new media
“The wind was blowing harder now, and the snow was coming down in thick flurries, which quickly turned the fronts of their clothes white and made it difficult either to see or hear; but Dora thought she heard a snatch of music. Then one of the little boys started jumping up and down and pointing. 'Look! Look! They're dancing! They're dancing!' Everyone looked where the little boy was pointing. On the far side of the snow-field, next to the fir trees, the snowmen and snow-women were moving.”
“They landed in a huge circle of white dust, with a rim of sharp-looking rocks all the way round the outside. Everything was bathed in harsh colourless light, like moonlight but ten times as powerful. In the middle of the circle of rock was a massive square stone slab, and on the slab, flat on his back, lay a giant with his eyes closed.”
The children fly with some owls to the moon, where they meet the Queen of the Night and hear the story of Pandora and Prometheus. The seventh chapter of twelve.
Below is my response to this post/presentation by Stowe Boyd. Looking back, I feel my criticism is a bit pointed, but I guess I'm beginning to feel frustrated by conversations that layout the importance of new media for our collective future without providing any concrete steps that can lead us there.
Please understand, I think Stowe truly has his fingers on the pulse of Western culture. He is a keen observer of society and the associated intricacies and subtleties that impact they way we live and breath. I guess I just want expect pioneering thought leaders to do more. Let's stop talking about affordances, and instead show them. We've had plenty of time to assess the situation, the time is now for action.
Am I being off base here? Have I finally flipped? Am I just having a "bad day?" Perhaps. In the end, I feel that showing is often more important than telling -- especially for someone like myself who has heard this same story for many years.
I applaud your efforts and thank you for sharing your presentation.
I found the points presented to be on the mark, but you are focusing on new media affordances, on theoretical possibilities of a hyperconnected reality, and not as much on how to actualize said affordances. Perhaps that will be in the book, but so much of this has been said in so many different ways -- when are the social media heavy-hitters like yourself going to focus on practical applications, on social action, instead of talking about the need or possibility thereof?
I apologize if I appear to be overly pedantic. I guess I'm just tired of seeing the same ideas, the same promises, being replayed over and over for the past 10-15 years about the future and social software.
Your analysis is sharp and your observations are critical. I guess I'm also used to seeing citations for such statements as "We have learned that trust and reputation is personal, non-transferable." Who says this? What research are your referring to?
I teach educators and students how to decode new media, how to validate and evaluate information they find on the Web. I also teach people to understand that such skills are not individual, but cultural. So I think in many ways we are on the same page. I guess that's why I want to see not just a summary of where we are and where we need to go; but instead I want to see such an analysis with an accompanying road map for how to get there. What steps should we be taking to move ourselves in the prescribed direction? Should we be so prescriptive? Should we be constructing this new reality from the ground up? Or do we need help from the centroids, the hierarchies that are in place?
I offer this feedback as someone who recognizes your power and influence in new media markets. Since I am only reading your notes, I am sure there was much more presented in your talk that addresses some of my concerns.
Please know that as an edgling, I am one with you and all of the other edglings trying to make an impact on the centroids (that's why I am dedicated to working with the centroids' children and their children's teachers). But we need more maps, more sharing of what is working in addition to our understanding of what is possible.
Keep rocking...
Chris
I have been listening in to several conversations of late that have been pondering our collective fate in light of new social media affordances. It's not just politics or education or celebrity news that's driving this train. It seems the potential to organize, act, and solve problems has never been greater given new social media applications. And given the relative trajectory of social media adoption across the globe, things appear to be potentially getting brighter.
Since we have the ability to organize in a ridiculously easy fashion (Paquet, 2002), the next step involves developing new forms of group leadership. Managing people, activity, and information is no small feat; thus, while new social tools are re-vising the way we do our work, new organizational models are required that, for the most part, have yet to be invented. I look forward to reading the research that examines how to best manage and leverage new media applications for social action in profit and non-profit arenas. However, with the pace of new application development and deployment being what it is, it seems difficult in many cases to stay on top of rigorously assessing these new media applications, hence functional research is often years off.
A different solution might be turning social media research over to the users themselves. This is precisely how the notion of action research evolved. Imagine having school children studying the effects/affects, and impacts of social media in mathematics, biology, economics, in literature, as well as the communities within which they participate. Imagine K-12 school children using social media to study social media and the world they live in. Of course, teaching children how to set up, validate, and evaluate experiments with rigor and aplomb requires teachers to be capable of doing such, as well. So the reality there points back to the caliber and quality of educational professionals and what we are doing as a country to ensure that we are providing our youth the best education possible (and not simply what they can afford). As such, it is my belief that school curricula need to be re-written to allow learners and educators to become researchers of, as well as producers of knowledge and information, and not just consumers thereof.
So, if this is something you believe in, you might ask yourself: What am I going to do to alter this reality?
What are your expectations? How are you going to make these changes happen? Who do you need to better educate? What's is your timeline? What resources will you need?
Somewhere in the distance, I can hear John Henry's hammer ring.... Just don't swing yourself too hard and I look forward to reading your results.
Bill Moyers is ambushed by a "reporter" for The O'Reilly Factor, and turns the tables on him with the help of a gaggle of reporters surrounding the guy. The end of the video is fantastic as the O'Reilly warrior is chased down by reporters asking questions about his journalistic ethics.
Try not to cringe!
"The mouse did seem to be waiting: instead of scampering into the darkness it held itself almost completely still, except for small attentive movements of its ears and the constant trembling of its whiskers."
On the run from Urizen's henchmen, the children undertake a hazardous underground journey. At the bottom of a frozen cavern, they find out more about one of the clue cards.
Putting blogger, Emily Gould, on the cover of last Sunday's New York Times Magazine set off a firestorm among the chattering classes of traditional media and the blogosphere.
The Los Angeles Times discusses the controversy and whether Ms. Gould's blog-fueled fame/exhibitionism is worthy of such prized New York Times real estate.
Marcia Meier, director of the Santa Barbara Writer's Conference, writes in the Huffington Post, "At Least She's Writing..." in an article that makes arguments Will Richardson might share.
New on The Hyperliterature Exchange for May 2008: a review of 'Le Reprobateur/The Reprover' by Francois Coulon.
"Le Reprobateur... exudes selfconfidence, playfulness and humour; it attempts to do a lot of things at once, and by and large it succeeds in everything it attempts..."
To read the whole review, go to http://www.hyperex.co.uk/reviewreprobateur.php .
