social media

My gadgets and I

Its difficult not to think about digital culture after reading Jaron Lanier‘s book You are not a Gadget. He captures me at once with his discussion on how we are locked into our technological settings by previous design decisions. These decisions may not be the best but they might have been the best at the time. To overcome their flaws we build work-arounds and use more power but at the heart of the system lie flaws which are limiting us and controlling our ability to develop.

The problem, according to Lanier, is that we continued to develop our gadgets and became so impressed with them that two things happened. First we began to think that the gadgets we actually doing the work (computer beats chess player) and not realizing that it was the programmers et al doing the work (programming team & chess experts together beat chess player). Second the popularity of gadgets and applications were not increasing our freedom and development. The iPad & Facebook (just to pick 2) are not freeing us but limiting our choices of action.

Obviously digital culture, web2.0 and social media are not high on Lanier’s list of popular ideas. The hive mind lacks intelligence and the collaboration is all about remixing bits of information without producing anything new. Individuals produce – the hive iterates.

But this is where he loses me. Critiquing the masses for not being innovative or exiting smacks of arrogance – they (the mob) just dont get the sophistication of what the web could be? Sure, we (the mob) are controlled by our iPhones and Twitter. Our communications are not totally free – but when were they ever free? Was there ever a period where the mass was more exciting than it is now? The mass collaboration of Wikipedia may not be producing new knowledge but encyclopedists never did. They are however providing information more efficiently than ever before.

Critiquing bloggers for not being memorable writers is equally unfair as 99% of all writers either never got published or are now out of our memories. Critiquing twitterers for not being deep is also to forget that 99% of all human communication is shallow and pointless (Hello, how are you? nice weather we’re having). The point is to establish relationships (real or imagined) and occasionally pass information of importance.

Sure we are not gadgets and I totally agree with the dangers of the lock-in and the fact that people not networks are the most important – but simply because we are controlled by our infrastructure (as was the medieval scribe) does not mean that we are pawns of our infrastructure.

We are not gadgets – but we may be too fond of them… but thats a different problem.

Read the book its an important addition to our understanding of how technology forms us. Read The Independent & New York Times review of Lanier’s You are not a Gadget

Posted on by mklang

Fame at last!

In December 2009 I wrote a positive text in my Swedish blog about the Norska Forbrukerrådet (Norwegian Consumer Council) and their decision to write a report and demand answers from the Norwegian Data Protection Authority on the role of social networking sites in relation to personal integrity. I ended the post with the words:

Detta är ett härligt exempel på socialt patos från en nationell aktör i en globaliserad nätbaserad värld.

Translated: This is a wonderful example of social pathos from a national actor in a globalized network-based world. Today I received an email from the Norska Forbrukerrådet. Partly they wanted to inform me that there report has been sent in:

Facebook operates in a virtually lawless sphere as far as data protection and terms of use are concerned. The terms and conditions are not made available and are subject to frequent changes by the company. The Consumer Council of Norway is therefore asking the Data Inspectorate to clarify what Facebook and other social networking sites can and cannot do under the law.

The complaint against Facebook/Zynga is here (in Norwegian) and their readable report on integrity & sociala medier is here (in English).

On a more personal note the mail contained some really cool news. The Consumer Council has taken the closing words from my original post and put them on a t-shirt! This must be my best quote ever.

Posted on by mklang

Boyd's rant on Facebook integrity

I should have posted this last week but things happened. Anyway Danah Boyd’s Facebook and “radical transparency” (a rant) is an excellent contribution to the Facebook integrity discussion. In particular I like…

What pisses me off the most are the numbers of people who feel trapped. Not because they don’t have another choice. (Technically, they do.) But because they feel like they don’t. They have invested time, energy, resources, into building Facebook what it is. They don’t trust the service, are concerned about it, and are just hoping the problems will go away. It pains me how many people are living like ostriches. If we don’t look, it doesn’t exist, right?? This isn’t good for society. Forcing people into being exposed isn’t good for society. Outting people isn’t good for society, turning people into mini-celebrities isn’t good for society. It isn’t good for individuals either. The psychological harm can be great. Just think of how many “heros” have killed themselves following the high levels of publicity they received.

Posted on by mklang

Please don't anger the natives

This week began with two very interesting local events on Social Media in Borås. First there was Mötesplats Social Media which was an attempt to introduce local politicians to social media questions, possibilities and probabilities. The lecturers were all excellent social medier users and observers (even yours truly) and it was lots of fun. Then on Tuesday SociaMediaPedia organized a series of short talks (adapted mini Pecha Kucha) around Social Media. My role was more to organize attempt to establish order and listen. Interesting stuff!

During the discussions one of the topics that came up was the digital divide which is claimed to exist between young and old (whatever do these epitaphs mean?) and then it was only natural to bring up the horrible term digital natives, digital immigrants and digital turists. All these terms were popularized by Marc Prensky and are completely horrific. And of course very popular. There were voices of reason among the crowd but at the same time the catchy phrase seemed to win over intelligent discussion.

There are several problems with the metaphor, not to mention the built in racism. In most languages, calling someone a native smacks of arrogance, a touch of racism and good old fashioned colonialism.

Who is the native? So who is the native and how does one become one? Obviously the idea here is that the youth of today are all tech-savvy and understand technology while the older generation is good at saying stuff like “I remember when…” and handling analog technology. Seriously what a load of dog doodoo. The fact that we lack common areas of interest is not a digital divide. Young people tend to have different tastes in music, love, hobbies, work, films, books than older people. Even Beethoven’s father probably complained at his sons taste in music.

Are they a group? The young are not a homogeneous group, but then again the question could be put forward if homogeneous groups actually exist at all? Does the Englishman really exist? What is it the natives are supposed to understand? This is the biggest problem with the metaphor. Yes, there are hoards of young folk who can easily send hundreds of text messages per day but does that identify them as digital? Does this mean that they are fundamentally different from those who can hardly use the mobile telephones?

The problem is that the idea of the digital native seems to be that they are (1) comfortable using all digital technology and, (2) understand all digital technology. This is most obviously wrong. The ability to be on Facebook does not prepare you for editing wikipedia, blogging or twitter. The ability to use wikipedia has nothing to do with being popular on twitter. And none of these abilities have anything to do with the ability to use the most of the functions in the simplest word processors.

The understanding of technology, how it works, what it means – in addition to its social, economic and cultural impact is quite often totally lost on these so-called natives. I mean no disrespect (even though saying this usually makes things worse) but being an enthusiastic user has no relation to understanding technology.

Metaphors are supposed to exist to help us understand complex ideas. When they do not fulfill this basic purpose they are useless or worse harmful to our understanding. A misguided metaphor is worse than no metaphor at all. And the concept of digital natives does not aid understanding –  it only creates barriers.

/RANT

Posted on by mklang