Internet Myths

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Internet Myths

• Dr. Norm Friesen
• June 23, 2007

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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?

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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

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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!)

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Research into Children the Internet

• "children and young people are generally
  claiming greater online self-efficacy and skills
  thantheir 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)

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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).

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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)

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Myth 2 Technology drives Social Change

• Technology or technological change impact society
• Technology as a disruptive force
• Laws of technological change
• tipping point
• Moores Law
• Kurzweils Law

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"Destiny wires the plains"
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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."

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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 flawed (Bernard
  et. al. 2004 Russell, 1997
• In both cases, the question as to why we have the
  technologies we do, is unanswered, and unasked.

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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/tecde
  t.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).

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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.

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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

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Myth 3 Internet the "Knowledge Economy"

• "Technology and intellectual technologywhich
  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"

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Implications for Education other Social Programs

• "The challenge is to get students ona
  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."

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The Reality

• 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)

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• 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)

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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."

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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)

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Place
"Anyplace?"
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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.

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Interpellation
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interpellation
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• 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

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Questions

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