life@speed

I’m dealing with waves of anxiety right now.  the last 24 hours have been an intense whirlwind… very intense.  Now that the dust has somewhat settled, and our issue… our cause… is in the last 3 minutes of its 15, my protective cognitive devices are kicking in as I start to intellectualize the experience and turn it into something productive.

This story, the story of this little boy with autism, who is absolutely adorable and photogenic (by consensus)… generated so much interest that it was picked up from station to station to station across the country.  Newspapers, radio, TV, Cyberspace… the media dug in.  We figured a page 6 story on the Chronicle-Herald… maybe.

Our friends and family are amazing and supportive.  As are the autism parents I have connected with online over the years, from all over the planet who have a variety of perspectives about autism.  One thing is unanimous about all Autism Moms and Dads… they protect their cubs.

And god bless ‘em for it.  Lord knows the institutions of our society aren’t going to fight for them… because people with Autism immediately present a problem for the status quo… in that they have different needs than the status quo, so the status quo has to start making exceptions for them.  This is true, not just for people with Autism, but for all people who have disabilities that lie in the realm of brain function and cognitive processing.

The status quo easily adapts to people with physical disabilities.  We have braille on our money, closed-captioning TV, all of our buildings have to be accessible for people on wheels.  But when it comes to people with mental disabilities, disabilities that we can’t see, and that we can’t understand… the status quo doesn’t do so well in it’s adaptation.

But I digress…

The only certain conclusion that I can draw at this point in time, the only nugget I have taken from this experience so far, is that I will not be taking Izaak on the public transit system again, any time real soon.

Other than that, I have to keep digesting…

Internet Literacy

Ted Naylor and Charlene Croft, with E. Dianne Looker
from May 2007

While issues of access to technology and connectivity infrastructure remain essential, it is also paramount that on top of connectivity we recognize that inclusive access does not end at being ‘connected’. Rather, inclusion and participation in the knowledge society is tied to social processes that are dynamic and complex and which vary across different socio-economic contexts.

To this end, we introduce and discuss the notion of ICT literacy. This concept provides an analytical approach that makes visible that there are important differences in use, skill levels and objectives in using ICTs throughout the social order, particularly across the key socio-economic sectors of governance, business, education and community. ICT literacy therefore provides the analytical link to understanding how to navigate and use the information highway in ways that cuts experiences of users in different ways; people form literacies with meaning that are socially and culturally mediated. An equitable knowledge society is indeed a connected one, yet is also one based on acknowledging that a plurality of ICT literacies exist; there are not ‘dumb’ users of technology and ‘smart’ users of technology when considering how individuals employ ICTs in ways that matter to their lives, circumstances and needs.

From a policy and practice perspective, we believe this approach helpfully moves us away from the prevailing tendency to understand ICT literacy as a singular, hierarchy ranked, uniform set of competencies with computers or technologies that can be measured, standardized and taught.

The Knowledge Economy

It is now generally acknowledged that Canada, similar to other advanced social democracies, is becoming a knowledge based economy. This shift is premised on the accentuation of “knowledge” as the most important factor of production, surpassing land, labour, and capital based on the diffusion of information communication technologies (ICTs) throughout the social order (Parayil 2005).

From a federal policy and programme perspective, Canada has aggressively positioned itself as a leading proponent of the knowledge economy, making massive investments in infrastructure and programs based on the understanding that “Canada needs a highly skilled and educated workforce to remain competitive and sustain its prosperity in an increasingly global and knowledge-based economy” (Berger et al. 2007).

The Knowledge Society

While there has been a great deal of focus on creating an advantageous climate for growing the knowledge economy, considerably less focus has been put into considering how we might ensure the development of an equitable knowledge society. In broad terms, a knowledge society centre’s around the social capabilities to identify, process, transform, disseminate and use information to build and apply knowledge for human development (UNESCO).

However, while issues of access to technology and connectivity infrastructure remain essential, it is also paramount that on top of connectivity we recognize that inclusive access does not end at being ‘connected’. Rather, inclusion and participation in the knowledge society is tied to social processes that are dynamic and complex and which vary across different socio-economic contexts.

Indeed, scholars of the ‘digital divide’ now point out that this divide cannot be reduced to just technological access, “solved” through “simple technological fixes” (Parayil 2005) because connectivity and access to infrastructures are not a sufficient basis to develop a knowledge society based on equitable inclusion and participation (UNESCO).

In both cases, the concept of the knowledge society and economy hinges on access to computing infrastructures – while government policy and programme has begun to successfully conquer the ‘digital divide’ in terms of access to technology and connectivity infrastructure it has not yet sufficiently addressed the digital divide in terms of ensuring adequate levels of literacy with ICTs.

ICT literacy addresses the post-connectivity question of, what now? For those with access to the ubiquitous information highway, ICT literacy provides the analytical link to understanding how to navigate and use the information highway in ways that cuts experiences of users in different ways. This approach makes visible that there are important differences in use, skill levels and objectives in using ICTs throughout the social order and that these differences should not, and do not, necessarily follow along a hierarchal ordering of ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ skills within the social realm – there are not ‘dumb’ users of technology and ‘smart’ users of technology when considering how individuals employ ICTs in ways that matter to their lives, circumstances and needs.

ICT literacy

While there are many definitions of ICT literacy within the scholarly literature (see Bawden 2001 for a review), ICT literacy is generally taken as an “umbrella term” that attempts to describe a new set of literacies which have emerged as a result of a broader shift to an “information society” and the accompanying technologies embedded in that shift. As Warschauer (in press: 16) concludes, “Today, the social, economic, and technological transformations are again aligned to bring about major changes in literacy practices.”

Currently, the prevailing tendency in understanding ICT literacy is to understand it as a singular, standardized set of competencies with computers or technologies. In the tradition of traditional literacy, we then find those agents and organizations wishing “to define ‘it’, to teach it, measure it, assess it, and remediate it – in a word, to universalize and standardize it (Lankshear and Knobel 2005).” If you don’t have ‘it’, then you better get ‘it’ because you will need ‘it’ in the future, goes the rationale. Within the education sector, for example, this approach is ensconced within traditional curriculum programs that understand ICT literacy as a teachable and unified set of skills to be learned. However, evidence from our study, among others, suggests that ICT literacy should be more accurately understood across a broad range of competencies and skills, and that individuals use ICTs in ways that matter to them, and not necessarily along a fixed continuum of ‘advancing’ skills.

Our understanding of ICT literacy therefore differs from the normative understandings of ICT literacy by recognizing that there are social and cultural elements which draw our attention to understanding literacy in different ways which vary in different social contexts (Simpson 2005).  Freire (2000) describes literacy as “an active phenomenon, deeply linked to personal and cultural identity. Its power lies not in a received ability to read and write, but rather in an individual’s capacity to put those skills to work in shaping the course of his or her own life.” In this context, ICT literacy conceptualizes a whole host of social practices of how people engage in making meaning “mediated by texts that are produced, received, distributed, exchanged, etc., via digital codification” (Lankshear and Knobel 2005: 9). People form literacies with meaning that are socially and culturally mediated, which is not the result from some universally learned skill or technique.

With this in mind, we would suggest four major socio-economic sectors where ICT literacy matters; it matters in the sense that while literacies with ICTs will inevitably vary among individuals, these sectors continue to form the basis of the knowledge society. Therefore a consideration of literacy with ICTs among these sectors is paramount to ensure equitable inclusion in the knowledge society.

* Governance

It is important to consider ICT literacy in relation to its significance around equitable participation within the public domain. The existence of asymmetries in democratic and governing practices in Canada is now well established. In this context, ICTs are increasingly playing an important role in inclusion around policy formulation and decision-making processes (Dale and Naylor 2006). Civic engagement processes are increasingly found on-line, and the communication possibilities created by ICTs allow the public to express itself more immediately and effectively than previously possible, helping citizens reinvigorate public talk and dialogue in entirely new ways, and with entirely new results (Dale and Naylor 2006).

Aside from ICTs contribution to civic engagement, ICTs are also now crucial to evolving notions of alternative service delivery mechanisms within government. In efforts to become more efficient and effective, many government services are now found online (http://www.gov.ns.ca/snsmr). The rationale is that the public can be better served by making these services available online, circumventing the traditional bureaucratic ‘silos and stovepipes’ found across departments, and offering more immediate and better services to citizens.

* Business

Simply connecting business to the Internet isn’t sufficient for ensuring effective use of the advantages offered by ICTs. In a study of rural New Zealand small businesses, the authors recommend that human capability play the key role in their E-Commerce strategy as a priority for the Government in the drive for economic transformation. To this end, among a host of recommendations, the authors direct the government to facilitate skill training for small business by ensuring the education sector focuses on ICT literacy, and that the government helps the private sector “build broader ICT literacy and capability in the community including rural areas” (Al-Qirim and Corbett 2003). In this way, ICT literacy becomes positioned as the key competitive edge for businesses once they have gained connectivity – the better literacy skills with ICTs on behalf of businesses and owners, the more competitive they become within a global marketplace where ICT literacy is presumed to be the entry fee to compete.

* Education

Canada requires a highly skilled and educated workforce to ensure it is competitive and to sustain its long-term prosperity in a knowledge-based economy (Berger et al. 2007).

At the same time, it is widely believed that students who have difficulty converting written information to knowledge are at a critical disadvantage in today’s world (Sim 2006). ICT literacy is therefore a desirable and necessary form of human capital, particularly in relation to an increasing emphasis on an individual’s success within the context of a knowledge economy.

Within the field of economics, there is also a growing theoretical consensus that the driving force behind economic growth is technological advancement; an assertion which has clearly found its way into educational policy formulation, and curriculum reform and practice for many governments, including Canada. As Milton (2005: 10) contends, “The early drivers of levels of investment in ICT in education have not changed.  ICT skills are a key factor in both individuals’ success in the labour market and in national economic growth.” So while connectivity and access remain important obstacles within education, obstacles to creating literacy with ICTs within the education sector is the key to ensuring all groups have access to tapping the potential created by connectivity within Nova Scotia, particularly those groups that have been historically marginalized (Naylor and Frank, forthcoming).

*   Community

Rural connectivity and literacy with that connectivity represents an important development in the historical use of ICTs to foster and enhance civic participation within the public domain (Dale and Naylor 2006). In this context, the use of the ICTs to expand dialogue, literacy and discourse are taken as new features of a potentially democratic process within the public sphere since to a large extent they seek to involve different groups employing different techniques to achieve different objectives.

Rural communities worldwide are now facing formidable challenges: significant demographic urban growth, with associated problems of economic and population losses in many rural and resource-dependent communities, with associated job loss and community decline; and meeting the basic necessities for clean air, clean water, energy, transportation, land use, housing, jobs, health, waste disposal, etc. Such problems are dynamically interconnected and cannot be dealt with in isolation; they require new approaches, frameworks, partnerships and tools to address them in an integrative fashion (Dale and Onyx, in press). Key to facing these challenges is the capacity of communities to coordinate and lead discussions around these issues, potentially contributing to a rapid development of social capital.

The emergent tools of Web 2.0, for example, suggest the importance of a set of communication tools that rural communities might adopt as strategies that cut across the rural socio-economic experience. It also highlights the critical need to address a plurality of literacies that need to be considered in relation to connectivity.

Internet Web 2.0 applications are “those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated services that gets better the more people use it, creating network effects through an ‘architecture of participation’ (O’Reilly 2005). In this way, Web 2.0 first assumes access to web based infrastructure but from there departs from the current understanding of the internet as a single entry point to access more information or as static communications link. Rather Web 2.0 is centered on a model of knowledge generation and production by communities.

As rural communities continue to face the challenges noted above, they require the tools to mobilize not only their civic voices and participation but their commerce and economies; and without the literacy to embrace and adapt the evolving architecture of the knowledge society and economy they risk becoming marginalized as technology ‘have-not’s’.

tangled webs of the brave new world

Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen – And keep your eyes wide the chance won’t come again – And don’t speak too soon for the wheel’s still in spin – And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’ – For the loser now will be later to win – For the times they are a-changin‘

For the past three days I’ve had that friggin’ song in my head.  And most definitely, it has been Bob Dylan’s version of the song.  It’s so stuck I often find myself walking down the street singing it fairly loudly, and upon recognizing that, I find myself wanting to burst on out into it… all theatrical and shit.

I love being a citizen of Now.  Observing these structurally shaking instances of history.

Citizens of Iran, speaking out against their theocracy.  The Women of Iran, finding their voices.  The Net Generation of Iran, fighting violence with information-communication technologies.  Amazing.  I am sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for the results of this one.  Unfortunately our attention spans here in the West are so short, especially the media’s attention span.  Also unfortunately democracy always comes bundled with bureaucracy and it is possible that the institution has far more power to drag the recount process out.  I suspect the Iran saga will be anti-climatic.  They will do the recount, and the numbers won’t change.  What then?  The citizens will have to accept it.  Just as US citizens did in their 2000 election … and in the end, they didn’t even get their recount.  The Supreme Court decided… much like the Supreme Overlord will.

Unless, of course, the recount happens and the numbers do change… what will happen then?  I have no idea.

I am ultimately convinced that if Obama had not won in November, we would have seen a similar uprising in the US.  I know it is a highly theoretical thing to say, but I stand by it.  What’s happening in Iran is a smackdown of cultures.  What happened in the 2008 election was also a smackdown of cultures.  If John McCain won in a landslide, or even by a narrow margin, there would have been protests and allegations of voter fraud en masse.  In 2008, the outrage would have expanded past an audience of election wonking observers like it did in 2000 and 2004.  You would have seen these scenes from Tehran in Washington.

God I’m happy that didn’t happen.  I am increasingly impressed with Barack on a daily basis.  He is governing exactly how I hoped he would.  And, he is still using all those social media tools that got him elected to reach out to his constituents.

Though, when I read about a City in Montana that requires you submit all of you Web 2.0 logins and passwords, I think… WTF America?  Background check takes on a whole new meaning when you have to start opening up your cyberlife to your employers.  That is the depth approach to job screening.

Then I start thinking about the Bill just introduced in Canadian Parliament about intercepting Internet transmissions and gathering user information from ISPs and I think WTF Canada?   “Twenty-first century technology calls for 21st-century tools,” said Justice Minister Rob Nicholson (via CBC).  Indeed they do Minister Nicholson.

The Internet is blowing it all up.  Thrusting us into a brave new world whether we want to go or not.  We early adopters are all quite giddy about it.  Once labelled the “cyber-utopianists” it is clear the skeptics are now paying attention.  And jumping on board where they can.  The revolution could never be televised because it must be an interactive, reflexive process for it to be real.

But, now that the Internets’ transformative potential is very clear, it becomes scary.  Because Now, it is no longer theory… and you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be people trying to make their top dollars by attempting to exploit the technology for profit, for security, and for measuring an individual’s moral value by snooping around their Web 2.0 pages.

Now is, indeed an interesting and exciting time.

The line it is drawn the curse it is cast – The slow one now will later be fast – As the present now will later be past – The order is rapidly fadin’ – And the first one now will later be last – For the times they are a-changin’

Saving “Local” Media

I find the CTV save local media campaign amusing and absurd.  The interests on the other side of the fight have called the ethics of the campaign into question, saying it’s one-sided and biased; but that element you could expect from a mega media conglomerate trying to squeeze more money out of service providers who are posting record profits.  I don’t blame CTVglobemedia for appealing to their dwindling population of old media consumers to write to the CRTC in an effort to save their “local” media.  But, what I do find unethical is the use of the word “local” in this whole debate.

Granted, CTV Atlantic employs many people round these parts.  They have, at least, maintained local offices, anchors and reporters to cover the media-worthy stories in the region.  But to suggest that the broadcast of 4 television programs (BT, Live at 5, News at 6, and news at 11:30) are the sum of local media in this region is ridiculous.  Further, if CTVglobemedia was so concerned about the perseverance of  local broadcasting, why did they gobble up CHUM Ltd. in 2007.  You didn’t hear any calls for saving local media then.

Further still, have you ever counted the ratio of local to global stories on either the 6:00 or the 11:30 broadcasts?  It’s roughly even.  That is, for every locally-oriented story gracing the news desks of Steve Murphy and Bruce Frisko, there is one non-locally oriented story presented to Maritime viewers (this includes professional sports highlights).  This, of course, will vary based on the number of sexy local stories which present themselves as newsworthy on any given day, but you get what I’m saying.

And even further still, how is Nova Scotia local to PEI?  How is Halifax local to Sydney?  There is a distinct difference between the local and the regional.

Poor little CTVglobemedia, they’ve invested so much into mediums which are quickly becoming obsolete.  Their holdings include a vast array of television, radio and newspaper interests, but little in the way of new media.  They are fighting with the service delivers for more money to carry their signals, in an era where people rely less and less on those signals for the delivery of news and information.

For me, the Internet has replaced my need for tuning into any CTV Atlantic news broadcast.  Sure, I turn it on at 11:30 for background as I nod off to sleep, but I could easily adapt CNN into my bedtime routine and not feel as though I am less connected to the goings on in my immediate local surroundings.  Facebook keeps me thoroughly informed as to the cultural goings-on in the city way better than the BT or Live at 5 crew can, and the fine local folks I follow on Twitter, including independent operations such as haligonia and HFX, are faster and less-mediated than any media agency could ever hope to be.  The citizen journalism that emerged from the Spryfield fires was proof positive of this.

At least CTV Atlantic finally has a Twitter account, but with less than 30 tweets since March 19th and no home CTV Atlantic website to direct traffic to, for more information on their stories, it is hardly even worth a follow (though I’ve added them anyway).

I can understand the tactics of CTVglobemedia as they trot out local media personalities begging you to write the CRTC so that they can close the gaps in their operating budgets, but let’s face it, the fight is not about saving local media, it’s about saving the local media jobs.  Perhaps they should ask for a government bailout instead.  Hell, our Federal Government seems to be open to pouring billions of dollars into obsolete technology and industry.  Just ask GM.  Apparently every Canadian GM employee is worth 1.4 million dollars, surely Steve Murphy, Liz Rigney, Bruce Frisko and the CTV Atlantic gang is worth at least half of that!