Inquiry Into Digital Content #3a: Research that Reverberates

Michael Wesch: Mediated Culture

Recorded at UX Week 2010 from YouTube

The beauty of the current moment

is that new media has thrown all of us

as educators

into just this kind of

question-asking, bias-busting, assumption-exposing

environment.

There are no easy answers

but we can at least be thankful

for the questions that drive us on.

(Jeannette, adapted from Wesch, 2009)

Michael Wesch emphasizes, through his research, that the various media mediate our culture or translate and define the way we relate to others.  As he relates, various forms of media shape what is said; how it is said; who is able and can say it; and who is able and can receive it.  In addition how the "knowledge," or what has been said, is stored can determine who can access it.  Media shape how we experience the world.  It is, however, not to say that we all experience this is the same manner: many cultures and many pockets of societies will have a differential access to the stored knowledge of the world and therefore we may unknowingly promote, not only unequal access but also multiple complexities of understanding about how the world is or even how it should be.

My Blythe Family by Valeri-DBF

The proliferation and increasingly wide-spread use of digital technologies may eventually reduce these differences but, in so doing, possibly flatten our sense of the world, encouraging a sameness that is perpetuated by those very same liberating technologies.  For example, more of the world's population will be influenced by the tone set by the interconnected media. 

Flowers, Central Kiev by Maistora

I suppose it illustrates two sides of the communication coin:

heads we create a wonderfully connected and growing networked community that is liberating and culturally enriching; tails we create a flattened reality that subsumes differences under a powerful influencing media.  And so, will we eventually shape many cultures or one overriding and powerful one?

I have noticed the tendency of many to hotly defend any raqueries offered, or mild differences of opinion expressed, regarding the positives of social digital technologies:  it is either seen as an instance of digital ignorance based on age or experience or a lack of a mind-shift that we should and have-to embrace as, in my opinion, we allow technology to lead us rather than the other way around. There should always be room for healthy discourse around the influences, both positive and negative, of any technology that humanity is tempted to embrace: the pros and cons, the fors and againsts are an essential aspect of using technology wisely and with informed judgement. This is especially important for educators who make such choices, sometimes on a snap of the fingers:  it is cool after all!  We should not condemn caution.  As danah boyd (2010),  intimates:

I've been blogging for 13 years, determined to communicate to the world what I've had the privilege of witnessing.  I love technology but I also love to be critical of technology.  What keeps me up at night is trying to make sense of how social media transforms society and, more importantly, what it helps make visible about humanity. Technophobes love to talk about how technology is ruining everything and technophiles obsess over how everything is radically different.  I like to wade through the extremes to see the subtle inflection points. Reality is always in the details.

In the video above, Wesch tells of the consequences to a particular culture that begins to embrace technology just because they can: the very foundations that the culture is based upon shifts dramatically and affects all of the institutions of this Papua New Guinea community.  I wonder if this was a culmination of wise and informed judgement or just the consequential re-sorting action of introduced technology: in this case writing. We ourselves are experiencing this same action as we embrace more and more of the online communication structures together with the plethora of creative tools for connecting and creating across distances.  Wesch tells of the points made from Lee Rainie who studied research conducted by Elizabeth Eisenstein (1979) regarding the effects on society of the introduction of the printing press.  I rewrite them here as they are particularly pertinent to our own 21st century re-sorting:

1. The role of experts are challenged by newly empowered voices
2. New institutions emerge to deal with changes happening
3. Struggles to revise social and legal norms ensue
4. Concepts of identity and community multiply
5. New forms of language arise

Literacy in a Digital Habitat by Tahani, Eryn, Heather, Robin, & Jeannette

Hence, the power of today's technologies embolden, and afford a platform for, many voices that have  traditionally been silenced or at least discounted; moves to reform our schools and universities in a ploy to harness the possibilities inherent in new technologies for education; we experience much debate and furor over copyright legislation and the establishment of online sites devoted to "no loopholes" sharing and remixing; and the use of logos, emoticons, acronyms and the like as new communication forms.  I would probably add the increased re-reliance and re-recognition of the power of visuals and sound as languages of communication.

Interestingly, collecting digital data as methodology for qualitative research studies, in particular for ethnographic/anthropological inquiries, presents its own ethical and moral implications, and dilemmas around what it means to own and control information.  Quoting dana boyd (2010) once more: 

 What we are seeing is extremely messy. Observing people's data traces gives no indication of whether or not they are trying to be public or private. You need to understand their intentions, how they're interpreting a technological system, and what they're trying to do to make it work for them.  Each of you...needs to think through the implications and ethics of your decisions, of what it means to invade someone's privacy, or how your presumptions about someone's publicity may actually affect them. You are shaping the future. How you handle these challenging issues will affect a generation. Make sure you're creating the future you want to live in. 

To conclude: from his studies within cultural anthropology Wesch (2007) states, 

If we don't understand our digital technology and its effects, it can actually make humans and human needs even more invisible than ever before.  But the technology also creates a remarkable opportunity for us to make a profound difference in the world.

So May I Introduce to you by Andrea Joseph

References:

Battelle J. (2007). A Brief Interview with Michael Wesch at URL  http://tinyurl.com/3g8sh4t

boyd, d. (2010). Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity. SXSW. Austin, Texas, March 13, 2010: Keynote address at URL http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/2010/SXSW2010.html 

Wesch, M. (2009). From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-able: Learning in New Media Environments. Academic Commons at URL http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/knowledgable-knowledge-able