Howard Rheingold on New Literacies – Crap Detection

March 12, 2010 · Posted in Social Media, Transliteracy · View Comments

This is a long video but worth watching. Howard Rheingold talks about literacy, information literacy, digital literacy and critical thinking. One of the things that stands out to me is he borrows the term “crap detection” from Ernest Hemingway. So while he is applying it to the internet the importance of critical thinking has been around long before the internet. It is not a new skill, but rather an old skill being applies to a new medium.

Tags: crap detection, critical thinking, howard rheingold, information literacy, media literacy

Control is an Illusion You Need to Let Go

December 2, 2009 · Posted in Change, Managers, Policies, Social Media, Social Networking Sites · View Comments

CC image courtesy of Bill Gracey - Gone to Mexico on flickr

The issue of control comes up over and over again when we talk about the online world. It recently it came up at Internet Librarian in many different ways, including:

How do I stop a staff member from wasting time on Facebook?
How do we control what staff are saying online?
Management wants everything posted online (Twitter, Facebook, blogs etc) to go through PR.
We don’t want employees to be able to access social networking sites?
What about privacy?
We can’t allow just anyone to post a comment without approving it first.
How do we know a student is who they say they are?

I have answers to all of these questions, but these questions aren’t what this is about, what they represent is, control. Or the illusion of control.

The desire for control comes from fear. Fear of change, of the unknown, of doing things differently, of a situation not created by us, of taking risks. It is human nature to fear these things, it’s how we’ve survived. So is adaptation and times are changing, just as they always do, and we need to adapt.

In the internet age your image/brand no longer belongs to you. It belongs to your customers. The things they have always been saying are now online for the whole world to see. The content and commentary they post about you may rank higher in search engines than your site or content. You can’t stop them. Every attempt you make will be like fighting the Hydra, cut off a head, two will grow back. I promise.

Prevent comments on your website? They’ll start their own blog or Twitter account or website. Implement a filter to block social networking sites? They will find a way around it (and you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face).

Stop wasting time trying to get control, you might be fooling your boss or the board or yourself, but you are not fooling your staff or more importantly your customers. Better yet, when you stop spending time trying to get control or pretending that you have it, it frees you and your time to address the real issues.

Still not ready to let go? Think about these questions from Andrew McAfee :

Are you ready and willing to let more internal voices communicate and shape your brand over time?
If not, why not?
Is it that you don’t trust your people, or your customers?
Is it that you don’t want any negativity at all to appear on your digital properties?
Or is it that you’re afraid there might be too much negativity?

Still not convinced? Or need to convince someone else? Try reading these:

*Up Next – What you can do after you’ve accepted control is an illusion.

Tags: approval, Blogging, business, Change, comments, control, employees, Facebook, fear, illusion, let go, letting go, Managers, managing, moderation, power, productivity, Social Media, social networking, Twitter

How Using The Internet Is Changing Our Brains

December 1, 2009 · Posted in Social Media, Technology, Thinking Outloud · View Comments

CC image used courtesy of Reigh LeBlanc on flickr

As with most things, the benefits from computers and technology is all about balance.

From an article in The Independent – What the web is teaching our brains, a list of activities and the benefits each provides.

Internet research: Boosts the ability to integrate and process information as well as enhancing decision-making skills.
General browsing: Encourages the use of continuous partial attention and multi-tasking, which can impair cognition and cause irritability
Playing computer games: May improve multi-tasking skills, memory and peripheral vision. Can lead to antisocial behaviour.
Building a blog or website: Building a blog or your own website improves frontal lobe function, reasoning and memory.
Sorting email: Boosts information-processing functions in the brain’s frontal lobe. Can also cause stress.
Using emoticons: Exercises brain centres linked to emotion and social connection; particularly beneficial to those who use computers for long periods.
Tweeting and chatrooms: Enhances peripheral attention, helps to boost self-esteem and protects the hippocampus.

The article includes more information on the “why” or how it works, and of course some negative aspects of internet & technology usage too.

Worth reading:

Tags: brain, computers, internet, mind, neurology, reading, Technology, Thinking Outloud, Transliteracy

Put Down the Phone and Pay Attention

November 5, 2009 · Posted in Blogging, Chit Chat, Facebook, Flickr, Podcasting, Social Media, Twitter · View Comments

CC image use courtesy of Lights Out Photos on flickr

CC image courtesy of Lights Out Photos on flickr

Last week I (and many others) spent a lot of time documenting the Internet Librarian conference, photos, tweets, blog posts, facebook updates. Did the act of digitally documenting the events change anything? Did the process of lifestreaming change my (and others) behavior, perception of what was happening and memories of it. Will we remember it better or worse?

A recent article from CNN Do digital diaries mess up your brain? looks at the effects of lifestreaming. Just knowing others are watching you may change the types of experiences you choose to have, from books to movies to where you eat and what you wear.

“If we have experiences with an eye toward the expectation that in the next five minutes, we’re going to tweet them, we may choose difference experiences to have, ones that we can talk about rather than ones we have an interest in,” he said.

It also detaches you from what’s happening at the moment. If you’re focused on tweeting what’s happening, you’re not fully engage in what’s happening.

But recording everything you do takes people out of the “here and now,” psychologists say. Constant documenting may make people less thoughtful about and engaged in what they’re doing because they are focused on the recording process, Schwartz said.

What does that do to our actual memories of events? Memories are shaky at best even when you’re completely focused. If you’re only half there, will you remember it later without the aid of digital documentation? What would I rather have a memory of something or documentation of it to prove I was there? What if that documentation goes away?

It makes me think, I do want to be living and experiencing life to the fullest. Does this mean I’ll put down the camera, the cell phone, the laptop? I don’t know. Probably not at conferences, but I’ll be thinking hard about doing it in other areas of my life. What good is lifestreaming an experience if I’m not fully enjoying it?

Tags: Blogging, conference, diary, digita, document, documentation, documenting, Facebook, Flickr, lifestreaming, photos, recording, tweets, Twitter