{"id":85,"date":"2008-03-21T01:22:34","date_gmt":"2008-03-21T05:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/2008\/03\/21\/digital-youth-innovation-and-t"},"modified":"2008-03-21T01:22:34","modified_gmt":"2008-03-21T05:22:34","slug":"digital-youth-innovation-and-the-unexpected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/2008\/03\/21\/digital-youth-innovation-and-the-unexpected\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected"},"content":{"rendered":"

cross-posted from Dr. Palfrey’s blog<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The MacArthur Foundation\u2019s Series on New Media and Learning, published by the MIT Press, includes a book called Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected (2008); open access version here. I opened this book first when I was writing a chapter on Innovators, for Born Digital, a book I\u2019m co-writing with Urs Gasser. I had reason to come back to this book again in thinking about the Task Force we\u2019re chairing, called the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, as there\u2019s a chapter that centers on risk and moral panic in the context of Internet safety. (I\u2019ve previously written about the series as a whole and the volumes Youth, Identity, and Digital Media and Civic Life Online.)<\/p>\n

As with the other volumes in the series, there\u2019s much in this book that informs and provokes.<\/p>\n

The first essay, by editor Tara McPherson, has a title with particular to the lawyer interested in this topic: \u201cA Rule Set for the Future.\u201d It did not disappoint. This first essay serves both as a guide to the book as a whole as well as a description of six rules to lead to a bright future. As McPherson points out, \u201cThis volume identifies core issues concerning how young people\u2019s use of digital media may lead to various innovations and unexpected outcomes, including a range of unintended learning experiences and unanticipated social situations. While such outcomes might typically be seen as \u2018positive\u2019 or \u2018negative,\u2019 our investigations push beyong simple accounts of digital media and learning as either utopian or dystopian in order to explore specific digital practices with an eye attuned to larger issues of history, policy, and possibility.\u201d (p. 1) She promises that the book will take up a broad range of issues within this frame, including \u201cpolicy, privacy and IP,\u201d and to do so in a way that will inform a series of core questions, about what\u2019s really new here, the historical background for these changes, the manner in which these changes are occurring, and what recommendations one might make for \u201cpolicy, curriculum, or infrastructure.\u201d (p. 2)<\/p>\n

These issues that McPherson raises are in many ways the same questions we are seeking to answer in Born Digital, to be honest. She puts them nicely here. (And as a side note: the first footnote of McPherson\u2019s opening essay points to the fact that there have already been \u2014 at least \u2014 three books on roughly the topic that Urs and I are working on: Prensky\u2019s Don\u2019t Bother Me, Mom \u2014 I\u2019m Learning; Tapscott\u2019s Growing Up Digital; Howe and Strauss\u2019 Milliennials Rising.)<\/p>\n

The bulk of McPherson\u2019s opening essay is devoted to laying out \u201csix maxims to guide further research and inquiry into the questions motivating this study.\u201d (p. 2) These six maxims, or rules, are wonderful, both on their own and as a guide to the essays that follow. I will not ruin it by citing them all in this blog-post; you should read them for yourself if you are interested enough in this topic to be reading this paragraph of this obscure blog post. I will say that in Rule 4: Broaden Participation, she cites to a number of the prominent cyber-lawyers, including Lessig, Boyle, and co.<\/p>\n

In her essay, \u201cPracticing at Home,\u201d Ellen Seiter does the unexpected: she \u201cdraw[s] out the similarities between learning to play the piano and learning to use the computer.\u201d (p. 28-9) One such similarity is the barrier to entry of cost. Overall, it\u2019s a worthy exercise. She informs nicely the issue of how to conceive of digital literacy in the curriculum. Her assessment of the digital divide data and literature, with an overlay of concerns about cultural capital and participation, (e.g., pp. 37-8) invoke Henry Jenkins\u2019 fine work on the participation gap as a better way to think about the relevant split. (There\u2019s also a critique of a passage in Yochai Benkler\u2019s The Wealth of Networks on related grounds. (pp. 41-2) Ultimately, as Seiter admits, hers \u201cis a pessimistic essay,\u201d (p. 49) though one worth engaging with, especially for those of us who are hopelessly optimistic.<\/p>\n

Justine Cassell and Meg Cramer take up the safety issue in the third essay, which is why I picked the book back up again now. It is a bit unexpected to see this essay in this volume \u2014 it fits less neatly than some of the others do with the rest \u2014 but is very helpful, especially when thinking about what we should really be worried about with respect to young people online. Cassell and Cramer lay out the facts about how great the risks are to young women of using the Internet, wonder why the media portrayal of the issue is quite so hyperbolic and misaligned with these facts, and ultimately \u201cargue that the dangers to girls online are not as severe as they have been portrayed, and that the reason for this exaggeration of danger arises from adult fears about girls\u2019 agency (particularly sexual agency) and societal discomfort around girls as power users of technology.\u201d (p. 55) Cassell and Cramer do an especially nice job of placing into historical context the worry around teens online, in light of previous, similar fears that cropped up as earlier communications media became popular.<\/p>\n

Christian Sandvig\u2019s piece on \u201cWireless Play and Unexpected Innovation\u201d offers a nice overview of how unexpected innovation may happen and what the prerequisites are for its occurrence. He locates Eric von Hippel within the literature and Sandvig\u2019s own argument, which, as a von Hippel devotee, I found a helpful anchor for aspects of his argument. (p. 89) The last paragraph is an accurate \u2014 possibly scolding, certainly daunting \u2014 call to action. \u201c\u2018Participatory culture,\u2019\u201d Sandvig contends, \u201cwill only move beyond the elite if the desire for decentralized control and widespread participation can animate changes in our society\u2019s fundamental structure of opportunity.\u201d (p. 94)<\/p>\n

A cluster of essays that drive down further on the literacy and curricular questions follow. Sonia Livingstone offers insights aplenty in her strong essay on Internet Literacy. She stresses \u201cthe historical continuities between internet literacy and print literacy,\u201d to great effect. (p. 115) She ends with a challenge nearly as ambitious and daunting (and just as accurate) as Sandvig\u2019s. Paula Hooper has an instructive take on the use of programming in the curriculum. Sarita Yardi writes up a fun take on the \u201cbackchannel\u201d in the classroom \u2014 \u201can exciting innovative space for a new learning paradigm.\u201d (p. 160) Henry Lowood dives deep into games and \u201cthe expressive potential of machinima.\u201d (p. 191) Robert Heverly reviews the topic of \u201cgrowing up digital\u201d and its impact on identity, privacy, and security \u2014 with many themes invoking the work of danah boyd (such as persistence).<\/p>\n

The second-to-last essay, by Robert Samuels, is the most challenging. He argues, off the bat, \u201cthat in order to understand the implications of how digital youth are now using new media and technologies in unexpected and innovative ways, we have to rethink many of the cultural oppositions that have shaped the Western tradition since the start of the modern era.\u201d (p. 219) Like the challenges at the end of the Sandvig and Livingstone pieces, Samuels\u2019s argument strikes me as right, and hard work. He also argues \u201cthat we have moved into a new cultural period of automodernity.\u201d I admit I did not understand it in full. (p. 219, 228-33) But I suspect that I like the idea of what he sees ahead: \u201cby defending the public realm against the constant threats of privitization, we can open up a new automodern public space.\u201d (p. 238) It sounds like something you need a whole conference on to understand properly, rather than the one-way street of a 20-page essay.<\/p>\n

In the final essay, Steve Anderson and Anne Balsamo explore perspectives on the current state of digital learning. I am glad I made it this far in the book \u2014 propelled by the fine essays that preceded it \u2014 because they take up some efforts near and dear to our hearts at the Berkman Center, including Prof. Charles Nesson\u2019s Harvard Law School\/Harvard Extension School\/Second Life class, CyberOne, taught with his daughter and my law school classmate Becca Nesson. (p. 249-51) Anderson and Balsamo end with a spirited manifesto for \u201cOriginal Synners,\u201d which I intend to think about adopting in my own teaching. (p. 254-7)<\/p>\n

Taken together, these essays fit together as a series of detailed examples that string together issues that are not immediately connected in one\u2019s mind. McPherson predicted as much in her opening essay. As she puts it, together, these essays, \u201cencourage us to recognize that innovation as a cultural phenomenon often happens in unexpected places (as does learning) and produces unanticipated outcomes. They remind us to ask who innovation serves and how we might best reap its benefits for broader visions of social equity and justice. And, finally, they underscore that the term \u2018innovation\u2019 is value laden and historically complex.\u201d (p. 5) It\u2019s worth making it all the way through; the connections become clear in the full telling of the tales.<\/p>\n

version with full links here<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

cross-posted from Dr. Palfrey’s blog The MacArthur Foundation\u2019s Series on New Media and Learning, published by the MIT Press, includes a book called Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected (2008); open access version here. I opened this book first when I was writing a chapter on Innovators, for Born Digital, a book I\u2019m co-writing with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1729,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17419],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1729"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}