Thanks anonymous Jean, my sister in law in NJ for once again providing grist for the mill. And once again you have raised an essential question which by all accounts is a time of great change in the media. Your question is will new media result in honest change in Washington where it is ‘We the People’ who use new media to orient Washington and make government more transparent and accessible to us all – or - will it be used to misinform and control information and reinforce the stronghold of elite interests have on our Government? In the latter scenario media will continue to be a messaging strategy, albeit delivered through ‘hipper’ and more interactive strategies.
We all know reality is rarely an either or situation so both these media outcomes may exist at the same time in the same place. The real question is, which one will dominate?
Jenkins observes at least two major contradictory trends at play in our media environ today. The first trend is the large number of consolidation and mergers across the news, cultural, and communications industries. The mainstream press is caught in the cross fire as they are now tightly controlled by narrow private ‘corporate’ interests. Imagine, Disney doing the news? Newspapers are dropping like flies. The Pew Center on Excellence in Journalism released a report a few weeks ago noting alarming trend in the DC Press Corps. The number of reporters affiliated with the mainstream news outlets in DC has declined steadily since the 1980s. Mainstream journalists with credentials to cover Congress has decline by a third, while those registered with other agencies are down by more than half. In the last quarter of 2008 alone, five newspapers closed their DC bureaus while six others cut staff positions.
At the same time, the number of writers, editors, and reporters working for newsletters, magazines, and specialty news papers, and broadcast media outlets considered to part of the ‘niche media’ has risen by half – with a third of that growth in newsletters alone. This sector offers specialized and a more detailed analysis directed at smaller, often elite audiences or audiences concerned with a particular political interest or cause. In addition, the representatives of the foreign news outlets have grown nearly tenfold since 1968 when it had 160 members.
As you can imagine, these trends have an enormous effect on what journalists can report. Journalists in mainstream outlets are crunched for time and under fire to be more entertaining – they no longer ask the hard questions. Rising to fill the reporting gap are outlets with a mission – they keep plenty of news flowing out of DC, but it is new news – news with a spin and an agenda that goes way beyond keeping us all informed.
The second, contradictory trend is that at the same time new media technologies and practices have lowered production and distribution costs, expanded the range of delivery channels and empower consumers to engage in the media to include the creation of their own media. So new media advocates say these trends give ‘we the people’ the power to storm the new gates to the news.
Gillmore talks about ‘we the media’. Individuals like you and me who care about our government take up new tools and use them to mine information, link it with other information sources, and join with others to discuss, compare and contrast our sources to become more aware of what is going on in our world. Once passive consumers of mainstream news have the power to be transformed into an active and vital part of the larger media environ. People now have to toots to make their own news and this can potentially tip the scales in our relationship with our government. We can use these tools to join with others in making government more transparent and accountable to us all.
So who will orient the orientors of new media in D.C., will it be ‘We the People’ or same old crowd? Although time may tell the answer to this question – the forces that will tip the scale in one or other of these directions are in play in the media landscape in DC today. So you see Anonymous Jean it is not about Washington at all really. It is about how people like you and me assemble with others through the use of these new tools to hold government more accountable. It is about using the new media tools force the orientors of new media in DC to shape a new media infrastructure in the halls of government that supports “We the Media”.
Any thoughts on how we do this?
Monday, March 23, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Can boring be good for business?
Pratt suggests new media is best understood as a situated industry and practice characterized by the networks of firms and skills that converge in particular locations, in particular ways, for particular purposes. The products, material dimensions, and dynamics of a new media economic center and its workforce are thus largely constituted by the local economy where institutions and firms apply new media to enhance internal operations and external relationships.
In this light any analysis of a new media cluster by definition must be contextualized in a regional economy and it must include a discussion on how a new media industry emerges from within a broader network of industries and skills. Indeed over the last decade there have been at least three attempts to explore the emergence of a new media cluster in the Greater Washington Region. Although each study explored convergence among different combination of the technology, communications, information, media, entertainment, arts, and cultural industries residing in the region, each articulated the new media cluster differently.
For example, in 1998, the Potomac Knowledgeway in an analysis on the InfoComm Industry in D.C. region explored the convergence of ‘heritage’ – the established communications, information content (including nonprofits, publishing, and the press), and computing and systems integration industries in the region; with ‘vision’ provided by a new class of entrepreneurial visionaries who understood the Internet and digital products and services.
In the second study produced by the Greater Washington Initiative (GWI) in 2005, new media was presented more narrowly. The report explored the convergence of the significant cluster of film, video, and niche entertainment production and distribution with the growing number internet service providers in the region and predicted it would result in a new digital platform for the delivery of existing media products as well as new digital products and services. In this light, this study made the argument that D.C. was poised create a new media cluster to compete with New York City.
The third study also conducted by the GWI in 2007 of knowledge workforce in Greater Washington, extended this argument and stated that DC had emerged as another Silicon Alley and was now fully prepared to compete with NYC. This study configured the industry differently than the 2005 study. The new media cluster in this study included the serious film and niche entertainment production, the news media, the media produced by the large non-profit sector in the region, as well as other creative industries like the commercial arts, museums, and all kinds of design work. Because the study positioned new media in the broader context of the creative industry, its close affiliation with the IT sector seemed to fade into the background.
These three studies, each defining the new media cluster and activities in Greater Washington differently over the last decade illustrate that new media in the Greater Washington Region continues to be an emergent, inherently unstable, and contested social object. This series of studies also show that new media is not all that new in the Region. Indeed it seems those involved in thinking about and observing new media in the Greater Washington Region have either focused on the relationship between the communications, technology, and information content sectors, which includes the mainstream news and the policy and advocacy information and analysis produced in the region - or the relationships between the news and entertainment content sectors and the internet. Except for the military, the role of government in new media convergence in the region receives little to no attention in these studies. Even less attention is paid to the whether and how convergence may or may not be occurring across all these sectors, or more importantly how this convergence is linked to or embedded in the broader political economy of the region.
Perhaps one of the barriers to a broader and deeper analysis of the new media cluster in DC is the stated and intended purpose of each of these studies, which is to present DC as more than a company town. Each of these studies goes to great lengths to emphasize the vital commercial sector in the region while downplaying the important role of government as a regional catalyst and orientor of innovation and growth in each of the economic sectors that are linked to the new media economy. I argue for an alternative approach. Rather than comparing the region to New York, San Francisco or other ‘cool’ centers of new media or the creative economy, economic development resources would be better spent fostering a new media economy that extends rather than departs from the historic relationship between the federal government and the commercial sector in the region. I argue that more study is needed to explore how government continues to orient the concentration and organization the commercial resources across the ICT, media, and artistic sectors in the Region.
What do you think DC?
In this light any analysis of a new media cluster by definition must be contextualized in a regional economy and it must include a discussion on how a new media industry emerges from within a broader network of industries and skills. Indeed over the last decade there have been at least three attempts to explore the emergence of a new media cluster in the Greater Washington Region. Although each study explored convergence among different combination of the technology, communications, information, media, entertainment, arts, and cultural industries residing in the region, each articulated the new media cluster differently.
For example, in 1998, the Potomac Knowledgeway in an analysis on the InfoComm Industry in D.C. region explored the convergence of ‘heritage’ – the established communications, information content (including nonprofits, publishing, and the press), and computing and systems integration industries in the region; with ‘vision’ provided by a new class of entrepreneurial visionaries who understood the Internet and digital products and services.
In the second study produced by the Greater Washington Initiative (GWI) in 2005, new media was presented more narrowly. The report explored the convergence of the significant cluster of film, video, and niche entertainment production and distribution with the growing number internet service providers in the region and predicted it would result in a new digital platform for the delivery of existing media products as well as new digital products and services. In this light, this study made the argument that D.C. was poised create a new media cluster to compete with New York City.
The third study also conducted by the GWI in 2007 of knowledge workforce in Greater Washington, extended this argument and stated that DC had emerged as another Silicon Alley and was now fully prepared to compete with NYC. This study configured the industry differently than the 2005 study. The new media cluster in this study included the serious film and niche entertainment production, the news media, the media produced by the large non-profit sector in the region, as well as other creative industries like the commercial arts, museums, and all kinds of design work. Because the study positioned new media in the broader context of the creative industry, its close affiliation with the IT sector seemed to fade into the background.
These three studies, each defining the new media cluster and activities in Greater Washington differently over the last decade illustrate that new media in the Greater Washington Region continues to be an emergent, inherently unstable, and contested social object. This series of studies also show that new media is not all that new in the Region. Indeed it seems those involved in thinking about and observing new media in the Greater Washington Region have either focused on the relationship between the communications, technology, and information content sectors, which includes the mainstream news and the policy and advocacy information and analysis produced in the region - or the relationships between the news and entertainment content sectors and the internet. Except for the military, the role of government in new media convergence in the region receives little to no attention in these studies. Even less attention is paid to the whether and how convergence may or may not be occurring across all these sectors, or more importantly how this convergence is linked to or embedded in the broader political economy of the region.
Perhaps one of the barriers to a broader and deeper analysis of the new media cluster in DC is the stated and intended purpose of each of these studies, which is to present DC as more than a company town. Each of these studies goes to great lengths to emphasize the vital commercial sector in the region while downplaying the important role of government as a regional catalyst and orientor of innovation and growth in each of the economic sectors that are linked to the new media economy. I argue for an alternative approach. Rather than comparing the region to New York, San Francisco or other ‘cool’ centers of new media or the creative economy, economic development resources would be better spent fostering a new media economy that extends rather than departs from the historic relationship between the federal government and the commercial sector in the region. I argue that more study is needed to explore how government continues to orient the concentration and organization the commercial resources across the ICT, media, and artistic sectors in the Region.
What do you think DC?
Monday, March 9, 2009
What is New Media?
Since launching this blog several people have asked me to explain what I mean by new media. Even many of you who 'do' new media, have inquired about my views. Sooo....
New media is a broad term used to describe a series of technological, political, and cultural shifts that together are changing the structure of the media and entertainment industries. More importantly, these shifts are also changing the historic relationship between the media producers and consumers.
Deregulation, technology innovation, and new capital investments have significantly altered the way media and entertainment products are developed and distributed. Large corporate conglomerates have emerged to exploit capacity from across once different sectors of the economy. Intellectual property and media content developed in one part of the corporation can be repackaged, resold, and distributed many times over several mediums, and across domestic and international markets. New products and services and new business models have emerged that threaten many industry players who have not figured out how to adopt them, like newspapers.
These same technologies gives consumers much more control over not only what they will watch, read and listen to, but also over how media products are developed and can be used. The new internet based peer-to-peer networks, collaborative tools, social software coupled with new and cheap computer software and recording equipment, coupled with a myriad of new communication devises empower consumers to become producers and distributors of their own media and entertainment. Interactive forms of entertainment and civic engagement like internet based social networks are cutting into the overall percentage of personal time and resources people invest in traditional media products and services. The media and the entertainment art form are changing from a one-way, mass viewing experience - to an interactive, personalized experience. Many people are demanding a new level of engagement in the media and cultural that constitute their world.
Yet there is still no consensus on a definition of the media industry today – old or new. Analysts use different frameworks to identify the sectors that make up the industry. Attempts to study the industry are further complicated by the large number of mergers and acquisitions that have occurred since the 1990s and continue today. Data on specific companies is constantly changing. Also, given that much of the work within the industry is project based and contingent, data on the number of people who actually earn a living by working within the industry, their wage levels, skill sets, credentials, etc. are also hard to obtain.
It seems to me Jenkins got it right when describing new media as a process - a convergence process through which a new or an alternative media environment will emerge. He believes the new media environment is being shaped by these two seemingly contradictory trends - trends in traditional media that have a given rise to very small number of privately held gatekeepers who now have unprecedented control over the media and popular culture - and - trends that are transforming the audience into active producers and consumers of the news and popular culture. As we sit in the midst of this process he claims it is very hard to predict the media landscape that will emerge on the other end.
Next week, I will share some of what I have learned about the potential implications of these trends for the media landscape in Greater Washington DC.
Meanwhile, what do you think? Does Jenkins capture the inherent contradiction which he believes may characterize 'the media' today? What are your thoughts about how these contradictions are playing out in Greater Washington, DC?
New media is a broad term used to describe a series of technological, political, and cultural shifts that together are changing the structure of the media and entertainment industries. More importantly, these shifts are also changing the historic relationship between the media producers and consumers.
Deregulation, technology innovation, and new capital investments have significantly altered the way media and entertainment products are developed and distributed. Large corporate conglomerates have emerged to exploit capacity from across once different sectors of the economy. Intellectual property and media content developed in one part of the corporation can be repackaged, resold, and distributed many times over several mediums, and across domestic and international markets. New products and services and new business models have emerged that threaten many industry players who have not figured out how to adopt them, like newspapers.
These same technologies gives consumers much more control over not only what they will watch, read and listen to, but also over how media products are developed and can be used. The new internet based peer-to-peer networks, collaborative tools, social software coupled with new and cheap computer software and recording equipment, coupled with a myriad of new communication devises empower consumers to become producers and distributors of their own media and entertainment. Interactive forms of entertainment and civic engagement like internet based social networks are cutting into the overall percentage of personal time and resources people invest in traditional media products and services. The media and the entertainment art form are changing from a one-way, mass viewing experience - to an interactive, personalized experience. Many people are demanding a new level of engagement in the media and cultural that constitute their world.
Yet there is still no consensus on a definition of the media industry today – old or new. Analysts use different frameworks to identify the sectors that make up the industry. Attempts to study the industry are further complicated by the large number of mergers and acquisitions that have occurred since the 1990s and continue today. Data on specific companies is constantly changing. Also, given that much of the work within the industry is project based and contingent, data on the number of people who actually earn a living by working within the industry, their wage levels, skill sets, credentials, etc. are also hard to obtain.
It seems to me Jenkins got it right when describing new media as a process - a convergence process through which a new or an alternative media environment will emerge. He believes the new media environment is being shaped by these two seemingly contradictory trends - trends in traditional media that have a given rise to very small number of privately held gatekeepers who now have unprecedented control over the media and popular culture - and - trends that are transforming the audience into active producers and consumers of the news and popular culture. As we sit in the midst of this process he claims it is very hard to predict the media landscape that will emerge on the other end.
Next week, I will share some of what I have learned about the potential implications of these trends for the media landscape in Greater Washington DC.
Meanwhile, what do you think? Does Jenkins capture the inherent contradiction which he believes may characterize 'the media' today? What are your thoughts about how these contradictions are playing out in Greater Washington, DC?
Monday, March 2, 2009
Liminal Tribe
If I had any doubt before this weekend, my experience at Transparency Camp 09 confirmed for me that D.C. is a place of great opportunity for tech savvy professionals from across the media, information and communication technology, creative, non-profit, and public administrative sectors. Represented at this weekend’s un-conference was the current generation of the class of professionals who have historically clustered in D.C. This class is described on the Camp’s website as a... ‘trans-partisan tribe...from all walks – government representatives, developers, NGOs, wonks, and activists” and I’d add to this list members of The Press.
This weekend made clear to me the professional opportunities that exist in the DC area for individual members of this tribe. But perhaps more importantly this tribe may represent an opportunity for us all to learn how to distribute the powerful potential of social media tools and practices beyond the industrial sectors that invented them and the generation who grew up with them. If this tribe succeeds, they may very well provide a bridge to help move social media and its benefits into broader areas of community, civic, and economic life.
Ironically DC is not recognized as a significant cluster of the social media economy. It is way overshadowed by areas like Silicon Valley, or New York City. It may be said the social media ‘tribe’ in DC are like a liminal people residing at the bounds between the originators and a broader adoption of social media technologies and practices throughout the civic life and the economy. And they share a common problem with other liminal people - they are ambiguous and unremarkable and seen as possessing no particular status, power, or role in the overall social structure. Liminal tribes, like the DC social media professionals are hard to see and define for their condition often defies classification by conventional means.
This experience of being ‘unremarkable’ on the broader economic map of social media was expressed by many of the individuals and groups I met throughout my research in social media in DC. Almost every individual I met who is involved in convening groups of social media advocates, every professional association executive, every individual who hires or in some way supports social media professionals in D.C. expressed frustration by the lack of recognition DC receives for the wide ranging social media work performed in the region. Individual professionals themselves also acknowledge their lack of broader recognition and indeed, this insight seems in part to drive them to work and learn and engage others in their social media endeavors. Much of the networking people do in social media in DC seems to me, to be partly motivated by a personal and collective desire to matter in the broader world of social media.
If my analysis is correct and the D.C. social media tribe represent a liminal stage between the powerful political, economic, social, and technological forces that gave rise to social media and its broader adaption and integration in civic and economic life, then it D.C must be seen as a site of great potential, learning, and personal risk. Liminal stages require greats acts of personal and group agency for it involves pushing past established boundaries and great collective effort that is often punctuated by significant meaning. Liminal worlds are naturally sites of individual learning and cultural development – people and their culture emerge from liminal states transformed in some way. What liminal people learn and how they learn it may be of value to all others who will inevitably follow them to the other side of their developmental cycle.
If the members of the tribe who came together this weekend achieve their aims they will not only succeed in making government more ‘transparent’ they will also be poised to help figure out what seems to be a fundamental question in the world of social media today. I argue that their efforts may help distribute and begin to normalize social media tools, practices and the collaborative culture it fosters inside of the hierarchical institutions that comprise and uphold our society and economy. The skills this tribe develops and uses and the way they organize to work and learn may have implications beyond their current aims – it may be a harbinger of things to come for us all who live and work within the bounds of the institutions that comprise modern life.
This weekend made clear to me the professional opportunities that exist in the DC area for individual members of this tribe. But perhaps more importantly this tribe may represent an opportunity for us all to learn how to distribute the powerful potential of social media tools and practices beyond the industrial sectors that invented them and the generation who grew up with them. If this tribe succeeds, they may very well provide a bridge to help move social media and its benefits into broader areas of community, civic, and economic life.
Ironically DC is not recognized as a significant cluster of the social media economy. It is way overshadowed by areas like Silicon Valley, or New York City. It may be said the social media ‘tribe’ in DC are like a liminal people residing at the bounds between the originators and a broader adoption of social media technologies and practices throughout the civic life and the economy. And they share a common problem with other liminal people - they are ambiguous and unremarkable and seen as possessing no particular status, power, or role in the overall social structure. Liminal tribes, like the DC social media professionals are hard to see and define for their condition often defies classification by conventional means.
This experience of being ‘unremarkable’ on the broader economic map of social media was expressed by many of the individuals and groups I met throughout my research in social media in DC. Almost every individual I met who is involved in convening groups of social media advocates, every professional association executive, every individual who hires or in some way supports social media professionals in D.C. expressed frustration by the lack of recognition DC receives for the wide ranging social media work performed in the region. Individual professionals themselves also acknowledge their lack of broader recognition and indeed, this insight seems in part to drive them to work and learn and engage others in their social media endeavors. Much of the networking people do in social media in DC seems to me, to be partly motivated by a personal and collective desire to matter in the broader world of social media.
If my analysis is correct and the D.C. social media tribe represent a liminal stage between the powerful political, economic, social, and technological forces that gave rise to social media and its broader adaption and integration in civic and economic life, then it D.C must be seen as a site of great potential, learning, and personal risk. Liminal stages require greats acts of personal and group agency for it involves pushing past established boundaries and great collective effort that is often punctuated by significant meaning. Liminal worlds are naturally sites of individual learning and cultural development – people and their culture emerge from liminal states transformed in some way. What liminal people learn and how they learn it may be of value to all others who will inevitably follow them to the other side of their developmental cycle.
If the members of the tribe who came together this weekend achieve their aims they will not only succeed in making government more ‘transparent’ they will also be poised to help figure out what seems to be a fundamental question in the world of social media today. I argue that their efforts may help distribute and begin to normalize social media tools, practices and the collaborative culture it fosters inside of the hierarchical institutions that comprise and uphold our society and economy. The skills this tribe develops and uses and the way they organize to work and learn may have implications beyond their current aims – it may be a harbinger of things to come for us all who live and work within the bounds of the institutions that comprise modern life.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Harbinger
Thanks to Anonymous for sparking this week's post. Anonymous is Jean, my sister-in-law who is a middle-school teacher in NJ.
Jean responded to my question: What affect has new media had on your work and learning? Her answer was visceral - like the affect of new media is at the core of her everyday experience as a teacher. Indeed, the new media affect seems to help describe her relationships with her students - each of them standing on an opposite side of the digital divide. The students owning their personal learning tools, and she owning the responsibility for their learning of the curriculum adults deem important for them to learn.
Jean's posting is a very insightful depiction of life on the front lines in an institution that is being over taken by the everyday experience of those who are relied upon for its reproduction. What will become of institution of education if those responsible for maintaining it - Jean and her students - can no longer achieve what they are there to by the means ascribed? And even more frightening, what will happen to Jean's mission to foster student's learning and development if the institution of education fails to keep pace with their everyday reality and needs?
Real learning for Jean's students is fun, so education should also be fun. Students want 'edutainment'. The educational experience should look and feel like the way they learn. It should be engaging, it should take their interests seriously - it should put them in control of the learning process and allow them to cut and paste, and borrow from others, to build on what they and others know in order to create something new and then to share it with the world - not just put it on the refrigerator, but put it on line to get feedback, not just from parents and teachers but from peers or experts in China, Ireland, or on the other end of NJ.
Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to depict a new media utopia where everyone learns from everyone all the time. Indeed what happens if teachers like Jean are not supported in their efforts to keep pace with her student's needs? The kids won't wait! So who will guide and encourage them to look deeper at the assumptions, social structures, ideology underlying the tools they engage; what happens if no one is there to help them approach their learning with rigor and 'discipline'? Indeed, what becomes of those kids who, like their teachers, lack access to these tools in the fist place. Will they also lack access to the political, economic, and social world their generational cohorts will most certainly create?
Rather than promoting new media for all, I am pointing to the power of new media tools, and perhaps more importantly their ability to disrupt the power structures in society and our institutions. Some individuals like Jean's students now own the tools of production. Yes, the tools Jean's students use for learning will be the very same tools (albeit more enhanced) they will own and demand to use when they arrive in the workplace in the next 5 to 10 years.
So Jean's experience in the institution of school may be a harbinger of things to come for those of us who work and learn in the institutions of adult life. Her students will soon be our employees, clients, patients, vendors, cohorts, and colleagues and we will look to them to help uphold our rules, standard practices, and procedures. I argue, they will not stand with us on common ground. They will see their work and learning, their responsibilities to work, the role work plays in their everyday experience, what it means, and how to engage in it quite differently than many of us of an older generation do.
In writing her post, Jean was afraid her experiences were not real world enough to be share on my blog, but my fear is that her experience is all too real. Jean may be like the canary in the coal mine - our early warning system that something is terribly out of balance in our ecosystem.
My question is: are you and the institutions where you live and work any more prepared for the new and disruptive ways Jean's students approach and engage their world than Jean?
Thank you Jean for providing this week's grist for the mill.
Jean responded to my question: What affect has new media had on your work and learning? Her answer was visceral - like the affect of new media is at the core of her everyday experience as a teacher. Indeed, the new media affect seems to help describe her relationships with her students - each of them standing on an opposite side of the digital divide. The students owning their personal learning tools, and she owning the responsibility for their learning of the curriculum adults deem important for them to learn.
Jean's posting is a very insightful depiction of life on the front lines in an institution that is being over taken by the everyday experience of those who are relied upon for its reproduction. What will become of institution of education if those responsible for maintaining it - Jean and her students - can no longer achieve what they are there to by the means ascribed? And even more frightening, what will happen to Jean's mission to foster student's learning and development if the institution of education fails to keep pace with their everyday reality and needs?
Real learning for Jean's students is fun, so education should also be fun. Students want 'edutainment'. The educational experience should look and feel like the way they learn. It should be engaging, it should take their interests seriously - it should put them in control of the learning process and allow them to cut and paste, and borrow from others, to build on what they and others know in order to create something new and then to share it with the world - not just put it on the refrigerator, but put it on line to get feedback, not just from parents and teachers but from peers or experts in China, Ireland, or on the other end of NJ.
Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to depict a new media utopia where everyone learns from everyone all the time. Indeed what happens if teachers like Jean are not supported in their efforts to keep pace with her student's needs? The kids won't wait! So who will guide and encourage them to look deeper at the assumptions, social structures, ideology underlying the tools they engage; what happens if no one is there to help them approach their learning with rigor and 'discipline'? Indeed, what becomes of those kids who, like their teachers, lack access to these tools in the fist place. Will they also lack access to the political, economic, and social world their generational cohorts will most certainly create?
Rather than promoting new media for all, I am pointing to the power of new media tools, and perhaps more importantly their ability to disrupt the power structures in society and our institutions. Some individuals like Jean's students now own the tools of production. Yes, the tools Jean's students use for learning will be the very same tools (albeit more enhanced) they will own and demand to use when they arrive in the workplace in the next 5 to 10 years.
So Jean's experience in the institution of school may be a harbinger of things to come for those of us who work and learn in the institutions of adult life. Her students will soon be our employees, clients, patients, vendors, cohorts, and colleagues and we will look to them to help uphold our rules, standard practices, and procedures. I argue, they will not stand with us on common ground. They will see their work and learning, their responsibilities to work, the role work plays in their everyday experience, what it means, and how to engage in it quite differently than many of us of an older generation do.
In writing her post, Jean was afraid her experiences were not real world enough to be share on my blog, but my fear is that her experience is all too real. Jean may be like the canary in the coal mine - our early warning system that something is terribly out of balance in our ecosystem.
My question is: are you and the institutions where you live and work any more prepared for the new and disruptive ways Jean's students approach and engage their world than Jean?
Thank you Jean for providing this week's grist for the mill.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Boundaryless Work?
Thanks to Peter for sparking this, my second posting.
I concluded my first post by asking ...“What affect has new media had on your work and learning?”
And Peter responded....“New media hasn’t changed my life....it is my life!”
I find this response remarkable in many ways – but here I consider two.
First, Peter's comment caused me to notice how I think about the place of new media in the sequence of people’s career trajectory. By asking about the affect of new media on work and learning, I assume most people encounter new media after they enter into a career. Peter’s response reminds me that this sequence of events (a career followed by an encounter with new media) is not the same for everyone. For some, like Peter their involvement in new media is followed by work and learning and this sequence may make a big difference for the significance of new media in everyday life.
For me, and perhaps others of my generation (Generation Jones) new media potentially disrupts our work and learning – it 'affects' our work and learning for it may change what we do in some way. Like this blog for example, it is changing the way I present my research findings and it may also change the way I write. I struggle to figure out how to integrate into my everyday experience - you may note that this is only my second post since launching last week.
For Peter, and perhaps others of his generation and new media community, new media has no affect on their work and learning for as Peter puts it, it is my ‘life’. It is already an integrated part of his everyday life.
My second point is what I find most remarkable about Peter’s comment. Not only is new media his life, it also appears as though his work and learning are synonymous with his life. Peter answers a question about his work and learning with a statement about his life – it like work, learning, and living are all somehow part of the same activity.
Social researchers claim that the division of labor - including the division between work and everyday life, reflects social purposes as well as social relationships. Work activity itself is recognized as perhaps the most significant mechanism for the socialization of adults. Indeed, throughout history the organization of production has explained how people and groups come together, form bonds, pursue common goals, and learn and develop as individuals and as a culture.
Barley & Kunda (2001) in an excellent essay on the need for more research on the changing nature of work, observe that in pre-modern, agrarian society people were socialized into a communal division of labor. The concept of work was unremarkable for it was an integrated and natural function of communal life. As the industrial revolution took hold, people left their small communities and took on jobs and began to separate their work - physically, temporally, socially, intellectually, and emotionally from other spheres of life. Industrial or economic modes of production became the dominate mode for organizing human production and as a consequence, class positions and work roles became the dominate mechanisms for adult socialization.
However we all know what has happened to the industrial 'job'! Let's just say it is not your father's job anymore! We are all well aware of the new formats for organizing production - indeed networks and other more fluid organizational formats are not that new anymore.
Salling Olsen (2001) claims these more fluid organizational formats and the new productive relationships they generate, have broken down the structures that once separated work from everyday life. Work requires much more individual responsibility for the development of skills, careers, and identities - individuals are called upon to become active agents in creating the circumstances of their own socialization.
And this is where Peter's comment and my research intersect. The focus of my research is on work and learning and the apparent break down of the boundaries between the two once distinct activities in industrial society. One was educated, prepared for work, and then entered into a career track that guided or even helped to pull them along - up the ladder - to more knowledge, expertise, and for some, prestige. Workplace learning (my field) was organized to help individuals learn the new knowledge and skill required to progress up these pre-existing career ladders.
But now, many of the traditional career ladders have broken down, and where they remain, many people are thwarted in upward progression by steep learning curves, as well as industrial restructuring or other forms of economic disruption. This is all having a huge affect on the social institution of school and on people like me who have spent their careers working to support learning in the workplace. We must rethink conventional notions about the relationship between work and learning as well as our understanding of how individuals are socialized in society in the new structures that are emerging for organizing production today.
Is work once again becoming ubiquitous in society? Some argue that work and by extension, careers are now boundaryless with people taking on up to seven distinctly different roles in production over their lifetime. Is this your experience - or do you experience a sense of coherence in the numerous work roles you may have taken on in your career?
My thanks once again to Peter for providing the grist for the mill.\
I concluded my first post by asking ...“What affect has new media had on your work and learning?”
And Peter responded....“New media hasn’t changed my life....it is my life!”
I find this response remarkable in many ways – but here I consider two.
First, Peter's comment caused me to notice how I think about the place of new media in the sequence of people’s career trajectory. By asking about the affect of new media on work and learning, I assume most people encounter new media after they enter into a career. Peter’s response reminds me that this sequence of events (a career followed by an encounter with new media) is not the same for everyone. For some, like Peter their involvement in new media is followed by work and learning and this sequence may make a big difference for the significance of new media in everyday life.
For me, and perhaps others of my generation (Generation Jones) new media potentially disrupts our work and learning – it 'affects' our work and learning for it may change what we do in some way. Like this blog for example, it is changing the way I present my research findings and it may also change the way I write. I struggle to figure out how to integrate into my everyday experience - you may note that this is only my second post since launching last week.
For Peter, and perhaps others of his generation and new media community, new media has no affect on their work and learning for as Peter puts it, it is my ‘life’. It is already an integrated part of his everyday life.
My second point is what I find most remarkable about Peter’s comment. Not only is new media his life, it also appears as though his work and learning are synonymous with his life. Peter answers a question about his work and learning with a statement about his life – it like work, learning, and living are all somehow part of the same activity.
Social researchers claim that the division of labor - including the division between work and everyday life, reflects social purposes as well as social relationships. Work activity itself is recognized as perhaps the most significant mechanism for the socialization of adults. Indeed, throughout history the organization of production has explained how people and groups come together, form bonds, pursue common goals, and learn and develop as individuals and as a culture.
Barley & Kunda (2001) in an excellent essay on the need for more research on the changing nature of work, observe that in pre-modern, agrarian society people were socialized into a communal division of labor. The concept of work was unremarkable for it was an integrated and natural function of communal life. As the industrial revolution took hold, people left their small communities and took on jobs and began to separate their work - physically, temporally, socially, intellectually, and emotionally from other spheres of life. Industrial or economic modes of production became the dominate mode for organizing human production and as a consequence, class positions and work roles became the dominate mechanisms for adult socialization.
However we all know what has happened to the industrial 'job'! Let's just say it is not your father's job anymore! We are all well aware of the new formats for organizing production - indeed networks and other more fluid organizational formats are not that new anymore.
Salling Olsen (2001) claims these more fluid organizational formats and the new productive relationships they generate, have broken down the structures that once separated work from everyday life. Work requires much more individual responsibility for the development of skills, careers, and identities - individuals are called upon to become active agents in creating the circumstances of their own socialization.
And this is where Peter's comment and my research intersect. The focus of my research is on work and learning and the apparent break down of the boundaries between the two once distinct activities in industrial society. One was educated, prepared for work, and then entered into a career track that guided or even helped to pull them along - up the ladder - to more knowledge, expertise, and for some, prestige. Workplace learning (my field) was organized to help individuals learn the new knowledge and skill required to progress up these pre-existing career ladders.
But now, many of the traditional career ladders have broken down, and where they remain, many people are thwarted in upward progression by steep learning curves, as well as industrial restructuring or other forms of economic disruption. This is all having a huge affect on the social institution of school and on people like me who have spent their careers working to support learning in the workplace. We must rethink conventional notions about the relationship between work and learning as well as our understanding of how individuals are socialized in society in the new structures that are emerging for organizing production today.
Is work once again becoming ubiquitous in society? Some argue that work and by extension, careers are now boundaryless with people taking on up to seven distinctly different roles in production over their lifetime. Is this your experience - or do you experience a sense of coherence in the numerous work roles you may have taken on in your career?
My thanks once again to Peter for providing the grist for the mill.\
Monday, February 9, 2009
Launch
When I began my outreach into the new media community in Greater Washington, DC in May, 2007 many of you encouraged me to blog. I have resisted. In academia you publish at the end of the research process, not along the way. Personally the notion of ‘my blog’ reminded me of my nagging fear that no one really cares about what I have to say.
But I learned from many of you who participated in my study that blogging is a generative exercise where people can learn and grow together through writing. I also learned about how I can use a blog in my research – and this learning is about to change the way I work and learn. For example....
· Blogs are a good, informal way to learn about the themes I may find in my analysis because I can invite others to respond and contribute to my thinking before I put my ideas out into the world in a more authoritative style - like I must do in my final dissertation report.
· Indeed with a blog I can ‘push the learning’ – or- ‘bootstrap’ my analysis because blogging can improve my knowledge and writing. The more I blog/write, the more the quality of my thinking and writing will improve, and as my quality improves, more people may engage, thus ‘pushing the learning’ for us all. As people share their insights, it is likely they will influence my thinking and analysis – and I will learn.
· I can write in takes – do a little analysis, share it, see what comes up. The story of my research can accrete over time and I don’t have come up with everything at once.
· Indeed this way of writing and presenting is more responsive to the way people view and use information today. Information is ephemeral – the world will move on long before I can publish my findings. If I share it a little at a time, others might actually find it useful – now!
· I can use the blog to connect and remain connected with those who expressed interest in my study. Those who asked me to blog, in effect invited me to join in the new media community, not just remain on the outside and study it.
· But blogs are more than a connection; for blogs can also help people learn about their community and mobilize others around issues they care about. For some, blogs are a way of relating to others and making an impact in the world. I hope this will also be so for me.
In February, 2008 after spending many months participating in the new media community in DC, I returned home with buckets of data. I had notes and pictures from the dozens of meet-ups and un-events I attended, transcripts from dozens of interviews with people who were said to have a broad view of the media in DC, as well as transcripts from my in-depth interviews with 15 people in traditional and new media about their work and learning experiences.
I spent the last year developing case studies of each of the 15 individual participants. I used the interview transcripts and all my other data to construct a narrative or a series of stories each individual could tell of their work and learning experience. These are very extensive documents that provide a lens onto the broad knowledge, deep skill, and innovative practices these very talented individuals draw upon to create traditional and new media in DC. These cases also tell a very compelling story about the broader context of media in DC – the tools, the values, the community, the economics, etc – that make their unique ways of work and learning possible.
Now I am faced with the daunting task of pulling from all these cases to tell a plausible story of work and learning in new media in DC. What makes this task particularly challenging is my aim to preserve the incredible richness of each of the individual narratives while also telling the very compelling story I discovered about work and learning in new media in DC.
So my resistance to blogging has given way to the developmental demands of the final stage of my research. I invite you to engage with me in making sense of it all. It is my hope that you will not only find what I post here interesting, but that you also find something of practical valuable.
Before I end this first post, let me clarify my focus in this blog.
This blog is not about new media theory, practices, and trends. There are plenty of blogs and resources focused on interesting developments and perspectives on the media.
This blog is about the way new media is changing, or not changing the way people work and learn. In this blog, I plan to continue to explore the affect new media tools, practices, norms, values, and relationships is having on how people perceive and experience their work and how they learn in and from the work they do.
That said, what affect has new media had on your work and learning?
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