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I was struck by Maryanne Wolf’s “Learning to think in a Digital Word.” Her essay brings to light the new trajectory many children and teenagers find themselves on. The exchange of laptops for traditional notebooks and blogs for diaries have fundamentally changed the way we think and learn. Fair enough. Honestly, I think this is a great phenomenon. Our children have become so entwined in the digital age that almost everything they do is tied to technology in some way. I understand Socrates’ initial fear of literacy; easy access to knowledge may prevent people from asking the vital questions that help solidify the journey to personal wisdom and growth. However, just as his opposition to widespread literacy seems futile, opposition to young people’s involvement in the digital age may seem unfounded in the future.

When I think about the changing nature of young people and the digital age I think of my 6-year-old cousin Piper. The first time I met Piper she was only three. Helping her mom pick me up from the airport, she was as cute as could be in her little car seat. As we made the long trip from the airport to their house, Piper became restless. What did she turn to? Technology. Within minutes Piper had reached into her mom’s purse, pulled the iphone and unlocked it so she could play her favorite game. Seamlessly, she colored and played her favorite song. I was amazed. Before that moment I had never even seen an iphone. I couldn’t believe that my technological prowess was being rivaled by a three year old.

At the age of three or even six it is impossible to know whether this little girl will take in everything she learns from the Internet and not question. However, the odds are in her favor. Even if she starts off believing everything she finds out on the Internet, as she grows older I am sure this paradigm will shift. How many children look at the world through beady eyes and expect everything to be just as they see it? Lots! It’s part of growing up – discerning which sources are credible and which are not. Almost every two year old believes everything told to them – they have no reason not to! Just as maturity and learning experiences teach children to question the world around them, these very same mechanisms will encourage them to question the Internet as well. What we must realize is that these children are growing up with technology. In some ways it’s becoming fundamental to their learning process. In my experience digital knowledge has enhanced the learning process for children not hampered it. Must children have honed in on their literacy skills before they become immerged in the digital world? Honestly, my hope is that children will be able to learn digitally and conventionally simultaneously. Why not?

r4: The Internet

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In Steven Johnson’s essay in The Digital Divide, he talks about the internet and a lot of the positive effects it has had on society.  Personally, I love this chapter, mostly because I’m a huge proponent of the internet.  Thinking more critically, however, I can’t help but question some of the responses that Johnson gives to the common criticisms of the internet.

Near the end of his essay, he specifically addresses the questions of whether or not the internet is causing social isolation.  His arguments seem “hand-wavy” in a way, like he’s just brushing aside all the negatives and pushing the positives front and center.  He argues that the internet has created constant social interaction, and that the notion that it is isolating people is all myth.  I would argue, however, that the internet is increasing social isolation, despite the vast array of ways in which people can communicate with one another digitally.  Sure, we are instantly connected with one another via email, instant messaging, skype, facetime, etc., but I’m not convinced that these are social interactions.  I mean, by textbook definition, of course they are, so in a sense I understand Johnson’s argument.  But I would argue that social interactions are changing so rapidly that these social interactions aren’t the same as the classic face-to-face interactions of the past.

So do you think Johnson is correct when he says the internet doesn’t contribute to social isolation?  Or do you think it creates a new form of social isolation, in which people’s interactions are constantly separated by a screen?

 

Googllible

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So in the last book we read, we were encouraged to make our own words as a form of Microstyle because the creativity and intellectual stimulation was attractive to the new generation of Digital Natives. Thus, I coined the brilliant term “Googllible,” a witty combination of the common-come-to-be-verb “Google” and adjective “gullible” to succinctly characterize the large subset of the population who still find the Internet a perplexing, yet convenient crutch. Jacob Nielson’s essay “use skills improving, only slightly” (for someone who preaches often and staunchly about the detriments of being boring could not pick a more mundane title) addresses the misconception that the young population is comprised of technowizards that are one with the computer, akin to Net-whisperers. No such sublime relationship exists.

I am not talking about the moment on a Sunday night when there is homework a’waitin’ and yet students are googling “watch (insert movie here) online free” into googling and cursing the internet gods for the lack of working links to illegally streamed videos of their feature-filmcrastination. I want to actually draw everyone’s attention to the new level of laziness with which students go about their academic research. The author brings up an important notion of search-monopolies. Another brought up the volume of topics that Wikipedia covers and the frequency with which they are the first search result on a google search of a topic and finally, the consistency with which people start and end their search of an issue with the first link they can click on in a page.

This, I think, has more serious repercussions than anyone can truly fathom right now. While the internet has proven to be a source of information dispersal and access, it can also serve as a crutch for those crippled my lethargy. Why indulge in more in-depth research to find “THE answer” when you have already been given “AN answer.” Today’s world of 160-character tweets and sensationalized-summary headlines has lent itself to a generation of individuals who do not feel they need holistic understanding of an issue to engage in discourse about it and so, the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article should suffice as “background research.”

Now, this encourages a apathetic and misinformed public but it also puts an immense amount of power into the hands of an undeserving few. Although it is certainly impressive that a group of people have managed to elevate their website brian-child to the level of popularity that the name they have dubbed it has become a de facto verb, but that does not make them the research authority on every issue they contribute, or aggregate, findings on. We have all been preached to much too often about the fallibility and lack of integrity of the information provided by Wikipedia, however, it is alarming how often students will look at Wikipedia first when beginning a long paper or research discussion.

This helps widen an intellectual gap in society, I think. The people who have the wherewithal and savvy to create an internet encyclopedia that has something to say about everything without having to say any of it themselves (it accepts public submissions) are clearly intellectual entrepreneurs capitalizing on the new field of markets in society, but they are also making it less likely for a whole population to reach their level of efficacy and drive. By providing an easy-way-out-shortcut, no one else has to put in that much effort or begin with as much initiative as they did. Is it good that you CAN leave papers for the night before because googling your topic will take all of fifteen minutes? Is control-(or command)-f-ing key words in your prompt the right way to analyze a document? Is the copy and paste function leading itself to plagiarism? I know many a person who has written an extensive paper but when asked basic facts about the issue they so in-depthly discussed, cannot mention anything of note because their aggregation of internet searches was facilitated by googled sites in the most cursory fashion. And so, we have become a generation that Googllible—likely to believe the first well-stated tidbits of “knowledge” a search engine throws our way.

r4: Do they really think differently?

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Prensky’s essay immediately called to mind a memory of my now 11 (and a half) year old cousin. Several years ago, when she was about 8 or 9, she told me how she had been assigned her first “research paper.” I tried to recall the experience of writing my first paper – I remember going to the library, writing notecards, and feeling quite important with an encyclopedia in my hand. I was eager to hear how she had fared so the next time I saw her, I asked her how the dinosaur paper was coming and whether or not she had trouble finding books. She looked at me as though I was a dinosaur and told me she “googled it,” and that was that. While it seems like it wouldn’t be quite as rewarding, it definitely is a much more efficient method and one that we all employ today.

The technologies we grow up with and have access to definitely affect the way we interact with the world and therefore the way we think about things and approach problems. I wonder though, if learning through “digital game-based learning” is a way to bridge the gap between the current, non-technologically integrated (for the most part) education system and the students who are oversaturated with exposure to technology in nearly every other aspect of their life. The essay makes the argument that this method will work because it is what children are interested in. Haven’t teachers been trying to make learning “fun” forever though? Educational board games have been tricking kids into learning for as long as I’ve been educated – we were always playing matching games, cards games, math games (24!), Scrabble (!!!!), and many, many more. I think that going over similar math and reading concepts in a Playstation game, is really not anything special, but rather just an expensive solution to the age-old problem of how to keep a young child engaged in an academic environment.

That being said, I think the part about the US Military is interesting. Using simulators and video games to simulate experiences rather than just teaching basic concepts can actually add value in a new and unique way. When I read this essay, I immediately thought of was an article I had read for another class about video games and virtual reality being used as a treatment for PTSD for returning soldiers. It is used in “exposure therapy.” You can learn more about that here. Exposure therapy is all about dulling the emotional stress associated with a traumatic event by repeating it over and over again in a safe environment. I wonder if using video games as a tool to teach us how to make decisions and function in the world would similarly desensitize us from the feelings of experiencing such things in real life, or rather, would it actually be a valuable resource allowing our brain to simulate the consequences of taking different actions based on these “learned outcomes.”

Children today are experiencing the world with much easier access to information and technology than generations past. “Digital game-based learning” might offer us usefulness in teaching concepts (and simulating experiences) in ways we were unable to in the past.

R4: Deeply Connecting

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The piece that struck me the most while reading Digital Divide was the one most resistant to the digital world: Maryanne Wolf’s article, “learning to think in a digital world.” As an author, she strikes me as the quintessential digital immigrant, resistant to the new world. Worried that, “the reading brain is slowly becoming endangered,” Wolf argues that children today should have to become expert readers before they immerse themselves in the digital world, and that “the immediacy and volumes of information should not be confused with true knowledge.” Drawing upon the philosophies of Socrates and Proust in the style of a true old-fashioned academic, she worries that children today will decode information without deeply reading and analyzing it.

I would like to preface the argument I’m about to make by asserting that I began using a computer around the same time I began reading chapter books. While I acknowledge that my reading brain functions differently from those of the older generations, I don’t believe it is in any way endangered. If children today read a word or concept they don’t understand, they can google it to learn the definition, along with its contexts in our society that they might not find through their own mental devices or the classic dictionary volume. This is the digital way of “going beyond the decoded text to think new thoughts of our own.” After all, isn’t the use of a search engine the byproduct of a new thought one has on one’s own? Children today may miss out on deep reading in the sense that they spend less time reflecting and more time interacting, but I would argue that they’ll be better equipped to draw connections between terms and themes than past generations, due to the vast amount of information accessible to them. Their cognitive abilities will be different, but not necessarily inferior.

In the same vein, who says that children analyze and react more to printed text than what they read on the internet? Just because the text is typically less complicated, what about that implies that their responses are less sophisticated? Children from my own public school district have begun receiving iPads as they enter high school, to be better equipped for the digital world. This did not necessitate the simplification of the content of the curriculum in the process; high schoolers will still “deeply read” and discuss The Great Gatsby as they always have. In fact, now that technology is formally present in the classroom, teachers may better acknowledge the widespread use of sites like Sparknotes and push students to go beyond the analysis everyone has read on the internet, or use it to spur discussion.

I am a product of the digital age: I think its both funny and endearing that my mom still usually addresses me “Dear Liz,” and signs off “Love, Mom,” when she texts me, even though both statements are implied before I open the text. It doesn’t make me sharper or her more literate, it just makes our communication stylea different. I’d be curious to hear what the rest of the class thinks about the difference in communication styles between digital natives and immigrants.

The Digital Immigrant versus the Digital Native

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I know we are supposed to write a response to a single essay from the group, but there were a few issues that I started to think about because of different elements from many essays. Though the moment I appreciated most was when it was discovered that younger generations can pay attention, it’s just that they choose not to.

1. Are we, the generation of digital natives, somehow sacrificing every single sociable skill humanity has developed by being digital natives?

It seems to me that each of the digital immigrants (as they were all immigrants) writing these essays believed that the younger generation was going to morph into a society of people who live by themselves and only communicate through abbreviated text message language. I suppose the exception to this would be online dating sites, which may find any one of us a companion of our choice. No one seems to remember that we, and those younger than us, still share the same basic instinct that makes people want to be together, to need other people around them. Sure, we text while we’re together in the same room, but usually only as a convenient way to not say something out loud. I am rather curious as to what my peers think on this subject because though I have no reference for comparison, I think we’re becoming more social considering that we are constantly in communication with one another.

I think this issue of social skills arose most in the last essay, “Your Brain is Evolving Right Now.”

2. My generation, the students in this class, what are we?

I think we’re digital natives, but also not really. In Prensky’s first essay, “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants,” I think we fall into the category of digital natives because we do things like immediately refer to google for the answer to all questions. On the other hand, I have some friends who don’t do that. I also prefer to print out my readings and read hard copies whereas my same friend who doesn’t immediately go to google (though he has an iphone and an ipad) reads all his texts digitally. We are both in and out of the digital natives definition in oddly personal and quirky ways, yes?

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The piece that struck me the most while reading Digital Divide was also the most resistant to the digital world: Maryanne Wolf’s article, “learning to think in a digital world.” As an author, she strikes me as the quintessential digital immigrant, resistant to the new world. Worried that, “the reading brain is slowly becoming endangered,” Wolf argues that children today should have to become expert readers before they immerse themselves in the digital world, and that “the immediacy and volumes of information should not be confused with true knowledge.” Drawing upon the philosophies of Socrates and Proust in the style of a true old-fashioned academic, she worries that children today will decode information without deeply reading and analyzing it.

I would like to preface the argument I’m about to make by asserting that I began using a computer around the same time I began reading chapter books. While I acknowledge that my reading brain functions differently from those of the older generations, I don’t believe it is in any way endangered. While the vast amount of information on the web doesn’t equate to knowledge, isn’t the use of a search engine the byproduct of a new thought one has on one’s own? Children today can read a word they don’t understand, and then google it to learn the definition, along with varied uses in our society that they might not find through their own mental devices. Children today may miss out on deep reading in the sense that they spend less time reflecting and more time interacting, but I would argue that they will be more easily able than past gnereations to draw connections between terms and themes due to the vast amount of information accessible to them. Their cognitive abilities will be different, but not necessarily inferior.

In the same vein, who says that children analyze and react more to printed text than what they read on the internet? Just because the text is typically less complicated, what about that implies that their responses are less sophisticated? Children from my own public school district have begun receiving iPads as they enter high school, to be better equipped for the digital world. This did not necessitate the simplification of the content of the curriculum in the process; high schoolers will still “deeply read” and discuss The Great Gatsby as they always have. In fact, now that technology is formally present in the classroom, teachers may better acknowledge the widespread use of sites like Sparknotes and push students to go beyond the analysis everyone has read on the internet, or use it to spur discussion.

I am a product of the digital age: I think its both funny and endearing that my mom still usually addresses me “Dear Liz,” and signs off “Love, Mom,” when she texts me, even though both statements are implied before I open the text. It doesn’t make me sharper or her more literate, it just makes my communication style different. I’d be curious to hear what the rest of the class thinks about the difference in communication styles between digital natives and immigrants.

Harmful or Helpful?

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I’ll be honest, 95% of the time I find an introduction at the start of a book I rarely read it. I am not proud of this fact, but I have fallen under the impression that nothing important and worthwhile is actually mentioned in the introduction. I also have come to despise the small roman numerals that stand in my way of the actual beginning of a book. With that small tangent being said, I found this introduction very thought-provoking.

Though I consistently hear horrendous stories as a result of the fast-pace of today’s technology, I never stopped to weigh the pros and cons of the Internet. I always focused on the benefits that we receive. The possibility of buying a book through Google hours before an assignment is due (guilty), the endless ways to connect with friends and family, the option to watch a missed television show or catch up on the morning’s newspaper. Some of these benefits may seem insignificant, but there is no question that they drastically help us save time and effort.

But then there is the gruesome, ugly side of the Internet that Mark Bauerlein refers to several times in his Introduction. Like the horrific case of the Rutgers freshman jumping to his death after his roommate exposed his sexual relationship with another male over the Internet back in September 2010. I actually was not aware this happened, which led me to Googling “Rutgers Sex Scandal.” Sure enough, multiple hits came up referencing the devastating event. Here we have a pro of the Internet: an incredibly fast way to discover and reveal information at the drop of a hat. But what also came up was an article referencing the Duke sex scandal involving Karen Owen that occurred around the same time. I was abroad in Florence when I received a copy of the Powerpoint the very same day it was released to the Duke student body. I remember how shocked I was that something so personal and invasive had gone viral. I knew several of the people on that Powerpoint and I couldn’t imagine the embarrassment they were dealing with.

I also thought it was very interesting that Bauerlein referenced collegeacb.com because I think it is something that many people at Duke have been victims of (including myself). The anonymous aspect of the Internet is what I incredibly despise. The fact that people can so easily publish ridiculing comments pinpointing individuals for the entire world to see because they know their identity will never be revealed. Who in their right mind creates these websites? Is Duke alumn Matt Ivester proud of what became of his creation Juicy Campus?

The debate over whether the Internet causes more harm than good can go in many directions and I am curious to see what other people in class think!

R4: The New, Improved Brain

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In their essay “Your Brain is Evolving Right Now,” Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan analyze the results of some interesting neuroscience studies and argue, via several experimental paradigms, that the human brain can and does adapt to the use of technology in varying ways depending on the level and type of exposure. On p. 95, they assert that rather than “simply catching ‘digital ADD’” – losing the ability to parse out important from irrelevant information when presented with what seems like an endless pool of data (e.g., google search results) – our brains have instead become fit for “incisive spurts of digital concentration.” Given the plastic nature of our neural circuitries, and knowing that finding good information on the internet can require a lot of sifting through the haystack, I don’t doubt that this is true.

The problem for me is on p. 96, when the authors apply the opposite argument: that because our brains are adapting for rapid bouts of applied attention, the circuits that support traditional face-to-face interaction must be atrophied, leading to “social isolation” and diminishing the “spontaneity of interpersonal relationships.”

…That part, I’m not buying. I spent ten years without a home computer and thirteen without a cell phone, and until high school, getting a hold of people was hard. They’d call your house, you’d be out to lunch, and your dad would forget to pass along the message until after dinner… meaning that you’d entirely missed an opportunity to get together with friends, because there was no easier way for them to get in touch with you. These days, say two of us are going out for drinks on a Saturday: we post our plans on Facebook two hours ahead, and ten other people join in on the evening. If social isolation means sitting behind a laptop screen making spontaneous dinner plans, sharing inside jokes through Facebook chat and sending videos to all my friends that we’ll talk about later (because, yes, we’ll see each other in person soon), then Small and Vorgan are right, the digital age has really done a number on the joy of our interpersonal relationships.

 

r4: Your brain is evolving right now

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In the first section of Digital Divide, the one essay that stood out to me was “Your brain is evolving right now”, by Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan. While I feel that they made a variety of arguments, the one that struck me most was this idea of an “artificial sense of intimacy” (p. 92) and a “new culture of communication” (p. 95) that exist because we interact with other people online and through text messaging.

In “techno-brain burnout”, Small and Vorgan suggest that we derive our self-worth from these interactions, and furthermore, that they detract from our real-life relationships because our habit of multi-tasking with relationships does not compare to one-on-one communication. I do think they make a valid point, that the lack of face-to-face interactions could be detrimental to our social skills and our relationships to others, but I also feel that they are being a bit over dramatic. They are looking at the minority in this situation. The average person may spend a good deal of time on facebook and their phones, sending text messages and writing comments, but that’s not where their relationships end. They still get up, go outside, and socialize with others in person. In fact, they tend to prefer that, and in many instances, the friends that they communicate with via the web are long-distance ones. Using that logic, it’s entirely possible that digital methods, like facebook and skype, have allowed them to maintain long-distance friendships more effectively than other methods, like writing. Overall, I don’t think this argument is completely valid.

In “the new, improved brain”, the authors speak in a somewhat condescending tone about relationships through digital media. In one instance, they say “no need for ten phone calls or, heaven forbid, actually waiting to talk in person the next day in school”, in reference to teenagers obtaining news via instant messaging (p. 94). I think their weakness here is to automatically assume that there is a fundamental problem with this form of communication, rather than acknowledging that it reflects the progression of technology. I remember before instant messaging was as popular as it is today, and teenagers shared such dramas over conference call. In fact, the relationships people can have over skype are arguably closer to traditional face-to-face methods than other, less recent options like the telephone.

I understand Small and Vorgen’s fears about the progression of technology and human interaction. However, I also believe that in this instance, they are making grand, overarching assumptions about modern methods of socializing. While there are potential problems with this “digital divide”, I felt as though certain parts of their essay focused too much on the negative impact on human interaction and relationships.