Category Archives: Random

May 28 2 comments
Random

Memed Digital

Since the start, I’ve taken issue with the “digital immigrants/digital natives” divide. From one angle, that division puts me and everyone I share my digital life with on the digital immigrants side, in spite of our very rich online lives. From another, it suggests that the undergraduate students I spend my days assisting are somehow “wired differently” than me, and are way more adept at technology than me. This just isn’t my experience in any way. I think it denigrates the amazing work of older net citizens and puts teens in a box in which they do not identify in any way shape or form. The generational argument just falls flat to me.

Listening to Don Tapscott’s recent Big Ideas lecture the other day gave me a new insight on the matter. Like all who advocate the idea of a digital generational shift, Tapscott was inspired by watching his kids. They’re geniuses! No wait, all their friends are geniuses too! This is the beginning of the problem; anecdotes are great, but they bias you in a particular way. In Tapscott’s world, it’s the kids who are living the digital life, not his peers. Therefore, it must be generational. There is nothing in his evidence that proves this; in fact, even the brain chemistry evidence he cites doesn’t prove it. Different behaviours, different activities can change brain chemistry; that’s not news. That’s the real story, not generations.

Different behaviours and activities can be more popular with certain age groups than others, which makes this “digital native” thing an issue of correlation, not causation. However: do we have evidence that more teenagers are interested in the digital life than any other generation? Gen X is small compared to the “millenials”, correct? In 1994 Wired predicted that by the year 2000 the average age of internet users would be 15. Then I wonder why, in 2008, the average age of internet users in the UK is 37.9? As of right now, NiteCo lists the average age of internet users as 28.3421. I’m not suggesting that teens aren’t interested in the internet and in digital life; it’s just that it’s not primarily or only them. It’s not a factor of their age. This isn’t even like Elvis, when the kids loved the rock’n'roll and the adults hated it; it’s nowhere near that clear cut.

I think it’s more like a cultural meme. It’s a series of metaphors, of truths we accept. In the digital culture meme, there can be something called “digital culture”. An online community is a real community. You can have online friends, and they’re real friends. You can “talk” online using only text, and have it mean as much to you as a face to face conversation. You’re intrigued by new internet apps, not scared. You have a tendency to play with things digital and see how they fit into, or alter, your digital life. The idea of wanting to be connected pretty much all the time is not that strange or dangerous; “thinking with the internet” is a concept that makes sense to you. These ideas, among many others, make up the digital culture meme, and the people who subscribe to it are the digital natives. It has nothing to do with when and where you were born.

Maybe it’s like Stravinsky. When they first performed Rite of Spring, people rioted. It was so foreign, no one knew how to respond to it. But eventually, the meme of radical music spread; eventually, the song made it into Disney’s Fantasia. It wasn’t worthy of a riot anymore; it wasn’t different anymore. It wasn’t going to destroy society. It was just a new way of thinking. Did that start with a generation? Or just a group of classical music lovers? We didn’t consider that a generational shift, but perhaps it was. New ways of thinking, new ways to intrepret culture.

Or are we trapped by old ideas about genetics? Old ideas, the ideas that filter through into society as truths. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks; real change comes from the youth. Is that so? For people like Don Tapscott, is thinking of the digital culture meme as a generational change a way to excuse himself, and his peers, and others who fear the meme, from participating? Is it reassuring to think of digital culture as something akin to built-into-your-genes and unfixable? They are just built differently, they’re brains are different; don’t feel challenged by these new ways of thinking and communicating. Don’t feel threatened. It’s not your fault that you don’t understand or won’t participate. That’s what’s right given your brain wiring. This is only a game for the young. This is the way THEY think, because they were born in this world. But no, it’s not like genetics in that sense; it’s more like epigenetics. Your brain is flexible, your genes are flexible depending on the choices you make, the options you have, and the circumstances you’re in. Accepting the meme and living digital can change your brain. It has nothing to do with your age.

May 24 1 comments
Random

Podcast theme, attempt 1

Thanks to this guy for the music, orator for the voices, and garageband for making the mixing possible.

May 24 3 comments
Random

The Tech-Ink Manifesto

[Dear Tech-Inkers: below is a manifesto I have written to define what this blog is for. Please feel free to edit or add to it to reflect the direction you feel it should go, or to ensure that it's properly conveying your circumstances or interests. It will be a far more interesting place if I'm not the only one to define it: don't be shy! Edit away!]

Internet technology and new media move fast; libraries generally move slowly. As librarians, it’s easy for us to get comfortable and do what’s required of us and nothing more, particularly in a world where library patron satisfaction is based on how friendly we are and not on how accurate, or innovative, or trend-setting we are. It’s easy not to be innovative; innovation scares people. Change makes people uncomfortable. Introducing new ideas translates into more work, more thinking, more feeling insecure at not being on top of all this change, or not being in the loop. It’s easier, more comfortable, and more popular to just do what’s expected. To just keep digging one particular ditch without looking up.

This blog is about looking up. We don’t want to dig the same ditch for the rest of our lives. We are curious and thoughtful people interested in the way communication is changing. We like the way the world is turning authority on its ear and opening up publishing platforms to anyone and everyone. We like what this means in terms of our old ways of talking about legitimacy and information literacy. We like the new genres and forms of communication that are being generated all around us. We like the challenges that are being made to old ideas like copyright, distribution, sharing, and authorship. We are intrigued that currently available information is taking on new meaning, new power and new potential as it gets mashed together via new media with geographic data, contributed text, and images. We are keen to be part of the conversation around these things. We have much to offer and learn.

We want to discuss how new media impacts us, our patrons, and the information around us; we want to move toward new media with wide open eyes and helping hands. We want to be actors and partipicants, movers and shakers, not just witnesses. We need to come out from behind the desk. The internet needs us as much as we need it. It needs us to evaluate it, find ways to apply it, make it valuable, give it a niche if it deserves one. We need new media to help us to change the way we think about old problems and methods; it is one of our catalysts toward innovation.

The purpose of this blog is to create a venue for this kind of discussion. Not all librarians share our interest in the impact of new media and the internet on our profession, our patrons, and ourselves; this is a place where we can share our discoveries, our enthusiasm, our questions and musings, or our disappointments with like-minded souls. It is a place to record what we learn and build on each other’s experiences. It is a place where we can challenge each other and ourselves.

While in-depth considerations of serious and academic new applications is welcome and likely, so is random, joyous play with applications that appear to have no intention of improving the minds of anyone. (Most of the best applications we have we never meant to be anything but fun.) Play is a crucial part of learning, and if we jettison things to fast because they aren’t “serious” enough, we risk avoiding any innovation or valuable learning altogether. Fun things have more potential for social change than boring things. Fun things tap into parts of ourselves that we tend not to invoke when we put on our serious learning faces; those things might be the key to our ability to learn deeply.

This blog is the place where we will spill virtual ink about being virtual; the hardware that gets us there, the software that guides us, the communities that people create and develop, the information they generate, and the ways these things change (or have the potential to change) our library environments.

We hope you’ll join us!

May 23 1 comments
Random

ETIG library camp – still time to register!

i had initially planned my first post to be a bit more of a “why i love tech” type thing, but there is something more pressing i wanted to mention first. then, as i thought about it, talking about the library camp for ETIG is definitely “why i love tech”.

the ETIG preconference for CLA is not, in fact, cancelled, it has just gone “off the grid”.

if you are interested in attending, sign up on the wiki and bring your A game. we’re going to talk about all kinds of tech-related issues affecting libraries these days. oh, and Montreal, is a pretty fun town.