Amusing, no?

In another life and time, Postman and I would have had a great deal to discuss. Perhaps we would have done so publicly, in large arenas, complete with cheering audience and five-hour time limit. Alas, destiny precludes it, so I am left to read and digest and respond to no one and everyone all at once. This blog, it is literary - steeped in typography. In its own way, it is also another piece of (mostly irrelevant) information contributing to our culture's information glut. It may even be entertainment.

I suppose, at my core, I am a relativist. My essential quarrel with Postman is not that television has reshaped our public discourse, our sense of truth and knowledge, our definitions of intelligence and information, but that we are in any place to pass a judgment on these changes. Things are not as they were 100-200 years ago. Much has changed, for the better and the worse (e.g. while I bemoan the heaps of irrelevant "news" trumpeted from every corner of the world, I embrace the mind-opening exchange of information and culture). I do not believe that it is possible to get enough perspective from inside today to accurately judge it against yesterday. We need a little distance.

But distance is a luxury that we will never have, for we are here right now, teaching and learning in this quagmire of headlines, tweets, texts, hypertext, moving images, and typography. Sure we can lament the "fall" of print, the "rise" of imagery, the shorter attention spans, the perceived decrease in complexity of thought and lack of exposition, the "reading problems" and learning disorders that Postman argues did not plague the students and educators of yester-century. Or we can work diligently and thoughtfully to provide kids today the best ways and means to process, analyze, reflect on, and thrive in and shape (for the better, the meaningful-er, the serious-er!) our culture.

On Media and Messages

A medium, by definition, is "an intervening agency, means, or instrument by which something is conveyed or accomplished; one of the means or channels of general communication, information, or entertainment in society, as newspapers, radio, or television."  Since it is impossible to transmit our ideas and emotions directly from mind to mind, we are are forced to use a carrier substance - language.  Often that language is then floated along in a secondary carrier, paper and pen, radio waves, cathode ray tube, tweet, text . . . . so that in the end the essence of what was thought or felt or dreamt is squished and squeezed and folded and deconstructed and reconstructed to fit the confines and purposes of the conveyor.  Thank you, Mr. McLuhan.

I love language.  I love polysemous words, the nuance of context, the subtle shift between shiver and quiver that opens up a whole new world of understanding and interpretation.  I love that we are unable to directly convey our thoughts and must pour them messily into linguistic containers and carry them on media's shaky cafeteria trays from table to table.  I love the work of analysis and interpretation that comes with deeply reading a text and I work everyday to pass that love on to the students I work with.

This love translates directly into a love of graphic novels.  Talk about nuance!  There is so much to synthesize!  As McCloud discusses in Understanding Comics, comics require the very active participation of the reader.  The reader must buy-in and construct meaning from the myriad linguistic and artistic tools employed by the author/illustrator - from words to pictures, from blank space to camera angles.

Perhaps because I love a good double-entendre, I take no issue with the idea of media impregnating our messages with their own.  Two messages for the price of one!  It is when we stop recognizing this that problems arise.  When we take for granted that the containers and conveyances are passive and idle, then we fall into the trap of assuming (wrongly) that we can use tools without them using us.  Thank you, Mr. Postman.  Tricky stuff, indeed.

It's been ages

And I'm sorry about that.  Fall into Winter 2009 will forever be remembered as the semester that did me in, which, considering my debaucherous past, is saying something!

Today I was passed a link to a NY Times article on geekifying our high schools.  Looking at the link and description, I hesitated to even click through.  Afterall,  I can still taste the disgust that I felt at Wired's short take on the subject of geek culture in high schools.  But click through I did, and I was pleasantly surprised to find an even-handed article on how we've been teaching high school computer science and technology classes all wrong . . . and some promising examples of how to do it the right way.  More theory and critical thinking, less word processing and spreadsheets!  More creativity and a better view of the big picture, less code-writing drills!  Woohoo!

Technology shapes and is shaped by humanity.  We both use it and are used by it.  A clear understanding of how new technologies function and evolve is critical to a future aided, rather than controlled by, technology.  Improving high school tech course: step one.

On an entirely different note - here's a collection of short fiction by New Jersey native Patrick Eamonn.  Funny, poignant, at times disturbing glimpses into the lives of a series of no-one-in-particulars from our own Garden State.

Play it Again, Sam

Ahhhhh the Youth of Today.  A mess, aren't they?  They prefer texting to talking, online to outside, MySpace to the library.  They are distracted, unorganized, lazy, and disrespectful.  They can't form a complete thought, never mind a complete sentence.  They abuse language and ignore the rules of grammar and discourse.  They have no stamina or deep interest in anything.  They are so fixated on social networking and their cell phones that they aren't learning how to cope and communicate in the real world.  They are coddled and spoiled.  Yet they are exposed to more danger than ever before.

Sound familiar?  If not, then you probably never talk to anyone who works with kids - teens in specific.  I hear variations on this lament nearly daily, from colleagues, grad students, friends, my own mouth.  As someone who rides the digital native/digital immigrant line I can see where everyone is coming from.  Afterall, it's the same place they've been coming from for 2800 years:

I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words.

When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint.
--- Hesiod, Eighth Century B.C.

We thought it was the Youth of Today that were the downfall of civilization and culture.  Turns out it was the Youth of Twenty-Eight Hundred Years Ago that started it all.  Today's kids running around on the internet, playing in the street, talking back in text-speak . . . just the latest in a long history of Youth vs Establishment.

At one point everything is new and with new technologies and new ideas come changes - sometimes cosmetic, sometimes fundamental - to the ways we interact, learn, express ourselves, and navigate the world.  Priorities shift, new information changes old ways of thinking, concepts of what is rude, healthy, or safe reflect these changes.  All of which can be very uncomfortable to the old guard.  Especially to those whose ideas of right and wrong are firmly entrenched in the Truths they were taught.

The internet has had a profound impact on our culture.  It has changed the way we participate, socialize, and organize.  It has shifted the seats of power and influence, and our perceptions of public and private.  As Danah Boyd, of UC Berkeley, wrote in her excellent paper, Why Youth Heart Social Network Sites:

In today’s society, there is a push towards privacy.  It is assumed that people are public individuals who deserve the right to privacy rather than the other way around.  With an elevated and idealized view of privacy, we often forget the reasons that enslaved peoples desperately wished for access to public life.  By allowing us to have a collective experience with people who are both like and unlike us, public life validates the reality that we are experiencing.  We are doing our youth a disservice if we believe that we can protect them from the world by limiting their access to public life.  They must enter that arena, make mistakes, and learn from them.  Our role as adults is not to be their policemen, but to be their guide.

The new isn't necessarily bad, but it is different.  What makes a good friend may not change - a person who listens and hears you, who stands up for you and with you, who is trustworthy, kind and with whom you have fun.  But the ways these characteristics manifest themselves may change drastically with new ways of communicating and new social networks.  Sometimes to the point of not being recognizable to people not immersed in the new technologies.

As people who work with teens, it is important that we try to keep up, admit it when we haven't, and learn instead of judge.  New is not bad, old is not good (and neither is the reverse true), and the Youth of Today are destroying the world, just like they always have.