...With a Side of Responsibility, Please

Okay, these readings hit home because my research deals with how emergent technologies have created a new vehicle for collaboration within society. Much of the theory behind this aligns with these readings, so I'll just dig in.

Jenkin's work on convergence likely stuck with me the most because of how it relates to Jay Bolter's concept of remediation. Remediation is how we in the literati and print-based culture tend to view media evolution. Remediation describes how media tend to imitate one another as they adapt to a societal role: thus print and web design both mimic each at first as they fight out their respective roles in each other's presence. Convergence can be seen as the place where content overlaps in remediated media. This is important to me because convergence and remediation allow fragments to be joined more easily than in the past. Today you can join concepts from TV, music, and Joyce together on the Internet with a picture of your kids to create something new. This is part of the new collaborative culture: kinda like Evil Burt. We now all own access to once privileged fragments to do with what we want. The challenge now is for pedagogy, especially secondary schools, to catch up with teaching methods that promote responsible rhetoric and collaboration with this new power.

That's also the frightening aspect of this new collaboration. Mob rule historically isn't the sunshine and happiness revolution often preached. Responsible revolution generally develops through extensive argumentation and deliberation. The new powers of the digital mob and raw democracy discussed in both Poster and Rheingold threaten responsible discourse. I was pleased at how Rheingold looked at the darkside of the digital mob, because it's more worrisome than the benefits for now to everyday life. The anonymity of the Internet to hide dangerous elements has now given way to a method for those elements to physically manifest and act. It's a tough trade off because I do not want to sacrifice my non-virtual civil liberties due to a perceived need to protect society from these forces, but I also cannot deny the danger. What is needed is a means to effectively communicate and engage publicly in these forums with detailed debate, and not simple rumor mills and mob friendly sound bites. I wanted people engaged in their community, but not at the expensive of responsible deliberation.

I think how we train ourselves to collaborate with these technologies will affect daily life more than time restraints. I think some of the researchers overlook basic science in understanding why these technologies give me more personal and family time.

Time = Distance / Rate

If I collaborate across greater space at greater speed, I save considerable amounts of time. Since the Internet grants superior speed-to-distance ratios, this offers me more time to contribute however I wish: family, friends. personal reflection, or community interaction.

Whether working from home, ordering online, or researching online, I cut down on commute, searching, and waiting in line. This dramatically affects my daily life in a way not fully explored in the readings; though most touch on related topics.

However, the collaborative elements the readings discuss do present the more important ethical considerations of these new technologies to daily life. How we collaborate in mass, how we make decisions and deliberate with one another remains paramount. Social interaction on the web remains an emerging topic as Bargh and McKenna demonstrate. Though I wonder if we don't see the best in our partners online due to the fact that the current method of communication is so devoid of detail that we simply fill in that void with our own self. We do this in normal communication, but one wonders how much we amplify this online.

For random closing thoughts: I'm a Mac guy at heart, but I use both because IBM-PCs are cheap and I'm a student. The supremacy of platform gaming makes IBM-PCs nothing better than the cheapest option. I thought the articles did a great job talking hardware, but the lack of Linux references kinda lessens their weight from software platform POV.

I also want to say that the McMillian article ranks as the most useful piece I've read all year in any class. A great starting point for making some research choices on Internet sampling. Now I have to rework my paper again.

So, the good? Superior and more democratic collaboration and content production with more time to do so. The bad? Mob rule combined with anonymity granted to potentially harmful minority sects--in other words, a lack of regulation regarding the worst aspects of the most important elements within a functional democracy, freedom and minority protection.