The human link

We know from media research that the different genres and styles in film and literature are converging, and are being connected and rearranged in order to make new expressions. However, it is not only the «filmatic» or «textual» level of life that has become interconnected; even people have been described as connected to each other and the surroundings, and to a higher degree now than before. I think there is three main reasons for this.

1) The first have to do with the notion of time. When the communicative technologies were restricted to pen and paper, the communicative activities still were binding people together, but the distance between people were defined by the time it took for a letter or a message to reach the receiver. The longer distance between people, the longer time it took to communicate. Now, the relationship between distance and time is somehow “out of sync”. We are no longer bound by the travel of physical material in order to communicate, and no matter how long the physical distance between us, we can instantly communicate in real time. This is contributing to the notion of the “world getting smaller”, a notion not exclusive for digital (communicative) technology. Due to better transportation, the travel time between destinations has decreased dramatically in just a few years. The distance in time, for instance, between my home town and the capital, has been decreased by 33% in ten years.

2) The second reason for arguing that people is more connected now than before have to do with the distribution of meaning. Today, much more than before, we are exposed to the meanings and preferences of each other. (For instance, if it had not been for the technology of blogs, you would not have been able to read my meanings on this subject, and maybe take a stand towards it.) All of us have got a vast number of potential channels to make use of in order to make ourselves heard, and many of us use them in one way or another. This means most of us, at least to some degree, are contributing to an idea of what “the world out there” is thinking about. And further: all this information is making us reconsider our own meanings; at least I know that I do. Or, if I don’t change meaning, I perhaps become more certain of the opinions I have. When I read others opinions I start to think, and I’m starting to develop arguments about the subject. This way I actually get to elaborate on my stands in life, by means of all the information I receive. This “exchange” of information is binding us together, making us able to elaborate on our meanings and construct new meaning communities.

3) The third reason for people today to be considered connected, is that much of our life’s information is stored in several centralized databases. Each of these databases store a bit of information about us, and the databases is, increasingly, being connected to each other in order paint a broader picture about every one of us. The practical effect of this is that we are placed in categories, with characteristics that should apply to all members of a specific category. Obvious examples is the insurance sector, where personal insurance is a question of what medical category one can be placed inside. Different parts of society are starting to collaborate in order to construct the “full” picture of its inhabitants, in order to regulate society “objectively”. This, of course, has some unfortunate side effects, in that the bureaucracy dealing only with categories – and not real people, is taking over the process as soon as the person is categorized. But none the less, we are all increasingly being compared with each other, in order to see who is deviant and who is not.

The knowledge of feeling and looking

It is obvious that different artefacts require different kinds of knowledge; you cannot use a calculator on basis of experiences of using a radio. Hence, the introduction of new artefacts in a setting often changes the relevant knowledge in that setting. However, this is not obvious in every context; let us use the paper producing industry as an example. In earlier times, to check the quality of the cellulose in such a factory, the workers went down to the big combs, took a little cellulose in their hands and felt it. They analyzed it between their fingers and actually felt what was needed in order to make satisfactory cellulose. The workers had a physical contact with the process in which they made use of certain kinds of knowledge to affect the process. Now, the workers do not need to get “their hands dirty”. What was previously felt and analyzed through the fingertips must now be “felt” through computer screens. The workers are removed from the actual process of making paper, and are investigating it from a distance, through numbers and graphs on the screen in the control room. This, of course, demands a quite different kind of knowledge than before, a kind of knowledge that is more intellectual than tactile. The machines are trusted in doing the “feeling” on our behalf; all we have to do is to take action when the machines tell us to. The question, however, is what we lose when the brain (apparently) is all we need.

Who are we really? (No such thing as ‘really’.)

Mediated activity comes in all sorts and forms, and one familiar example include a blind man and his stick. When the blind man walks by himself he is (as we all are) depending on some kind of knowledge about the surroundings. In order to construct this knowledge, the blind man uses a distinct artifact: the stick. The blind man feels through his stick what the world around him “looks” like, and through the stick he is able to construct a “picture” or a “map” which he can navigate by. As he uses this stick to “see”, the question arises about what “state” this stick has in his “biology”. It seems obvious that the stick at least can be understood as integrated with the body when he is using it, and this integration gives him new possibilities. Through the stick he can feel the surface of the ground, if there are any bumps or other obstacles in his way that he has to take notice of. He is “another” man with the stick that without; he can “get by” differently. It seems quite clear that his sensory organs have changed, so where does the body of the blind man end? Is it by the skin in the hand holding the stick, is it by the tip of the stick, or is it somewhere in between?

And further, all artifacts mediate also in another way. Not only is the blind man’s stick a mediating tool in his search for information about his surroundings, it is also a signal to the surroundings. This signal, a white stick held by a person in front of him, tells us to stand aside and not to make unnecessary distractions in his way. The use of this artifact communicates something to the world: “I am blind”. All artifacts have this double character of mediating both perception and action, although in different manners.

The thing is, then, who we are (in the deepest sense of the word) is depending on what tools or artifacts we are using. It is not our biology, but our tools that defines our “nature”. If we want to become “smarter”, we have to learn how to use more tools.

Skype – Human communication

Ever been about to phone a friend and wondered if he or she is busy? If it is OK to disturb? I came to think of it the other day, that calling someone is actually a way to intrude on other peoples private life. I’m making a phone call because I want to talk to someone right now. And the thing is, on the receivers end, one feels obligated to answer the phone when someone calls. Somehow it is the callers right to reach you whenever he or she wants; not taking a call when you could (or should) is close to cutting some off by saying “I don’t want to talk to you”. Who says that to a friend face to face? Very few. Of course, this is not face to face, that is way we can get away with not taking that phone call. We can always pretend to be busy, not hear the phone ringing or whatever.

However, as we move over to communication technologies like Skype, all that is about to change. One of the most brilliant features in Skype is the ability to indicate to the surrounding world if you are avalible for talk or not. This way you don’t have to turn one particular friend down by ignoring his call; tell them all in advance! And from the callers point of view: It is so much more rewarding to call someone who actually wants to talk! If you don’t feel like talking, or got your head buried inside some project that needs your attention, set your indicator on “busy” or something and tell your contacts that now is not a good time to call.

So if you don’t wanna talk, send the message. If you really wanna talk, let someone “Skype you”. You might actually make some new friends while you’re at it. This is what communication should be all about anyway; you shouldn’t have to give up your privacy even if you wanna stay in touch. This, I think, is a “new” and more humane way of communicating.

Gaming through life

One of the reasons the term literacy has to be revisited in the realm of ICT-research lately is because of the highly advanced digital technology introduced into children’s, adolescents’ and even adults’ life. One field where digital technology has played a major role is in the realm of games. As children we play, and as we play we learn. As we grow, our play becomes more complicated. Now an entire generation has grown up with a different set of playing activity than any before it – and it plays in different ways. The play has been brought into the digital world, a virtual reality where linearity no longer applies. To act in this virtual reality is not to read the manual, it is to push the buttons on the controller and see what happens. Through trail and error, players build a model of the underlying game based on empirical evidence collected through play. As the players refine this model, they begin to master the game world. This is a rapid cycle of hypothesis, experiment, and analysis, and it is a fundamentally different take on problem-solving than the linear, textbook based approach often advocated in schools. However, without knowledge and experience in this kind of working and learning, teachers might not be able to see how this interactive curriculum can contribute to a school context. To borrow words form Will Wright, creator of the hugely popular game The Sims:

“… watching someone play a game is a different experience than actually holding the controller and playing it yourself. Very different. Imagine that all you knew about movies was gleaned through observing the audience in a theatre – but that you had never watched a film. You would conclude that movies induce lethargy and junk-food binges. That may be true, but you’re missing the big picture.”

Knowledge and competence learned in a virtual reality is not something that is considered useless; virtual is not the same as unreal. In the business world, people are hired for their skills, no matter where they learned them. An example of this is Stephen Gillett, senior director of engineering operations at Yahoo! Gillett was employed as a result of his status as “guild master” in the multiplayer game World of Warcraft. A guild is a collection of players who come together to share knowledge, resources, and manpower. To run a large one, a guild master must be adept at many skills: attracting, evaluating, and recruiting new members; creating apprenticeship programs; orchestrating group strategy; and adjudicating disputes. The master must resolve failures of management without losing valuable members, who can easily quit and join a rival guild. Gillett says: “I used to worry about not having what I needed to get a job done. Now I think of it like a quest; by being willing to improvise, I can usually find the people and resources I need to accomplish the task”. Another example is the way Google is recruiting new employees: the company sets up billboard posters with riddles and equations. The ones creative enough to solve the puzzles arrive at an address to a web page that invites them to apply for a job. This way, the borders between the “real” and the “virtual” is becoming blurred. This makes it highly important for teachers to develop competence in creating learning environments where the pupils themselves are in charge of the process, where they can contribute to their own learning in ways that makes them able to draw on their existing knowledge and work forms. And above all, makes them create new and creative work forms and strategies for problem solving that puts them in charge of the society the rest of us is creating.

The question of Land and Fish

he other day I noticed a postcard in my office that read: “Land is a mystery to fish. By the time fish finds out about land, it’s too late”. The card was a business promotion, I don’t know for what, but still the quote caught my mind. I found the thought intriguing: is there something around us that we are not aware of; something that is crucial to us, but that we have not taken notice of?

I think there is, on several levels. I’m not going to investigate all of them here, but concentrate on a cultural aspect. Some of us have heard (and used) the expression “tacit knowledge”, but all of us have made use of the knowledge itself. It is a tacit dimension to every culture that has to be there in order for the culture to work. Without it, all the members of a culture would have to explicate every action, and in practise that would be impossible to handle. This becomes particularly evident when we travel; arriving at an unfamiliar place we might observe strange activities and actions that the natives to not even think about. We learn how to act and function in a culture not (at least not exclusively) because we have been thought explicitly how to do things, but based on our very existence in that culture. We learn it by way of doing it. The things we cannot articulate is (of course) impossible to talk about; it has to be shown implicitly.

This is one of the places where the hyped term “literacy” comes in. To be literate in our world it is not sufficient to be able to read and write mere text, with the term “literacy” we are concerned with being able to “read” and “write” an environment, to “unconscious see” what is going on. And in order to understand what is going on we have to be able to make use and see the relevance of the different technological tools offered to us, and know how it is put to work in subjects that concern us, because technology is one of the main building blocks of our society. And now (as an educator and interested in schooling) to the point: if we as a society agree that knowledge about technology is important in order to function in this society, why do we not let our pupils and students get more acquainted with it? Unlike fish when it comes in contact with land, we become more apt to the task, better prepared and more experienced when we meet new things in organised environments. Getting experienced with different sides of our culture is not lethal to us; not getting experienced with it might be.

I came across jet another quote illustrating this: ”Figuratively speaking, it is as difficult for those who have become fully literate within a world dominated by print to see how their own literacy has been shaped – indeed limited – by the technology used to produce and disseminate printed materials as it is for a fish to think about the water in which it swims” (taken from Reinking ed. 1998).

Perhaps we have difficulties identifying what is most important in our society, depriving the next generation a head start managing it?

Neil Postman & Roger Waters

In 1985 the well known media researcher Neil Postman wrote the book ”Amusing ourselves to death”. The book – known probably to most of you – is concerned with how media and television has placed itself in the center of our collective consciousness. One of the main ideas in the book is that media is setting the scene on which all other events happen, and at the core of media and television is an element of entertainment. Hence, whatever is put on television must be defined as entertainment, no matter how brutal the murder or worrying the news displayed is. Credibility is a question of good editing, not truth. Reality is more a matter of what we think is happening, than factual events.

However, in 1992 Postman’s ideas was translated into music by none less than Roger Waters, former lead singer in Pink Floyd. Waters made the album “Amused to Death” and put Postman’s thoughts into music in a way that – at least by my standards – makes an outstanding album. Of course, we don’t need music to receive information, we get the idea when we read the book, we see the concepts that Postman is trying to show us, but put Waters’ CD on and just feel how is all suddenly makes a whole different sense! This is what we’re talking about, this is how media is portraying reality and contextualizing information in a language that we understand. What Waters is doing is visualizing – audiolizing – exactly what happens when one medium is replaced with another: the concepts is remediated, and the message is no longer the same. Ironically, it is the music that makes the book interesting; when reading the book again we start humming the tunes of Waters. Of course, Postman and Waters is obviously not saying the same thing – Postman is a researcher and Waters is selling records, still Postman recognizes Waters work in a later book of his, The End of Education: “There are, as we know, different levels of sensibility. In the case of music, for example, most American students are well tuned to respond with feeling, critical intelligence, and considerable attention to forms of popular music, but are not prepared to feel or even experience the music of Haydn, Bach, or Mozart; that is to say, their hearts are closed, or partially closed, to the canon of Western music. I am not about to launch into a screed against rock, metal, rap, and other forms of teenage music. In fact, readers should know that Roger Waters, once the lead singer of Pink Floyd, was sufficiently inspired by a book of mine to produce a CD called Amused to Death. This fact so elevated my prestige among undergraduates that I am hardly in a position to repudiate him or his kind of music. Nor do I have the inclination for any other reason. Nonetheless, the level of sensibility required to appreciate the music of Roger Waters is both different and lower than what is required to appreciate, let us say, a Chopin étude.”

Even if this is really not about being sensible to music, Waters production makes an impact on some of us unparalleled by the book by Postman. I’m not quite sure what makes the CD so good, the voice of Waters, the message he is conveying, or the “soundscape” in his music; it all plays together and makes me feel something. It makes me think differently, and for me, that is one of the main “side effects” of music.

Miraculous you call it babe,
You ain’t seen nothing yet,
They’ve got Pepsi in the Andes, McDonald’s in Tibet (…)
By the grace of God Almighty,
and the pressure of the marketplace,
The human race has civilized itself It’s a miracle

- Roger Waters