Thompson: "Slowly, Slowly We’ll Obtain a Balance."

Douglass Rushkoff’s brilliant "Digital Nation" should be required viewing for reformers committed to "disruptive innovation." 

In terms of specifics, I don’t know how much he adds to the insights of Umburto Eco’s The Name of the Rose  and Travels in Hyperreality. The novelist had long ago persuaded me that the digital age will cause short-term damage to the younger generation, not unlike the way that the rise of literacy damaged memory and other aspects of the human imagination. In the long run, as is also true of data-driven accountability, humans will learn to control the technology, create art, and produce real gains. In the short run, however, who would trade an increase in math skills for an acceleration in the decline of delayed gratification?

Secretary Duncan is 1/2 right about the transition of the next five years as up to a million Baby Boomers retire.  He is dead wrong in implying that we do not need to be afraid of technology. A technology enthusiast described digital gaming "as a lens for the entire learning experience." I support investments in those more engaging technologies, but I really agree with Todd Oppenheimer who wrote, "we’ve got to slow down and stop. And schools are one of the few institutions we have where you can have a sustained conversation."

Rushkoff’s strength was portraying the overall transformation of society and the younger generation by digital reality. We must debate how much should schools try to slow the transformation or whether schools should just try to direct change in a healthier direction. But as with the other issues that divide us, educators must recognize that classroom effects will continue to be dwarfed by social forces. The schools we build will be determined by the values of our culture, with commercialism weighing in as the 900 pound gorilla. Hopefully technology will restore some of the "human touch." It is ridiculous, however, that educators would fight over disruptive innovations as if school reform will control the unfolding of history.

I would be far more comfortable with the Defense Department rather than schools bearing the financial, the human, and the moral risks of futuristic gaming, for instance. Noah Shachtman was intriguing and terrifying in describing how "distinctions between virtual and real reality become more blurred." For instance, when a real person adds ten centimeters to their digital height in virtual negotiating, they win. When children experience swimming with whales in virtual reality, ½ recall that they actually swam with whales.

"People developing these tools seem to have less regard for how technologies will affect us in the future than how we will be influenced in the present," says Rushkoff. Sherry Turkle adds, "technology challenges us to assert our values. Slowly, slowly we’ll obtain a balance. It will take time."

Comments

[Dick]

I too found "Digital Nation" informative, but would offer a few caveats.

Actually, the invention of written language didn't "damage memory and other aspects of human imagination." It just changed what had to be stored in human memory. People had to be taught how to read and how to handle the new conventions of "writing." We're still struggling to construct reliable means of doing this in English speaking countries.

Electronic information and communication technology means that we no longer have to exclusively on human memory for declarative knowledge. That is, if it's on the Internet, it doesn't need to be in your head. And with Kindle and the iPad, it's no longer necessary o rely exclusively on "hard copy."

Any new technology, whether information, military, industrial, athletic, etc. etc. creates new risks as well as new opportunities with implications beyond their direct application.
Rushkoffs' communication did brilliantly depict the new risks,
But one could argue that playing mindless games is as useful as memorizing "core knowledge," that tasking on a laptop is as productive as tasking to a university prof's lecture, and so on.

In education, "technology" is not viewed as "how to." It's commonly viewed as electronic equipment that teachers and students have to "use." Technologically, elhi is at a hunting and gathering cultural level. How long it will take to change that and the direction the changes should take are not presently even on the scope.

Technology doesn't "challenge us to to assert our values." It inexorably changes our values. That does occur "slowly, slowly." The professional and public educational question is what to DO in the meanwhile.

[Sherman Dorn]

I'm less worried than the producers of the Frontline special and less enthusiastic than self-proclaimed "disrupters." Maybe it's because I'm an historian, but claims of a sudden New Era are less than persuasive on their face. Siva Vaidhyanathan had it right in his 2008 essay on the fallacy of the digital generation (http://www.sivacracy.net/2008/09/my_essay_on_the_myth_of_the_di.html ): there is less change there than meets the eye. A mother's observation that her family is focusing on interactive LCD screens: isn't that just a repeated meme from the invasion of television in family life? Screenshots of Second Life, a dying fad? Not persuasive. Sherry Turkle (MIT faculty member)? I wish they had interviewed Rosalind Williams as well.

[Claus]

Dick writes, "If it's on the Internet, it doesn't need to be in your head." I'm not entirely sure about that. I think we still need a good deal in our heads to make our way through the internet. And Sherman, I think the internet is more transformative than television was. It is changing the way we read, perhaps for the better, perhaps for the worse. I do get worried, though, when reading becomes a form of mere wish-fulfillment, a hunt-and-peck exercise for what the reader deems "relevant."

But we've seen so many media move from dangerous and low-brow to high brow. Plays were not generaly well regarded in the Renaissance, so it was quite a statement when Ben Jonson printed a folio edition of Shakespeare's works. Novels were widely maligned in the 18th & early 19th centuries but are certainly more highly regarded now. As John suggests, we'll have to see where things settle down the road. But I do think it's fair to look on with immediate concern as well as hope.