Information Artist Aaron Koblin interviewed (by someone else) and posted on the excellent inspirational blog brainpickings. These are a couple of important things he says that might be important for my research. The following are notes made coherent rather than temporal notes.
More computer processing and storage “what we’re seeing is richer and full content that’s contextually— that’s human”
The most important bit from this interview, for me, is what he talks about the components of digital storytelling: data and interface.
This book has very little to do with digital anything other than Baker briefly comments that now that video can be shot digitally, filmmakers have a tendency to film too much because film is cheaper to record, store, and transfer as digital cards can be used over and over. (Whilst I'd like to take issue with that statement, that's perhaps a diversion that doesn't need to be taken).
The book is primarily Baker's favourite filmmakers and the storytelling techniques they use that she likes best.
Beyond these complaints, these are some of the techniques she likes / recommends, some anecdotes shared from experienced documentarians that I find useful and insightful as well:
In my last post I said something horribly naive that as a tool, social media has the potential to be a 'great leveler'. Well, it appears it isn't (at least yet?)
I stumbled across this TED talk by Ethan Zuckerman (below), co-founder of GlobalVoices.org.
As it turns out, we self-segregate into groups even within social media. I thought I had a pretty diverse Twitter list, with news from all over the world. But it turns out, I probably don't.
Some points on self-selection in social media:
"A lot of these trending topics are segregated conversations."
"If you wanted to mix up who you were seeing on twitter, it's literally a click away. You click on that cookout tag there's a different conversation going on. But generally speaking most of us don't, we end up in these filter bubbles ... where we see the people we already know and people that are similar to people we already know... this wasn't how it was supposed to be."
11% of internet users in Brazil use Twitter. It's below 10% for both the US and the UK. 24% of Twitter users in the US are African-American, which is almost twice the actual demographic proporation in the US.
He explains that we have a tendency to only look at the framework and the infrastructure of globalisation, rather than how it actually operates.
"When we stop looking at the infrastructure that makes connection possible and we look at what actually happens, we realise that the world doesn't work the way we think it does."
Twitter falls into the same old trap of de-globalising media: "Our media is less global by the day." 37% down to 12 % global news on newscasts over 30 years.
News is still about rich nations and "places we've invaded."
"New media isn't actually helping us all that much."
'Wikipedia is heavily biased: most entries are geo-coded for US, Western Europe.'
He calls the perception most of us have about social media "imaginary cosmopolitanism." (Despite Twitter being used to counter political and social repression in recent years, is it possible those are blips? or do we need to separate political activism from whatever it is we are talking about here... everyday social media, social networks.)
The major trouble with this, he says, is that for the world economy to grow really and truly in the Haque sense of constructive capitalism-- based on innovation, social entrepreneurship, and business as a force for bettering the world-- is that we need to "stumble on to something you didn't know you needed."
He goes on, "after a while you need someone to bump you out of the flock." But this bumping isn't "algorithmic" -- which is good news for Pink's kind of conceptual professionals. Only people can bump us out of the flock because we all have different experiences and backgrounds and specialties in different things. Whilst Pink and Robinson say that we should have multiple skill sets, perhaps it's best to cultivate them within one uber specialisation.
Zuckerman says we need "bridge figures" who have "deep connections" in different worlds. But here's the important part of this bit, he implies that co-location and indeed, renewed co-location is important. Connections take cultivation and if there's one thing that managers with herds of 'at-home' workers have found is that everybody needs to feel they are part of the team which means meeting face to face every now and then. Moreover, it's difficult to learn about the changes in a place without visiting every now and then.
Some speculation: future professionals with have several homes in different cities, different countries.
Why this is important to my research: social media, being one component social functions like real, living social networks in being human driven, we still tend to self-select into groups.
This has something to do with network theory. I'll have to go back and re-read the Barabasi (unfortunately, it's in London and I'm still in Wisconsin) but I think that some of this will punch some holes in some of what he says.
I can relate it to Jane Bennett's work on man-made, physical object networks (and paraphrasing because once again, I don't have the book with me) in that man-made systems often take on lives of their own, function in a way that is other than intended instead or in addition to their intended functions. Zuckerman says, "When we stop looking at the infrastructure that makes connection possible and we look at what actually happens, we realise that the world doesn't work the way we think it does."
I'm not certain about all the implications of this for my research but right now I'm left with these questions:
how does social media really function?
how was it intended to function?
in the context of learning, how does/is it functioning as intended?
I'm wondering if we're talking past eachother the way statistics have misunderstandings sometimes-- causation versus correlation. Here's the first link, a criticism of Evgeny Morozov's book (which admittedly, I haven't read yet, but I am familiar with his pov from twitter) that says that actually, the internet isn't a force for democratic liberation. The second is a link to this blog, my last post about understanding social media in a network theory context: the system behind 'social' and the system behind 'media'-- how those work separately to understand how they work together rather than trying to characterise 'social media' as a singular thing.
@jeffjarvis and @evgenymorozov on whether Twitter as a social media tool is indeed an instrument of democracy, extent of 'freedom' of information.
Bettween is a very useful tool for tracking twitter coversations, FYI always refresh 3 times because it takes a while to find everything.
Considering 'freedom' in flow of information that social media allows, I personally appreciate that these deliberative discussions are taking place in public where geeks like me can watch as they unfold-- no hacking or leaking required.
Pundits like to talk about social media as it changes relationships between people-- indeed, deadens terms like relationship, friendship.
Every business, app (whether for entertainment, communication, and productivity), person seems to be trying to figure out how to integrate this structure into their everyday.
Is this a correct way to think of social media though? Is it something that's really and truly new? To what extent can it be separated from mobile technology?
My PhD at its core includes an examination of what social media is, so here's my first whack at it:
I want to question that it needs to be a good or bad thing. Pundits and journalists seem to like to talk about any technology as good or bad but technology is a thing, it's a tool. Whether a tool is good or bad depends upon the system in which it functions, and further, its functioning at a specific time (Bennett, 2008). Social media is a tool in a system of information (call it the internet) in a system of communication, where information is also a tool.
I've been trolling through the online mag Edutopia.com for articles on social media and learning. Social media as well as netiquette are becoming increasingly common place in classrooms. Indeed, Educase has case studies available that analyse social media in learning-- evidence suggests that social media improves learning because it gives students an emotional investment in and ownership over the topic they are learning about. Woohoo for agency. Thus, future generations of workers will work like no others; if we take a rosy outlook, companies will be poised to innovate and adapt at a faster pace as today's students are increasingly trained in Tony Wagner's 7 kinds of 21st century schooling.
But what about the intermediate term? What about today's workers?
Some schools today are utilising Personal Learning Networks (PLNs), essentially teaching students what professionals in have had to figure out for ourselves: how to construct digital information monitoring feeds (using RSS readers, iGoogle, twitter, etc).
On Edutopia, Vicki Davis writes, "Like an empty locker, the RSS reader starts off as a blank Web page, and students must learn how to seek out sources of information to fill the page that will make up their research. The PLN is never complete, but it evolves to meet the changing needs of each individual project."
That last bit is important-- "is never complete, but it evolves to meet the changing needs of each individual..."
Funny, I say "professionals" like all people do this, but I think the reality is that most of today's workforce hasn't figured out how to utilise the constant flow of information on the internet to augment their professional lives. To many the need isn't apparent. But most professions do require some kind of yearly continuing education, professionals cannot expect to stay in their jobs if they don't keep up to date with the latest information in their field.
My mother is a pharmacist, her continuing education comes in reading short reports, of 10-20 pages in length and then completing a likewise short multiple choice reading comprehension test. The learning she does from others only happens when she happens to talk to another pharmacist on the phone. The retail chain she works for prohibits live digital communication between professionals (and directly with customers)-- communication that might serve customers better. I had to put together my mother's iGoogle page and her RSS reader. She doesn't monitor these things. She isnt' certain (still) what they're for.
How do we 'teach' professionals and moreover show organisations that personal learning networks are needed for each and every worker they employ? (underlying assumption: it is right and necessary to do so).
What PLNs do organisations utilise now? Are they organic? Or a mashup of Facebook, Twitter, RSS readers, left to the responsibility of each and every worker-- should it be corporate policy to demand or simply to education each worker in social media?
One of the case studies I hope to include in my PhD is an experiment in social networks and behavioural change going on right now in some of the UK's governments ministries implementing low-carbon organisational behavioural change policy.
(In response to @Karen_Fu 's post "Postgrad or Not?" where she questions whether postgraduate education is the answer to real - world problems.)
I really struggled with the choice to pursue a PhD because in my experience academia is often impractical and non-applicable to the real world. It's not that the research academics do isn't interesting, but that they often can't communicate it to regular people in an effective way that leads to change or even awareness of the circumstances in which we live.
The purpose of academia-- much like one of the main purposes of journalism-- is to create a record of awareness of the world around us, the circumstances in which we exist at any given moment at time. But it needs to be more than that. If nothing comes of it, what's the point?
I have a bachelors degree and have completed coursework for a masters degree-- and still have no skills and am not hirable. I left university completely unprepared and unaware of what I would need to make any kind of living. It might not have been so bad in a better economic climate, in an era where journalism wasn't going through a period of creative self-destruction. I have been floundering around the labour market for a year and a half and since things are going nowhere I'm using my PhD to buy myself time to acquire real skills (fliming, video editing, motion graphics, statistics, and communications). I expect that my PhD will take me longer than four years because I don't intend to stop working whilst I research. This will be practical or I will not finish.
The nice thing about research degrees are that they give you time and therefore a freedom to make something of your research. Academia has been allowed to exist too long in impracticality. I call on all current PhD students to make certain that your degree ends in something intensely practical-- not just for you but for society as well. Blog as you research but put what you find in plain language so the dialogue is there for regular people to understand. Think about making your findings multimedia too. That's the freedom of the digital age we live in-- information can be more easily accessible but it's up to us to utilise it.
Tonight I had my first crack at presenting what I think my PhD is about. Here's a little video I made. I also showed Professor Michael Wesch's 'The Machine Is Using Us.'
Rather than explain what I think it's about, I'll just let you watch.
I also want to reflect on the discussion with the tutor and other students, the questions they have and the ones I'm left with -- where my research needs to go next.
First and foremost, I need to flush out the metrics of it, the final form of the interface.
__ in what context? inter-organisational, intra-organisational, public versus private sector, communities?
Probably need to define what I mean by social media and interactivity-- for example, is it enough to sign up to the network? no. I think we're looking for more than that, as users, as citizens, as professionals.
__define learning
__define what I mean by user-agency
Learning or behavioural change? or both?
__ does learning necessarily lead to behavioural change?
The biggest parts of my learning process need to be around learning process and engagement (public? employees?) and ethnography.
__if/how have people used social networks to explore / approach topics that are difficult for them? (like Islam, plenty of videos on youtube about what real Islam is... but plenty about what it isn't)
Network theory is pretty obviously applicable, but I'm not quite certain yet how or what it means.
I'm doing an MPhil (PhD?) as a component, after-thought thing to the '21Hours Experiment' at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Institute of Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship.
It will seek to test the premise of the documentary presentation formal: does a non-linear user-agency documentary format make difficult topics (social policies that threaten identities) more palatable?
February 1, 2011 