Internet Myths

1. Internet Myths Dr. Norm Friesen June 23, 2007

2. Questions/Outline • Is the Internet producing a new generation? • Does the Internet (and technology generally) drive social change? • Has the Internet ushered in a new "Knowledge Economy"? • Does the Internet allow for you to be anywhere anytime or even anybody?

3. Myth 1: The "Internet Generation" • Those born since 1982 are the "Net Generation" • Characteristics: • "personal, multifunctional, wireless, multimedia, [and] communication-centric" • multitasking, always-on communication • Active, creating multimedia, not just passive & consuming

4. N-Generation "For the first time in history, children are more comfortable, knowledgeable, and literate than their parents about an innovation central to their society. And it is through the use of the digital media that the N-Generation will develop and superimpose its culture on the rest of society" (Tapscott, 1998; 1-2 –A Canadian!)

5. Research into Children & the Internet • "children and young people [are generally] claiming greater online self-efficacy and skills than…their parents" (Livingstone, Bober & Helsper, 2005; 3) • skills needed to use the Internet are distributed not only by age, • also by “gender and socio-economic status” (Livingstone, Bober & Helsper, 2005; 3) • Class: middle class children more "likely to experience the Internet as a rich, if risky, medium than less priveged children" (Livingston, & Bober, 2004; 415)

6. The 1% Rule? • "if you get a group of 100 people online then one [person] will create content, 10 will "interact" with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it" (Arthur, 2006).

7. The "Net Class?" …not all of the opportunities available to children and young people are being taken up equally. Hence [we chart] the emergence of a new divide, signaling emerging inequalities in the quality of Internet use, with children and young people being divided into those for whom the Internet is an increasingly rich, diverse, engaging and stimulating resource of growing importance, and those for whom it remains a narrow, unengaging if occasionally useful resource of rather less significance.” (Livingston & Bober, 2004; 395)

8. Myth # 2: Technology drives Social Change • Technology or technological change impact society • Technology as a disruptive force • Laws of technological change: • “tipping point” • “Moore’s Law” • “Kurzweil’s Law”

9. "Destiny wires the plains"

10. Encoded in Research Designs Rogers’ "Dissemination of Innovation" Model: • Technology disseminated through a population • Technology as pre-given in its uses, design, purposes, functions, etc. • technology as a kind of "unmoved mover," decisively influencing education from the outside • Adoption and resistance as the only responses • Implied values: "early adopters" "mainstream" or "laggards."

11. Encoded in Research Designs • quasi-experimental designs that define technology as a treatment or control • Measure its effects or outcomes for education, violence, alienation, etc. • produces results deemed either controversial, inconclusive or as “fatally flaw[ed]” (Bernard et. al. 2004; Russell, 1997 • In both cases, the question as to why we have the technologies we do, is unanswered, and unasked.

12. Technological Determinism • technological determinism: “the belief that social progress is driven by technological innovation, which in turn follows an ‘inevitable’ course.” Smith, 1994, p 38; also http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/tecdet/tecdet.html • “optimistic” hard determinism: “the advance of technology leads to a situation of inescapable necessity [with the future being] the outcome of many free choices and the realization of the dream of progress…”(Marx & Smith, 1994; xii).

13. Counter-Examples • “progress” can sometimes fail, or be stopped dead in its tracks • The persistence of the classroom, offices, and cities themselves. • adaptation has occurred in a manner that seems to have had the end effect of reinforcing rather than disrupting many conventional institutional practices and organizations.

14. Alternatives • active end-user “domestication,” “taming,” or appropriation of the technology (based on Silverstone & Hirsch, 1992; see also Pinch & Outershoon, 2004). • Study technology design processes; “technology in the making” (ANT) • “Empower” users; place designers in dialogue • Combined models

15. Myth #3 Internet & the "Knowledge Economy" • "[T]echnology and intellectual technology…which forms the foundation of the electronically mediated global economy" (xv), and • A "knowledge theory of value" in which knowledge, rather than skilled labour, becomes a productive force, creating "value added and increasing returns to scale" (xvii). • "dependent on acquiring and using information technology, on having (or restricting) access to the right information at the right time, and on managing information flows"

16. Implications for Education & other Social Programs • "The challenge [is to] get students on…a developmental trajectory leading from the natural inquisitiveness of the young child to the disciplined creativity of the mature knowledge producer." • "The new economy has placed the acquisition of knowledge, and the role of higher education, at the center of national development."

17. Registered nurses Postsecondary teachers Retail salespersons Customer service representatives Combined food preparation and serving Cashiers, except gaming Janitors and cleaners, except maids and housekeeping cleaners General and operations managers Waiters and waitresses Nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants (US Department of Labor, 2004) The Reality

18. service sector employees generally require only "short- to medium-term on the job training" (Henwood, 73; 2003); and the divide between knowledge work and service work has been associated with problems like "underemployment" and "overeducation" (Livingstone, 1997)

19. Peter Drucker • "This society, in which knowledge workers dominate, is in danger of a new class conflict: the conflict between the large minority of knowledge workers and the majority of people who will make their living through traditional ways, either by manual work, whether skilled or unskilled, or by services work, whether skilled or unskilled." • "challenge to the knowledge society to give decent incomes and with them dignity and status to non-knowledge people."

20. Myth #4: Anyplace, Anytime, Anybody • The Internet overcomes time, space & even the body • Cyberspace as better than the "real world" • Overcomes race, gender, diability • Can go to class in you pyjamas • "death of distance" (Cairncross, 2001)

22. Place "Anyplace?"

24. Anytime or Anybody? • We are positioned in front of the screen • We are also positioned in terms of identity, place and time by the messages that bombard us from that screen. • interpellation: Think of a policeman who shouts “Hey, you there!” on the street. Someone will generally turn around to “answer” that call. At this moment, this person is positioned, becoming a subject relative to the ideology of law and crime.

25. Interpellation

26. interpellation

27. Anyone, anywhere, anytime, invokes a kind of “default” person, place and time which is generally white and male (Nakamura, 2002), in a position of wealth and in a space and time generally defined in terms of production and consumption

28. Questions • Is there some truth to these myths? • Are there other myths about the Internet? • What does this mean for research on the Internet?