Digital pervasion and loss of identity

This is a continuation of yesterday's post entitled: Always connected.

“We are all digital now” claims Paul Longley of University College London, in a research report (BBC News, 2006). In so doing, he identifies a global digital tribe. Taking into account the fact that much of the world’s population is more than a day’s walking distance from a fixed line telephone, and even allowing for the growing trend toward mobile phone usage in developing countries, or the paucity of computers in the third world, Longley’s claim could be considered contentious. However, where applied to western industrialised nations, it musters some credibility. There is none the less a need to acknowledge the digital divides that are perpetuated wherever technology is applied. Interestingly, Longley’s claim may hold some truth when contextualised in a world where cable and satellite television channels proliferate, digital mobile communication becomes ever more pervasive, surveillance of civil movement and activity is automated, and where digital identification of individuals, commodities and services is becoming common place. The location of a global digital tribe within this landscape is a feature of interest for this chapter.

Longley’s research team identified digital tribes by their socio-economic activities and by the manner in which they used information and communication technologies. Yet there are more subtle distinctions that can be made, particularly at the perceptual and motivational levels of analysis.

There is an argument that due to the process of globalisation, national boundaries (and therefore tribal boundaries) have been eroded to the point that we are amalgamating into a homogenous mass of humanity, and where the last vestiges of tribal identity are vanishing. In essence, the forces of globalisation have amalgamated us all into one tribe. We are living in a ‘corporate age’ runs the argument, in which all of our decisions are being dictated by ‘those who have the real power’. Therefore, wherever I travel, I can find the same fast food outlets, and the same familiar chain stores where I can purchase clothing and footwear I will be comfortable wearing. I can blend into the background because I am wearing a similar style of clothing to the hundreds of other people milling around in the high street, and I will not be conspicuous, because I am eating the same food and drinking from an identical soft drink can as the natives. Have I therefore blended in to such an extent into the local culture that I lose my identity? No, my individual identity remains intact, whilst my individualism is subsumed into the social melange within which I am located. Identity and individualism are not synonymous, even though there are obvious commonalities. The identity argument may break down when it is applied to the formation of a single ‘digital tribe’, but clearly there are many personal identities represented within the tribe. It is quite possible then, that there is in fact one ‘digital tribe’ in the broadest sense of its meaning, but there are many sub-sets of this large digital tribe – what we can term ‘virtual clans’.

Tomorrow: Virtual Clans

Always connected

This is a continuation of yesterday's post entitled: The digital tribe and the network nation.

It was Howard Rheingold (2002) who coined the term ‘smart mobs’ (a play on the word 'mobile' or mobile phone) to describe individuals who work collectively and intelligently toward a mutual goal without necessarily having met. Unlike their more feral counterparts, smart mobs tend to act intelligently and with a purpose. They are distributed beings (Curtis, 2004), carrying devices that have immense computing power and telecommunication capability, enabling them to collaborate in ways which were previously inconceivable. The immediacy of their communicative ability and the ubiquity and persistence of their engagement (they are always connected) within the smart mob enable them to perform collective feats of imagination, co-operation, trading and the exploitation of aggregative mind power, beyond anything humankind has ever achieved up to this point in its history. This may appear to read as a eulogy, but in reality smart mobs are the vanguard of an influential social movement that will gather pace over the next few years and will ultimately radically change the face of education.

Smart mobs can act for the public good, for example where drivers use their mobile phones to inform a local radio station of a road traffic accident. They can also act concertedly for more nefarious purposes, such as tram or bus passengers who text their ticketless friends to warn them of the location of ticket inspectors. Some smart mob activities may be pointless to all but those who participate in the action. In recent years, a new social phenomenon has been observed, particularly in urban areas. Known as ‘flash mobs’, they are large groups of people who suddenly gather in a public place, perform some meaningless activity for a period of time, and then just as quickly disappear. The T-Mobile dance was an example of this phenomenon and there are many more examples. Flash mobs are almost always co-ordinated by one or more individuals through mass SMS texting, e-mails or other electronic message transmission methods. Technology directed flash mobs have occasionally gathered for political purposes at times of civil unrest in Romania and China, but generally their purpose is ill defined. Flash mobs have been explained as a classic example of the innate need for people to belong to a group, be privy to inside knowledge, and be able to participate in what is ‘happening’.

Rheingold also identifies a ‘thumb tribe’ which consists predominantly of those younger members of society who appear to be constantly connected to the rest of their tribe and who use ‘one thumb signalling’ via text to communicate. They belong to the larger tribe of the ‘always connected’ who are identifiable by their apparent dependency on mobile telecommunication technologies. They are clearly identified not only by the means through which they communicate, but also by the manner in which this communication is constructed, i.e their vocabulary. SMS text is constrained by a single message limit of 160 characters. To save money, txters have developed a reduced form of language made up of letters, numbers and symbols. Known as ‘squeeze text’ (Carrington, 2005) this clannish form of language changes the morphology of the language being used, with little or no loss of its semantics for those who are members of the clan. For those outside the clan however, txting can present a bewildering conundrum.

Tomorrow: Digital pervasion and loss of identity

References

Carrington, V. (2005) Txting: The end of civilisation (again?) Cambridge Journal of Education. 35 (2), 161-175.
Curtis, M. (2004) Distraction: Being human in a digital world. London: Futuretext.
Rheingold, H. (2002) Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books.

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The digital tribe and the network nation

This is a continuation from yesterday's blogpost entitled: Digital Tribal Identity

I will argue here that within the present information age, where digital communication technologies have fractured the tyranny of distance beyond repair, and where computers have become pervasive and ubiquitous, identification through digital mediation has become the new cultural capital (Bordieu & Passeron, 1990). Cultural capital is the set of ‘invisible bonds that tie a community together’ (Curtis, 2004, p 72) without which societal cohesiveness begins to unravel. It is this ‘social glue’ - such mutual understandings and exchanges that occur on a daily basis – that holds together the basic building blocks of social life in which people simply ‘look out for each other’. In the real life community, people work hard to sustain such mutual exchange, and its value is instilled in them from an early age. This results in the transmission of the culture from generation to generation.

For the digital community, such tribal identification operates at least within the social and individual levels, but may be inherently more complex, transcending age, ethnicity, gender and other social divisions such as disability. Paradoxically, it is largely the individual figures within this equation who act in concert to perpetuate the social cohesion of the tribe. Even stranger in the digital age, such exchanges are conducted regularly through one or more mediating technologies.

The anthropologist Erving Goffman suggested that the performance of the self is a social act designed to regulate the impression one presents to others. Goffman’s notion of impression management in public spaces evokes the construction of the self simultaneously in the mind of the individual and in the collective mind of the audience (Goffman, 1959). We see ourselves reflected in the eyes of the other, and adjust our behaviour to conform and remain accepted by those with whom we choose to identify (Cooley, 1902).

Rheingold (2002) applies this ‘theory of being’ to the use of short message service (SMS) texting by young people – who they send texts to, and receive them from, defines an element of their social identity, as constructed by themselves in relation to the others in their SMS circle of communication. Such small friendship circles may be physical, or virtual, or a combination of both, but for the individual, this may matter little, but remains very much an essence of his or her identity as a tribal member. The content of the text message may also be secondary to the fact that the message has been sent, and the perception that the sender has been ‘thinking about you’. Such management of impression is projected through the technology to show the sender in a ‘best light’ to others.

Tomorrow: Always connected

References

Bordieu, P. and Passeron, J-C. (1990) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. London: Sage Publications.
Cooley, C. H. (1902) Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Scribner.
Curtis, M. (2004) Distraction: Being human in a digital world. London: Futuretext.
Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday. Rheingold, H. (2002) Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books.

Digital tribal identity

Earlier this year I published an edited volume entitled 'Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures' which was a compendium of papers written by leading theorists and practitioners in the field of learning technology. Over the next few days I will present an abridged, bite size series of exerpts from one of my chapters which was entitled: 'Digital Tribes, Virtual Clans'. I hope you enjoy it and look forward to reading your comments.

Tribes use common culture to construct group identity and will employ dialects as a shared but often exclusive form of communication. The dialect of the London East End for example, is peppered with rhyming slang, whereas just a few hundred miles away, the Geordie dialect of the North East of England is heavy with accent and vocabulary that have survived from the incursions of the Norsemen several centuries before. Such linguistic devices, although deriving from different roots, both serve to exclude outsiders who attempt to enter into the circle. Thus the shared symbolism of the slang or dialect tacitly protects the tribal culture and secures its social exclusivity for its members. Communication, including speech, clothing and actions all serve to signal our cultural identities and group membership (Pahl & Rowsell, 2006). Cultural transmission is the communication of ideas. According to Dawkins (1976) key actions and thinking patterns of members of a culture are influenced by a contagious patterns of information known as ‘memes’. Memes carry no specific rules, but in effect are adopted and shared around by the tribe as a means of perpetuating that culture.

The smaller elements with the tribe, which we call clans, also employ shared symbolism. Each clan for example, has its totem, a symbol that represents it and distinguishes it from other, possibly rival clans. In primitive clans, the totem was often a representation of an animal or tree. Durkheim suggests it is easier for clan members to project their feelings of awe toward a totem than toward something that is as complex as the clan itself (Haralambos & Holborn, 1995). For digital tribes and virtual clans, the totem – the traditional rallying point for all tribal activity – is patently the world wide web. Not only are these digital spaces objects of intense interest and rallying points for the clans, they also act as transmitters of units of cultural knowledge. Several authors have argued that digital technologies and electronic networks provide perhaps the best environment for the transmission of memes (Blackmore 1999; Adar, Zhang, Adamic & Lukose, 2004). Such new literary practices of communication (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006) rely heavily on shared spaces, shared symbolism and the viral nature of the social web.

Weber originally suggested that culture should be construed as a ‘web of significance’ that was spun by the individuals who comprised the culture (Weber, 1947). Significantly, the increasing role the World Wide Web plays in the shaping of modern tribal culture causes Weber’s notion to resonate. Until recent technological innovation, people with common tribal identity lived in geographically specific locations, and considered areas of land to be their sole territory. Such territories are now being eroded due to the emergence of new digital tribes who occupy spaces located within cyberspace – a virtual space that transgresses all traditional, social and political boundaries.

Tomorrow: The digital tribe and the network nation

Related posts

When two edu-tribes go to war (Peter Ford)
Hoe verbind jij je met andere mensen op internet? (Wilfred Rubens)

References

Adar, E., Zhang, L., Adamic, L. and Lukose, R. (2004) Implicit Structure and Dynamics of Blogspace. Cited in Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2006) New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Classroom Learning. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Blackmore, S. (1999) The Meme Machine. Cited in Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2006) New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Classroom Learning. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Dawkins, R. (1976) The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haralambos, M. and Holborn, M. (1995) Sociology: Themes and Perspectives (4th Edition). London: Harper Collins.
Pahl, K. and Rowsell, J. (2006) Literacy and Education: Understanding the new literacy studies in the classroom. London: Paul Chapman Publishing.
Weber, M. (1947) The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation. New York: The Free Press.

Smart talk

I'm an invited speaker at the Learning Technologies Conference at London's Olympia in January. It promises to be quite an interesting two days in the capital with keynotes from Lord David Puttnam (remember Chariots of Fire?) and Stephen Heppell, as well as a host of other social media experts including my Twitter buddies Jane Hart, Donald Clark, Barry Sampson and Mark Oehlert.

My own presentation is scheduled for Day two, where I will tackle the subject of 'New Smart Devices for Learning'. Here's the blurb from the conference website:

Smart phones are now proving themselves for learning, but what happens next with smart devices? Join Steve Wheeler as he explores how existing technologies such as GPS, cameras, light-weight projection and bar code scanning can be combined with new software to extraordinary effect. In the next few years, individual's interactions with the world, and how they learn in it, may be transformed. Steve will explore:

• Augmented reality: the short-cut to information
• The power of smart devices combined with semantic search
• Wearable learning devices - pipe dream or practical reality?
• Devices already altering how people learn: from Kindle to the TouchTable
• The challenge for L&D: adopt and understand now, or play catch up later

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Hanging in there

Socrates once said: 'I cannot teach anyone anything, all I can do is make them think'. And then there was Andrew Carnegie who said: 'People who can't motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.' Some teachers struggle to motivate their students, and some students find it hard to concentrate for long enough to learn anything. So what is this slippery, elusive thing we call motivation? We certainly need it to do anything, anything at all. But where does motivation to learn come from and how can we capture it?

One of our Atlantis University team, Tillman Swinke, recently published a blog post called 'This time it's personal' where he deals with the subject of motivation in relation to informal learning. He remarks that learning always starts at the personal level (correct) and argues that therefore, informal forms of learning should assume more importance. Tillman then goes on to describe some of the most motivational ways to learn (e.g. my girlfriend only speaks Chinese, therefore I am motivated to learn to speak Chinese). He argues that informal learning has both intrinsic (self motivated) and extrinsic (externally imposed demands) motivation. I tend to agree but will maintain that informal learning is more reliant upon an individual's intrinsic motivation than it is by any external pressures. In other words, we learn because we are interested. When we move into the more formal aspects of learning, there the extrinsic motivation begins to be applied through a need to achieve good grades, complete successful projects and avoid falling behind your peers. The trick is to maintain an intrinsic motivation that is just as strong as if one were still learning informally.

This is one reason, I think, why personal learning environments (which tend to heavily represent informal learning approaches and are intrinsically motivated) are assuming an ever increasing importance in education. For it is within the PLE that students can truly pursue their own interests, motivate themselves to learn and generally capitalise on their personal talents and skills. It is the PLE that enables learners to transcend the often stifling nature of the institutional VLE to make their own creative choices about tool selection and formation of digital presence and identity. Now that's interesting....

Related posts

Intrinsic & extrinsic motivation and informal learning (DPhil Stuff)

What's in it for me? (Social eLearning)

There's no LMS in my PLE (Shelley Gibb @mollybob)

Are you listing?

I'm not entirely certain what people will use the new Twitter lists service for, but I can of course speak for myself. Personally, I intend to use it as a kind of filtering tool, so that I can click on my specific list and hopefully see tweets that are grouped around a particular community of interest of practice.

In creating this app, Twitter are merely doing what other services have already done quite successfully, including TweepML and Listorious. The only difference is that Twitter has integrated this into the side bar of its own home page, so that you can see all the Twitter lists you have yourself created, and click on them to quickly access your lists. At the moment, Twitter is polling those it has selected to test out the Beta version of the app. The results of the poll show that 17% intend to use it to find and follow other like-minded people. To find out more and receive updates live from Twitter, you should follow Nick Kallen who is @nk

Some will complain that Twitter lists are elitist. Others will welcome them with open arms, pick up the ball and start running with it. Most I suspect will shrug their shoulders and say - so what? Until of course, they spot that they are included in other people's lists, and perhaps their following is increasing. Twitter lists I predict, will consolidate many people's following numbers, and coalesce communities of interest together in a more coherent and usable way. We shall see if I'm right. In the meantime, here's an excellent video showing how to use Twitter Lists.

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