As many of you will have noticed, this blog has become rather silent lately. There are multiple reasons for that, but one is certainly that I have taken some time to focus on two academic publications for a book called “Disruptive Technologies, Innovation and Global Redesign: Emerging Implications”, which is edited by Ndubuisi Ekekwe of the African Institute of Technology and Nazrul Islam of Aberystwyth University. #

Together with Bruce Mutsvairo, who’s a PhD candidate at the University of Hull (and a lecturer at my college), and Louis Klamroth, I have written about the applicability of traditional media impact theories in the age of the Internet and, in particular, social media. One thing that is always striking me there is how little use even young people make of the diverse and accessible media landscape they take for granted to have at their hands (a prime example, in my eyes, is the finding of the 2009 JIM – Youth, Internet, Multimedia – report that 70% of German 12 to 19 years olds liked about television that they did not have to actively choose what content to access). #

Another chapter I wrote on my own reviews research on the economic impact of mobile phones in developing countries. This project started out with the research of Jenny Aker and Robert Jensen, who have conducted quantitative economic studies, but I have also included much qualitative research (e.g. by Ragnhild Overa). I find this topic particularly interesting because it steers away a bit from the hype that surrounds both digital activism and ICT4D. And the economists provide quantitative data, which is so badly missing from the latter discourses (Patrick Meier was also at re:publica, giving a great talk about Ushahidi. Still I wish he had rather presented his dissertation research, which might substantiate much of all this talk about Facebook revolutions). #

Both papers are currently under review. If you are interested, I’ll be happy to share a copy of my drafts with you, in particular of the second paper – just drop me a message at -simon [at] thisdomain-. There are also some other great news to share in the near future, but I have to await confirmation until I can spread the word. #

The similarity between blog and printing press is to obvious to go unnoticed, and many have extended on this allegory. But Eisenstein’s account highlights details which most advocates of the rise of those who were formerly called the audience will likely overlook. Who would have guessed that crowdsourcing is a practice half a millenium old? But indeed, early printers of maps and globes and natural compendia already asked their readers to contribute their discoveries to following editions, as Eisenstein shows. “After printing, large-scale data collection did become subjects to new forms of feedback which had not been possible in the age of scribes.” #

This, of course, is not the collaborative process enabled by the Internet which we see today in the Wikipedia, and which Clay Shirky invests so much hope in. But Eisenstein’s work is fascinating because it allows us to look for the general principles that communications revolutions come with. Enhanced feedback processes, it seems, are one of them. #

I have often heard from sceptics that they don’t see any new ideas in blogs. How can a medium be revolutionary if it just spreads the contents of its traditional predecessors, undermixed with urban myths and conspiracy theories, they ask. A historical perspective seems helpful, because the same is true for the printing press: Early printed books did barely contain any new content; in fact, they often served to spread myths and charlatanry, alongside the same old, unscientific theories as before. #

Eisenstein claims that there is a benefit in knowing three wrong theories instead of one. From comparison, their inconsistence can be realized – and new, better-fitting theories can be devised. We might think similarly about the Internet. My generation has already grown up with near infinite sources of information at their hands, open for comparison. Surely, most people don’t use these intellectual pastures of plenty, but what can they effect as tools of those who do? #

“The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe” had originally come to my attention via a mention in Graeme Kirkpatrick’s “Technology & Social Power”. There, the author enhances Eisenstein’s arguments in connecting it with Habermas’ writings on the emergence of the “public sphere”. He writes that “only through the agency of print [...] does it become possible for people to think of themselves as members of an ‘imagined community’, the basis of modern nationalism”. #

The fascinating question that arises is, of course, whether this development will find an equivalent in the social media age. Ala’a Abdel Fattah recently wrote, regarding the current revolutions in the Middle East, that “[f]rom the internet and satellite TV a new pan-Arabism is born”, and Zeynep Tufekci (when rebutting Malcolm Gladwell) touched on hopes for an social media-enabled globalism as a possible force against global problems such as climate change: #

New movements that can bring about global social change will still require people who interact with each other regularly, and trust and depend on each other in somewhat dense networks. Or only hope is if those networks span the globe in a tightly-knit, broad web of activity, interaction, personalization. Real change will come only if we can make friends we care about everywhere and we make bridge ties that cover the world in a web of common humanity that is bigger and more powerful than a handful of corporations and the corrupt, self-perpetuating class of politicians. [...] I say, bring on the hive mind, please let it be global in scale as nothing less will do, and let Facebook and Twitter lead the way. #

I think that’s wildly optimistic. I see very little conversation outside of individual regions, with the exception of a few cross-continent ties (Kenya to Ghana, for instance.) It’s rare to see dialog between Anglophone and Francophone speakers, for instance, and the conceptual barrier that separates sub-Saharan and Northern Africa remains firmly in place in a digital age. I’d love to see digital media emerge into regional media, and will wait to see that before I indulge in Nkrumist fantasies. #

The book takes an anthropological and historical perspective on the role of mobile telephony in a wide range of (sub-Saharan) African societies. It includes chapters on the call-box business in Cameroon, a traditional healer’s use of the mobile phone, and the ‘biography’ of a mobile phone in Tanzania, to name just a few. #

One chapter of particular interest to me, and which proved to be highly disappointing, is Thomas Molony’s account of a Tanzanian wholesaler’s non-use of mobile telephony. The author first outlines how traders of perishables in Tanzania use mobile phones to transmit supply and demand information, a field that is well researched in a range of quantitative studies (see Aker, 2008, 2010; Jensen, 2007). He also looks at the efforts farmers had to undertake in 2004, when Molony conducted his research, to access mobile phone networks (a situation that has certainly improved since then). #

Despite finding that mobile phone usage was already wide-spread among wholesalers in 2003 (when it was considerable more expensive then today), Molony then singles out one trader who, at that point, refused to use a mobile phone to argue that “the telephone may be considered unimportant because personal relationships are formed during meetings conducted in person”. On this still successful wholesaler, he writes that #

while not having a mobile phone may make his jo hectic and he may lose some friends alng the way when he is unable to sell farmers’ consignments to his many contacts in Dar es Salaam, his visits to farmers ensure that he is known localy, and crucially, recommended to emerging farmers”. #

This ignorance of related empirical literature has bugged me throughout the whole book. There is a great deal of references to other anthropological studies, but in the end, a lot of anecdotes still doesn’t make up for the need of quantitative evidence. Another issue is that much of the research the chapter are based on was conducted as early as 2003. In the history of mobile telephony, the six years that are between data collection and the book’s publication in 2009 are a lifetime, and many of the observations might well be outdated today. #

“Mobile Phones: The New Talking Drums of Everyday Africa” provides some interesting qualitative research from a great variety of countries and a range of different viewpoints. I also like the fact that it includes at least some chapters by African researchers, who are often greatly underrepresented. However, in the end, I felt that the book lacks a quantitative component to assess the relevance of the phenomena described. #

Mirjam de Bruijn, Francis Nyamnjoh, & Inge Brinkman (editors). Mobile Phones: The New Talking Drums of Africa. 2009. Bamenda: Langaa. Amazon.com. #

As Deborah M. Gordon’s recent book “Ant Encounters” shows, the reality might be even more fascinating than Latreille’s altruistic phantasy. Ant behaviour, she writes, is determined by “interaction networks”: “An ant colony’s behavior is guided by a pulsing, shifting web of interactions, in which the pattern of interactions is more important than the content.” #

“Understanding how ant colonies actually function”, Gordon writes in an article for the wonderful Boston Review, “means that we have to abandon explanations based on central control”. Each ant responds only to its immediate surroundings and to its interactions with other ants nearby, yet from this interaction network, coordinate behaviour emerges. #

One of the most fascinating parts of “Ant Encounters” is devoted to the question how ants communicate. “An ant uses its recent experience to decide what to do. The pattern of interaction itself, rather than any signal transferred, acts as the message”, writes Gordon. It’s not important what ants tell each other when they meet, but simply that they meet. #

The author herself reminds us of the stunning parallel between ant behaviour and the self-organization that forms the human body: “Ant colonies, like genes, work without blueprints or programming”, she writes. Just as in ants, the messages of neurons are not transmitted by one neuron, but a multiple. A single neuron can only send an excitatory or an inhibitory signal, or not fire at all. Yet one excitatory signal is not enough, just as one ant can’t tell another what to do – a whole pattern of interactions is necessary to trigger an effect. #

On the other hand, Gordon points out where the scientific strife to create cognitive systems still falls short of its aspirations. Engineers have started to model robots after insects, and ants in particular. But even as robots communicate amongst each other to coordinate behaviour, they are far from living beings, writes Gordon: “[T]he complexity of complex biological systems is not what makes living systems unique. One way that living systems are unique […] is that they cause their own development and activity.” A robot is still programmed to achieve a certain goal – an ant can change its task by simply encountering enough nest mates. #

Deborah M. Gordon’s “Ant Encounters” gives a fascinating insight into the organization of an ant colony. Most of all, however, it is a great read because it inspires to question common place understandings of communication and organization, far beyond the world of insects. #

Deborah M. Gordon: Ant Encounters. Interaction Networks and Colony Behavior. Princeton University Press. 2010. #

Crossposted from the BeTA Lab website. BeTA Lab is led by Dr. Sennay Ghebreab, who teaches my course Information, Communication, Cognition. The lab operates “at the crossroad of the brain sciences and information technology”. #

1. If this intrigues you, you might be interested in Diane M. Rogder’s “Debugging the Link Between Social Theory and Social Insects”, which explores the link between political fashion and the interpretation of insect behaviour in depth.

For the start, we watched an unusual documentary: Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, a 1997 film by Errol Morris. It’s hard to describe this movie without asking: What do an elderly topiary gardener, a retired lion tamer, a man fascinated by mole rats, and a cutting-edge robotics designer have in common? #

As it turns out, they share more than they might be aware of. All four of them deal with complex systems – and as different as a bear-shaped tree and a lion, a mole rat colony and an insect-like robot might be, interaction with them has shaped similar ideas in the protagonists of the movie. #

Complex systems are not stable. They collaps, like a carefully shaped tree statue burdened by a winterly blizzard’s snow, and they can even turn against their human “master”, like a lion suddenly angered by a hidden irritation. #

Often it seems as if such systems have a “will”, as if they where progressing in a determined direction. Yet in fact their behavior emerges from inherent qualities – their design, so to say – and their interaction with the environment (including others of their species). #

Sensory capacity is thus extremely important. As in the lion which the tamer holds at distance with a chair – because the lion can only focus on one of its four legs and lets go as the chair is put down. #

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control is a great inspiration to think about the behavior of complex systems and our interaction with them. The individual stories of its four protagonists lead to great question – how do complex systems work? What is communication? At first, however, its message might be hard to find – I will definitely watch the movie again, because I’m sure I still missed quite some parts of it. #

Finally, I also have to mention the film’s fine and quite unusual cinematography (by Robert Richardson, whose work has won him two Oscars for JFK and The Aviator). I loved how sometimes a scene would go on while a different interviewee started to speak, blurring the lines between their seemingly so distinct fields and often making me realize the connecting link between them. All in all, an inspiring and enjoyable movie. #

Naturally, corporate foreign news organisations are confined to major urban centers, in the case of Al Jazeera (resp. Al Jazeera English) Cairo, Alexandria and Suez. And following numerous attacks on their reporters, they are even restricted to their own offices. The revolution is being televised – but which revolution does the television show? #

Since the Internet and mobile network shutdown, news from rural areas have all but vanished from international reports. Commentators have repeatedly stressed that the uprise in Egypt is exceptional for happening all over the country, but whatever is happening outside the urban centers right now – it goes unnoticed. I.e., for the international audience it effectively does not take place.¹ #

In a short digression, it’s also noteworthy that there are now news that Al Jazeera Arabic was taken off air a couple of minutes ago. The most important news source for Egyptians first on the revolution in Tunesia and then on the developments in their own country is thus no longer available. Alaa Abdel Fattah, Egyptian superblogger and longtime opposition activist, has pointed out the impact of supranational media in the Guardian: “From the internet and satellite TV a new pan-Arabism is born.” #

It’s a close call to compare this situation to the much talked-about role of social media during the “green revolution” in Iran one and a half years ago. What is noteworthy is that Blogs, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter diversified the range of news sources – I might just point to the videos of the death Neda Agha-Soltan, which were spread over the Internet. While apparently not relevant to the organisation of protest, Twitter and other social media certainly changed the portrayal and perception of the “green revolution” in the West. #

However, in Iran the protests never spread nationwide in the way they are now in Egypt. There were demonstrations in other major cities apart from Tehran, yet they stayed minor events in comparison to the mass rallies in the capital. Most notably, I barely found (English-language) sources on the ongoings in these smaller cities. Should one conclude that the Internet doesn’t make reporting on uprisings (spatially) more diverse? #

The recent developments in Tunesia seem to go counter such an analysis. Sure, the situation there went unnoticed by a broader (Western – it was amplified powerfully by Al Jazeera in the Arab world) audience; but social media such as movie-sharing platforms were used from the beginning to spread news about the uprising from the beginning. #

The Internet enables us to get informed on the ongoings in any place connected to the network, however remote it might otherwise be. Egypt’s Internet shutdown has effectively narrowed down our perspective to the angles of Al Jazeera’s television cameras. Does that change civil resistance? Being skeptical about media’s role in these in general, I am not sure. But it is certainly an issue to watch as events unfold. #

1. Just as I am writing this, Al Jazeera English is interviewing somebody from Bani Suwaif. So it seems they are, after all, able to create connections to more remote places.

Augmented Reality. The dangers of technology-enabled personalisation in the digital age. #

THE CAR OF THE FUTURE #

Alan N. Shapiro wants to create the car of the future. A computer scientist by profession and author of a theoretical work on sci-fi series Star Trek, Shapiro has a plan that would revolutionize the world of motorized vehicles. The automobiles of today, he explained when I met him at Berlin’s media art festival Transmediale (motto: “Futurity Now!”), are highly ineffective. Too wide when you are looking for a parking space in the city centre, not flat enough when you are driving on the high way. Shapiro wants to change that. #

Nick Pugh has given Shapiro’s dreams a shape. His sketches show a car that bends and folds itself, adapting length, width, height to its environment. Shapiro, an American living in Germany, has been working with Volkswagen on the “car of the future”. If it would go into construction, it would be a masterpiece of engineering. Yet the computer scientist, who starred at a sub-conference called “Phuturama” alongside a futurist, a sci-fi writer and a video-game programmer, among others, has an idea which might be even harder to implement. #

The inefficiency of today’s cars cannot be blamed solely on their engineers. Drivers, too, have a responsibility – but they often drive just for fun. A wasteful, dangerous form of entertainment. If everybody had a truly realistic car simulator in the parlour, they would only take their cars out of the garage if they really needed to get from a to b, the idea goes. And still it was not revolutionary enough for one member of the audience. Why not combine the two?, he asked. Why not have an augmented reality-enhanced car, one that lets its driver chose a theme for the environment it is crossing – transforming the morning commute into a tour through a medieval town or ancient Greece? #

That was when I first started to worry about augmented reality. How will we as a society react to a technology which bears the possibility to give us greater power to shape our experience of the world than ever before? Will we master this tool, or will the technology master us who cannot resist to implement what is technically feasible? And how will the transformation in our perception of the world change our society? #

INFORMATION-ENRICHED REALITY #

If you ask experts in the field, augmented reality is a revolutionary technology. Austrian web magazine “futurezone” calls it a “new kind of seeing”. What is it that makes technologists, entrepreneurs and artists so excited? #

Simply put, a layer of digital information is added upon reality to “augment” it. This information can be made visible using devices such as smart phones. Take a simple, yet well-known example for augmented reality technologies: When you watch football on TV, free kick distances or offside situations will be visualized on screen. Yet modern “AR” applications are much more advanced than that. #

Layar, a Dutch company, is one of the front-runners in augmented reality technologies. It develops the “Reality Browser”, a software which it says “shows what is around you by displaying real time digital information on top of the real world as seen through the camera of your mobile phone.” Users can choose among various “layers” – applications with information on historical buildings or chef de cuisine Jamie Oliver’s favourite restaurants. The browser uses camera, compass and GPS data to identify a location and then displays venues nearby. #

One of these layers, offered by two German developers, lets users see a 3D animation of the Berlin Wall when they visit the original sites. Another application for the iPhone, from the Museum of London, does not only provide information on tourist features. It also includes 400 years of historic images which can by laid over today’s city streets. Standing on the bank of the Thames, looking at London Bridge, visitors can see a painting by Baroque artist Abraham Hondius engrafted in the scene. When walking through the city centre, photos from the 1920′s might show them what London looked like a century ago. #

Today, all this still happens only on tiny mobile phone displays. But since early augmented reality technologies, developers have dreamt of integrating it even closer into people’s lives. Maybe the first digital AR project at all were spectacles developed in 1968 by MIT scientist Ivan Sutherland which could project simple abstract shapes into users’ visual fields. Back then, a complicated apparatus was needed for this. But today, half a century later, the dream of slim, easy-to-wear augmented reality glasses could soon become true. #

EVERYTHING IS CANVAS #

“In an augmented reality rich world everything is a potential canvas”, says Jan Chipchase, an ethnographer known for his work as a former chief usability researcher with Nokia. This is especially true for big, flat surfaces – such as billboards. Google, which has already rolled out a “visual search” application called “Goggles” for looking up photographed text and images (including, technically, faces, a feature not yet rolled out due to privacy concerns), is reportedly thinking about selling advertising space on billboards it does not even own – using augmented reality. #

Julian Oliver, a British artist, has a different take on advertising. These proprietary spaces are exclusively owned by companies, while passers-by are forced to look at them, he complains. Thus, his project “Artvertiser” uses AR technology to replace advertising with art – quite literally a creative way of reclaiming public space. #

Yet in the end, a third solution might prevail. Millions already use a Firefox plug-in called “AdBlock Plus” to exonerate their Internet experience of distracting advertising. A similar application for augmented realities could be the first choice of many who would like to get rid of unwanted bills and placards. #

IGNORANCE IS BLISS? #

A photograph by British artist David Shrigley shows a sign placed in front of Glasgow’s Clyde Auditorium, reading “ignore this building”. A desperate effort in view of the Armadillo-shaped concert hall? In an augmented reality world, we might well carry a remote control with an “ignore” button to remove objectionable sights from our view: Clyde Auditorium becomes a freshly-mowed, computer-generated lawn. A greasy beggar is converted into a flower pot. All with just one click. #

As our ability to model the world as we see it according to our preferences continues to grow at a rapid pace, the unexpected faces extinction. Last.fm provides you with music similar to what you have heard before, Facebook shows you updates depending on which ones you have read in the past, and Amazon suggests books to you based on your previous purchases. Google is working on a technology called “predictive search”: It aims to anticipate users’ interests, prospectively suggesting search terms which might be interesting to them – by analysing their anterior behaviour. #

In a dystopian augmented reality world, we would be able to hide anything unfamiliar or unwanted from our view, creating for ourselves a highly personalized bubble in which we only hear what we want to hear, see what we want to see, and meet who we want to meet. At some point, we might even be able to block objectionable smells. #

Don’t get me wrong: I am not suggesting that augmented reality is our doom. Nor is Google’s predictive search. Technology does not determine our future. But the emergence of digital tools, and especially of communication networks such as the Internet, has opened up an unprecedented opportunity for personalization. The world it enables is still to be shaped. #

A HISTORICAL CHANGE #

In the 18th century, new machines started to vastly increase the amount of goods a single worker could produce. The following Industrial Revolution did not only boost productivity. It also transformed society, giving birth to the antagonistic ideologies of capitalism and communism, which would dominate the political discourse from there on. Both systems were styled to fit the prevailing mode of mass production, which superseded former ways of manufacturing. #

The industrial model prefers one-to-many communication, where one sender tries to spread its message to an audience as big as possible. Newspapers, which were previously small, local enterprises limited by printing press capacity and logistical means of circulation, developed into large, nation-wide corporations. Television, which eventually became the dominant medium of the industrial age, uses expensive transmitters and cheap receivers to broadcast its message to the masses. #

During the last ten or twenty years, this paradigm has undergone a fundamental change. The emergence of the Internet has decreased the price of publishing to nearly zero, for the first time in human history making wide-spread many-to-many communication feasible. Digital technologies allow for an increasingly fine-tuned individual appropriation of information goods. #

A CRITICAL MASS? #

When mass was the prevailing paradigm, any alternative (i.e. non-mainstream) ideology was to fear homogenization as the biggest evil. The individual seemed constantly under threat by economic and political powers. In the “networked information economy” – a term coined by Harvard economist Yochai Benkler – this situation is turned upside down – personalization becomes the norm. Could this put our society at risk? #

Democracy is fundamentally based on the idea that there is one people, the demos. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his work “Du Contract Social”, writes about the “volonté générale”, or general will, as the “true interest” of democracy. It is remarkably opposed to the “volonté du tous”, which is made up of the sum of particular interests. In a possible technology-enabled world of near-perfect personalization, would we still be able to have a common interest? #

Homophily, as Ethan Zuckerman describes it, is “the tendency of birds of a feather to flock together”. Closed circles share their preferred sources of information at the expense of other, often disagreeing voices. A person within such a circle only gets to know perspectives of people she approves of, living in what Harvard legal scholar Cass Sunstein calls a “media cocoon”, an isolated sphere. #

Insulated from differing views, ignorant of the living circumstances of others, we would be cut off of the sorts of information we need to make informed decisions as citizens. No longer members of a greater community, but caught in a highly personalized bubble, the common interest would fall out of sight. Under these circumstances, the ground our society is based on would be sedated. #

A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY #

Technology does not determine our fate, but it enables possible paths for the future. Augmented reality is not going to harm us, but our use of this tool possibly will, if we make the wrong decisions. #

Just as well, the digital revolution opens up a window of opportunity to shape our world to be a more free and more equal place. New communication tools have torn down century old barriers and are rapidly changing the face of our media world, while the structure of the Internet could stand as a model for future politics. #

Meanwhile, old forms of organizing are experiencing a revival. The commons, which seemed close to their death, are on the rise in the digital spheres, where lossless copying makes sharing easier than ever before. They live of a concerned community that cares for their maintenance, and communication among all those participating in the commons is the key to their sustainment. #

Layar advertises its “Reality Browser” with the slogan “Discover your city again”. Yet we might do well to use technology to discover our neighbour’s world instead, taking a step towards understanding the fundamentals of a shared environment on which to build a more free and equal society. #

While not utterly surprised, I was astonished by the frequency of these questions, which raises some important issues: What does it mean if we have to expect that information published by our friends in online publics is distorted, not to fool us, but to trick data mining companies and identity thieves? What does it mean for our society if we encounter some of our most important publics – social networks – with distrust, so that we do not feel free to publish personal information there? Will this “virtual distrust” make online public spheres less open, welcoming spaces? What does this mean for our ability, and will, to communicate with others, especially strangers? #

Later on, I stood together with another guest. Via Viktor Mayer-Schönberger’s “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age” (there’s an interview with him by David Weinberger on Radio Berkman), we arrived at the question what digital goods – documents – ought to be preserved. And, more importantly, how to choose them. #

For most of human history, the idea of preservation did not even exist. Things were either used or abandoned. What they were built from would become a natural resource for later generations. The Colosseum became a quarry, and vellums with the writings of Aristotle were recycled to contain Byzantine prayers. #

At some point, our societies started chronicling human history by preserving artifacts and documents. They had – and still have today – designated places for them (museums) and experts (archivists, curators) who are in charge of deciding what is worth keeping – and what’s not. #

Just as newspaper editors, curators are an elite. They are gate keepers, filtering a ubiquitous ressource (information here, artifacts there) for cultural value. This has been an important task, as space is limited, in newspapers as much as in museums. #

But, as Clay Shirky writes in “Here comes everybody”, in the digital space the paradigm has shifted from “filter, then publish” to “publish, then filter”. Subsequently, the Digital Museum ought to preserve anything ever published on the Web – and let users sort through it using search functions and rank exhibits by popularity. In fact, Archive.org is doing just that. #

But memory capacity isn’t a ubiquitous ressource. Even Archive.org needs to make decisions about what to preserve and what to let vanish. The obvious solution is to crowdsource the exhibits of the Digital Museum. Now the question is: Do we have to fear mob rule? #

The answer was one of the most interesting parts of Friday’s panel discussion. As Mercedes Bunz remarked, there has been another paradigm shift. While the industrial age was marked by a trend towards homogenity, the networked information society shifts towards customization. #

What does that mean for the Digital Museum? It does not have a main exhibition, but consists of a plethora of theme rooms, each catering a small subculture or niche interest. #

This is not absolutely positive. If today we go to an exhibition, we will most likely be confronted with exhibits that we would not come across were they not paired with others that we are interested in. It’s the same with newspapers, or conferences. #

In the Digital Museum, this ought not to happen. We, the visitors, with our questions (queries) decide exactly what we will see. In return, the museum will only show us what we already know about. #

Imagine such a museum in the analog world. You fill out a questionary about your preferences upon entering and will be served accordingly. At Transmediale 10 yesterday science fiction novelist Bruce Sterling talked about atemporality. If you want to be an astronaut, he said, just dress up as one. You will look ridiculous, but by what standards? #

The Digital Museum is bound to feature equally ridiculous situations. As I joked, a Nazi will only get to see Hitler memorabilia, a Communist Soviet agitprop. In the analog world, the question is: What happens if two Nazis and a Communist enter a room together? Will the majority rule, or will the exhibits split to equally represent visitors’ preferences? #

In the Digital Museum of customization, people can enter together without noticing each other, neither their differences nor what they have in common. It is possible to fully withdraw from public discourse, one of the pillars that support our democracies. #

The study only refers to it briefly. Its authors use the term for the generation they are writing about, those who are 12 to 19 years old at the moment. “Digital natives” has become a name for a generation rather than a description of certain habits. #

That’s different from what it was when Marc Prensky coined it in his 2001 work “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”. Back then, there was no generation grown up in the age of ubiquitous Internet access. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say on the origin of the term “digital native”, as used by Prensky: #

The term draws an analogy to a country’s natives, for whom the local religion, language, and folkways are natural and indigenous, over against immigrants to a country who often are expected to adapt and assimilate to their newly adopted home. Prensky refers to accents employed by digital immigrants, such as printing documents rather than commenting on screen or printing out emails to save in hard copy form. Digital immigrants are said to have a “thick accent” when operating in the digital world in distinctly pre-digital ways, for instance, calling someone on the telephone to ask if they have received a sent e-mail. #

Which is probably a good distinction to make. As the study I cited above shows, sophisticated use of social media is far from being the norm among Germany’s youth. While Internet penetration in this group is close to 100 % and nearly everybody uses it – with instant messaging and social networks being the most popular applications – participation stays at a low level. #

Only 37% create own content on the web at least once a week. In most cases, this means writing a forum entry or uploading photos or videos. As a blogger and twitterer, I am clearly not a common example for my generation. According to the study, only 4% each do this daily or several times a week. But today, I am also a professional. For me, it’s no longer “user-generated content”. It is (also) writing for a living. #

So while on the one hand the promise of participation and democratized media does not seem to appeal to Germany’s youth, they just love passivity on the other hand. Nearly two thirds say it’s great you don’t have to actively look for content on TV. Is this a Bradbury generation? (Well, no. Book reading has increased by two percentage points since 1998, the study says). #

In fact, nothing may have changed with the Internet. At least that’s what digital anthropologist danah boyd is saying. “There’s nothing native about young people’s engagement with technology”, a recent (very read-worthy) article in The Guardian quotes her. She goes on: #

Young people are learning, they’re learning about the social world around them. The social world around them today has mediated technologies, thus in order to learn about the social world they’re learning about the mediated technologies. And they’re leveraging that to work out the shit that kids have always worked out: peer sociality, status, their first crush. #