social media technology

The appropriation and repurposing of social technologies in higher education.

Web 2.0 is revolutionizing communication, social interaction and just about anything else you can think of.  By their very nature, Web 2.0 applications are interactive and open.Institutions of higher education are increasingly incorporating social media tools into their pedagogy.  

Higher education cannot ignore the sweeping changes that social media has wrought. Claiming issues of privacy and safety, the academy is appropriating and repurposing these tools.Rather than embracing the "open" nature of these Web 2.0 tools,higher education is locking them down, enclosing them within course management systems that require authentication and have restricted access.

It is clear that commercially available online learning environments, i.e. WebCT, Blackboard, Angel, Moodle etc are not engaging students.  They are clunky, boring and difficult to use. As this article points out, they are also “dependent on pre-digital metaphors which are increasingly anachronistic as new media gains in significance.” These course management systems are built around dated academic frameworks, the critical essay. New media is built around the visual and digital. New media is radically altering our concepts of “writing” as we have previously conceived of it.

We need to integrate the long held traditions of the academy with the new values of social media. To ignore the social media technologies, facebook, blogs, social bookmarking applications is to negate how the majority of the population spends much of its’ time.  Social media will revolutionize education, it will shift the balance of power once closely guarded within the walls of the academy to the crowds beyond the palace walls.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose! (The more things change, the more they remain the same)

The Dating Game-1960's

The Dating Game-2011

In Hancock, Toma & Ellison’s article, The Truth about Lying in Online Dating Profiles, the authors state that online daters lie. Nine out of ten participants in their study lied about one the assessed variables, height, weight and age. The caveat was that the magnitude of the deception was not that great. So, 81% of respondents lied, but not THAT MUCH!  Would it be okay to date someone who lied a little, but not someone who lied a lot? Are there in fact, white lies and black lies? 

These lies they go on to say, are not self-deceptions but are in fact intentional.  As in I think I weigh 110 lbs. but whoops, I must have been mistaken! It is more that I am sure that someone will like me better if I shave 10 pounds off my weight, say I go to the gym religiously, and I was born in a decade that began with the number "6" rather than "5"

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I grew up watching the television show, The Dating Game, in the 60's and 70's. A “bachelorette” would pose questions to 3 "bachelors". At the end of the game, she would choose the one who appealed to her and go on a date. Fast forward fifty years, a woman flips through profiles, writes an email, and hopes for a response back.I am not sure things have gotten better in love-land or really changed that much. Anyone who argues that people lie more online than offline should watch the Dating Game episode in 1978, when serial killer Rodney Alcala was chosen by  bachelorette Cheryl Bradshaw as her "dream date". Something about him creeped her out (he was in the midst of a killing spree), and her instincts served her right and she never  went out with him.

Of course people lie about their height, weight and age. Everyone expects the photos to be a little dated, the weight (if you are female) a little higher, the height a little lower (if you are male) and the age a little lower for both men and women. The real concerns are actually more serious. Many (perhaps a higher percentage for men) lie about their marital status, their relationship status and many other factors about their lives. Whether you are pursuing a relationship that begins online or offline, caveat emptor (let the buyer beware).

Sherry Turkle

Sherry Turkle

This past friday night I attended a lecture given by Sherry Turkle at the Princeton/Columbia Club.Sherry Turkle is the Director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self and the author of (mostly recently) of Alone Together--why we expect more from technology and less from each other.Her perspective is that something has gone amiss in our culture, we no longer focus on one another, but look to technology to create our sense of intimacy.Her talk focuses on three mains ideas; technology is re-defining our sense of intimacy, today's adolescents are growing up in a tethered world, and our democratic notion of privacy is ending.


Her talk focused on the impact that technology is having on our lives.We are living with technology in a distracted world. We text everywhere, even at funerals. Our presence, and lack of presence with one another is redefining our relationships. We are deeply attached to our gadgets. Technology has become the architect of our intimacy, and is a substitute for intimacy. We must carefully measure the costs of technology. One of my favorite quotes from Dr. Turkle from the evening was: "Just because we grew up with the internet does not make the internet grown up". We must learn to be present to one another.


She also discussed the damage that technology is causing for adolescents.By being tethered to their technologies, they are always "on", and suffering from performance fatigue.This is enabling an emotional style of "I share, therefore I am." She warns parents that if we do not teach our children how to be alone, they will only be lonely. For adolescents, they are growing up in a culture of distraction, and need to understand what it means to have "sacred spaces". This is a concept that Dr. Turkle defines as a private space, to be able ago have a conversation with yourself. In psychoanalytic terms, this is how the self begins to define itself. Having a conversation with oneself is modeled after conversations that we have with others.This is a generation that is growing up texting, typing and cannot have a conversation. They would rather text than speak on the phone. Technology is redrawing the boundaries of solitude.Dr. Turkle believes that we are abandoning ourselves to our technologies.

She closed her talk again warning us of the long "electronic shadow"that the internet casts. It is defining our notion of privacy and democracy.She discussed the implications of Larry Page's (CEO of Google) comment that privacy is not a relevant social norm. Dr. Turkle countered with the idea that intimacy is only possible with privacy.Her closing words were: "We make our technologies and they in turn shape us."

Romance in the Information Age

Christine Rosen, in her article, “Romance in the Information Age”, poses some of the fundamental questions in the age of the Internet. To what extent do our technologies transform who we are? What challenges do these technologies pose to our ability to meet and maintain a successful relationship that begins on the Internet? Can technology and/or science lead to a more meaningful and compatible relationship?

In the Clouds? For the Birds?

Where my information lives

Cloud Computing?

  The article on cloud computing brought up many issues I have never considered

  Perhaps as many people, I have no idea where my data is physically stored. I have this naïve (very naïve) idea that there really is a cloud upon which my data drifts around safe and secure in heaven.

  From a legal perspective, if there were any type of legal issue, I have no idea where the place of jurisdiction is. Again, an image pops into my head of clouds, is that really a country? 

  How secure is my data? Since I really don’t have any trade secrets and I am not (really) a covert undercover agent, I assume that no one is interested in my information. So cross this issue of the list of things that keep me up at night.

Another issue is intellectual property rights. Under whose domain is my creative work if it is stored on the cloud?  The country where the data is warehoused, the country where the work was created, pretty complicated.

  Musings aside, this was the first time I understood the complexities of the legal, ethical and environmental issues of data storage. Are we empowering a few major corporations with vast control of our information and identities? As a country, are we making the right choices when it comes to cloud computing?  Are we selling our knowledge base, and perhaps our soul based on cheap electricity and space?  Who is overseeing the complicated legal issues regarding information policy? 
  The next time you log into your Google account (or any cloud based application) think carefully about where that information is going, who you are sharing it with, and what your legal rights are.

Do you love your gadgets?

You love your iPhone. Literally

  This week an article appeared on the op-ed page in the NY Times telling us that we "literally" love our iphones. The ringing of the iPhone apparently activates the cortex of the brain which is most often associated with feelings of love and compassion.

  This week we focused on the issue of identity. Who are we in relationship to our gadgets? Are we having more “personal” interchanges with a screen that with each other? Our sense of self is radically redefining itself, as we transform ourselves into an image of who we want to project online. 

  Sherry Turkle, of MIT has spent the last three decades exploring our relationship to our gadgets. We have become a society tethered to our iphones, blackberries,____________(insert your gadget here). Without them, we feel a deep loss. She describes a television producer whose Palm crashed, and she felt like it was more than she could handle. A death. “I felt as if I had lost my mind.”

   Dr. Turkle argues that technology is interfering with adolescent development, by keeping kids attached to their parents, unable to make their own decisions, and unable to move forward and develop a sense of autonomy and independence.

  Dr. Turkle also worries that we are increasingly blurring the lines between RL and virtual reality. “Sometimes we engage with avatars who anonymously stand in for others, enabling us to express ourselves in intimate ways to strangers."

The question that she leaves us with, “It hangs on the question of what we will be like, what kind of people we are becoming as we develop very intimate relationships with our machines.”

  I don’t know the answers to these questions.But the desire for deep personal connections has not disappeared. People still crave human connection. 

I may really like my iphone, but I love my husband and daughter.

Interpersonal life online or How I met my husband

I found the articles this week extremely engaging, particularly Nancy Baym’s article: Interpersonal Life Online. To what extent has this digital medium altered our relational lives  is a fascinating  question.

From Baym’s perspective, technology is fundamentally social.  She also points out that many early scholars failed to understand the social implications of the medium.

Since online interpersonal communication filters out the traditional cues that are present in an FtF encounter, we base our judgments of other on different criteria. There is more emphasis on conversational style rather than appearance. There is also a heightened potential for identity playing.  People can be whoever they want to be on the internet.

Certainly the established rules of interpersonal behavior and etiquette (if I can use that dated term) are changing radically.

We are now in a digital world where people are being introduced by matching algorithms.   Is this proof of a broad cultural shift in society?  If the answer is yes, are we in fact in the third wave, the information revolution?  I think we shall soon know.

Information Revolution or Evolution?

Are we in the Midst of an Information Revolution?

The first thought that struck me while reading the articles this week was the multitude of terms attributed to the “information society”. Are we in a "post-industrial society" as Daniel Bell wrote, or the "third wave" of a technological revolution as Toffler spoke of or a "knowledge society" as Stehr proposed? 

How do we define the term information? Is it interchangeable with technology? 

Are there appropriate qualitative or quantitative methods to evaluate whether we have entered a new era?

Webster, in his article The Information Society Revisited, points out that there is an assumption (that he argued against) that quantitative increases transform-in unspecified ways-into qualitative changes in the social system. Are more computers and more information synonymous with a new societal order? Is there a tipping point?

Webster would argue that technology is a part of society not the major force in change as the determinists would state. There is a much more complicated relationship between technology, history and society.

After reading the articles, I would agree with Webster that the basic structure of our society has not changed, so have we entered the Information Revolution?

I say no.