It was a strange ALT-C 2009 for me, with my participation in sessions being constrained by my lack of mobility and the fact that I couldn’t get the netbook to connect to the Wireless network. The outcome was that my online stuff at the Conference was through my iphone, and I had lots of face to face conversations.
Reflecting over the last 36 hours, I have realised that the technology issues I picked up on were around integration and choice (in ways other than through monolithic integrations such as VLEs where the main choice is the ‘big’ one of which VLE?). This has also been reflected in the post-ALT-C 2009 conversation. As I commented at the ALT-C 2009 cloudworks around Matt Lingard’s on the relationship between Twitter and blogging @mattlingard Blogging & Tweeting Poll ,
technologies are endlessly and variably adapted by their users, thence infuencing developers to accommodate new requirements. Many of the social technologies are technologies of integration mimicking the links between people and things (in the sense described in connectivism). So for me, Twitter links me out to images, videos, web pages, blog posts - and I link out to those I find, and bookmark those I like from others. So it’s not Twitter OR blogs but how these link together and enable me to network with others, http://cloudworks.ac.uk//cloud/view/2266
Dave White posted his reflections about post-digital. His post made me think of the work that has gone on the Social Shaping of Technology (from Science and Technology Studies) that tries to steer a way of understanding that isn’t trapped by social or technological determinism. This article (for the title alone) is worth a read - first link on http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENZZ339&q=The+Wrong+trousers+Williams&btnG=Search&meta= showing how technology is discovered and tamed in use.
The introduction of innovations in technology is a key point in time for users and developers because the disruption increases our awareness. In writing an abstract recently, I read more into Marshall McLuhan “Marshall McLuhan’s statement “the medium is the message” is interpreted as encouraging us to notice changes that accompany a new medium, in order to shape the development of the innovation and use it effectively (Federman, 2004). “see http://francesbell.com/2009/08/04/emerging-technologies-medium-and-messages/ I read that as seizing the opportunities presented by the newness of technologies to spot changes and then shape the development of the technology. For example, we can spot the impact of Twitter on conversations and sharing within networks and drive changes to Twitter (and clients) e.g. clickable hash tags, seamless links to picture uploads, etc.
In short, pedagogy/social is co-digital rather than post-digital.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Terry Wassall // Sep 12, 2009 at 2:51 pm
I like c0- rather than post-. Post- is static and implies a rupture. Co- is dialectical and implies a process, albeit with the possibility of threshholds of change. I like the idea of ‘co-evolution’, a concept I have found to be very useful in other things I am wrestling with at the moment - the standoff between critical realists and social constructivists in debates around the relationship between society and the environment for instance. It may be useful to see the relationship between culture and technology in co-evolutionary terms too. I think a strong argument against technological determinism is the history of technological subversion. If the use of technology can be shaped by moral and political values and used in competing repressive and emancipatory ways then it doesn’t seem to make much sense to see any sort of inevitability in the way it can be used.
2 Frances Bell // Sep 12, 2009 at 4:56 pm
I agree Terry. Although the argument was more nuanced, the “VLE is dead’ approach belies what happens with sociotechnical change. Kings might die and be replaced by new ones. Technologies are not swept away but morph and new ones come along side changing each other as people innovate by design and use.
3 Dave White // Sep 14, 2009 at 9:11 am
For me the co-digital is a helpful perspective which I think gets closer to the reality of what is taking place out there on the web. The ‘post’ prefix is easy to misinterpret but does kick-up a healthy debate. Your post has helped me to refine my thinking which, as I freely admit, needs to become more elegant.
4 TALL blog » Blog Archive » The Transition from the Co-Digital to the Post-Digital. // Nov 27, 2009 at 1:06 pm
[...] these discussions Frances Bell suggested the term Co-Digital as a better term to describe the process of “…seizing the opportunities presented by the [...]
Leave a Comment