New Media for Children & Young Adults, 2010-11

Like Schuyler, I enjoyed this chapter, especially since it seemed to address the technological environment that we inhabit much more realistically than Tapscott.

What I found most compelling was Baym’s discussion of the implications that the internet and mobile phones have on social interactions and relationships. I am wishy-washy in that I waver back and forth between believing that online interactivity and our dependance on it completely destroys our ability to function with people in face-to-face scenarios. Following Rob’s lead, I’m also going to take an example from YA literature: M.T. Anderson’s book Feed is about a dystopian society that has advanced so far technologically that a computer chip is installed in everyone’s head and even when hanging out with friends, characters can “chat” each other from across the room in their own minds. The need for speech is essentially eradicated.

So while this is a legitimate fear, I also think it’ll never happen. At one point in Feed the characters lose their connection to the information feed. At first they’re completely lost, but then they easily resort back to life without constant connectivity and communicate without any problems. I also think people can easily resort to saying that someone is “socially inept” because of the internet, but the truth is there were socially awkward people before the internet, and their ineptitude was blamed on other things. Like Baym says, the internet quickly becomes a catch-all for all our problems.

I would be remiss not to point out the obvious point, however, that the internet, texting, and instant messaging is definitely changing the way we communicate in terms of language. Nouns are made verbs and vice versa, words are shortened to a grotesquely small syllable, and initialisms are everywhere. However, just as Aristotle’s prediction that the alphabet would ruin communication was laughably incorrect, it would be wrong of me to suggest that these technological changes to language are destroying English as we know it. Language is constantly evolving and developing, and although it pains me to see someone use “lol” unironically, I shouldn’t be so quick to devalue the way that technology has changed language.

I really enjoyed Nancy Baym’s introductory chapter on new media. My appreciation can perhaps be summed up by her statement that “the truth, as is so often the case, lies somewhere in between.” In almost direct juxtaposition to Tapscott’s largely one-sided presentation of the issues, I enjoyed the way that she laid out both the technological determinist and social constructivist viewpoints and was able to demonstrate the merits of each while attempted ultimately to reconcile the opposing views into what she described as “social shaping.” Excuse my pretense, but the concept of a culture’s relationship with technology as a continuum in which each influences the other strikes me as quite obvious, which led me to question the prevalence of such polarized viewpoints as technological determinism and social constructionism.

I began to question how so many of the discourses in our lives are characterized by these utopia/dystopia polarizations, and how rarely it seems that individuals on either side of an issue are willing to be swayed from their entrenched viewpoints. I was reminded of a recent This American Life podcast in which an expert on climate change attempted to convince a skeptical youth of the existence of global warming; despite her best arguments, the young girl remained unconvinced. Similar examples are endless, and it occurs to me that our culture and education (and technology?) encourage this type of thinking. I’ve written countless papers whose thesis I could have blasted apart a hundred different ways, but instead strengthened to meet the established expectations for an academic essay. The sheer volume of available resources makes it possible to back up almost any argument, no matter how suspect.

Similarly, modern media allows us to find the points of view on a given topic that match our own expectations and sources of news and information that come pre-tailored to fit our entrenched point of view. In this sense the Internet and the social communities it supports can be seen as a fractured and disparate collection of ‘islands’ rather than the utopian medium of global cultural exchange some had envisioned, but is it the cause, or merely a reflection of existing social structures? In all likelihood; both. Perhaps as Baym suggests, the ‘domestication’ of the internet may eventually make the technology so pervasively embedded in our lives that it is “barely worthy of remark,” but I suspect the polarization of viewpoints will persist.

/rant

NOTE: I know this is a bit of a long post, but it’s because I’m not sure what to focus on specifically.  There is so much STUFF out there!  I figure because I’m working with YA literature a lot, I will incorporate some of what I have learned from fiction into this post.  I hope that I don’t confuse too many people.

A lot of what Baym has to say can be seen reflected back from the pages of fiction.  Currently, I am reading Cory Doctorow’s For the Win, in which a number of people meet, interact, and fight back the evil corporate world through online games and all sorts of other crazy technological things that I can barely follow.  What made me think of this book is Baym’s discussion of the curious dynamics of online relationships and interaction.  The cartoon that reads “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” is in both Baym and Doctorow and is relevant both in reality and in the slightly fictional world of the novel:

Although Steiner has said he didn’t know what the cartoon was about when he drew it, New Yorker cartoon editor Robert Mankoff said it “perfectly predicted both the Internet’s promise and its problems” (2004: 618). Whether this cartoon represents a dream or a nightmare depends on whether one is the dog or the fool unknowingly talking to the dog.

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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?

link: http://thecreatorsproject.com/blog/the-newest-japanese-pop-star-is-a-hologram-video

This strikes me as another prime example of New Media moving out of the “box” (tv, computer ect) and blurring the lines between our digital and ‘real’ lives, but something about a huge crowd cheering on a computer animation is still deeply unsettling to me.

Also, I found it interesting to note that although the hologram tours with a live backing band, the singing is synthesized digitally.

(note: always the skeptic; I couldn’t actually find any mention (or pictures) of the hologram project on the Crypton Future Media website, so I’m sort of wondering if this is real.. but then again, I can’t read Japanese.)

Pricewaterhouse Cooper just released a report entitled “Turning the Page: The Future of eBooks.”  I just thought it might be an interesting read for anyone looking at eBook readers or the future of electronic reading.  It’s got lots of charts and tables and graphs, which makes it that much more Awesome to read.  Go Pricewaterhouse Cooper!

I stumbled across this short piece on McSweeney’s turns the tables on the old “birds and bees” speech, and provides an amusing illustration of the generational divide that Tapscott describes:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2011/1/21young.html

Hey Folks, sorry I’m a little late getting this post up. The day sort of got away form me.

I was six months before the end of Generation X, according to Tapscott’s timeline, but I think I relate more with his description of the “Net Gen”. That’s probably because I’m generally a pretty geeky guy and as such was a bit ahead of the curve growing up. It’s also because these generation divisions are pretty blurry and it’s easy to make generalizations that aren’t terribly accurate.

I have to agree with previous comments that the stereotypes that Tapscott carts out kind of rub me the wrong way. I’ve spent a lot of time working with young people over the last several years, and they come in a huge variety of personalities and learning styles. I understand why Tapscott is using these generalizations to illustrate the shift that is going on in the way young people live and think, but he does seem to go a bit far some times.

Brains create technology which in turn affects the brain. This is nothing new, and I think that the written word had at least as profound an effect on the human brain as the internet age will have. We, especially as the “book people” we are, automatically assume that the rather anti-social behaviour of a family sitting together in a room, each reading his or her own book is healthy, while each person staring at his or her own screen is somehow perverse. I would argue that to an oral culture, both are equally unnatural.

I appreciate Tapscott’s passion on this topic, and I think he’s a necessary counter-balance to the fear-mongering that seems to go on so much these days. I also agree with his concern over privacy issues, though it does seem a bit strange that this is his only big concern in his otherwise positive view of the effect of digital technology. Perhaps he digs into this issue a bit more later in the book.

Don Tapscott’s text was particularly refreshing for me because what I have been listening in the school environment is a apocalyptic vision of the new generations. Teachers complain all the time about the difficulties to reach these hyperactive, deconcentrated and technological child. In this sense, what I have been listening is have being theorized in Mark Bauerline y Nicholas Carr. In very pedestrian words we could said that represent the idea that “it’s always best in the past”.  I share with Tapscott that teachers must change the way that they have been making classes, they must perform classes centered in the students, where the the cooperation must be central when they plan the learning activities and in this way develop the great talents that new generations have.

But one of the things that I find particularly disturbing in the text of Tapscott is the generalizations that he made about the ages where the Net Generation began.  I know that all the study is centered in North America, but was impossible not to   contrast the difference between this specific point of view and the relation with technology-age in my country, particularly in all the little stories that were interspersed in the chapters where was reflected a specific way of living and I can only see this kind of behaviors in a very particular social class: the very rich one (only the 8% of my country).

In this sense I find more appropriated the description that appears in the introduction of Palfrey & Gasser’s book “Born Digital”: “This narrative is about those who wear earbuds of an iPod on the subway to their first job, not those of us who still remember how to operate a Sony Walkman or remember buying LPs or eight-track tapes.” (4) Here the most important characteristic of the definition is not the age but the things the people do with the technologies they have.

This, I think, is a key point because even if I could be considered as a part of the Net Generation according to Tapscott’s words, this “community” is not so extended in my country. There the materials and technologies are so expensive that just a small part of the population can access to this goods. In this sense, the more I was reading the article, more I felt part of the Boomer Generation in  how they relate with technology (how much time I watched television when I was a child, the way I searched for YouTube videos, and how many times I posted in Facebook) than with Net Generation.

Therefore, I believe that the difference between generations are centered in the economic development and possibility of use of technologies in each country and not in the age of every person.