blogmarch

I took the challenge from all of you smarty-pants people posting your paper in PDF form.  In the spirit of “fear no technology challenge,”  I decided to try it myself.  Hope it works….rmarchlis768final

Hi everyone.  For all of you “games are good for you” people, here is an article about National Geographic’s new gaming venture, which sounds pretty fun.  It sounds like they may be releasing games to go with each N.G. isssue that comes out?  Anyway, thought it was kind of interesting.

As I’ve been writing my final paper, I’ve been thinking about how much easier it is to do this in 2008 than it was 20 years ago.   After writing everything in blog form this semester, I’ve been frustrated writing in Word.  I want to add links and photos for explanation, clarification and expansion (I know I can do this in Word, but it isn’t as instantaneous or as cool).  20 years ago I would have killed for Word.  Or a computer.  Or the ability to edit as I write.  You “digital natives” might not know that all of us old people used to have to write everything out by hand.  Take notes, make an outline, write the paper, work on rewrites, and then type it.  On a typewriter, electric if you were lucky. Often you had to retype whole pages after realizing that an  entire sentence was all wrong, and a whole sentence was too much to white out.  Suffice it to say that it sucked.

So if anyone is in a position to appreciate the new technology, it’s me.  And appreciate it I do.  Love it, even.   But I don’t love easily.  Anything I love, anything I take seriously, I question.  I wonder what it means, if the good outweighs the bad, if it is going to make life better or worse, if it is going to irreparably change the way I think and feel.

I recently read an article about dreams.  It said that people under 25 dream in color, while many people in the 55 and over crowd dream in black and white.  It all depends on the kind of television you watched as a child.  In its early days, the merits of television were as hotly debated as is the technology of today.   If that particular technology had and has the power to color our dreams, then what will the ubiquitous technology of today do to our psyches?  My point throughout all of this has been that if something is going to have that big of an impact, well then, it had better be excellent.  Technology in and of itself is value free.  It’s a tool, that’s all.  It’s the human element, what we do with technology that I have questioned and will continue to question.

Jaron Lanier is a computer guy who writes for Edge and Discover Magazine.  One of his areas of expertise, and yes, I would call him an expert, is Artificial Intelligence.  Lanier wrote a few pieces for Edge a few years ago questioning the rise and trust in Wikipedia and what he refers to as the online collective.  He believes that there is a parallel between promoters of A.I and promoters of online collectivism, with a corresponding belief that the collective dulls the creativity and humanness of individual voices.  Just as  the A.I. people are “willing to bend over backwards and make themselves stupid in order to make an AI interface appear smart (as happens when someone can interact with the notorious Microsoft paper clip),”  Lanier feels that the internet culture is willing to accept online dullness and mediocrity in the name of democracy.

This has been the crux of my concern–accepting without questioning.  It is easy to see all of the benefits of the online collective–connectivity, conversation, linking, expansion of ideas.  I just wonder why there isn’t more wondering. About the things that might not be so good–like dullness, and mediocrity and inane entries that we are supposed to take as seriously as excellent intelligence or wickedly funny wit.  About the fact that originality is sometimes harder to find now in the midst of the cacaphony.  About the fact that lots of stuff that is on the internet is there for somebody to make money, even if it is presented in the package of a free exchange of ideas.

This class has been a good place for me to do my questioning.  I tried a lot of the tools that have been on my list–Facebook, Flickr, Ning, Twitter (I still don’t get the love of Twitter, by the way).  In the trying, I got to answer some of my questions (Is Facebook dumb?  Yes, but in the best possible and most fun way.)  I also got to dispell some of my own wrong ideas.  (Does Facebook turn people evil?  Not really, only if the person posting is already evil.)  And I have new questions.  What does having access to all the people from your present and past do to the idea of personal memory?  With universal access to long tail items, how do people in their teens and twenties make themselves feel hip and cool and different from everyone else?  And most importantly for this class, where do I and my MLIS degree fit into this chaotic sea of information?  I don’t have answers to any of these questions.  But as for the latter, I will always question information.  I will always wonder how something I read or hear or see fits into the bigger picture.  I will wonder if it is worthy of my precious time and even more precious affection.  I will always look for the smartest or the funniest or the most clever.  Hopefully doing all of this will help me to order the chaos and to make a career out of helping others to do the same.

I am choosing Option #1 for my paper, focusing on the issue of establishing reputation online.  Even though I chose this option, much of the impetus for choosing this topic came from reading “Against the Machine:  Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob,”  by Lee Siegel.

I have been fascinated by the idea of what “reputation” means in an online environment ever since I first heard about social software.  Much of contemporary criticism of the internet, specifically social software, focuses on the idea that reputation in online communities is based solely upon popularity, not necessarily on intelligence, creativity or originality.  In his book, Siegel points to 2.0 culture as the main destroyer of the meaning of reputation, a culture in which “simply being human has now become sufficient qualification for engagement in cultural expression” (Siegel 139).  With popularity replacing excellence as the sole criterion for success (Siegel 161) along with the anti-expert, anti-authority ethic that comes with the democratization of information, what does reputation mean in 2.0 culture?  And how is reputation established?  In The Cult of the Amateur, author Andrew Keen calls it the “Law of Digital Darwinism,” where it is the survival of the loudest and most opinionated. (Keen 15)

I decided to look at what reputation means online.  How do people get noticed among the over 100 million blogs (the actual number of blogs is disputed) that now exist?  Research into online reputation suggests that while most social networks start out with a kind of  “everyone’s voice is equal” ethic, those networks that stick around for awhile eventually establish some sort of set of rules and guidelines for contributing members, as well as some code of ethics, with certain members checking and balancing other members.  Clay Shirky, who writes extensively about internet culture and technology suggests that “group stucture is necessary to defend the group against itself.”  (A Group is its Own Worst Enemy)  In studying successful and longstanding social networks, such as Slashdot.com, it does become clear that while those members with the loudest voices and the strongest opinions might initially receive attention, they are not always the same voices that establish a good reputation, unless what they are saying is accepted as good and useful information by the community, especially that part of the community that has established good reputations themselves by posting regularly, posting non-anonymously, and obeying group norms.

What I have found is that in the good social networks, “good” in that they have been around for awhile, are widely respected and have many long-standing and new members, reputation does have meaning beyond popularity.  It does not appear to differ from the meaning of reputation in the culture at large. It is based upon merit, whatever that means to the specific group–usually some combination of intelligence, thoughtfulness, and respect for the culture and rules of the group.

I am still trying to figure out the “Where do librarians and Library 2.0 fit in” piece to all of this.  Moderators are a big part of the successful networks, so I am thinking this is going to be the link somehow…..

For anyone who is interested in the arguments between those in favor of the “wisdom of the crowds” idea  and those who oppose it, check out Digital Maoism:  the Hazards of the New Online Collectivism by Jaron Lanier, and the responses he got from heavy hitters in the tech and 2.0 worlds–Clay Shirky, Cory Doctorow, Douglas Rushkoff, Jimmy Wales…

I was a part of the Ning group project, and I have to say that I don’t know how our project could have worked without social software tools, as well as group members (initially, not me–better now) who were so comfortable using the various tools.   We never had to meet in person, yet we were able to communicate, confer, address problems and make suggestions, all through the the wiki that Lindsay set up during our first discussion.  As a stay-at-home mom, I do my homework in little increments, during naps, between scheduled activities for the kids, etc., so being able to not only do the work at home, but to confer with my group members on the wiki proved to be invaluable.   Meeting in person is near impossible for me, but I never felt that we missed out by not being able to do so.  I feel like the wiki was such a good place to gather our thoughts and to keep a record of our progress.

Our subject matter could never have been possible without social software, since the subject was a type of social software.  It was fun to explore the world of nings.  At first, I had trouble finding one that I wanted to join.  As is often the case with user-created tags or titles, unless you know the tags or the exact title used for the ning you are  looking for, it can be daunting to try and find an exact match to your interests.  I settled at first on Babble Ning, a ning for parents.  While it was active and well-populated, it even had a separate Twin Cities forum, I realized that I am not that interested anymore in reading parenting stuff, at least not that kind.  I don’t care anymore about how to get your kids to sleep, the best way to potty train or why you shouldn’t let them watch too much t.v.  I mean, I care, but I’m over the needing-advice part of it all.

Then I found the Law Libraries and Librarians ning.  This was a great ning.   It has 411 members, and is very active, with many subgroups, a good mix of experts and novices, good discussions.  Some of the forum topics included:  legal issues, legal research, library applications, and innovation and change.  A couple of the users were very helpful when I started a discussion asking for feedback on how they use the ning.

It was also great for our group to be able to work on our powerpoint together using Google documents.  While there were a few glitches trying to get around Google docs being blocked for Erin, Lindsay found a way around it.  I had never used Google documents before, so this part was another learning experience for me.  It is amazing to me to be able to do all of this from the comfort of my home computer.   Even just a few semesters ago, I don’t think I would have thought it possible to finish an entire group project without meeting or calling each other, especially not constructing a powerpoint.  I suppose you could have done much of it all through email, but that would have entailed a lot of “which email did she say that in?”  and “whoops, I deleted that, could you resend me your information?”

In her post about our project, Lindsay talks about participatory culture, where there is often some type of informal mentorship, in which the more experienced members often teach the novices.  I definitely felt this in our group, with me as the techno-novice.  In our first meeting together, while we were talking, Lindsay set up our wiki, and Beth set up our initial ning, both within the first five minutes of our sitting down together.  They both had also worked with Google documents before, so they not only set it up, but also explained how to use it.  I usually dread having to work in groups, mostly because I feel like I am more interested in doing good work than others tend to be.  Not so in this group.  Everyone was respectful of varied opinions, open to suggestion, and quick to take on whatever work was necessary.  Instead of feeling like I was doing all of the work, at one point I felt the opposite, and had to say “Hey, what can I do to equitably participate?”  This was a fun, seamless and informative group project, and I really appreciate the technical prowess and hard work of my group members.

Many of you probably have A.L.A. in your feeds, but for those who might not, here is an article about a recent ALA symposium called Complex Games Lead to Complex Thinking.  Good short article with some good links.  The Shifted Librarian also wrote about the ALA symposium as well as National Gaming Day @Your Library, which is November 15.

This week has been full of big news about books and print media.  Oprah loves Kindle, and maybe so will Lindsay, Google settled it’s copyright lawsuits with various publishers, and the Christian Science Monitor will no longer offer print versions of its newspaper during the week.  All of this has been making me think about the way books, and printed reading material in general, are evolving.  Also about how readers are evolving.  Some of the things I have been reading lament the fact that people are reading less, and that their attention spans aren’t able to handle whole books anymore.  I wonder if this is true.  Everyone I know still reads books.  My 21 year-old neice is the most “continually computing” person I know–Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, texting, IMing–she does all of it, sometimes all at once (or so it seems).  But at the end of the day, before she goes to sleep, she reads books.  She and my sister choose titles to read and discuss together.  My husband, a web programmer and computer-obsessed freak, still manages to read an average of two books a week, the same as he did when we first met.

So I wonder, are we reading less, or is the way we are reading changing?  When Lindsay pointed out the features of the Kindle, she mentions being able to make notes in the margins, ask online “reference” people questions, look up words in the dictionary.  Doing all of this may make the reader’s attention span wander, but what a way to wander!  It seems like the features would only enhance the reading experience.  There are so many times that I mean to look a word up, but don’t because I don’t want to get up.  Lindsay also discusses how great a Kindle would be to keep kids engaged.  I agree.  In a magazine my six-year old’s teacher sent home there is an article “The Future of Literacy.”  Various experts discuss technology and teaching.  One of the panelists, Bob Stein, of the Institute for the Future of the Book, is asked about how reading is changing.   His reply is that now, if a child is reading, s/he will put down the book, and go to the book’s website, look at forums and maybe respond, then return to the book.  Then, s/he will put the book down again and Google some query about the author.  This kind of interactivity makes reading even more exciting and so much more informative than it used to be.

I see how exciting this kind of interactiviy can be as I teach my six year old.  Last week, we were looking at one of her Halloween books, and there was a cartoony picture of Frankenstein.  She asked about the inevitable push-pin looking things in his neck.  She wanted to know if Frankenstein was a monster. I started to explain about how he is kind of a monster, but kind of sad, too, because he has human feelings inside a monstrous body made up of dead body parts and gears and things.    I asked if she wanted to see other pictures, so we put the book down and went to Google Images (she is a six year-old who has always liked morbid stuff).  Then we went to look for information on Wikipedia about Frankenstein.  Then we printed out Frankenstein coloring pages.    Then I decided that I should get out our copy of Mary Shelley’s original story for me to read again.  Reading begat technology begat more reading.  We both had a great, interactive Frankenstein experience, as fractured and interrupted as it was.   And we both came away with a more well-rounded experience.  Google claims, with its book digitization program, that it wants to provide access to all of the world’s information.  Every time I read that, it sounds so exciting.  I realize this is the feeling I have every time my daughter and I look things up.  It really feels that between all of the books in the world and all of the technology, that we really do have access to all of the world’s information.

First, I read Inside the Minds of Teens who Post Sexual Images of Themselves on the ABC News website.  Specifically, the article refers to a 15-year old teenager who sent naked pictures of herself to classmates.  If convicted, she could face probation or several years in a juvenile detention center.  While the main thrust of the article is about the “porning” of America, the author posits the notion that the teen’s “quest for notoriety (in a) culture where pornography has gone mainstream and fame can be had in an instant by simply distributing a sexually explicit video with a cell phone or on the internet.”  I found this quote interesting, because it echoes some of the ideas that were the foundation of my context book.

A couple of days after I read this article, a friend of mine got a call from the police.  She had lost her phone a few weeks ago and it had been found and turned in.  They told her that she had to come to the sex crimes unit for questioning because not only had they found her cell phone, but they had seen pictures of her 6 and 4 year old sons, naked, on it.  While they were somewhat relieved to hear that the owner of the phone was the mother of the naked boys, they told her, in essence, that she wasn’t out of the woods.  She still had to come down for questioning.

Then, this week, it was my youngest daughter’s birthday.  She turned 3.  My older sister sent her an IPod shuffle for a present.  The first thing my daughter did was pretend the IPod was a phone, and then threw it against the wall.  My sister’s kids are all older (in their twenties).  My husband said, after the Shuffle hit the wall, “Her kids weren’t little with all of this technology.  She doesn’t get it.”

All of a sudden, it hit me.  A lot of us don’t get it.  Some do, but for many of us, our minds haven’t caught up to the technology yet.  We are not sure of the appropriate way to use this bounty of access to information of which we find ourselves in the midst.  Teens posting nude pictures of themselves might not be looking for notoriety.  They might just be doing what teens have always done–being stupid, pushing boundaries, being “naughty” for their friends, not thinking about the fact that naked online pictures  meant for your friends might be naked pictures for the world.   Teens (and others) post naked photos online because they can.  Same with my friend.  Her boys were wrestling naked.  As a parent, I understand the impulse to catch the ridiculously cute moment.  She caught the moment with her cell phone because she could.  Now that I am on Facebook, I look up all kinds of people.  I snoop into acquaintances’ profiles that are not my friends, but are on pages of people I know.  I look up the women who teach the classes I take at the YMCA.   I am always afraid that I am going to slip up and say something I know about them from Facebook, something that makes me look like the nosy person that I am.   I do it because I can.

I don’t think that the interconnectedness and the transparency of technology, particularly the technology of the last 5-10 years, is fully entrenched in our psyches yet  For many of us, especially those of us who are digital immigrants that Lindsay refers to in her book report, it still doesn’t compute that thoughts, ideas and pictures that we put into digital format go from being exclusively “ours” to being part of the permeable world of public information.

My husband has had a  cult of the amatuer experience this week.  He is a web programmer who loves all things computer.  Which means that even in his spare time, his head is working on programming and math problems.  One of his current obsessions is a website called Stack Overflow, where programmers post and answer technical questions.  It is set up in a Digg-type way, with users voting on the quality of both the questions and the answers that other users come up with.  The more good votes you get, the more points you gather, the higher your ranking.
Earlier this week, a user who is new to programming  and trying to teach himself, posted a question asking about learning some basics about PHP and mySQL programming.  He says that there seem to be some basic terms that that come from a “common base of familiarity between all languages” that he just doesn’t yet understand.  He asks the group if there a a book about programming in general that would give he, as a beginner, a good basic understanding of general terminology.

The beginning programmer got many replies.  My husband gave a detailed list of resources, including Wikipedia’s general computer science page, tutorials available on YouTube,  class material and resources available from MIT and Stanford, and his own explanations and definitions of certain topics within computer science.  (If you want to see his answer and others, his name can be found on his reply in the lower right hand corner under the name Corbin March).

I think my husband’s reply is great (maybe I’m a little biased).  What is interesting is that another participant, Will, gives an equally great reply, basically saying the same thing that Corbin is saying, but taking away all of the pointers to expertise and specific resources of Corbin’s post. Will says that he likes Corbin’s answer, but takes an opposite approach.  He says that with today’s system, you don’t need to know the “low level” details of systems.  Like Corbin, Will feels that the internet itself is the best place to find all of the answers that any programmer needs, but instead of having other people tell you where to go, he suggests “using your inner muse” to guide you to the answers.  Will says that “the fact that folks can get as far as they want ‘without having a clue’ is a testament to how far the field has advanced.”  The most important thing is jumping in and doing it, getting it done and not worrying about it being perfect or “doing it the right way.”  He closes with “Don’t let the yahoos in their ivory towers poo-poo your questions or shred your designs.”

I think that Corbin and Will are coming from the same place.  In fact, Corbin said as I sat down to write, “Make sure you don’t say anything bad about Will, his answer is great.”  And it is.  The interesting part about it all is that even though Corbin and Will probably use many of the same resources, many of them peer-created, I think Will is wary even of presenting his own self as more knowledgeable about something, even though he probably does know more than the beginning programmer.  In my context book, Against the Machine, author Lee Siegel says “Having made living life itself a type of professional skill, the internet has produced another effect.  It has created a universal impatience with authority, with any kind of superiority conferred by excellence or expertise.”  Are we becoming afraid to even tell other people what we know or point them in good directions for fear of seeming to lofty or know-it-all?  This interaction between my husband and his peer is an example of this impatience, or at least lack of faith in, expertise and authority, even our own expertise, that is so much a part of internet culture.

Against the Machine:  Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob turns a critical eye to the internet, or more specifically to the culture that has been influenced by the internet, social networks and other Web 2.0 technologies.  The author, Lee Siegel, is a former writer for the New Republic and Salon.com.  His experiences at both publications, especially the New Republic, led him to question what happens to a culture that “gives everyone a voice,”   one that allows us to create our own asocially social, isolated online worlds.  Siegel was let go from the New Republic because of incidents (and a prank he orchestrated) between he and some participants of the magazine’s online blog.  He makes it clear that he does not blame technology.  Technology, in and of itself, is value free, says Siegel.  It is what is being done with some technology that troubles him.  Of particular concern is the cutting off of individuals from the reality of other people, as they self-obsessively disclose every secret, every unedited, waking thought to the anonymity of the computer screen in forums such as blogs, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.  By existing more and more in these privatized and customized, completely personal spaces, we forget about the boundaries that come in the form of other people–their wants, needs, opinions and physicality.  Eventually, as our “self” becomes our one and only reference point, other people become less and less meaningful.  We get “impatient with realities that don’t gratify our impulses or satisfy our picture of reality.”

Another of Siegel’s  concerns is the commodification of our leisure time.  Along with all of this self-disclosure comes the morphing of disclosure into performance.  People are crafting their private lives into “marketable, public style.”  This marketing of self is what seems to trouble Siegel the most, as consumers of online information become “prosumers.”  Prosumers are people that produce as they consume.  In other words, the people who will use a product or service are the same people who create the product or service.  Much of Siegel’s argument against prosumers takes aim at Malcom Gladwell’s popular book The Tipping Point.  Inner life has become marketable, as popularity has become the main criteria for success.  Gladwell’s book looks at the way “cultural epidemics” occur, how influential people can create cultural “memes,” making products or ideas wildly popular.   The world is divided into connectors (people who know a lot of, and the right, people), “sticky” people who know the connectors, and everyone else.  Everyone else doesn’t matter.  Siegel’s take on Gladwell’s book is that the world is divided into manipulating winners and manipuable losers.  Online, everyone is trying to craft themselves into one of the manipulating winners.

One of the most compelling sections of Against the Machine is the last third of the book dealing with the difference between information and knowledge.  Information, Siegel tells us, is made up of facts that one has recently learned.  You can know a lot of information without really understanding it.  Knowledge, on the other hand, comes from understanding–a comprehension of the meaning of something.  Knowledge, says Siegel, “illuminates the hidden relations among events, and the degrees of value between events.”  The desire for the most recent and most popular information coupled with the egalitarian culture of the internet, where the only qualifications one needs to participate in cultural discussions is access to a computer and an opinion, have created an atmosphere of contempt for knowledge as well as knowledge’s companions–expertise, authority, merit and critical thinking.  Opinions, feelings, perceptions and judgments are all that matter in the world of social software.

The issues that arise in the last third of Siegel’s book is where librarians and the tools of Library 2.0 are most needed.  With the glut of information that the internet provides, much of it of a personal, subjective nature, there needs to be some sort of check and balance system to determine what has merit on a large-scale level.  Not censorship, everyone should be allowed to create a blog, post videos on YouTube, Twitter or tweet to their heart’s content.  However,  not all of the information created by these means is useful or valid to society as a whole.   Siegel claims that “what the new, crude egalitarianism is doing, in the name of democracy, is allowing the strongest assertion to edge out the most conscientious talent.”  Online culture is an anti-authority, anti-expert one that thrives on newness rather than on excellence.  Gone are the days of critical thinking, now everyone has a voice and everyone’s voice is equally valuable.  Sounds nice in theory, but often the most interesting voices, the ones that may allow us to turn information into knowledge, get lost in the tidal waves of information that flood the internet every day.  It is the job of librarians, especially in this 2.0 atmosphere, to do what they have always done best, help users to make sense of all of it–show them how to find the excellence in the sea of information.  We have always done that–determining the best reference tools or the most applicable database for a user.  Now we can expand and link to provocative, well-written or informative blogs and wikis, direct users to educational or thought-provoking podcasts or video content–help them to get past the merely popular to find their own way to knowledge.

To watch or listen to  Lee Siegel and others discuss the book from a reading at the New York Public Library, click here.

To read the New York Times article about Siegel’s dismissal from the New Republic, click here.

Picture of book cover from Amazon.  Click here to see it, as well as other journal and user reviews.

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