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How to Be Digital

November 2, 2010 on 1:14 pm | In Books, IdBlog, Privacy, Tools | Add a Comment

Douglas Rushkoff’s new book, Program or Be Programmed, makes a good argument for agency in the digital age.  The 140-page book elaborates on 10 Commands:

1. TIME: Do Not Be Always On
2. PLACE: Live in Person
3. CHOICE: You May Always Choose None of the Above
4. COMPLEXITY: You Are Never Completely Right
5. SCALE: One Size Does Not Fit All
6. IDENTITY: Be Yourself
7. SOCIAL: Do Not Sell Your Friends
8. FACT: Tell the Truth
9. OPENNESS: Share, Don’t Steal
10. PURPOSE: Program or Be Programmed

A more in-depth discussion of the book is on NPR’s On Point.  The repository of this popular NYU prof’s writings can be found on his website, Rushkoff.com.

In a similar vein,  author Nicholas Carr examines the effect of extensive internet use on our cognitive processes. His most-recent book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, is excerpted in the June issue of Wired. The upshot: the net promotes skimming and multi-tasking at the expense of concentrated linear thinking.

Malcolm Gladwell tackled the limited utility of social networks in his recent New Yorker article, “Small Change, Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted.” Gladwell uses examples from the American Civil Rights movement to show why “strong ties” are a necessary component of real social change. He contrasts this with the “weak ties” engendered by social media:

The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That’s why you can have a thousand “friends” on Facebook, as you never could in real life.

Gladwell has identified the particular weakness of click-here activism and a trend in networked communication.  As Gladwell writes in his conclusion: “The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo.”

It doesn’t take a pundit to posit a shift in the zeitgeist regarding the web. Now that the network is ubiquitous, now that the internet accounts for such a large portion of our daily diet of information, we really do have to watch what we eat.  Critical thinking and personal agency is part of the equation. An awareness of how the medium can skew the message  (and maybe our synapses) also helps. The limits of internet activism also must be acknowledged, along with an understanding of the web’s place in the broader economic context. But more on that later.

Right now I have to do some yard work.