In a just released eBook, Mind Amplifier: Can Our Digital Tools Make Us Smarter?, Howard Reingold asks:
Instead of asking whether the Web and the various devices
connected to it are making us stupid, what if we could mindfully design and use
digital media to make us smarter? What if humans could build electronic tools
that leverage our ability to think, communicate, and cooperate?
How might we build media that will enable people to think and
collaborate in ways never before possible? What if using information media
knowledgeably could make us smarter as individuals, as societies, as a species?
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| Map of Utopia, 1516 |
If you think the above questions
smack of utopian dreams, you may be right. And yet. Almost 2 days ago, I posted
a guest blog entry by my friend John Lane on Eric, Breitenstein, the Water
Payton finalist who is first and foremost a passionate student in environmental
studies.
After I posted the blog I went into
some meetings and about 3 hours later I checked to see who might have viewed
the blog. In that 3-hour span over 2000 people had visited the site. In the
ensuing hours about 8000 more joined in. With the help of analytics I could see
that the community of Wofford had read what John had said. This has taught me
several things about social media. First, it demonstrates how close-knit a
small liberal arts school is. Once word got out that a great teacher had
written a wonderful profile of one of their own, the community came together
and read what was said.
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| Wofford College, photo from US News |
In this case, social media helped to create bonds among
a relatively small community by worldwide standards, but each one of these
Wofford students, faculty, and administrators had shared a common reading
experience. Such a thing is the dream that has been tried by many colleges and
universities for incoming students (a common reading experience) but many have
abandoned it because the students have yet to become full members of the
community and a long book during the time just before starting school often
does not come at the top of the list. Instead, this profile allowed the
community to share quickly great information and to feel a sense of community.
I also learned that sometimes the doomsayers
are wrong. It does not take a disaster or something scandalous to bring people
together. In this case, the good news about a student brought a community
together to share words and a story worth hearing and learning from. It was, in
all respects, a teachable moment.
It is at such moments that I feel
that Salmon Khan and Bill Gates and others may well be right. For those of you
not familiar with Mr. Kahn, he is on a mission to change education in the
world. He is the founder of Kahn Academy. This free on-line resource for
students began as a tutorial for his young relatives in India. This MIT
educated innovator then saw that the lessons learned by them could be given to
people around the world. He is now a visionary in the movement to create free
education via media that is almost ubiquitous to many of the billions who
inhabit the planet. His book, The One World School House: Education Reimagined, outlines how the dream
of universal (or at least planetary) education for all may not be another
utopian abstraction.
And yet. There are also large
groups of people who think that digital media will be coopted in ways that will
make our lives anything but open and free. Instead, the outline ways in which
the media will be used to shape our desires and our thoughts, even before we are
aware of it.
B. J. Mendelson is one of the
naysayers. His book, Social Media Is Bullshit (and with a title like this, there
is no doubt he is trying to provoke), outlines the way Facebook and Twitter and
most forms of media are turning into one long infomercial. People are selling
everything at every moment, from literal products to those who sell their
dreams and ideas to all who will read or visit their sites.
What he really ends up trying to
prove is that it is not the number of hits or the number of tweets or anything
like this that matters. Instead, it is the human connection between real
people. And in this he is not so far away from what Rheingold says, so his
dystopian title is actually misleading from where I sit. He is using the title
to capture attention, just as almost anyone on social media sites like
Huffington do too. Tu quoque again. (Rhetorical term meaning you also, that I
have used on this site on several occasions).
Perhaps the most frightening books
I have read lately have to do with the ways in which the scientists, the data
divers, and the large companies are at work designing ways to get us to buy things
without our even consciously knowing how we clicked for things we certainly don’t need. An
example of this is the recently released Unconscious Branding. The scariest thing about this
book its that is gives a positive spin to the ways in which companies and
eventually individuals will be able to use the wiring in our brains to guide us
make decisions before they ever enter consciousness. As we head down the path
to discovery of brain function at a neuronal level, the power of companies to
use these discoveries to market products, rather than to carry out social good,
may be the reality all of us face.
But as Richard Rorty, the great
philosopher and mentor of mine, was fond of saying, human beings tend to muddle
through rather than live in utopias or versions of the Matrix. I would agree
but also add that part of the solution to way in which we navigate the world we
live in depends on the stories we tell and are told.
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| The Matrix |
The final reference I will make is
to Jonathan Gottschall’s The Story Telling Animal. This book, and so many
others, there are almost too many to count, make it clear that we are wired for
stories. From Homer to Homer Simpson we live for stories and we live in
stories. Choosing stories that shape our brain in positive ways. Like Eric's or
Salman Kahn’s can lead to better choices on our parts. On the other hand,
choosing the dark side, in whatever way we define it, may give us power and
success but at a price that will be paid when the story of deceit and back room
deals and media manipulations gets told at some future date.
But the dark tales can also be
cautionary too. I hope to give some examples of both types in the coming weeks
as many people prepare the narratives they hope will help them get accepted to
schools or jobs or some form of future endeavor.
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| Homer the story teller |
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