Digital Grandmas

This article in the UK Daily Mail caught my eye:

Pensioners surfing the internet are spending more time online than their younger counterparts.

So-called "silver surfers" dedicate an average of 42 hours a month to the World Wide Web, compared with 37.9 hours among 18 to 24-year-olds.

A greater interest in hobbies, news and local issues among the elderly is believed to be driving the trend, which sees over-65s account for nine per cent of all time spent online in the UK.

I'd like to hear more about who are 'silver surfers' and what they're doing online. In a typical flaw of such studies, researchers were recording "time online" versus "behaviors", the same way TV studies got it wrong by primarily looking at the amount of time the TV was on versus watching habits (attentive, not so attentive, on as background noise, etc.).

The study also mentions that overall internet use is up; big surprise there. This is across the upper age groups. Younger kids, as it so happens, are

...trending away from computer games and watching DVDs among children.

However, instead of marking a return to active outdoor pursuits, the figures simply reflect a move towards youngsters using the internet and using mobile phones and MP3 players.

But back to grandmas. Again, there's nothing to go on here other than older people are increasingly online. How do they compare with 'digital natives', those born into a world with internet, cellphones and the like? Does it make a whit of difference? The jury is still out. Though it reminds me a little bit of the panic around the introduction of telephones. And look at us now, crazy with telephones! People seem to adapt to useful technologies pretty quickly, and ditch the rest.

Media and Creolization

In Memory of Hurricane Katrina, 8/25/05

Howard Rheingold is fond of talking about something he calls the "creolization" of hardware, where an intrepid user will customize and hack out his computer, iPod, etc. David Edgerton's new book The Shock of the Old confirms that thesis (albeit in a less hip way) by looking at how third-world countries reappropriate and adapt our discarded junk for their own creole functions.

And now there's a steampunk laptop, a laptop encased in wood, and featuring a keyboard where the keys are from some old typewriter somewhere.



Wow. File under art, cultural remixing, too much time on one's hands. Then again, where would we be without the 18 year old kid who hacked an iPhone so the user could bypass the propriety AT&T connection?

Reading is sacred

Yes, of course reading is important, but it always feels a bit weird when I see articles like this one:

Teenagers playing video games like Nintendo Wii, Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution might not fit the image of a quiet library, but library officials have an ulterior motive.

They are hoping a new after-school program that brings together video games, computers, tutors and books will attract teens who often socialize at the library and expose them to technology -- including how to e-mail and use a digital camera -- that they might not have at home. And while they're at the library, the hope is that maybe they'll pick up a book or two.

I'm sorry, but this attitude drives me nuts. One, there's no recognition that computer games might have something valuable to offer younger students, such as reasoning, active play, etc. Two, there's absolutely NO acknowledgement that we are, in fact, living in a digital age which shows no signs of slowing, turning around, handing the keys to the culture back over to print, and shrugging "Well, I tried." Digital culture is here to stay (that is, as long as we continue access to relatively cheap sources of energy. But that's another horror story for another day).

Three, this digital culture we're increasingly immersed in has its own set of symbols and practices, different from print such as visual and cinematic literacies. It would behoove our kids to learn them, and learn them well, through multiple means. Four, for those educators who are all into "education for job training", which future looks rosier, librarian or game designer? (I'm joking, a little). (Oops, perhaps I spoke too soon).

And finally, who else here thinks it's a little bit gross that these educators are essentially looking to lure kids into the library and hoping to persuade them to put down the joystick and pick up Dickens? Bait and switch, anyone?

Games with a Purpose

Luis von Ahn is the pioneer of gwap.com, or Games with a Purpose. One can argue that every game has a purpose, even if it's as mundane as entertainment. Ahn aims higher, though, and is leading the way in games as a way to harness the collective intelligence of computer users to determine general taxonomies, etc. Check out Google Image Labeler, a game you play online with an anonymous partner where you both generate descriptors for an image; points are scored when your words match those of Partner X. You of course don't get to see the words your partner is inputting until the game's all over. One of the first times I played this, I saw that my partner had typed in, as one of her identifying terms, "you're not very good at this, are you?" Did I mention the game is timed? It's so nice that despite our busy schedules, we can still take time out to diss a stranger. : /

Wii your Way to Fitness!

I came across this article that the Wii gaming console is rolling out tools for fitness - the software WiiFit and a special WiiBoard. Nintendo is in the vanguard in its attempts to expand the gaming audience beyond hard core gamers, their children, and those who play online games for a nominal fee.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, if an exercise program on the Wii platform will appeal to people more than boring old regular exercise, or other forms of mediated instruction like workout tapes and DVDs. My instinct is that it will be a flash in the pan because at the end of the day, no matter how cool the platform is, it's still WORK. You still get sweaty and sore and it's not a heck of a lot of fun.

And then there was this comment about the WiiFit package on the TF Daily Board:

THIS IS STUPID Jul 12, 2007 20:37
If any of you saw something like this advertised on late night TV at 12AM for 2 easy payments of 149 dollars plus shipping and handling, all of you would either not care and change the channel, turn to a friend and make fun of it, or think its the stupidest thing youve ever seen.

As soon as Nintendo puts its name on it, all of a sudden it becomes a gift from God. All of you are pretty blind and pathetic.

Benjamin is still relevant, part ii; or the curse of museum mega-shows

Yesterday, I mentioned that I was rereading, for perhaps the 30th time, Benjamin's prescient work "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". Written in 1936 and ostensibly about photography, it has found new life in the digital age. The following passage jumped out at me:

A painting has always had an excellent chance to be viewed by one person or a few. The simultaneous contemplation of paintings by a large public... is an early symptom of the crisis of painting...

The simultaneous contemplation of paintings by a large public is just what you'll get if you decided to attend any of your local fine art museum's mega shows.

My sweetie and I managed to snag tickets for one of the final days of the Edward Hopper megashow at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts (MFA). We had tickets for the 8pm showing, and it was MOBBED (all the shows for Wednesday, apparently, had sold out). Imagine, if you will, trying to look at art on a packed subway car or perhaps within a can of sardines. For some reason, too, some of the exhibit was hung against small, internal walls, which caused a serious bottleneck of traffic flow. And many of the patrons had purchased the portable audio learning snippets, which require the user to stand in front of the picture for that much longer.

Two adult tickets set us back $57, which would've covered our usual feast at the local pho place quite handsomely (grump). I'm not sure if I'll attend another blockbuster again, certainly not any in the near future.

And if we are such a bunch of uncultured, digitally-desensitized louts, what is everyone doing at the museum? Or does that just refer to kids today?

So Sorry!

Hi, everyone. As you can see, it's been far too long since I posted here. I think I'm expecting too much of my posts, that they be thoughtful and generative and reflective of my thinking. But frankly, my thinking has been all wound up with my real life work at Harvard's School of Ed. I'm working on a fantastic project where we're examining the intersection of digital media and cognition, a field woefully underinvestigated other than the fact that video games are, actually, a mixed bag in terms of impact. Surprise!

In the course of my research, however, I often come across totally fun tidbits that, while not particularly relevant to anything I'm working on, are interesting. Such as this one:

This is a qualitative examination of how the presentation mode of Renaissance painting--original artwork, printed reproduction, or digital reproduction--influences the critical responses of adolescents. In contrast to prior experimental research in this area, the findings of this study provide insights into the experiential dimensions of student's responses...the varying qualities of the different formats can lead to diverging responses. Tactile experiences, reflection regarding materials, and consideration of the artist's process occurred only in response to the original painting. Participants preferred the original painting to both reproductions, and they favored the postcard over the digital image. These preferences were influenced by the physical properties of the three pictures and by viewers' notions about the status of original art in Western society. (Contains 1 figure and 11 footnotes.)

This is pretty important stuff when dealing with issues of digital representation. Youth adults preferred the original painting to the digital version; they also preferred the postcard over the digital version. But how many of them would forward along a postcard? And how much of this plugs into Benjamin's whole notion around the aura the original has? Benjamin also waxed poetic about shopping plazas and hashish (not that there's anything wrong with that), and his work was about photography. His work has been resurrected as we muck about in the digital age.