Communication & Media: Transformations in the Conceptual Age

1. Communication & Media:Transformations in the Conceptual Age Thom McCain 2006

2. Perspectives on Media and the Future • Three lenses: • Technological evolution • Political economy • Learning & Literacy • How people use media – How people are used by media • Implications for teaching and learning.

3. Contemporary Environment • The Information Age moves to the Conceptual Age • The speed of technology invention • From speaker to writer – 41,500 years (1,300 lifetimes) • From writing to printing – 5,000 years (167 lifetimes) • Last 100 years – more invention than in the previous 450 centuries.

4. “If the same rate of change happened in the Auto industry as has happened in communication technology in the past 10 years, you could buy a Lexis for ten cents and it could travel for 1000 miles on a thimble of gas.” (Randall Tobias) • More technologies will be invented in the next 20 years than have been imagined in all of prior human history

5. Moore’s Law & it’s Implications • Transistors decrease in size by ½ every 12 months (originally every 24 months) • Computing capacity (the number of transistors on a chip) double every 12 months. • Speed of each transistor doubles every 12 months. • Computational capacity of a $4,000 computing device is approximately equal to the computational capability of the human brain • 20 million, billion calculations per second • Memory in 2020 is an electronic phenomenon, not a mechanical one • Neural Implant chips are introduced

6. Law of Accelerating Returns (Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity, Age of the Spiritual Machine) • As order exponentially increases, time exponentially speeds up • The time interval between salient events grows shorter as time progresses • In evolutionary processes ORDER increases • In evolutionary processes CHAOS decreases • Time speeds up • Order is information that fits a purpose • Technology is on an evolutionary curve that is the same as geology and biology.

7. Communicating in the future • Can do anything, with anyone, everywhere, at any time • Most meetings can be accomplished virtually • High resolution 3-D images projected through direct-eye displays and audio lenses. Resolution exceeds human eye • Technology totally emersive and wearable

8. Your future? • How do you envision the world in 2020? • Politics • Sex • Violence • News • Stereotyping • Advertising • What will learning be like in this future?

9. Communication Infrastructure & the Political Economy of Media • Below the surface and usually taken for granted. • Necessary for all human societies • Other Society Infrastructures • utilities (heat, water, etc..) • transportation • banking/money

10. Stakeholders and Convergence • A stakeholder is an organization, public or private, with a substantial “stake” in the outcomes of alterations in the infrastructure. • The Old Four Communication Industries: • newspaper/book/magazines (print, content) • telephony (wires, no content) • broadcasting/cable (air & wires, content) • computers (hardware, software, no content) • There is significant variation from country to country • Examples?

11. Markets, Technology, and Policy are inseparable aspects of the same phenomenon

12. Transforming infrastructures --Global “Flatteners” (Thomas Friedman) • Berlin Wall – cold war • Netscape goes public – from a PC platform to an internet based platform (TCP/IP, HTTP, VOIP, etc.) • Work Flow Software – interdependent production and re-assembly – Paypal & ebay) • Open-Sourcing –self-organizing collaborative communities (apache, moodle, sakai) • Intellectual Commons • Wikipedia – the people’s encyclopedia • 250,000 articles in English • 600,000 articles in 50 other languages • Freeware

13. Flatteners continued • Outsourcing – sending work to other places: • “want fries with that?” • Offshoring – moving the whole factory to another country • Supply-Chaining – Eating Sushi in Arkansas – the Wal-mart effect • Collaborating horizontally – among suppliers, retailers and customers to create value • Insourcing – What the guys in funny brown shorts are really doing.

14. Flatteners • In-forming: Google, Yahoo!, MSN Websearch • Play on the googol, the number represented by numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros • The opposite of being taught • Reputations damaged earlier and more often • “Always tell the truth, that way you won’t have to remember what you said” (Mark Twain) • The Steroids – digital, mobile, personal & Virtual • Today’s students have never known life without them • The Ipod phenomenon

15. From Information Age to Conceptual Age – Daniel Pink (A Whole New Mind) • Neuro Psychology • Left hemisphere controls right side of body, right hemisphere controls the left. • Left hemisphere sequential, right hemisphere simultaneous. • Left hemisphere specializes in text, right hemisphere in context • Left hemisphere analyzes the details; right hemisphere synthesizes the big picture

16. Abundance, Asia, Automation • Abundance • 70 percent of Americans own homes (13% are 2nd homes) • Self storage -- $17 billion industry • U.S. spends more on trash bags than 90 other countries spend on everything • Asia • One in four IT jobs will be offshored by 2010 • Automation • Big Blue beats Kasparov • By the year 2020, computers will exceed human intelligence.

17. Recap of the Pink perspective • The scales are tilting in favor of R-directed thinking. • Abundance, Asia, Automation • Boosting the significance of beauty and emotion and accelerating individual’s search for meaning. • Increasing need for relying on skills that can’t be shipped overseas • Requiring L-directed professionals to develop aptitudes that computers can’t do better, faster or cheaper

18. The Six Senses of the Conceptual Age – High Concept & High Touch • Design • Story • Symphony • Empathy • Play • Meaning

19. Online Learning • Most college students today (90%) will take at least one course online. • 70% of college classes today are computer “enhanced” • The political economy of course management systems and other software is driving many teaching/learning decisions • K-12 Education’s fastest growing trend is in online schooling • Cyber course catalogs • Cyber schools • New stakeholders in K-12 learning are changing the landscape • University of Penn, provides blogs for all students.

20. What is media literacy? • Not so much a finite body of knowledge but rather a skill, a process, a way of thinking that, like reading comprehension, is always evolving • Help students become competent, critical and literate in all media forms so that they control the interpretation of what they see or hear rather than letting the interpretation control them

21. Learning what to look for • All messages are constructed • Gate-keeping and editing leave more things out than are included • Media messages are created using a creative language of their own • Understanding the grammar, syntax and metaphor system of media language increases appreciation

22. Learning what to look for cont. • Different people experience the same media message differently • Heavy viewers vs. light viewers • Arousal • Novice vs. expert • Media are primarily businesses driven by a profit motive • Newspaper news hole • Advertisers pay CPM impressions

23. Learning what to look for cont. • Media have embedded values and points of view • Character’s age, gender, race, lifestyles, attitudes. • Actions and reactions of plot. • Setting or location

24. http://www.reallybadjobs.com/http://www.funnyplace.org

25. Five Basic Questions to Ask of Media • Who created this message and why are they sending it? • What techniques are being used to attract my attention? • What lifestyles, values and points of view are represented in the message? • How might different people understand this message differently from me? • What is omitted from this message?

26. Questioning process • Usually applied to a specific “text.” • Sometimes a media “text” can involve multiple formats • Uncovering many levels of meaning and multiple answers to every question is an engaging and enlightening activity

27. How to question the media? • Core Questioning • The five basic questions • What are the differences between a newspaper and a tabloid newspaper? • Close Analysis • In depth scrutiny of one or two examples • Action Learning and Empowerment (Freire) • Awareness, Analysis, Reflection, Action

28. Debates about media literacy • Does media literacy protect kids? • Does media literacy require student media production activities? • Should media literacy have a popular culture bias? • Should media literacy have a strong ideological bias? • Does media literacy detract from learning the basics of a language?

29. Texts and the Construction of Meaning Debates • Objectivist: Meaning is entirely in the text -- it is transmitted to audiences. • Constructivist: Meaning is an interplay between text and reader – it is a negotiation between author and audience. • Subjectivist: Meaning is entirely in its interpretation by readers – it is re-created.

30. What’s the end in mind? • Transform the context for student learning • Provide “authentic experiences” for learning with technology • Encourage and model collaborative work • Combine skill training with problem solving • Relax and fuel the chaos • Require public student performance of learning • Develop credible assessment and evaluation

31. McCain’s Vision

32. “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire”W.B. Yeats

33. The motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and. . . .in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks.Thomas Alva Edison, 1922