Revolution round-up: weeks 10 and 11
Post categories: Brains,ÌýChanging humanity,ÌýDistraction,ÌýExperiments,ÌýProgramme four,ÌýWeekly round-up,Ìýannouncements,Ìýlearning
| 12:17 UK time, Monday, 28 September 2009
There are concerns being raised on the Digital Revolution blog about what the web is doing to our minds. Reading these blog posts and the comments they inspire, I can only conclude it's making some of us a lot more analytical, better informed, and more engaged with current issues (and their history) than ever.
Here's the weekly round-up of conversation and debate on the blog, followed by some news on the coming changes in the site as the production moves into its next phase of open source activity.
Programme four - the web is changing us
Building on the questions raised by Susan Greenfield in a previous post, Nicholas Carr joined the blog to question the web's effects upon our previously 'contemplative minds'. 'For most of the past 500 years, the ideal mind was the contemplative
mind. The loss of that ideal, and that mind, may be the price we pay
for the Web's glittering treasure.'
Much of the concerns raised in this area tend to spotlight 'multitasking' as an emerging mental process which the web is said by some to be encouraging. Nick Carr cites a recent ; @SheffTim pointed us towards a video reporting the study:
Nick Carr observes: 'Heavy multitaskers are "suckers for irrelevancy," said the lead researcher, Clifford Nass. "They're distracted by everything."'
@EnglishFolkFan raised the (seeming) lack of data taken into account in the study. That a degree of preference orÌýpredilectionÌýfor 'multi-tasking might come from a personality type as described by the MBTI, which might be present before the web's (potential) influence.
This subject and supposition - that the web is affecting our minds in a 'negative way' - was generally met with a torrent of contradictory links and opinion - bothÌýimpassionedÌýand empirical in content.
@A_PERSON_NOT_A_BOT linked us to an amusing interview between Nicholas Carr and Stephen Colbert:
'"We're not defined by our own creation!" --- Stephen Colbert (02:20 to 02:50 in the video).'
And from this @APNAB extracted the rather lovely thought: 'Since we're ultimately responsible for the language, we're responsible for the culture and the future.ÌýWE are changing the Web and its ability to proxy our consciousness rather than the Web changing our contemplation.'
@oxfordyorick offered some very interesting insight into the possibility of an increasingly... not exactly symbiotic, but intimate relationship between the web and its users. His thoughts and links regarding the rise of are fascinating; likewise the notion that our increased networking may be leading to a not altogether beneficial hegemony:Ìý
'the odd result that extensive Facebook exposure seems to be contracting
the list of first names used for newborns: it is as if linking to
larger intimate groups, and seeing what names they use, is causing a
higher degree of mutual name-copying and the proportion of first names
occupied by the top ten, names, say is shrinking in the English
speaking world. This effect, if transferred to the realm of ideas,
could be one we might not like: peer pressure to conform might grow in
a way that would not need to be enforced by any Government or law.'
Interestingly Professor David Nicholas added a blog post that, while concurring with Nicholas Carr's assertions of 'skittering' minds and readers, wondered whether there was any proof that the good old text book, newspaper or novel was always 'read well' and necessarily consumed by the majority in a deep and involved manner. (But he warned that a skittering tendency may be encouraged by the web - the same concerns expressed by Carr and Susan Greenfield.)
His idea was reiterated by @EnglishFolkFan 'Since when did we (in the UK) inhabit a world where everyone obtained rich information from disciplined reading?' and @TaiwanChallenges 'I think we're assuming too much about the mythical golden age of a super-literate focused society. '
For @A_PERSON_NOT_A_BOT the issues may lie with the contextualisation of information online: 'The way we're searching for information need not be "dumbing down". In certain ways it can help attune our brains to remember to conjugate keywords in a more intelligent way. What matters is our ability to contextualize content and then interconnect it back to other sources in a sense-making / sanity-checking manner.'
On Twitter sent us a link to information, which has some interesting ideas that build upon Carr's assertions.
Often the topics raised and discussed by both Nick Carr and David Nicholas in his post 'Fast information for the fast food generation' led to considerations of the '' and that the digital haves and have nots (be that or ) and that the deprivation of the web was as serious a problem for humanity as any effects the web may be having on those in its thrall.
Libraries and learning opportunities were also a recurring theme - how people may access information now and in the future - and how some may be advantaged over other by their web access (and training in exploiting that access perhaps).
It was suggested by @TaiwanChallenges that we should offer real-world examples of the web's usefulness, application and necessity to those who may be 'refuseniks' to the online world (or simply unaware of its presence in their lives already). Likewise, the programme should draw real-world parallels with web phenomena (free-conomics, open-source...) to maintain interest and relevance for a non-web-savvy audience.
Desperately seeking...
The hunt for Steven King - creator ofÌýComputer Networks - The Heralds Of Resource Sharing (Arpanet, 1972)Ìýcontinues. It's a lovely film capturing the early days of the internet. If you haven't dipped into this piece of history please do - and if you know anyone who knows anyone who knows Steven - please do let him know we're trying to contact him about his film. As @TaiwanChallenges pointed out - this is our own little foray into the - though at the moment I suspect we'll reach before we reach Steven King...!
Many thanks to those of you who are already helping us in our search. As, - but nothing has come of this contact (so far).
Experiments
@A_PERSON_NOT_A_BOT suggests: '@´óÏó´«Ã½DigRev team --- maybe send a help request out to a site like
to get some interviewee or test case perspectives on the differences in
concentration they're finding online compared with their lives off-line?'
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Filming on location
Aleks Krotoski sent back another video blog as a prelude to the programme one team's filming in Ghana. The next chapter of this trip should follow this week.
We include some of Aleks' photos from the trips in her vlogs, but for the full experience of her journey so far with Digital Revolution here's Aleks' Flickr stream from the production:Ìý
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Digital Revolution's next phase
The Digital Revolution open source project reaches a new milestone this week. Film rushes are returning from the crews already on location and we are gradually getting these processed, transcribed and ready to place online for your delectation, download and use.
Yes - download and use. You can take the longer clips of rushes that we put up and use them under the terms ofÌýa unique ´óÏó´«Ã½ permissive license. I'll leave the technical details of the license to Dan Gluckman to explain in a subsequent blog post, but the essence is that you could make your own documentary about the web, based on our interviews and footage, before we do. An utterly unique proposition in the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s history - we are incredibly proud to be able to make that offer.
³§´Ç³¾±ðÌýshort clips of recent interviews are already onlineÌý(not yet in downloadable form) to giveÌýan idea of the contentÌýcoming in.
This signals a shift in the production team's workflow - a second phase of the open source documentary. As we commit more time to delivering the rushes video content, and the programme teams finalise their scripts and set out filming that content, the discursive 'think piece' posts of the blog will need to give way to the video content - the interviews and opinions raised in those interviews - and, of course, the opportunity to download that content and create your own new films.
We do have more guest blogs to come and the conversation continues. All content we're delivering (video, text, stills...) remains on the blog platform, and so open to comment and debate as before, but the opportunities for the multiplatform team (Dan Gluckman and myself) to create detailed posts such as this one will no longer be there. Nor will this round up (digest) of the blog be as accessible to the teams filming in the field. So this will likely be the last detailed Revolution Round-up for a while. Fear not - I'll still be reading and commenting though - I ain't going anywhere!
An exciting new phase. A lot of content to come. A chance to share the video from a series you have helped to shape. Watch this space and keep the comment and analysis coming.
Comment number 1.
At 28th Sep 2009, EnglishFolkfan wrote:Thanks ~danb for the roundup, certainly things seem to be moving at a faster pace, am looking forward to the DigRev video and seein what other people do with it. Is outside my techie ability but will continue to enjoy the thought provoking that is The Digital Revolution.
Just posted this tweet "The Digital Revolution open source project will place online Film for use under terms of a unique ´óÏó´«Ã½ permissive license as there are video creatives who see my twitterstream out there who may become engaged at this level. Shall carry on RTing @´óÏó´«Ã½DigRev as well!
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Comment number 2.
At 28th Sep 2009, A_PERSON_NOT_A_BOT wrote:@ Dan Biddle --- Russell Barnes made a good choice in asking you to be the gate-keeper of this blog. We've been able to go down lots of interesting rabbit holes but no......worm holes, :*).
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Comment number 3.
At 28th Sep 2009, A_PERSON_NOT_A_BOT wrote:Just read this and it made me LOL so I'm sharing it:
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Comment number 4.
At 29th Sep 2009, SheffTim wrote:"but the essence is that you could make your own documentary about the web, based on our interviews and footage, before we do."
It may be worth advertising this more widely; say on the Radio 1 pages, on YouTube and around University media studies courses.
Your round-ups (and contributions) have been really useful and interesting; they also helped draw my attention back to items (The Michael Wesch video for example) that I'd missed earlier.
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Comment number 5.
At 29th Sep 2009, Dan Biddle wrote:Many thanks for the mentions - it has been and continues to be a pleasure working within this community. This is by no means a farewell, but an admission that content duties will be changing for us and so shifting in emphasis. The blog and our community continues to be the central point of the activity.
@SheffTim 'It may be worth advertising this more widely; say on the Radio 1 pages, on YouTube and around University media studies courses.' - Absolutely. In fact I'm grateful for any suggestions of groups / organisations / bloggers / film-makers etc. who'd be good to approach - likewise any retweets or lines dropped by yourselves to people you think would be interested are much appreciated.
Right - back to the code!
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Comment number 6.
At 29th Sep 2009, A_PERSON_NOT_A_BOT wrote:Definitely send a shout out to these sites which are where film-makers and video mash-up maestros tend to be:
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Babelgum launched its online film festival with Spike Lee's documentary 'Jesus Children of America' and he's been involved with them for several years. Triggerstreet's co-founder is one......Kevin Spacey. Current's co-founder is one.....Al Gore of 'The Inconvenient Truth' and former Vice President fame.
@SheffTim --- you asked previously about when the documentary including me will be released. First rough cut is being shown this week at a local cinema in London. The marketing for it draws quotes from the 4 participants.
"Consciousness is a space we have been invited to participate in" says sculptor Antony Gormley, "But a subject neuroscience has "sidestepped"."
"Consciousness is just a post-hoc narrative we tell ourselves" says perceptual neuroscientist Beau Lotto.
"We are bombarded by numbers, 16,000 numbers a day, 6 million in a lifetime. They get into our consciousness and affect it in ways that we don’t fully understand," says cognitive neuroscientist Brian Butterworth.
"We are looking for consciousness with possibly the wrong tools. We have the quant-based tools but we need to develop the more qualitative tools," says A_PERSON_NOT_A_BOT.
I also managed to get a concession from Brian Butterworth by highlighting: "Not everything is quantifiable and this is why we need tools that capture QUALITATIVE information too like our emotions, adjectives we associate with an experience, the way we perceive from experiential and pre-cognitive sources.
After all, we can't measure.....LOVE."
Also, yesterday I posted a video message to the UN to call on world leaders to foster the building of a CONSCIOUS WEB which talks about fostering corporate altruism and educating our children to discover and care too.
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Comment number 7.
At 29th Sep 2009, A_PERSON_NOT_A_BOT wrote:´óÏó´«Ã½DigRev might even consider setting up a competition in partnership with Babelgum / Triggerstreet etc. or even BAFTA/Orange to let their audience decide the Top 3 mash-ups from content here.
The winners get to attend a major film premiere as roving vbloggers and to report on it to 'The One Show'.
Something like that.....
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Comment number 8.
At 10th Nov 2009, A_PERSON_NOT_A_BOT wrote:Perhaps it would be timely to cite the Prime Minister's 3R mistakes in his letter to Jacqui Janes, the mother of Jamie Janes, here:
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Some of the papers published the letter in full and circled the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in red.
Interestingly, we had a healthy and productive debate @´óÏó´«Ã½DigRev following Nicholas Carr, Maggie Jackson and Professor Greenfield's comments about distraction, contemplation and various concerns that the Web and other technologies such as mobile SMS may not only be affecting this generation's literacy, numeracy and general intelligence, it may also mean we don't pay sufficient attention to detail and are too easily distracted.
Elsewhere, it's been suggested that a negative aspect of students doing coursework in Word instead of writing everything out longhand is that they have automatic spell and grammar checks at their disposal and, therefore, their mistakes will not be picked up upon in their coursework.
During our various discussions here, we've also shared opinions about how people who have good educational foundations offline don't become illiterate simply because they're also acquiring TXT speak, 140 characters, loss of punctuation and more; they're just assimilating that into their linguistic skills as much as their abilities to quote entire tranches of Shakespearean soliloquies or differentiate between "meme" and "viral" which Dan Biddle and SheffTim did very helpfully and clearly.
Now, the Prime Minister has a 1st Class MA, was educated during a time PRE-Web, reads tomes rather than tweets and is not known for his tech savvy --- as highlighted by media commentators when he appeared in these YouTube videos:
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Can we point to the Prime Minister as an anecdotal example that it's NOT the Web that's making this generation unable to spell, be grammatically precise, have attention to detail and contemplate the consequences of our words and actions?
It may be attributable to our own natural predispositions, characteristics and situational experiences; the type partially explained in MBTI, graphology and other psychometric tests?
If the Prime Minister is our anecdotal example it is also, predominantly, about our core education BEFORE we get all the tech tools and tech language.
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In France, where graphology is deployed by a majority of companies in the candidate selection process, the graphologists would find the Prime Minister's handwriting an interesting case study.
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