At the end of Wesch's video The Machine is Us/ing Us, he calls upon the viewer to "rethink a few things," stating "Digital text is no longer just linking information ... The web is linking people." The topics to rethink are "copyright, authorship, identity, ethics, aesthetics, rhetorics, governance, privacy, commerce, love, family, ourselves."
Oddly, not "education reform," which Wesch rethinks in his article The Old Revolution (although one might argue that he's also rethinking governance).
Despite the striking and constantly transmogrifying message of the video and the upbeat music, there is the sinister overtone of one incarnation of the title (the web is using us) and the answer to the question in the video "Who will organize all of this data?" which was answered first with "Google," followed by brief highlighted portions of the Wired article from 2005 titled We Are the Web. "When we post and then tag pictures ... we are teaching the machine. Each time we forge a link... we teach it an idea." "The machine is using us."
Wesch seems to believe we can build an educational reform revolution with Web 2.0 tools, but he is acutely aware that they are at the center of a cultural upheaval that we need to take control of.
Sherry Turkle is a psychologist, and so is well positioned to rethink "identity," "love," "family," and "ourselves" as she does in her article The Flight From Conversation.
Both Turkle and Wesch begin with a similar theme that the digital world is malleable. In Wesch's video The Machine is Us/ing Us, he begins by writing in pencil that text is linear. He goes on to type that "Digital text is different," and then edits that to read "Digital text is more flexible." Turkle writes, "Texting and e-mail and posting let us present the self we want to be. This means we can edit. And if we wish to, we can delete. Or retouch: the voice, the flesh, the face, the body." She writes that we have "learned the habit of cleaning [human relationships] up with technology."
Turkle's argument evolves into a discussion of the loss we experience from this relationship with technology, which includes not only the editing of self, but the quality of interpersonal communication that these tools impose: short on-demand interactions that cause us to "dumb down" our communications. She writes, "We expect more from technology and less from one another and seem increasingly drawn to technologies that provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of relationship."
She concludes that our inability to be alone will cause us to be more lonely.
This may be true. The evidence she provides is in the form of anecdote. But I agree with Wesch that we do need to think about all of the facets of our lives that are changing because of our connectedness. Turkle's concerns may be accurate or she might be forecasting a social gloom that will never transpire. We need to figure it out.
I feel as if Turkle's concerns are correct. Yes Wesch told us we will need to rethink all of those different aspects of society, but he did not convey the sense of urgency that I think is implied in Turkle's writing.
ReplyDeleteUnfamiliar as I am with programming, I wonder if differences in style are detectable. In other words, like I rarely need my students to put their names on their work come November, can you read your students' personalities in the lines of their code? Also, have you read any of Douglas Coupland's novels that touch on the Wesch/Terkle debate? I'm thinking specifically of "Microserfs."
ReplyDeleteHi Seth,
ReplyDeleteNo, I haven't read any of the Coupland novels. (I, sadly, have little time for fiction, although I will go on the occasional tear.) Do tell me about them today if you get a chance.
Yes, I absolutely can tell my students from their code. Even the most basic program can be written in myriad ways. You don't really learn that until you teach, and then you see the variety. And then personalities start to come out. I can tell which students are reading the text and watching my videos based on the style of their code, and I can tell who has lifted something off the Internet. The "better" a student is -- the more closely he or she mimics standard design practices -- the harder it is to distinguish the student. There certainly isn't the variety you would see in an essay or creative writing sample.