Prelimnary response to Guardian article – Facebook and Bebo risk ‘infantilising’ the human mind

Hi sorry I am jumping in so late but this is so interesting.   ( a preliminary response to the Guardian article: Facebook and Bebo risk ‘infantilising’ the human mind )

I see elements of the entire Masters in Digital Technology, Communication and Education ( more information here at MA-DTCE ) course reflected in this article and maybe it would do the Lady some good to register for this masters degree. There are elements of Development of Educational Technology, Communication and its attendant textual analysis such as semiotics, there are Issues in Research (or lack of it in this case), there are design issues and e-learning and the web challenges. That was the first semester.

Coming on to the second semester there is Emerging Technologies and the tension/confusion that can be caused simply because the technology is new and enough research has not been done in the field, and then there is the issue of how prepared and well planned is the research by the good Lady in the area of facebook and social networking. I am not sure but maybe Managing ICT in schools and colleges need to pay attention to the introduction of these “dangerous” technologies in schools and colleges.

On a very fundamental level though, Media in information literacy seem the best place for me to start.

In the first instance this is an article that was published by a news media that has its own spin on what comes out. The media might have ingested a well done piece of writing by the goodly Lady and regurgitated something that will, rightfully so, cause some lecturers and students in some well reputed university (such as the University of Manchester) to actually spend time paying attention to it. In the end the paper makes money because controversy sells papers. So primary source, namely the goodly Lady may need to be contacted for a copy of her original article and that article should also form a part of  any response we make. Of course just from a media in information literacy perspective it would be interesting to see how well the spin doctors at the guardian mutilated, (if they had to) this article, or should I say, massaged this article into speaking their language which would pull readers to find out “what is this about facebook”.

I do write too long, forgive me but – this issue is a real one and there are concerns in that article that echoes concerns about television which one of you, my esteemed colleagues, already alluded to. Just like television was viewed before and still seen now as a technology that would do all sorts of things to the human brain and look at how it created new social ills such as the “couch potato” at least the use of facebook require some measure of thinking. Television is like passive absorption of whatever someone else considers to be the “reality” you should be exposed to and rely on as “truth”.  There are real issues raised about socialization and the inability to talk to persons face 2 face after having been online with them all the time, but where is the research to back up this claim. I have read such issues in science fiction novels (novels were mentioned as being better than facebook but it depends on whether the novel is not just a representation of a fast paced world that still does not pay much attention to characters in the plot except for their role in the action).

There is research now (we learnt in class yesterday) that shows that most persons on these social networking websites are connected to real world friends and not as the article inferred to strangers. That person who is proported to have 900 friends in my opinion is not the norm and points to a possible deeper psychological issue in that individual that may border on impersonation, lying or just doing this as a prank to see how many persons they can fool into believing they are a legitimate friend of a friend which does happen in real life as well.

Again mentioning the 900 friends may be a part of the “spin doctor’s” job of ensuring that the article attract attention or of the good Lady’s attempt to also attract attention. Whenever you see a lot of high flown claims that are sweeping generalities invariable you should start looking for the proverbial – “smelly rat” in the phrase – “I smell a rat”. Invariably something is off like food left in the kitchen sink for a few days too many.

In short I would like to be a part of any response to this article. I just had a long way of saying that.

I really could go on about this but let me stop here and invite comments: which can be added in my blog – created for the emerging technology course –  at: http://princekoj.wordpress.com/ where I have posted this entire e-mail as well.