Category Archives: Net generation

A changing world view

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Modern science has changed how we view the world though most of us who are not scientists don’t think about it. But we do hear words like systems, and when we reflect on complex issues, we recognize that there is more than meets the eye – a fact that writer, Daniel Kahneman, in his wonderful book, Thinking Fast and Slow, playing on the maxim “What your see is what you get”, identifies it as WYSIATI – “What you see is all there is”. There is a focus on wholeness and systems, rather than on parts.

The metaphor used to be the machine. Now the model for the world is the web – brought home by the fact that if you are reading this, you are part of the “www” world. And like the Web itself, the world is being constantly built, altered and transformed by collective and widely distributed expertise. Just this morning alone my e-mail delivers an Idea Connection newsletter from the US and a knowledge management one from the UK. The environment is becoming more and more the focus than the economy or society. If there are links, the common element in all three is the emotional impact of all of these.

We are starting to organize around networks rather than hierarchicl pyramids – though the hierarchies are usually the last to notice or accept this. The focus of the organization starts to be interaction and relationships rather than the hierarchies themselves. So the chief task of the leader becomes communicating, translating the views of others and developing a unified and positive organizational identity. We are also starting to move away from being victims and taking responsibility for making things happen.

Help on the Way

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Let’s face it I am as addicted to E-mail as anyone I know. Recognize why I usually answer you promptly if you write to me, and it is because I’m on it. I don’t let a little bell or phone buzz me every single time something comes in and I suppose that is doubtfully to my credit. But I don’t have to. I’m already there looking at it.

William Powers, whose new book, Hamlet’s Blackberry, A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age reviewed in Today’s New York Times Book Review gives us some useful reminders. Rather than a guilt trip about our obsession, he posits that it may be an evolutionary leftover from paying attention to the immediate for our own protection because there may be some real meanies out there. Hello, Mel Gibson. Another cave man tactic may be to find some food – though these days it is more likely to be for thought. At the same time Powers warns us that our very distraction may be teaching others that we prefer the virtual to the real. For that reason, I try not to get distracted if any live person is within my line of vision.

Powers, who formerly wrote for the Washington Post on media and technology, is optimistic that we will smarten up. Adaptation has always been an issue. Socrates worried about the new thing known as the alphabet and thought writing would make it too easy to look things up instead of remembering them. The Gutenberg printing press was viewed by a contemporary as a way to goof off and trivialize. Hello Saturday Night Live.

But Powers thinks we will adapt sooner or later. One of the things he likes to do is jot ideas down in a Moleskine Book. At least I already do that – in a purse sized version. I have a collection of five by eight books which allow for more extensive notes. At the beginning of this year, I reread some old books and carried forward some of the better ideas. Some of the old ideas survived. Keeping a few of them around might be part of the solution – and also remembering that everyone has usually thought old technologies would destroy us. They haven’t done so quite yet. The challenges is to make choices – one at a time.

Learning Experiences

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IPad instructor

Yesterday’s a reader commented on the fact that we humans don’t seem to learn very well. And simultaneously yesterday I had my first IPad lesson – from a small grandson who had just turned three. He had no trouble navigating the main menu and immediately picked a summary of Toy Story 3, choosing to have it read to him and swiping the screen to turn the page at exactly the appropriate time. After that he turned off the sound and re-told the story from memory without a slip. The term, “digital native”, seemed apt. Even though I turned on a computer before any of my four sons, I felt very much reduced to “digital immigrant” status.

The next adventure was equally interesting. After Andre had put a random number of magnetic letters on the fridge, he sang the ABC song to them, – though they didn’t precisely match the letters he was singing about. As a diversion I suggested that I play the same tune on the piano for him and that we could sing it, but he wanted to play it too, – and couldn’t. “How do you do that?” he asked with some frustration. Of course the right reply was “Practise, practise, practise”, but that would not have been entirely honest either. I’ve always been able to play by ear and since I had parents who could do the same, they let me experiment as soon as I could climb on to the piano bench. The result is that reading music is still a challenge decades later. We come by these challenges honestly though. Andre’s great grandmother could sit down and play the piano at four. She was frustrated that when she picked up a violin at the same age she couldn’t make it sound pleasant from the get go.

So what will an IPad contribute to learning? I’m not negative about it. I rather like the fact that it is less easy to multi-task and leads to focus on one task at a time. But it is so easy to flip to something else If we find ourselves burdened with information overload, what will the three year old find when he starts school a little more than a year from now? What is encouraging is that the most interesting activity of the afternoon was kicking a soccer ball around in the spacious open space of the lower floor and yelling as loudly as possible to hear the echo. Some things are still totally native.

Social Media Realities

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I found this one on the Herrmann International Blog with a reminder that we have to change our way of thinking about social media – and we also have to think about how it affects us personally. The growth rate portrayed here is interesting, but the presentation doesn’t even begin to think about what to do about it and its implications for education, society, economics and culture. Those aren’t part of the numbers game but they are the real challenges. If we let them simply wash over us we will have only ourselves to blame in terms of the consequences.