Birds of a Feather?
[I left a longish comment on Jen's "Network Persuasion" post, but putting more there seems rude, so I add a bit more here]
I suppose every discipline is like this, but educational technology (to adopt a very broad rubric, but intending it in the most inclusive sense of the term) seems particularly prone to the problem of not looking outside of its own (necessarily) narrow literature when considering phenomenon that cross many disciplinary boundaries. Beyond the normal problems of inter-disciplinary knowledge– there’s so much out there to be known in the many fields that "education" covers– I think it speaks to a subtle, but deep-seated sense of technological determinism. Jen considers "the network" in the Connectivist and contemporary educational pedagogy sense and makes the accurate observation that "our own biases and prejudice lead us to build networks of people who share our beliefs and culture." If you remove that statement out of the context of social networks mediated by digital technology and consider it instead in the context of social groups and networks as they would have been considered 20 years ago, it seems dead obvious. Who doesn’t know the saying "birds of a feather flock together?" It’s a proverb so old it was already old when Plato used it in 360 B.C. And it wasn’t only in the simplistic sense of people performing an action together, but in the complex social sense– a few hundred years later Seneca will be advising Lucilius on the danger of operating solely within like groups– not just those who say yes to anything you say, but even the diverse but relatively like-minded.
That this idea feels new isn’t a matter of ignorance, but of a deep assumption that the technology used to facilitate and sustain groups has some kind of bearing on the nature and quality of that group. We talk and talk and talk about the network (and I mean we, because I do so as much as anyone) and how it works and what it does. But most of that’s really a shorthand or a convenience for referring to (or eliding) the much more complicated question of what is actually new in these networks and what that potentially means. What characteristics distinguish these networks from the ones educators (to choose one example) had before there was an Internet and a world wide web? Because in figuring that out– and only in figuring that out– can we make sense of what is happening now and have a productive effect on what happens next. There’s a wealth of research going back hundreds of years into the dynamics of group formation and decision making in fields as wide-ranging as sociology, statistics, business and advertising, psychology, sociology and political science that wasn’t suddenly invalidated when the method of transmission changes from the telephone and letters to twittering and blogging (and telephones and letters) or when the network nodes grew to include electronic sources of information, analysis and decision-making.
I think there are some important differences that characterize current "networks" including relative diversity (perhaps our networks aren’t as global as we might like or think, but they are generally far more global and diverse than they would or or could have been in 1998 or 1988), speed (of transmission, formation, deformation, reformation), resilience, the strength and proportions of directionality. But I don’t think those differences dictate any particular result or determine the nature of the groups formed in and of them. The characteristics we can decipher are merely the outward manifestations of a great, underlying current of potential that may or may not come to pass. The future is determined not by the technology, but our understanding of and use of it, and part of that understanding has to come from integrating and accounting for the knowledge generated from a diverse set of domains and, ultimately, paying close attention to the human inhabiting the machines…
September 26th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Chris, thanks for linking and for expanding the discussion. I definitely don’t think it’s “new,” and don’t post most of my ideas as new concepts, just observations. However, I do think it’s interesting. It’s interesting to me, because technology potentially gives us access to so many different people and cultures, yet we are still gravitating to our own. So has technology really made the difference people claim? Many k-12 teachers are connecting students globally, but do you think maybe, after the lessons are done, the learners will go back to their old familiar ways? Is it really possible to change basic human nature, even with tools that make it accessible and less intrusive?
September 26th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
I suspect that we are thinking of somewhat different things when we talk about “our own.” I would argue that the definition of “our own people” has greatly expanded. So, while I and others like me still tend to run together, the definition of being “like” me has changed dramatically. In 1990, when I first started to make some sense of the literary scene, the diversity of personalities and types of writers that quite commonly work, play and perform together today was almost unheard of. At the same time that broader knowledge allows writers to self-identify as a part of smaller and smaller groups, we are also able to connect and interact in ways that weren’t possible. More to the point, we/they DO.
But your questions are right on and at least one feeds into my point here: technology doesn’t– and never has– “made a difference.” That illusion is the techological determinism that drives me crazy, although I use the same terminology often enough because it’s just simpler.
“Human nature” is a very broad, monolithic concept that’s incredibly difficult to change in ways meaningful to that broad concept. I think that we see that in the fact that, speaking generally, we could have much more diversity than we do, we could form news kinds of relationships but usually don’t, we could adopt new postured towards information but typically do not… but in the individuals and particulars it *does* change. The big picture is slow to evolve and I don’t think it’s easy to appreciate the change or how much change there is because of our limited vantage point and general inability to step outside of our own frame in any meaningful way. But individually it seems pretty clear. You might feel that your own network isn’t as diverse as it could be, that it’s essentially the same people thinking the same things… but I’d bet that if you came onto the scene 20 years ago (which I use as an example because that’s baically pre-net) you’d find that your social and intellectual network was even SMALLER and even LESS diverse, though it would have nothing to do with your desiring it to be that way.
And one thing about learners “going back.” That presupposes a position I fundamentally don’t believe: that one CAN go back. I don’t think you can go home again… and I don’t think you can step in the same river twice. People can (and do sometimes) try, but ultimately I believe that changes of the type we are talking about are effectively one way…
September 26th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Chris, sometimes when I am considering human nature, I really strip it down to nature in general. It seems to me that there are some things that you can try to force, but will never succeed, whether because of instinct, culture, chemistry, I don’t know. I have an unpublished blog post I would like you to read some time, that may relate to this. Maybe the notion of “techological determinism” is something I need to explore, because it seems to encompass all that has been eating away at me. 20 years ago, I was entering my senior year in high school. I was a member of a Mormon family, living in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in the D.C. suburbs. I attended a school with such strong racial tensions, there were no social activities outside of sports and prom, for fear of gang violence. I worked in a record shop (head shop) in a strip mall, where I met people from every background imaginable, and all ages. I also worked part time as a receptionist in a legal office. I had grown up in the military, and was still corresponding with friends all over the world. In some ways, I think my network may have been more diverse 20 years ago.
September 27th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Maybe your network was… but if so, you’d be in the small minority I think. In part because as developed Western country residents we are already in the small minority who had significantly-sized social networks. For many people around the world, connecting with anyone outside of a 10 miles radius of their home is a net change in scope.
So if we are talking general human nature or Jen nature might be different, overlapping sets. Not that your inhuman
I don’t see any need to “force” something, though… if anything, the burgeoning social networks show that people have intrinsic group and collective desires and I think part of that does go right back to our most base nature. Human beings, as an organism, are not isolationist….
Well, except insofar as a lot of good education is “forcing” the way many positive things are initially met with resistance. I push back hard when educators attempt to make the educational process all about what students “want” or think they want. Part of the point is that, by definition, students often do not know! So there might be some “forcing” there in the same way that I “force” students to write (and I’m not talking about blogs necessarily) and engage in authentic performances beyond simple directed tests…
When I talked about coming onto the scene, I meant as an educator and I meant keeping other things aside. Imagine you were working where you are now at a job equivalent to yours now… do you think you would as easily be able to discover, create, maintain and interact with even as diverse and far-ranging of a network as you are now? I find it highly unlikely… but if so, you are again in a very distinct minority. And if you take a broader view, go back 50 years or 100 years– or 150 years– 100 years ago, most people even in America still never went more than 20 miles from their homes, they corresponded slowly and infrequently, access to information was severely limited… things can and do change. But it’s not because of the technology, it’s because of human behavior.
It sounds to me like you are suffering from kind of deeper malaise about something. Most of your posts over the last six months seem to in some way come back to your unhappiness with your network (as a sometimes member, sorry about that), its diversity, technology, etc. I have no answers to those. Technologies are tools, your network is a manifestation of yourself… if you don’t like using them or aren’t getting the results you seek, then I’d suggest dropping the tool and dropping the network and whatever else is troubling you and finding things you’re happier with!