An interesting article from the National Science Foundation on Jeremy Bailenson’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford. For those of you who wondered why immersive online spaces such as Second Life seem compelling, at least to some people, read the article and watch the video. Food for thought.
Nancy Baym’s chapter provides us several ways of examining technologies and technology use. She introduces us to the discourse of technological determinism, which posits users as acted upon by technology, seemingly powerless to counter its negative affects. She also describes its polar opposite, in which technologies and technology use are constructed and determined by social factors. Along the way, she mentions the issue of “moral panics,” which is particularly relevant to our examination of young people and new media. We often see parents, educators, and policy makers responding to dystopian visions of technology adoption, worst-case scenarios in which children are the victims of technology, or are preyed upon by those who employ technology for devious purposes.
As part of our conversation on Monday, I’d like to address both the unintended uses and unintended affects of technology with young people. Can you think of an example of this? I’ll get the ball rolling with this example from my research in children’s virtual worlds:
I asked my students last year to spend time in one of three virtual environments designed for children: Club Penguin, EcoBuddies, or BarbieGirls. Most people were totally intrigued by the chat systems. These sites all use a moderated chat structure that either limits users to pre-selected words and phrases, or edits messages among users with a dictionary of restricted language. Students remarked that the dictionaries are too primitive to allow users to hold intelligible conversations, or the dialogue appears exceedingly vapid and generic. Kids, however, have figured out a ways to get around this. YouTube was full of CP hacks and cheats for getting around the swearing and self-identification rules. Disney appears to have cracked down on this, but kids seem to find a way. This highlights the tension between child safety (keeping kids away from online behavior like swearing or grooming by pedophiles) and online communication rights.
What are your reactions? Any examples of similar unintended uses/affects that you wish to share?
I hope you’ve all been as intrigued by the reading this week as Rob — I selected it because it’s provocative and represents a strong view of young people as enabled by technology. It also hints at lives constrained, more or less, by technology: people unable to start their day without Facebook or Twitter, always on and constantly connected, seemingly dependent on technology use as a defining aspect of their lives, even as it appears seamlessly integrated (flows like water or surrounds them like air, both commonly used metaphors).
Tapscott’s view is one of many that have emerged in recent years attempting to define the role of media in the lives of young people, and in particular attempting to identify the effects of media on a generation of connected youth. We have extreme detractors, such as Mark Bauerline’s treatise on the Dumbest Generation. Or Nicholas Carr, who poses the question of whether Google Makes Us Stupid. More balanced approaches, which document both the risks and opportunities can be found in books by John Palfrey and Sonia Livingstone, both significant scholars with a wealth of empirical evidence for their claims.
A recent interview with Howard Rheingold frames the challenge of defining a generation that many regard as “digital natives” but might better be thought of as digital naives: “I think we need to dispense with the assumption that a majority of young people are skillful users of social media.” It’s one thing to be connected, another to understand what to do with the information you find or assess it effectively. Where do you stand with regard to these portraits of young people? Since many of you are of this generation, what do you think of these depictions of yourself and peers? How good is your “crap detector” (to borrow from Howard’s interview)?
As mentioned in class on Monday this study, as summarized in the London Times, reveals that younger students prefer the lower-fidelity of mp3s to CDs and vinyl. Sad but true. The suggestion by Jonathan Berger of Stanford University is that changing technology affects individual preferences for music, both in terms of formats and styles.
In exploring the new media landscape over the coming weeks, we will try to identify that which falls into the scope of this course…and that which does not. As with anything labeled “new”, we run the risk of excluding categories of media based strictly on their age, or failing to recognize the relationships among old and new media forms. One of the challenges we confront is that newness is a temporary condition for all media, and so our discussion is immediately dated before we begin. Lev Manovich, in the chapter we read this week, provides some guidance to get this conversation started. He identifies five characteristics of new media, specifically 1) numerical representation, 2) modularity, 3) automation, 4) variability, and 5) transcoding. To begin our discussion, let’s think about this list and see how it applies to the media we would assume naturally fit into our discussion, such as Facebook, SMS novels, MMORPGs (massive multiplayer online role-playing games), or virtual worlds like Second Life (nearly all of which post-date Manovich’s text). Do Manovich’s criteria, ten years since he developed this list, still apply to our current “new media”?
Let’s take an example that blurs the line between old and new media, at least in the sense that it puts traditional media – music crossing several decades, some of it composed and recorded before the personal computer – together in a provocative way. You may have read about or heard the work of “Girl Talk”, which is the stage name of Greg Gillis. His “music” is a mash-up of samples from old and new recording artists that he triggers systematically using a laptop computer. While his collected samples are digital, he triggers them manually, and thus each concert performance is unique. This embarrassingly fawning New York Times profile gives some background: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/magazine/09GirlTalk-t.html?ref=music
Is the work of “Girl Talk” new media? Does it fit with Manovich’s five principles? Can you think of other examples like this one that incorporate old media using contemporary technology?
Welcome to the blog for LIBR 559b, 2010-11, Winter II. This space will be used to reflect on readings and disseminate other items of interest to the class. All students are welcome to post on any topic relevant to the course.