Summary:
In Reed’s sixth chapter of Digitized Lives, he focuses on the
impact of digital culture on politics. He opens by asking, really, whether
people are more involved in politics because of digital spaces like the Internet.
Reed discusses that the are positive and negative implications with the
intersection of the Internet and politics, highlighting electronic voting and
fraud, first and then digital campaigning. An interesting study he cited was
that of Cass Sunstein’s, who “argues that most people using the Web to follow
politics do not seek out a variety of perspectives, but instead seek out
information and opinion sources that match their existing ideological biases”
(123). Regardless of whether the web does or does not help citizens gain
political awareness, Reed believes that “it is a dangerous disservice to
democracy to fail to use the opportunities provided by the Web” (124). The
dispute remains as to how much political information on the Internet impacts
people. Reed then discusses that digital technology can affect the government
in tremendous ways, discussing the bringing down of authoritarian regimes and
using the Web to spy on and track down dissenters. He notes the Arab Spring
Revolutions, the Occupy movement, and countries such as Iran, China, and
Eastern Europe that have used the Web to their advantage (125-126). Reed then
examines social movements affected by the Web.
He discusses Wiki-leaking, live streaming, and slacktivism that is made
possible. “Digital social movement activity includes both new ways to
accomplish older forms of organizing, and truly new forms only possible in the
Internet era” (129). Reed cautions that despite the fact that positive
possibilities gained from the Internet, it has also created space for “white
supremacist, anti-immigrant, Islamo-phobic, sexist and homophobic groups”
(131). He also discusses activist movements/platforms made possible such as
OccupyWallStreet and HarassMap. Reed distinguishes between three terms
(hactivism, wiki-leaking, and cyberterrorism), hactivism including electronic
or digital civic disobedience. The Wall-The World was also
discussed at the end of the chapter, which seemed really
interesting.
In Chapter
Seven, Reed explores the impact of digital games on culture. One interesting
theory he discussed at the beginning of this chapter was assemblage theory,
that “game characters are both pixels and bits of us, not people in little
virtual worlds separated from us, but human creations that recreate us as we become
in some sense absorbed, cyborg-like, into game worlds (142). He discusses
different types of digital gaming and mentions that women actually represent a
larger population within the demographic of gamers than do teenage boys. Reed
discusses how games are teaching devices and then launches into whether games
make people more violent, especially in light of the fact that sometimes the
“real” world and the game world aren’t always super distinguishable. He says
that there still isn’t enough evidence/correlation/research that gaming has a
positive or negative effect on the brain. Reed discusses the links between the
military and gaming and how both have affected each other. He noted something that I noted when the war
in Iraq began, that reporters were reporting in the trenches and literally
“embedded,” giving the viewer an entirely different position, which renders the
concept of war as playful (148). Interestingly, virtual reality and video war
games are being sued to treat PTSD veterans and soldiers. Reed then discusses
the racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia in games. He discusses health
issues wrought from playing, the lack of female leads, misrepresentation, race
and issues with Lara Croft. “[I]t is a reflection of political timidity that we
have game ratings for violence and harsh language, but no ratings for racism,
sexism or homophobia” (157). Reed discusses issues with new races really just
perpetuating current issues with racism. He concludes his chapter by stating
that there are a lot of possibilities for social transformation with games
(160).
In Chapter
Eight, Reed discusses how technology affects our children and their learning.
In the beginning he makes a good point that just because we can access
information much quicker, it does not make that information knowledge and that
knowledge, likewise, is not wisdom (164). I was impressed with the section on
digital learning where Reed laid out the fact that over 90% of the time
students are spending online is with their same friends/people they do offline.
I was also impressed with the amount of time children spend online. He explains
that computers allow teachers to spend more time in face-to-face and personal
interaction with students. Computers can also make teaching to the test more
engaging. Reed then discusses how digital technology can help us cater to
different learning needs and modes of learning. One interesting thing Reed said
was that “Standardization is taking place not because of computers, but
computers facilitate or provide a rationale for this kind of unimaginative
pedagogy” (171) and I think there is a lot of truth to this…it allows us to
measure and graph in unimaginable ways…we get instant results. While Reed does
say that online teaching has brought us to think more about pedagogy (172), I
don’t necessarily agree. The rest of the chapter is dedicating to thinking
about MOOCs, the “business” of education, and financial implications in
digitizing education.
Chapter
Nine presented some fascinating statistics on access to the internet. As 70% of
the world’s population have no engagement with digital culture, Reed says there
are three broad lacks that shape this stat: lack of economic resources, lack of
information relavant to cultural groups, and lack of computer literacy skills
(180). Reed explains that the digital divide, focusing a lot on access, is not
just one thing, but divides within its divide. That English still dominates the
Net, Andrew Carver’s believe that the digital divide is the human rights issue
of this century, and access dominate the first section of this chapter. Warschauer’s chart is discussed, which shows
four levels that are key to the digital inclusion project: physical resources
(focus on getting required hardware and software), digital resources (content
addressed particularly for that particular set of users), human resources
(people who can provide proper training in techno literacies), and social
resources (model users and support networks to break reticence) (185-187). Reed
explains that sustained access, high-speed internet, funding, government
support, and community members with vision are necessary for inclusion. Digital
inclusion matters because “[d]igital technologies and the nearly instantaneous
transnational communication links they enable have been almost universally
cited as a key factor in the economic, political and cultural processes that
make up contemporary ‘globalization’” (193). At the end of the book, Reed
states that the benefits of digital media can only be realized when we take
responsibility for digital divides.
Main Argument:
The digital divide is multifaceted and complex, divides
persisting even within the divide itself, and we must do our part to ensure
those divides do not take a life of their own, as they perpetuate stigma,
othering, and cultural norms that can be forever in/visible.
Three Quotes:
“Continuing elements of sexism, racism, homophobia and other
socially destructive elements of contemporary games will not go away
automatically, any more than they will go away automatically in the wider
social world” (159).
“More generally, is militainment making it more difficult
for the general citizenry to sort out justifications for war and blurring the
line between civilian and military roles?” (150).
“Why does digital inclusion matter so much? Digital technoloiges
and the nearly instantaneous transnational communication links they enable have
been almost universally cited as a key factor in the economic, political and
cultural processes that make up contemporary ‘globalization’” (193).
Two Compelling Arguments:
When Reed discusses education and computers I felt that he
did make some interesting points. He
explains that computers allow teachers to spend more time face-to-face, to pay
close attention to individual students, and to find new means of teaching to
the test. He also discusses how online
teaching asks teachers to think “more carefully” about their pedagogy. I
disagree with a lot of these points. Foremost, I think that in this section
Reed focuses a lot on the term “computers” as opposed to the digital pedagogies
that teachers utilize. He mentions multi-modal outcomes but doesn’t spend a
great deal explaining what he means. It seemed like the idea of teachers
spending more time face-to-face was to say that teachers use computers to keep
other students busy while they focus on individual issues, which is fair, but
I’ve seen a lot of instructors use computers to make their classrooms less
interactive. And the idea of online teachers rethinking their pedagogy more
carefully is a major issue. So many instructors, grad student or not, are
thrown into teaching online without any training whatsoever. A lot of thought
and care needs to go into designing a course like that, and actually, a lot
more time than one would think. But, all
too often, instructors essentially create self-directed courses with little to
no interaction that turn into a space for students to essentially memorize and
regurgitate information by a particular date in order to pass.
When Reed stated that in the US children 8 to 18 spend on average
nearly 8 hours online, I was shocked. I
remember this figure being quite high when I was beginning college but I had no
idea that it had risen to nearly 8 hours. When I see children in elementary
school with cell phones and laptops, and perhaps it is because of when and
where I grew up, I feel a rock in my stomach. Whatever happened to physical
play and to learning actually physically with others through conversation and
interaction? I’m curious as to if others in class would agree that Reed doesn’t
answer one of his initial questions at the start of Chapter 8: “[A]re [our
students] a generation of informed, active learners with different, but,
perhaps, better ways of gaining and making knowledge?” (163). I’m curious
because the youth in my family are quite digitally apt. By the age of 2, all of
my cousins’ children (and there are 5 of them), are quite proficient in
operating an iPhone or iPad while having a conversation about something
entirely unrelated to the game they are playing better. What makes their
interaction and their learning better? Is it?
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