I visited the London Knowledge Lab in june. That was exiting. One of the project presented to our group had some interesting findnings about the use of youtube. After going through a large amount of profiles, they found that 0.17% of these users had actually uploaded anything! This means that for everyone contributing, there are at 600 only watching (of course there are possibilities of people having more than one profile and of one profile being run by more than one person). And many contributions, as we all know, are not the result of any creative work, but of riping.
The discussion I’m talking about should circle around how we depict young people on the net. Considering that we use these assumptions when thinking about education, it is important not to base them on obscure examples. Our schools are mainly for the 600 people watching. The relevance of marginal online youth culture must be questioned. We cannot believe that everything we see is an instance of ”early adoption.”
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Lifespace
We appreciate young people’s freedom and creativity, but not seeing or hearing or feeling it outside well established media channels. We like them to be with friends, but loitering is viewed as a social problem. A system called mosquito uses high frequency sound to make people under the age of 25 (approximately) move away from places we don’t want them to hang around. The truth is that the social spaces of many urban areas are heavily restricted. The ideal person in such surroundings is buying stuff!
On this background it’s striking how the picture of the youth’s use of the Internet is often so colourful. They make friends and flirt and chat and quarrel and do all sorts of things in this ‘virtual space.’ Given that we don’t give them any real space, it’s suspiciously convenient to imagine that they have an almost infinite space somewhere else. I’ve heard teenagers talking about hanging on the net. Isn’t that cute?
I realise the importance of the net, but the way we depict it in general, and especially the way we think about young peoples ‘life online,’ should be the object of constant critical inquiry. The metaphors we use should be scrutinized, the architectures of control investigated. To think that most young people today are expressing them selves in new ways in virtual environments is in my opinion far too optimistic. When in a fatalist mood I think it is consumption all the way down.
On this background it’s striking how the picture of the youth’s use of the Internet is often so colourful. They make friends and flirt and chat and quarrel and do all sorts of things in this ‘virtual space.’ Given that we don’t give them any real space, it’s suspiciously convenient to imagine that they have an almost infinite space somewhere else. I’ve heard teenagers talking about hanging on the net. Isn’t that cute?
I realise the importance of the net, but the way we depict it in general, and especially the way we think about young peoples ‘life online,’ should be the object of constant critical inquiry. The metaphors we use should be scrutinized, the architectures of control investigated. To think that most young people today are expressing them selves in new ways in virtual environments is in my opinion far too optimistic. When in a fatalist mood I think it is consumption all the way down.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)