A Communications Revolution?

When presenting information about writing to students in classes, I used to frame the significant shifts in technology and their corresponding impacts on the frequency and nature of our communications as a "technology explosion."  I  would describe how technology had permitted a world of 24/7 contact with other human beings and then delineate the ways in which it increased frequency of contact and entirely reframed the accessibility and expectations of those we do contact. 

Because current technology is ubiquitous to traditional-aged students, they are often surprised by what these changes have wrought in terms of job-related writing: for one, that they will do far more of it than they ever imagined.
 
At some point, "technology explosion" seemed too narrow a concept for the changes afoot, so I began identifying them as a "communications revolution."  I'm not meaning to be hyperbolic; I am simply trying to depict for students the sheer magnitude and scope of what our culture is experiencing as we continually alter our patterns of connecting with ideas, information, and people. 

Some have brilliantly captured the nuances of these changes using visual media:  Michael Wesch at K-State has had his finger on the pulse of this from an anthropological perspective and has produced several powerful videos.  You have probably viewed his most popular one, The Machine is (Changing) Us.  

Common Craft Media has a set of 3-minute videos for educators offering simple illustrations of how social media works and available for previewing on their website, including ones on  Social Networking and Social Media.

All of which brings me to the focus of this post: the first book meet-up yielded an interesting though far too brief discussion of the initial 100 or so pages of Here Comes Everybody. The group talking about the book last week at Next Door Pizza was composed of instructors and students and the mix of ages represented seemed to figure in some of our responses as we considered Shirky’s discussion of shifting power structures within industries like the news media.

We compared notes on the shifts we observed in our own lives instigated by pivotal changes in technology and the way our culture has adapted to these changes.

Facilitator Casey Reid invited us to reflect on passages she culled from this portion of the book and respond to questions she developed for our use (Click here and scroll down to view the entire set of questions.)

We touched on the topic of how higher education might be affected in ways other industries have, but time constraints precluded our full response to these questions:

2. On page 22, Shirky writes, “"Now that there is competition to traditional institutional forms for getting things done, those institutions will continue to exist, but their purchase on modern life will weaken as novel alternatives for group action arise.”
How does the weakening of traditional institutional forms affect us at the CC? In what ways might this shift alter how our students view the world and how we teach?


3. On page 47, Shirkey writes, “"Social tools provide a third alternative: action by loosely structured groups, operating without managerial direction and outside the profit motive."
In what ways might we take advantage of social tools in our classrooms to harness student energy? In what ways could/can social tools/media work against us?


6. On page 69, Shirkey writes, “A professional often becomes a gatekeeper, by providing a necessary or desirable social function but also by controlling that function.”
In what ways do we serve as gatekeepers in our roles in higher education? In what ways are our gatekeeper roles being challenged, impacted, and altered? In what ways might social media and the Internet in general be stripping higher education of its privileged status as a gatekeeper for access to, use of, interpretation of, and construction of information and ideas?

7. "Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society; they are a challenge to it. A culture with printing presses is a different kind of culture from one that doesn't have them. New technology makes new things possible: put another way, when new technology appears, previously impossible things start occurring. If enough of those impossible things are important and happen in a bundle, quickly, the change becomes a revolution.

The hallmark of revolution is that the goals of the revolutionaries cannot be contained by the institutional structure of the existing society. As a result, either the revolutionaries are put down, or some of those institutions are altered, replaced, or destroyed." (Shirkey 107)
a. In what ways are social tools a challenge to our work?
b. What previously impossible things are happening in your work as a result of social media?
c. Is the institution of higher education being altered, replaced, or destroyed because of new technology? How is it being altered, replaced, or destroyed? How is our work being altered, replaced, or destroyed?

Go ahead, dive in to this discussion by posting a comment. The only thing that might be at stake here is life at MCC-Longview as we know it!