google is turning off the search APIAnd that's when I realized:The Semantic Web will never work because it depends on businesses working together, on them cooperating.We are talking about the most conservative bunch of people in the world, people who believe in greed and cut-throat business ethics. People who would steal one another's property if it weren't nailed down. People like, well, Conrad Black and Rupert Murdoch.And they're all going to play nice and create one seamless Semantic Web that will work between companies - competing entities choreographing their responses so they can work together to grant you a seamless experience?Not a chance.Now - there are many technical reasons why I think the Semantic Web is a loser, along with some cultural and philosophical reasons. Namely: the people who designed the Semantic Web never read their epistemology texts.But the big problem is they believed everyone would work together:- would agree on web standards (hah!)- would adopt a common vocabulary (you don't say)- would reliably expose their APIs so anyone could use them (as if)Shall I go on?So...Maybe we won't be building clusters in Moncton, maybe we will. I don't know - I'd like to keep trying. Maybe people will listen to us or maybe (more likely) they won't.The future is not in the Semantic Web (or in Java, or in enterprise computing - all for the same reason). Careers based on that premise will founder. Because the people saying all the semantic-webbish things - speak the same language, standardize your work, orchestrate the services - are the people who will shut down the pipes, change the standards, and look out for their own interests (at the expense of yours)."

[literacy 2.0: born digital?]

This was originally posted over at Frontline Books.


I have spent the past week mulling over the thought-provoking comments to last week’s blog post. I’ve also been pondering the various responses (online and e-mail) to the “Web 2.0: The Machine is Us/ing Us” video. Ranging from a tangible enthusiasm, to a general malaise towards all things with the suffix two point oh, to wary placations that “we still have day jobs,” I’m left wondering why there are such divided reactions. The “us” and the “them?” Marc Prensky says “digital natives” are born into technology and thus are “’native speakers’ of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet.” Prensky also has a term for those of the Luddite persuasion; “digital immigrants” might adopt “most aspects” of the techy environment but will always retain their “accent.” So, no matter how fluent one might get in technospeak, it’ll never sound like its “natural.” Hrm…I would have to disagree with both the idea and the terminology employed (are we back in the dark ages?!). As an aside, to what conclusions might one leap when noticing that Prensky’s blog hasn’t been updated since early Sept. 2006.

Previously, my ideological position has been that literacy *must* be taught. The idea that there is a graspable notion of what literacy is and armed with plenty of teaching supplies, even the most reticent student will *learn* to appreciate the pleasure of the printed page. Not to sound too dogmatic... What about transliteracy? How can it be taught, explained, fathomed, when we’re still attempting to understand it as it unfolds?

But times and technologies change and so must we. And so, this week I’ve relived my own first forays into the technologically designed world. I remember the curiosity the glowing green screen provoked and the initial one-to-one sessions (between the computer and I) I experienced as more of a devoir rather than a pleasure. How times, and I, have changed. I now adoringly caress the slight indentations I’ve created on my oft’ used keys. I smile at the thought of the measureless hours I’ve spent at the computer, the smudged stickers and worn sheen as evidence. The computer now is much more than a device that allows me to follow academic guidelines (no handwritten essays accepted) but has become a mode of communication.

look out for the blackberry about 3mins in - yay Canada!

The point of this interlude into my consciousness is to highlight the necessity of time and collaboration inherent in most learning. I do not think that transliteracy can simply be *taught.* From the comments and responses to the web 2.0 video that are flowing online, I’m beginning to see transliteracy as more of an evolution between collaborators (person-to-person, person-to-computer, person-mode), a testimony to the level of comfort one might have with the various modes available. Perhaps certain examples can be given (Chris Joseph and I are currently working on this) to help elaborate the different modes at work (as mentioned in last week’s post: visual, aural, kinaesthetic, textual) but like any literacy, transliteracy will come with time, experience, and comfort. Additionally, transliteracy suggests a sense of a wider world. While you might only see your reflection in the screen, there are millions of others online with you. In this sense, transliteracy engenders a collaborative and participatory ethos (such as commenting on a blog post or folksonomy). We can read across modes, but we can also interact and communicate in various ways and in/at different times. Literacy might have an “i”, emphasising the subjective process, however, the “i” is not solitary.

Perhaps one point of agreement: transliteracy is distributed and participatory. How do you, born digital or not, read, write, and think across networks and modes? What are you earliest memories of digitalis? Have your initial feelings given way to others? Do you have an accent?
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[hen weekend]

The Seminar by the Sea for Female Artists, Writers and Curators

Hen Weekend is a new format networking event set-up by artist Ellie Harrison. It aims to facilitate discussion and encourage collaboration between its participants - who (at each event) will be a mix of 16 high-profile and emerging artists from around the UK and abroad.

Hen Weekend has just received funding from Arts Council England and the pilot event will take place at De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sea over the weekend 30 March - 1 April 2007. Over the course of the next two years, further Hen Weekend events will take place at a number of seaside arts venues around the country.

Hen Weekend is funded by The National Lottery through Arts Council England, with support from De La Warr Pavilion, ARC and the Networking Artists' Networks initiative (NAN) through a-n The Artist Information Company.

For more information visit the site.

[independent bookshop hires bloggers]

Frontline Books is an independent bookseller located in Leicester. As part of a new media initiative Frontline Books has hired several bloggers to make weekly contributions to the site, and I'm one of them thanks to my own blogging. In this way Frontline Books is acting as a bridge, bringing together the structural holes existing between print and new media. While structural holes are sometimes necessary (as discussed in lastnight's seminar given by Bruce Mason and Sue Thomas at the IoCT), in this case the bridging of the two media allows for fruitful contagion. This is already occuring through the blog comments. Additionally, Frontline Books is hiring bloggers! Frontline is paying professional bloggers to blog; this will come as great news for those interested in monetizing their blogging. There is a call for professional bloggers here and Frontline Books would particulary like to be involved with those who have interests in black history.