UberNoggin

Mark and I are in San Antonio at the ELI Annual conference. The program is super exciting with sessions on Second Life, social networking, haptic devices, and more. First up, Henry Jenkin’s talk about Wikipedia. Here are my notes from the session:

• Wikipedia and other web 2.0 platforms are the equivalent of the rock n’ roll movement of previous generations
• Importance of balance between enthusiasm for new media and understanding the cultural complications of the changes we’re living in
• Importance of learning cultural and digital literacy and participation
• Traditional literacy is fundamental and then is augmented and expanded by new media literacy
• Participatory culture: low barriers to entry, support for sharing, informal mentorship, value for contributions, degree of social connection between participants
• Less hierarchy between levels of experience in participatory culture, negates importance of age difference and places the emphasis on skills and contributions
• New media literacies are focused on social/communal literacy skills
• Focus moving from media effects to media ethics
• New Media skills translate well offline as well as they do online
• Challenges:
  • Participation gap: unequal access of youths to the opportunities, experiences, skills, and knowledge that will prepare them for full participation in the world of tomorrow
  • Transparency problem: the challenges young people face in learning to see clearly the ways media shape our perceptions of the world
  • Ethics Challenge: The breakdown of traditional forms of professional training and socialization which might prepare young people for their increasingly public roles as media makers and community participants
• How do we engage in the potentials of new media rather than shut the door on them?
• Collective intelligence, judgement, networking, negotiation: skills in wikipedia literacy
• Young people should overcome their excitement to learn to be cynical and Adults must learn to accept the possibilities of new media forms
• Wikipedia is something we DO, not something we consume. We participate in it, not just extract info
• The aura of the encyclopedia is undeserved.
• The wikipedia process is not to just collect knowledge but to encourage people to think about the process of knowledge making
• Wikiality is an important idea for information literacy
• Jumping from one topic to another via Wikipedia links to display how ideas, cultures, and subject areas are connected

**posting now due to lack of battery juice! I’ll post more complete notes later.

OMG! Have you ever wanted to shout at a computer screen? To scream at a page’s author across space and time and just yell “No!” This morning I’m in a rage about a totally crappy article published in the Telegraph. Dr. Aric Sigman is totally off his academic rocker. Among his claims:

• 25% of five year olds own a computer
• There is a direct correlation between time spent watching “screens” (he doesn’t differentiate between computer and TV) and school shootings, suicide, loneliness and depression
• Parents who like the same music as their kids are contributing to abnormality and antisocial behavior

Oh boy! Where do I begin?
First, Sigman cites stat after stat in the beginning of the article without citing a source. One can only hope that he’s not pulling these from the ten-year old “Internet Paradox” study that he uses for the rest of his argument. Yes, TEN years! The study by Kraut et al (see citation below) has even been questioned by its own authors and admitted to be only a rudimentary effort to explain early effects of the internet on the social lives of users. Their follow up study three years later basically disproved their early findings and created new gaps in the study. It’s just sloppy for Sigman to cite the 1998 article as any kind of credible study. It’s irrelevant to today’s internet usage and even the authors of the study have argued against their own early findings.
Second, Sigman who researches television watching patterns and that medium’s effect, doesn’t differentiate between television, a one-way medium, and the internet, a many-to-many medium in his discussions of “screens.” There’s a massive difference between sitting passively watching tv and being engaged in an MMORPG, chat room, IM, blog etc. Findings from one medium are about as applicable to other as comparing effects of cans on string and cell phones.
Finally, Sigman’s approach completely ignores the benefits for families who use the internet together. He assumes that all internet users are mole-like people who stare into a screen in total isolation and that children who use online technologies, like Webkins etc, don’t share those experiences with their parents and siblings.
This is an old, uninformed argument. The same anti-social argument has been made for writing (Aristotle), telephones, television…you name it. We could even say that home air conditioners, which caused folks to spend their evenings inside instead of on their front porch, are anti-social inventions.
What’s the point? Researchers have a responsibility to be far more informed than Sigman displays in this Telegraph piece.

Kraut, R., Patterson, M., Lundmark, V., Kiesler, S., Mukopadhyay, T., & Scherlis, W. (1998). Internet Paradox: A Social Technology That Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-Being? American Psychologist, 53(9), 1017-1031.

Sometimes I sleep in. Other times I’m up at 3am. I work in pjs as much as I work in a suit and heels (ok, I don’t wear high-heels but you know what I mean). I’m an information worker, a web-citizen, a member of the digirati and I work where I want, when I want, and I get a whole lot done. I’ve never punched a time card or kept a time sheet but the folks I work with have no doubt that I work hard. How do they know? Results.

The increases in the information economy have spurred a lot of discussion about how best to manage people like me. People who work as well at home as in the car or in the office. Recently mega-store Best Buy instituted a new policy with their corporate employees. ROWE (Results Only Work Environment), a brilliant idea developed by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, encourages employees to work as they work best which means that there is less emphasis on “when” and “where” and a whole lot more on “what”. Employees are evaluated on what they get done, projects they complete, and their overall productiveness without the interference of attendance, meetings and other artificial metrics that really don’t tell us much about how well an employee contributes to a company’s overall goals.

Molly wrote more about ROWE here. Her assessment is right on. ROWE, and other ideas like it, are signs that corporate America is waking up to how work is really done and technology plays a huge role in this change. Folks like Next Generation Consulting have been preaching these changes for years (Go read Rebecca Ryan’s Live First, Work Second. Go! Go now!). Changes in the work place that respect that employees are people. Going to the bank when it’s open shouldn’t be a privilege. Going to the doctor shouldn’t require a vacation day. This seems to be common sense, humane behavior that we can all get behind but how do we make it really work?

Technology. That’s how!

If I’m available for phone calls while waiting at the BMV, if I can reply to an email while sitting at the airport, then I’m not really away from my desk. My desk isn’t a piece of wood with a chair, my desk is a collection of tools that I use to stay in touch with people and information. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. “Sarah, if you can work anywhere anytime then won’t you HAVE to work anywhere anytime?” And the answer is “Yes and No.” Just because I can doesn’t mean I have to. That’s the beauty of email, voicemail, IM etc. It’s still there waiting when you’re ready to respond. I can check email at my daughter’s dance recital but I don’t have to. If it’s an hour out of my traditional work day then I’ll more than make it up later in the day when the recital is over. Things will still get done.

So how do we make things change? How do we, the digirati, help the non-techy-you-must-be-at-your-desk-to-work folks feel a bit more comfortable with a new work force that doesn’t believe in desks? What do you think?

This makes me giggle! Ah the wonders of technology. The iphone firmware upgrade lets you bookmark webpages on the phone’s front page. A little file magic and Voila! My logo is the bookmark icon for my homepage!

To see other folks cheesing over their logos on the iphone click these:

- O’Reilly

-BoingBoing

Instructions for creating your own logo 

I do believe that this makes me the coolest chick on the block this morning! Woot!

Listening to Bob Edwards on XNPR the other day I heard a great interview with child psychologist David Anderegg about his new book Nerds: Who Are They and Why We Need More of Them.  Anderegg interviewed kids from 6th to 9th grade about nerds, what makes someone a nerd etc. In the interview he points out that nerds are often interested in subject matter that makes others bored, that nerds aren’t considered sexy or socially attractive. The kids mentioned that nerds wear pocket protectors and glasses, are usually male and interested in technology. All the stereotypes from “Revenge of the Nerds” that we’re all familiar with.

What piqued my interest was that the author didn’t seem to differentiate between nerds and geeks and I wonder if the line between them is blurring as technology enters the center of our culture rather than a fringe area of knowledge relegated to programmers living in their parent’s basement. Hackers are sexy in the media. Blogs that feature geeky topics (like BoingBoing, GeekDad, and LifeHacker) are handy to more than just nerds. Gizmos and gadgets are touted as boons to productivity and success, not relegated to the few who understand them. So the pocket-protecting wearing fringe have become the masses. The ramifications are huge.

One of my daughters (6 years old), when asked what Mommy does for a living, answers proudly “My mommy is a geek!” She understands that  technology is cool, that it makes mommy successful, and that computers are fun. I don’t think that she’d answer Anderegg’s questions the same. An interest in a topic that others find boring just doesn’t really exist anymore. Star Trek fans have hundreds of websites to use to connect to one another. Chess fanatics play online and discuss strategy. Interests that used to be considered “nerdy” can be mainstream when we have an unlimited amount of information channels, social networks, and other technologies that bring people together around common interest.

What do you think? Will there even be nerds and geeks in five years? Will the meanings of the terms change? Will it be acceptable, in a few years, to admit “I just don’t understand technology. I’m not geeky”?

NYT Article about MTV’s Virtual Lower East Side (VLES). VLES is an interesting response to the independent music scene on MySpace and other social sites (which seem to be faltering big time!). In VLES, and its accompanying social network site, bands and fans meet up to support their favorite music, vote for up and coming groups, watch those groups in virtual clubs with the hope that enough popularity will get them gigs in the real versions and maybe even (gasp!) a spot on MTV.

So, being the nutsy person that I am, I couldn’t help but run off and download the VLES software and make myself an avatar. It was, needless to say, very interesting. I had the choice of about five haircuts in five natural colors (so disappointing for us pink-haired folks), about a hundred clothing options, skin color, and the choice of five celebrity faces. I chose “The Portman” because “The Ricci” had anime-sized eyes. I could choose my height but there was no slider for body shape. Everyone is eating-disorder-skinny in VLES.

Here’s my avatar in her Herby Hancock tank top and red Joan Jett haircut.

She’s “like sooo New York! OMG!” When I logged in I was surprised to see that VLES was announcing that CSS (that Brazilian band who sings the song about music on the new Ipod commercials) would be playing.

Log-in screen with concert announcement and menu for choosing the club you’d like to pop in to.

It’s grungy; it’s emo; it’s an opportunity to market to a self-selected audience of people who like virtual worlds, socializing, and new music. In my opinion, VLES is a pretty good idea. But will it work?