We are all participants in this social and cultural tranformation

कसाकाय?! (Howdy?!)

How pervasive is electricity in your daily life? If you ask me, I'd say electricity is embedded in our everyday social and cultural fabric, influencing just about every action of our lives. If this is too difficult to comprehend, try living just a day without using any device that uses electricity and/or has been produced using electricity. You'll have an answer. Just as electricity became so transformative to how the society functions, we are witnessing and participating in another significant change-the World Wide Web (WWW).

In this entry today, I am going to share key ideas from a talk given by John Seely Brown (JSB) in 1999 titled Learning, Working & Playing in the Digital Age. The timing of the talk may seem dated, but I think his foresight was brilliant, and is very relevant today. Of the things he touches upon, I will focus on some features of WWW and the shifts in the learning it supports. For you to be able to relate to it, I'll use illustrations that are more recent and close to your experiences.

JSB says that the WWW should be perceived as an infrastructure that has the potential to catalyze societal (e.g. friendship, business, dating) and cultural (e.g. forms of communication, language, symbolic expressions) changes in a transformative manner just as the changes electricity spurred over the years, since its inception. But, WWW as a medium is fundamentally different than any other media/technology ever used (book, typewriter, radio, newspaper). It has both reach and reciprocity, is interactive and intuitive. More so, its properties co-evolve with changing technological capacities (Desktop-Laptops-Handheld mobile devices-Smart phones) and societal needs.

However, I think the following are most significant characteristics of the WWW. Previous technologies have largely served individuals with strengths in text-based literacy (newspaper, magazines, text books). Now, with the WWW, multiple intelligences are honored. Think of sending a friend a text from your mobile phone in mid 2000's Vs. posting a video, audio, image, text on a friend's facebook wall. What is more likely to appeal to you? Lastly, because of it transformative potential, the Web is in a S-curve period of innovation, creating new opportunities for learners and for (academic, social, educational, corporate) entrepreneurs. For this, I need not give you any specific examples since I assume you have your field-relevant stories.

So, if we put together all of these capacities, what shifts in (formal and informal) learning can we observe and need to be aware of? Competence in text-only literacy moves to developing the capacity for multi-media literacy and information navigation. Authority based or lecture-based instruction switches to a discovery-based and experiential learning. This requires the willingness to explore and make sound judgments about what information is warranted and worthy, accepting that learning is affective (dependent on personal interests, motivation, emotions), cognitive (in the head) and social (with people), and giving up the traditional dichotomy of an expert-novice. It is important to realize then that intelligence is distributed locally and globally, in physical and virtual space; we have opportunities for apprenticeship in communities of interest we want to be a part of.

This has been a long post and I am going to leave you with the following implications that I think apply to all of us.

1. We ought to be responsible in the knowledge we create, share and consume on the web;
2. Our actions need to be even more purposeful since they are in public scrutiny (which is great, since we can use our voice for something powerful) and they can have far reaching consequences (think of the brilliant use of social media for the recent arab revolutions or even the Lok Pal Bill and support for the Anna Hazare fasting)
3. Empower the less privileged (not just the economically poor, but also those individuals who are not as immersed and comfortable using the WWW tools effectively as you are) by introducing them and familiarizing them to this new medium. 

Take away for today: A video featuring the  EZ cooker  developed by AID India (http://www.youtube.com/user/wilbursargunaraj#p/a/u/2/i24knZZokYI)

Its a simple, powerful, sustainable, eco-friendly (all the cool things of today) idea. You may want to gift it to someone needy (yourself, domestic help, sweeper, driver); it only costs rupees 100 and I can tell you where to buy it from. Alternatively, you may share the link with others and add to their awareness of a great product for good living.

Have a good day,

Mamta

p.s. I am trained to write for an academic audience. I invite suggestions so that I know whether I must keep/modify my style of writing.