A Portrait of Young

This portrait is of the internet, and the internet generation. There is so much knowledge, so much readiness, so much power, so much raw potential, so much intelligence, so much good will among the young. Why so little direction? I don't mean that in a critical sense at all. I mean why aren't colleges and universities providing more opportunities for direction?

Statistics say that there are roughly 2.6 million students enrolled in college in the U.S. A single week of let's say 20 hours of work per student yields around 5.2 million man-hours available in a SINGLE week. The world has X number of problems. We have all that smarts and the manpower. So where is the direction to understand and solve the problems? Why aren't colleges and universities doing more crowd-sourcing? More data-mining and analysis? More perspective-gathering? More real-world, problem-based learning? Might this provide some of the needed direction?

The problems besetting instructional architecture all seem to resolve to the training of the architects, not with the current group of learners. Increasingly, curricula and classes seem to me to be part of the problem, a major distraction. Why? Because I think classes and curricula need to be directed at real life issues and problems. But the current group of instructional architects/teachers (myself among them) were trained to be interior designers, trained to be masters of presenting internally-coherent and internally-consistent content, trained to be masters of pretty perhaps? Maybe we need to figure out how to orient ourselves to looking out the windows of our practices rather than in. Maybe we need to build structures that point outwards. Do I think a poetic worldview and the knowledge of literature to back it up can be part of this? Absolutely. I am not arguing for a reductionist/utilitarian concept of education. I'm just arguing that we should experiment with putting the world first, pretty much as poets do in their own work I would think.

So I am setting my portrait of young in the context of the above types of questions. It is a portrait that I see before me, painted by the young folk I have the privilege to work with. They seem to get it. They have come of age right alongside the internet and, as one of them noted, they now for the most part carry the internet in their pockets. Okay, they have questions and concerns and all that, but hey, these are in large part the things that tell me they get it, they are ready, they have come of age. But when will the grown-ups grow up? That's my question I guess. I think there is hope for us, but we need to know how to provide views that look outwards, direction to the real world, channels, currents. We still have a role to play and I'd like us to get better at it.

My worry is that when the young connect to their elders they hear recorded messages telling them that they have made a connection, but that the number they have reached is no longer in service. It is connection with no content. Why? Because they don't need the content. The internet provides that. What they don't have are conduits or pass-throughs to the real.

We provide some of these types of connections, but not enough. I worry that we still think teaching and learning are about content, rather than about real problems and real life. It's a lot of information and perspectives we all swim in. A vast ocean. A lot of liquid architecture. Do we perhaps need to build or generate some currents, ways to channel the flow to the real? Might this be how how 'liquid architecture' becomes more than a poetic metaphor for the internet?

So let's bring this all back home. There are 123 students enrolled in the Digital Media for the Artist course this term. How can I best channel the amazing amount of smarts, good will, and energy that a mere 123 young folks bring to the arena or theater (it's a small subset of the 26.2 million, but it is still a LOT of ability and energy). How can we make the most of this?

One way for us elders to grow up in tandem with the young is to help learners build or recognize currents by becoming becoming better data miners. Data-mining is clearly how the big boys (Google, Facebook, Amazon, et al) are making boatloads of money; they are sailing on the liquid data-streams they gather from us and sell to others. It's the ability to deal with vastness of scale and proportion that is now of most value, literally and figuratively. We might as well get in on the action, what say you?

So for starters we gathered responses in Facebook groups to the following prompt:

When you hear the words 'internet' or 'digital/new-media' what comes to mind for you? You can start with likes and/or dislikes, but beyond that, what metaphors do you use to describe it? What do you think of Novak's metaphor of 'liquid architecture'? What do you think about the idea of ontological in-between-ness? What concerns or worries do you have about what the internet is teaching us? What do you think it represents in human life and human development? 

Find below a small sample I selected from the responses. So, first off, note that you are getting a human-filtered dataset below. It is a particular portrait of young, in a way composed of of lines, colors, and shapes provided by the selection I made of participants' responses:

"I wish we knew when to draw the line, put down the smartphone, and just enjoy the Frappuccino before it gets all melty and gross."

"Privacy and pointlessness, I think those are the two most important problems the Internet has." 

"One of the most important benefits of the internet, besides entertainment and instant knowledge, is the more recent effects it has had on political issues. Protests and revolts have gone from the concepts on the internet to real life changes."

"I have heard lots of metaphors used in conjunction with the internet, for example; it’s like squeezing toothpaste out of the tube. Once something is out in the open, it is out; whether you wanted it out or not."

"The internet has allowed corporations to traffic in information, and when public information gets bought, it gets trimmed down by those who own it." 

"I fear that someday two people will fall in love and even get married without ever meeting face to face." 

"I think that while the internet and new media offer us the ability to see ourselves and the world in a new and transformative way, it simultaneously may be transforming what we think of as a ‘self’, for better or worse." 

"When I hear the word “internet,” I equate it to an intangible world bursting with endless information, representing the knowledge and creativity of millions of real people." 

"Until we stop the banality, originality and creativity will be mired in swamps of memes and self-pictures and vintage filters." 

"Ultimately, I believe that the internet or digital/new media is more of a blessing than a curse; people simply need to be mindful of how they use such a powerful tool."

"My problem with the Internet comes in when I think about the ways digital media could be utilized in such effective and important ways and instead how it is so often misused. I think that what a vast majority of the population uses the internet for is not to gain knowledge or learn about new ideas and cultures, but simply as a “watering hole” that we are all drawn to but that wastes our time, hacks our computers, and bombards us with continual ads and pop-ups that try to make us spend more money on things we don’t need or want." 

"The internet is both one of the greatest and worst things that has happened to my generation. While you have limitless access to information and have a constant flow of news coming at you, when used excessively I feel like it creates a disconnect between people. When I walk into a room it isn't a surprise to see more than half the room indulging in their smart phones, whether they're watching the latest movie trailer, checking their Twitter, or reading the latest news from CNN. While all of those things are very informative and can be helpful, where has the face to face conversations gone?"

"I think the internet represents our human need to connect with one another. For instance, we're always logging into social sites to see how other people are doing. The internet makes our planet a little less huge in a way, because we can so easily connect to other locations, cultures, and people far away. Maybe this is another need of ours too, to feel like the world is something that can be made less large and mysterious." 

"The internet is what you make it." 

"When I think of the Internet, and the way it's developing and evolving, it reminds of a maturing human brain. Forming new networks and connections constantly, sharing gathered information; and slowly developing a consciousness. I believe that this "Internet consciousness" is the precursor to artificial intelligence which will bring in a new era in the relationship between mankind and technology."

"While I'm not thinking of it this way, google is constantly acting as a teacher for me. It allows me to find answers to my questions, literally at my fingertips. In less than ten seconds, I learned a new word. I can take the initiative to actually get answers to my questions any time i want, and it is both convenient and beneficial to my growth."

"When I think of the internet I think of the future. I think that we can all agree that the internet has both its pro's and con's. In my opinion the pros out way the cons."

"I think the biggest things about technology/ internet is that... its potential and its opportunities and resources are only going to be as much as we want them to be."

"It's up to us as humans to use all of the information the internet gives up so easily and readily. And we have the CHOICE to look into the information given and believe it as law or pass it off as something interesting we read on the internet. The question should not be wether the internet itself is merely good or bad, rather, are human beings using the power the internet gives us to push us forward or hold us back."

"The internet is a sponge that absorbs all information that is put into it and we as viewers squeeze what we can out of it."

"There's so much information on the internet now a days, its almost impossible not to learn something."

"That's what I think new media is, simply a new canvas on which we can dance, sing, act, film, or design. New media is the art of sharing and creating new and interesting ideas that we find intriguing, thought-provoking, or informative. It is simply a new way of thinking about the arts."

"The internet in my perspective is most like a mind, it is present and can create tangible things, but it itself is no more than just a stimuli."

"The first thing that comes to mind when I think of the internet is knowledge. Now a days you can learn just about anything online. The internet has now created a generation of Do it Yourselfers, allowing us to be more independent. We may not be professionals at first, but practice does make perfect."

"The internet is the baby boy of your Aunt's being shared over Facebook, the Youtube video of the Evolution of Dance, the Google search of late night wondering; how come the stars align as they do? What is the big dipper? It is a dated Ask Jeeves, Yahoo! Answers, lesser programs such as Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary. It is a Tumblr blog full to the brim of cats and fandoms of popular television shows such as BBC sensations Sherlock and Dr. Who. Bandoms are also an avid group of people who enjoy music such as Panic! at the Disco, Fall Out Boy, One Direction, and Fun."

"The internet is like the answer key for a huge final exam."

"When I think of the internet I am really thinking of power."

Okay so the above represents the results of a human-based data-mining operation. But I decided to also push on. I decided to go in search of text-analyzing tools to experiment with a machine-filtered portrait of the above collection of quotes. So I inputted all of the quotes as a single bloc of text into the text analysis program, and here are the results.

My main points? 1) instructional architects need to invest in developing the skills of data-mining and analysis, including data-visualization techniques,  2) the data-stream of DMA views on the internet is intriguing and well worth mining, and 3) I could have spent the same time today preparing a lecture on my views of the internet, but I didn't do this. I did the experiment in data-mining via text analysis instead, and this caused me to have to learn something new --which was much more interesting to me in every way possible. In particular I enjoyed reading the participants' perspectives on the internet, I enjoyed the selection process, and I enjoyed the feeling of jumping off of the rails to explore a new tool.

BTW here is a link to the free Textanalyser tool I used. http://textalyser.net/

Also, here is a link to a Wikipedia entry on Text-mining: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_mining And in case you are interested, the accuracy/reliability of Wikipedia has been studied, and it compares well with the accuracy/reliability Encyclopedia Britannica.