1. DIGITAL LITERACY AND THE
DEATH OF COMMUNITY
implications for education
John Carter McKnight
Adjunct Professor of Law
Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law
Arizona State University
VWBPE 2011
2. who and why
adjunct professor of law
PhD student, Human & Social Dimensions of
Science & Technology
former officer/director, science education
nonprofits
Marketing/Communications in SL
communities
3. what’s digital literacy?
literacy: the ability to receive and transmit
meaning using a particular technology
(an STS spin on socio-linguistics)
print literacy: the ability to read and write
texts
digital literacy: the ability to receive and
transmit meaning using a range of computer
tools
5. but all tool use involves
power
“any view of literacy is inherently political, in
the sense of involving relations of power
among people” – James Paul Gee
“artifacts have politics” – Langdon Winner
“technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it
neutral” – Melvin Kranzberg
6. so what are the power
relations?
communities
associations
networks
7. communities
you don’t choose your neighbors
“socially integrative”
bad side – they can brutally enforce
conformity
good side – belonging, clarity
8. associations
de Toqueville and on – American democracy
is built on associations
where people gain “democratic literacy” by
making political meaning
“bowling alone” for 3 generations now
9. networks
“the first fax machine was worthless”
what would the politics of the network
become?
10. networks
a democratic renaissance online?
“declaration of independence of cyberspace”
1996
11. the california ideology
the electronic frontier foundation
mitch kapor
linden lab
burning man
14. artifacts have politics
community: politics of all of us
association: politics of kinds of us
network: politics of me and mine
15. sherry turkle says -
- kids these days are feeling themselves victims
of technological determinism
- their parents are more interested in their
BlackBerries
- digital literacy = vast social pressure
- high school social media, the worst
of community and network?
16. who has power in the
network?
me!
I can make my echo chamber
the network owner
why is facebook free?
the data miners
big brother was a punk kid
17. good for community?
probably not
everything from transit and housing choices
to high school socializing to gaming suggests,
we want to choose our ties
19. ok, but what about digital
creativity?
we’ve put a movie studio, a recording studio
and a printing press on every desk
what about the politics of that?
21. the empire strikes back
secret copyright treaties
“enclosure acts” for the information
commons
criminalizing the creative process
22. digital literacy – who gets
the power?
what’s our responsibility as teachers?
“nothing could be more crucial to democracy
than the education of its
citizens” - Martha Nussbaum
citizenship and civilization – “playing well
with others”
we don’t, we don’t want to, and digital
literacy empowers us not to
23. being here is a political
statement
"May have been the losing side. Still not
convinced it was the wrong one." - Malcolm
Reynolds
Glass half empty today – going to toss out some ideas and hopefully spark a discussion. *Please* backchat, and I’ll follow as best I can, plus take questions via Elektra.
so, I’ve been thinking and doing technology and community for about 15 years
I’m bringing together linguistics, education theory and STS – I think we need all those perspectives to understand where we are this *definition* is political – it holds that personal production is as central to literacy as consuming official/canon production (Jenkins, particpation gap?)
What power relations are inscribed in this space, and why? Who do you think built it, and what do you think their classroom looks like?
there are lots of others to look at, but I’m looking at these three
John Perry Barlow, Electronic Freedom Foundation – and Kapor
OK, LL out of Burning Life is actually kind of the libertarian California Ideology at its finest – but the point is, there was a market competition between two ideologies, two sets of power relationships, and SL lost –brutally. The net-communitarian view is dead as dinosaurs – we’re the last hangers-on after the Facebook meteor hit.
Kendall’s talk next, in the workshop zone – me and Nila on classroom experience at 5, me on WoW tomorrow at 11