Social network sites risk infantilising the mid-21st century mind, leaving it characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity, according to a leading neuroscientist.

In this related audioclip, Lady Greenfield indicates that “It’s not so much that one has evidence, but…” and then goes on to float an aspersion about a connection between social networking and autism.

This reminds me of some of the panic that swirled around Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, or of Dr. Alfred Carroll’s warning at the end of Reefer Madness…

Yes, that happened right here, to your neighbors. It is not too much to say that in your hands lies the possibility of averting other tragedies like it. We must work untiringly, so that our children are obliged to learn the truth. Because it is only through knowledge that we can safely protect them. Failing this, the next tragedy may be that of your daughter. Or your son. Or yours. Or Yours. Or YOURS!

Dr. Alfred Carroll

from: http://i42.tinypic.com/2mhhtap.jpg

He argues that these “tethered” devices are quashing the innovation and democracy that the Internet promised.

In a review on Leonardo Online, John F. Barber highlights Zittrain’s assertion that hope resides in the millions of users using “generative” devices and applications (e.g., Wikipedia)  to work creatively and collaboratively to restablish and maintain a truly democratic Internet.

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Zittrain, J. (2008). The future of the Internet and how to stop it. New Haven: Yale

review at: http://leonardo.info/reviews/jan2009/barber_future.html

Future of the Internet blog: http://futureoftheinternet.org/

On a personal note:  I pay about $35/per month for a home phone on which I make 3 to 5 calls.

I would like to charge Sprint and Verizon for using the services for which I pay so much, to try to sell me things.  Maybe I’ll include an invoice with my next payment.

A recent article in New Scientist describes a 2200 year old mechanical device called the Antikythera mechanism that was used to demonstrate and calculate planetary motion, eclipses and other celestial phenomena.  Here is an article from BBC News from 2006.

The account of the archaeological process of understanding and, eventually reconstructing the device is almost as fascinating as the device itself.

Take a look at this video:

From the New Scientist Article:

Historians have often scoffed at the Greeks for wasting their technology on toys rather than doing anything useful with it. If they had the steam engine, why not use it to do work? If they had clockwork, why not build clocks?

and

Rather than being toys, devices like the Antikythera mechanism were seen as a route to understanding and demonstrating the nature of the universe – a way to get closer to the true meaning of things. To what better use could technology be put?

OK.  I’m back to work.

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Reference:

Marchant, J. (2008).  Archimedes and the 2000-year-old computer. New Scientist, 200 (2686). Retrieved from

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026863.200-modern-lessons-of-ancient-greek-computing.html

I found this great Firefox add-on called Hyperwords.  It doesn’t work as smoothly as the demo video (which you should watch), but it is pretty functional–the translate option is fun.  They promise a Windows version in 2009  that will work in every Windows program.

Here may be an example:  I came across an ad for a Sudoku game aimed at children.  Instead of numbers, nine different colors were used.  Other than that, the rules are the same.  The idea is that it is easier for children to deal with colors than with numbers.  I also found another one that uses pictures.

However, it seems that the numbers provide a pattern that is the point of the game.  Replacing them with items that have no systematic relationship (I dont think that the colors are in wavelength order or the animals in some other meaningful order.) defeats much of what makes Sudoku engaging.  I’ve never used these and I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.

In the late 1980s, I attended a series of Aldus Pagemaker workshops for CCNY faculty.  Another attendee, a senior and very accomplished professor who had had up to this point almost no experience with computers was having considerable difficulty operating the computer.  He kept lifting his keyboard and moving his mouse underneath it when he needed to bring his pointer to the left side of his screen.  No amount of gentle and patient instruction during the four sessions was able to completely erase this tendency.  This professor found himself in a situation where he was uncomfortable and unable to perform a simple task that gave others in the room no trouble. He took it quite well and continued to work at it and, no doubt got past the frustration after the workshops were over.  But I know that many do not—they give up and begin to downplay the importance of the technologies that don’t grant them access.  They may even begin to denigrate those who regularly use and advocate for these technologies.  If in a decision-making or gatekeeping capacity, these people may, out of ignorance if nothing stronger, prevent or slow the introduction, adoption, exploitation or development of available tools, modes of communication and pedagogical supports.

Generational divisions around developing technologies may become less important as younger people begin to assume decision-making positions.  Of course, these younger people will likely be behind the curve on what ever is current in their future.

In Free Culture, Lawrence Lessig points out several instances when, in disputes engendered by incompatibilities between new and emerging technologies and copyright laws, the US Congress stepped in and “balanced the interests at stake” via new legislation.  Often legal processes are set into motion as disputes, disagreements and unforeseen issues arise.  However this is often before possibilities, solutions, obstacles, etc. are fully explored.  Therefore, it is beneficial that Congress’ “balancing act has historically been done after a technology has matured, or settled into the mix of technologies that facilitates the distribution of content” (p. 78).

The ages of members of Congress (especially the Senate) would indicate that many of them are probably not on the cutting edge of new technologies.  Therefore it is wise of them to let the law hash out and expose some of the issues before they act.

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Reference

Lessig, L. (2004). Free culture: The nature and future of creativity. New York: Penguin.

Children in public schools often are subjected to back-to-basics initiatives.  Let’s accept for the moment the good will of the people behind these pushes and their arguments that we are dealing with a crisis and therefore must prepare children to compete in the real world in which they live.  Are we in danger of fostering, or, more to the point, perpetuating a multi-tiered system where disenfranchised children are trained to survive in an unfair world while the children of the powerful and the wealthy are educated—given the opportunity to engage in activities that prepare them for leadership and success well beyond mere survival?  In doing this aren’t we in effect widening and strengthening the gaps in achievement and opportunity between the haves and the have-nots?

The problem is that not surviving precludes any chance of excelling.  Does this leave us with no choice?  Must we sacrifice a generation or two (or more) as we work to shape a better future in which there is no place, no need and no tolerance for a multi-tiered, race- class- or gender-based system of education?  Patience is not a virtue of mine, but neither am I inclined to play games with other people’s lives just for the sake of immediate action.  I know that this kind of argument raged around abolition, civil rights and, I am sure most other instances of oppressed peoples endeavoring to throw off the burdens imposed upon them.  Sometimes these arguments are engaged in by those more comfortable, safe and able to indulge in the luxury of debating big ideas than the people on the front lines of the struggle.

In What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, James Gee asserts that well-designed video games are long, and challenging.  He adds that good games are “life enhancing” or engaging.  Gee claims that these conditions are necessary for games to be successful.  He states that game designers don’t make their games shorter, simpler and easier (the way, he points out, that schools often do with their curriculums) because “gamers won’t accept short or easy games” (p.3).
Gee continues his comparison of video games to classroom instruction:

…the theory of learning in good video games fits well…with the best sorts of science instruction in schools today.  Such instruction stresses strategic thinking and problem solving, often collaboratively…[T]his sort of science instruction is rare and getting rarer as testing and skill-and-drill retake our schools. (p. 4)

Paradoxically, much of the educational software that is peddled to parents, teachers and schools seems not to be built on what Gee refers to as the “best theories of learning in cognitive science,” the very characteristics exhibited by the types of video games that are eschewed by schools, teachers and parents as a waste of time.

One of the sad things about public education as we practice it, is that irrelevance doesn’t describe just things like video games, but is characteristic of much of the teaching that takes place.  Learning experiences for children often have no connection to what they already know and understand.  Principles of science, for example, are in operation in inner cities and in the most rural of areas just as they are in the suburbs.  But we often teach in ways that do not tap into children’s knowledge and do not build on the strengths of learners.  At some point people in the British colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere resolved that it was of limited utility for their children to learn about the flora and fauna of the English hedgerow and began look for a more local, more relevant way to understand Biology.  This was equally true in other subject areas.  This was a major impetus for the creation of, among other programs and initiatives, The Education Development Center’s African Primary Science Programme in the 1960s.  Isn’t it the case that exposure to, facility with, and the taking for granted of technological capabilities and possibilities are among the very centrally relevant skills, abilities and habits of mind that the children in our public schools need to develop to have a chance to contribute to, benefit from, and lead in the world into which they have been born?

I share your worries about providing a less-than-relevant education to children for whom education is most critical, but how do we avoid marginalizing and limiting them even further?

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Reference:

Gee, J. P. (2007). What do video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palmgrave MacMillan.