This week’s readings did prove to be the most interesting yet I believe. It was an enlightening mix of the political blogosphere, Internet brain drain, and the benefits of podcasting. The article, Can Blogs Revolutionize Progressive Politics was especially interesting because of blogging’s prominent position in the recent presidential campaign race. The article highlighted the rise of blogging and its effect on American politics, while the article Is Google Making Us Stupid? brought much needed attention to the possible perils of Internet usage and its effects on literacy in both the young and old. Finally, the podcast of Greg Cangialosi speaking at Duke University was extremely educational, usable information that is paramount to the future of corporate and organizational communications.
We all should know by now that blogging is a consistent presence on the Internet and is continually evolving and finding its place in the corporate sector, financial industry, religious community and the political arena. As I read the article I filled margin after margin with notes to self and comments about how this article was so relevant to this past year’s presidential race. It’s as if the author knew what was on the forefront of American politics and she was giving us a sneak peak. There were two key points I read in this article. First I related the bottom up approach in digital convergence to the article when it stated “Blogs instead exert an indirect form of power, amplifying and channeling the pressure of netroots opinion upwards to pressure politicians and journalists”. That is such a key concept of connecting political blogging to digital media convergence. “It’s really a rising up” said Peter Daou who organized John Kerry’s presidential campaign blogging outreach in 2004. Blogging’s influence during a presidential campaign is indicative of its reach and effectiveness in American politics. Kerry’s campaign was the first time I ever participated in the political arena in an online capacity. I subscribed to his weekly and monthly messages to keep up with his platform and ideas. This brings me to my next point about this article. A consistent internet presence, some in the form of blogging, was a key part of Barack Obama’s success on his way to the White House. Compounded with other wisely planned grassroots activities, his netroots campaign gave him a distinctive edge over Clinton and eventually McCain, and his staff continues to use this avenue of communication during his presidency. The article stated “Blogs allow rank-and-file voters to pick the candidate to support in any given electoral race, influence his or her platform, and volunteer their time, money and expertise in more targeted and substantive ways”. I again participated in politics through the internet, but this time more interactively. I donated, left comments and volunteered my time because of his efforts. If Barack Obama’s campaign didn’t expose and use blogging knowledge to the fullest, I don’t know who did.
Nicholas Carr writes a telling article about Internet drain that is very accurate despite what some tech geeks and self-professed internet junkies may think. Although it won’t destroy us, the Internet is changing the way we think and process information. As we were just recently discussing in class, the ways children learn and their ability to read complex material is quickly changing. My theories about educating young people only touched the surface however. It wasn’t until I read this article that I realized its impact on adult literacy as well. As Carr states even he has a hard time reading lengthy articles and his constituent confessed to completely giving up on reading books altogether. I often resolved within myself while teaching fifth grade that most of the reading materials and textbooks that I learned from would no longer be appropriate to use now. When selecting short stories and books to read collectively in class, I would first look at the length of the story or chapters within a book. Anything over 3 pages and I decided against it. It’s not that I didn’t believe in my students, but I knew they would be on overload if we read longer material. To the contrary of this fact however, those same students could sit at the computer for hours on end surfing the internet for information and chatting on social websites. As Maryanne Wolf explains in the article, “…the media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains.” I truly believe this is the reason why a three year old child who cannot read yet can turn on a computer, participate in numerous games and activities on a computer and shut it down without knowing how to read a single word that comes on the screen. Literacy is fast becoming more and more about symbols and less about the alphabet.
This article also addresses a concept I believe is key in the idea of digital media convergence as it pertains to the Internet. The author writes “When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is recreated in the Net’s image. It injects the medium’s content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed.” The internet is one aspect of digital media convergence, yet I believe it’s the most crucial aspect. The author goes on to say “…traditional media have to adapt to the audience’s new expectations. Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads…” This immediately made me think about whenever I’m watching USA Network. I can’t enjoy a half hour or hour program without a pop up from the bottom of my television informing me of what’s coming up within the next few hours or even the next few days. There are now even pop ups of the product that is sponsoring the show. I find those pop ups so distracting, but according to the author, the internet is designed to distract, so it seems like television has followed its lead.
The most difficult concept I had a hard time dealing with is the A-listers in the blogosphere and their attitude toward diversifying the blogging community. Two A-list bloggers that were interviewed gave me the distinct feeling, like stated in that article, that bloggers are just the new old boy group in politics. They seemed to have no sense of social responsibility for making the blogging community more diversified and that reminded me of the 1950’s south and the racist white men that controlled it. For Moulitsas to state that he and other bloggers shouldn't have to embrace an “affirmative action of ideas” was insensitive and hypocritical to his own belief of using blogging as the “ultimate tool of democratic participation.” Who is the democracy anyway? Is democratic participation only for well educated, techno savvy white men? Attitudes like his will widen the social gap that blogging was created to narrow.
This leads me to my questions of the week:
- Can blogging truly revolutionize politics if it’s controlled by young well-educated white men who are quickly becoming the minority in this country? Statistics show that colleges are predominantly attended by females.
- Will our education system realize the impact the Internet has on future literacy and learning styles and address it?
- Can we use blogging and podcasting to educate our educators about the future of learning?
These questions and others that I’m pondering are forming my ideas about my upcoming paper. I’m interested to research the effects be them positive or negative that increased internet usage will have on our education system and the way teachers approach classroom learning.
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