A Whole New World! Response to Net Smart Chapter 4

"If you've never read any business case histories, but if you've run a guild, or organized a raid, or spent time resolving drama and disputes in World of Warcraft, your mind-set is well prepared for the real world in a very different way than a college MBA would be prepared to run a company."

This quote that Rheingold cites from Joi Ito in Chapter 4 of Net Smart is a telling representation of our 21st century Digital Age. We live in a changed world, and it is fascinating to me that the technologies that were once seen as merely being fun are now beginning to have a different perception in mainstream society. This isn't to say that just anyone should go out and list World of Warcraft in the "Relevant Experience" field of his or her resume, but it's an interesting concept. It's nice to see that there are acknowledged benefits to "nerd culture."

There are two things that I continually appreciate about Rheingold. Firstly, as I have mentioned before, he refuses to make the digital world into a bogeyman, and he achieves this by continually linking present advancements to those of the past. For example, he says that "Social media are part of a lineage that connects cave paintings to alphabets to hyperlinks." I think that this is a brilliant comparison, and I think that if anything could sooth the worries of those who aren't prepared for digital advancements, this might solve the problem. I quoted that on my Twitter for a reason, it really made me think!

The second thing that I appreciate about Rheingold's study of the online world, is that he has fully immersed himself in it. When I am reading this book, I don't sense the words of a lofty academic reflecting on the pleasures of the "youths." Rheingold explains his own experience in virtual communities, and defends them as real places in which one can find friendship and community. This is a beautiful asset of the online world, and it is nice to see it noticed and appreciated for what it is.

His discussion of the differences between the concepts of social "networks" and social "communities" was also interesting to me. It's not something I ever considered, but it is certainly true that there is a difference between the etiquette that is required for participation in each. There may be a huge difference, for example, in the network of classmates and coworkers that one forms on his Facebook, and the fandom community that he is a part of on Tumblr. There are different rules governing different online interactions, just as there are for the face-to-face interactions of daily life. Rheingold offers several helpful tips throughout this chapter, but his tips for behavior in online communities really struck me as being important for two reasons. First, many people turn to virtual communities, and it is good to know basic etiquette. Second, it may not be obvious when it's done right, but it is excruciatingly obvious when it is done wrong.

Pictured: Facebook done wrong.

Access to the internet brings people together and enables them to stand together for causes that they believe in. The discussion on crowdsourcing brought to mind websites such as GoFundMe, Kickstarter  and Indiegogo, to name just a few. These sites have enabled dreams to become realities for so many people through the donations of supporters who are interested in the ideas of their peers. I especially liked Rheingold's classification of crowdsourcing as "playbor orgaized by and for the playborers' benefit." Wikipedia is my personal favorite example of crowdsourcing and collaboration that he discusses, because it was, for so long, such a bad word in society. If most teachers I had growing up were to define Wikipedia it would probably be as follows: "Wikipedia: n. The literal devil that leads students to sin." On the contrary, instead of collaboration leading to mass chaos, the majority of people who edit Wikipedia pages are educated, knowledgeable, and quickly fix any mistakes or pranks that may appear. While Wikipedia, like all sources, must be verified, it is an incredible example of what happens when people join together to contribute. While the system is, as Rheingold says, vulnerable to the world, the world is also what makes it invulnerable. What a cool notion!

Rosenberg and Postman's Articles

In the Context of Web Context:


I found that this article offered helpful tips on how to navigate the web. Something that I have found to be more and more of a problem in my post-graduate life is stepping into the world outside the college bubble and facing the onslaught of both news and "news." Differentiating between good and bad sources is crucial-- as an example, just today I was researching the Zika disease that has become so prevalent. I noted that along with major news sites, there was an article about it on Buzzfeed. Nothing against the writer, but when I think "reliable," Buzzfeed isn't the first website to come to mind.
Learning how to sort through all the junk is a crucial skill, and I especially will remember "whois." I believe Rheingold mentioned that resource as well, and I have already bookmarked it for future use.
Rosenberg also mentioned other internet checks and balances that I had never thought of, such as looking up the site in Internet Archive, and looking into the source code. These are just further tools that will be helpful additions to my skill arsenal.


How's Your Bullshit Detector?


Hmmm. As for this article.
Although I can certainly relate to the frustration expressed by Stephen Pizzo, I felt that it wasn't a very worthy introduction to the piece that followed. It was extremely opinionated and rather scattered. In fact, I was fairly confused at first as to what I was reading, before I recognized it as a lead-in to the main point, Postman's address.
On that note, I'll turn to Postman. I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly with the first few paragraphs of his address. I believe that Hemingway would be proud of the way in which his famous phrase has been expounded upon, because crap detection is an important skill to have. Bullshit wastes everyone's time and, looking at this from the perspective of a future professor, I don't want to waste my students' time, or my own.
I was totally on board with the points Postman made about pomposity and inanity- my favorite part of the article was as follows,

"The press and air waves are filled with the featured and prime-time statements from people who are in no position to render informed judgments on what they are talking about and yet render them with elan and, above all, sincerity. Inanity, then, is ignorance presented in the cloak of sincerity."

I couldn't agree more, this is extremely frustrating to me and I was glad to hear it said so eloquently.

However, I started losing Postman's train of thought as he started talking about "Eichmannism," and had to do some research on the side to understand that reference, which distracted me from the point of the article. When he went on to superstition, he lost me completely. I felt that his points went from objective to opinionated. At first the address was factual and engaging, but when he introduced superstition, it got rather meta and he lost me.
Further, I have to pose the question-- is it the job of the teacher to educate the youth along such subjective lines? Perhaps it is the job of the teacher to instruct against writing bullshit that purposely wastes the time of everyone involved, but I would ague that it is not the job of the teacher to educate subjective thought.

I look forward to discussing this article further in class.

Net Smart: Intro-Ch. 3 Reading Response

And thus begins my first blog-post of the 2016 Spring Semester, for ENG 5085, New Media Studies. The first book we are looking into this semester is Howard Rheingold's Net Smart: How to Thrive Online. My immediate reaction to this book was excitement, as I have learned that Rheingold is one of the pioneers of the internet, having been an active enthusiast and participant since the 1970s. I personally believe that my generation (heyy 90s babies!) were among the first to truly explore the established internet, but Rheingold was a part of it since it put the typewriter out of business. In my opinion, that's pretty cool.

Delving into the book, I was immediately drawn in by the Introduction. Right off the bat, Rheingold establishes his background and addresses the fears that people have upon our entrance into the digital age. To pretend that that the new technologies we have at hand aren't something totally new and understandably daunting would be foolish. Students now know more than their teachers about ever-emerging technologies, and children know more than their parents about a world that is totally new. My generation fell into this new world at an odd time, because I can remember both sides-- I remember getting in trouble for passing paper notes, as well as texting in class. For this reason as well, I can see the benefits of the old as well as the new. I grew up experiencing the firsthand excitement of the next astonishing technological development (from the Nokia 3310 to the iPhone 6, from overheard projectors to white boards). At the same time, when I look back, I am blown away, and wonder how it all happened so fast.  For this reason I certainly agree with Rheingold that it is crucial to be aware and mindful of the new world.

Chapter 1, "Attention!", focuses largely on mindfulness: re: not allowing the digital world to only serve as a series of click-bait article and rabbit holes. I really enjoy reading about psychology, and I liked that Rheingold spent a lot of time talking about the mental drive behind attention, memory, and the things that distract us. I spend a lot of time getting distracted by the digital world, and it was interesting to read the scientific facts behind distractions. For example, the waste of time that happens when your attention shifts between tasks, and how much potential productivity gets thrown to the way-side.

I also found Rheingold's use of historical tie-ins to be utterly fascinating. He cites Claude Fischer as noting that 100 years ago people were worried about the societal implications of the telephone and, even further back, Plato's Phaedrus from the fifth century, wherein Plato noted people's fears of transcribing spoken word to written form. As it has happened in the past, people must learn where to focus their attention in order to make the most out of these new tools. There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun.

That brings us to Chapter 2, "Crap Detection," or, as I like to call it, "Everybody Lies" (thank you, Dr. House). To be perfectly honest, as a person who has grown up in the 21st century, this chapter didn't strike me as anything hugely revolutionary. There is a lot of nonsense on the internet, and it is much easier to be satisfied with a surface level search, than to put in the work required to confirm that the facts are correct. However, it is very true that facts must be verified, and many things are hugely biased, innocently mistaken, or unapologetically false. I found his facts on search engine optimization to be interesting, as well as all the work that goes into securing a first page search result. I will also be using some of the websites he mentioned when I need to confirm the reliability of facts found online.

Once again, I was interested by Rheingold's ties to the past. He cites the writing of Denis Diderot, wherein Diderot speaks of the necessity for the categorization of written information (spoiler alert-- this leads to the encyclopedia). In this world too, we have have a wealth of knowledge and must learn how to deal with it, and that progress is happening.

In the final chapter for this entry, Chapter 3, Participation Power, Rheingold once again pulls from the past to set a juxtaposition against the current digital world. He looks back as recently as 1991 to show how much power there is to be had in the ability to participate via the digital world. Something like video making, which was once restricted to a set group of people, is now something that anyone with enough creative talent and technological know-how can access. This point also made me consider on a larger scale. Right now we are facing another presidential election and, prior to Obama, social media presence was not required or even expected of a potential candidate. Now, it is expected. How our values have changed!

I greatly enjoyed reading the study of internet culture from a scholarly perspective, and I found Rheingold's two communities, friendship and interest, to be exceedingly accurate. One line I thought to be well stated was, "All the cool kids and wannabes are likely to be found in a friendship-driven community. Interest-driven participation, however, is full of people who are not popular or mainstream in their local youth culture" (118). This is a very accurate summation of internet culture and struck home for me- I'm still friends with a girl in California that I've never met in person, I met 8 years ago on a Facebook fanpage for Twilight (and hush, I was 14 and Twilight was very popular)! It is a very different world than it once was, and whether is it for the sake of friendship, interest, or rallying behind a cause, the power of participation cannot be taken for granted.

I look forward to discussing further throughout the semester. See you in class!