So I got the chance to watch and listen to Douglas Rushkoff on Friday morning before my presentation at New Trier High School, and that in itself was worth the trip. It’s really interesting to me how brilliant people put these times in perspective, and his take on what we’re experiencing was both articulate and thought provoking. (You can get the gist of his presentation by watching this video from Poptech last year.) He sees this as a renaissance, a time when there are shifts in the culture and in the tools and technologies that are transforming societies. And he also sees this as a time when traditional stories are being redefined largely because of the interactivity that technology is allowing, whether it’s the remote control with television or the joystick with computer games or just the keyboard and mouse in general. We have an opportunity now to write our own stories (a “Society of Authorship” as he calls it) and this renaissance is the “rebirth of the sensibility that we can participate in the writing of the story.” That’s pretty profound, to me at least.
And that’s what kids are doing these days, taking apart and rewriting the stories of their lives. They’re blogging and making videos, and that’s all good, but the problem is that “while kids know how to use this stuff, they’re not literate in it yet.” Literacy today is being able to read, disassemble, and write. It’s going from passive consumer to active interpreter to creator.
I’ve written before that I think blogs are in their adolescence, and Rushkoff used the term “terrible twos of self-expression online.” I love the way he put this, and I probably won’t do it justice, but he likened it to early child development where very young kids play alone and then play alongside others before reaching the stage where they are able to play interactively. We’re in that parallel blogging alongside one another phase, he said, still waiting to get to the point where we really start collaborating. And that seems to fit. I don’t think we’re near to finding the potential of the blog or of the concept of blogging.
Rushkoff writes a lot about the influence that media and corporations have on our kids, and how our new role is to teach kids to get outside of the story and ask what is the storyteller saying or doing and how can they do that themselves. And it’s that how can they do this themselves part that really interests me. He says that they should be the creators of the new stories, that “growing up means accepting responsibility for writing their own and our stories.” That we need to “help them accept the challenge of being the next most advanced civilization.” Some pretty heady stuff, and a very tough act to follow. But I think that we actually complemented each other pretty well with the philosophy in the morning and more that hands on, day to day effects coming from me in the afternoon. At least that’s what I hope happened. But it was so very interesting to hear the context he brings to this discussion, and regardless of what happened with the audience, I’ve definitely been pushed in my thinking some more.
Wow, what a great speaker. I followed the link and checked out the clip – it’s a shame we don’t get captivating education/future/media speakers like that down under. Thanks for the post, Will – any videos of you presenting available?
I like the analogy of parallel play — most blogs and their comments read like that — people might be writing “alongside” each other, but they only connect at a few points.
I’d like to point out a blogging community that I think is very interconnected. It’s centered around http://www.faithinfiction.blogspot.com, a blog on Christian ficton maintained by an aquisitions editor at Bethany House. He’s has actually managed to persuade his employers that blogging is a valuable on-the-job tool, so he is able to find time to post almost every day, Monday-Friday. He is carrying on an ongoing discussion with writers. Some are unpublished, some are skilled professionals, some are in the intermediate stages of developing their craft. He maintains a discussion board, parallel to the blog, which currently has 155 members and several thousand posts. He occasionally invites writers to write a “guest post.” There are several writers who maintain blogs that are, at different points in time, focus points of one or another ongoing conversations on his blog or the discussion board. In part because of the discussion board, where livelier, lenthier, free-flowing conversations can be maintained, a lot of the discussion goes much deeper than “I liked this book.” Currently, Dave has offered up his own first novel, published a few years ago, as a sort of sacrifical lamb, and it is being torn to shreds on another writer’s blog (Mark Bertrand at http://www.jmarkbertrand.com/fiction/analysis/ezekiel/theme.html). Dave fearlessly begins his own posts with “Read Mark’s article today and then come back here to discuss). Another blog that frequently links back and forth to FIF, Bertrand, and the discussion board, is the Master’s Artist, which is maintained by several writers (each of whom in turn have their own blogs). Another spinoff is a short-story critique group maintained on Yahoo.
I’ve gone on longer than I meant to for a comment. But I’ve been a very minor voice in this particular community for a year or so and I am still amazed at its interconnectedness. I’d like to map it sometime and see how far out it reaches, and at how many points the map intersects and connects (hey, is there software somewhere that would do that for me?)
Elizabeth, if you click on this link. It will direct you to the guestmap for the faith*in*fiction community.
http://www.risingconcepts.com/frapper/faithinfiction
dee
http://christianfiction.blogspot.com