"Digital Citizenship," in addition to offering a well-researched and finely-documented snapshot of the state of Internet use in the first few years of...more"Digital Citizenship," in addition to offering a well-researched and finely-documented snapshot of the state of Internet use in the first few years of this century, opens with a great definition: "'Digital citizenship' is the ability to participate in society online" (p. 1). Chapters covering benefits of various aspects of society online (economic opportunity, civic engagement, and political participation) lead us to discussions of the digital divide, the impact of broadband on increases in digital citizenship, and public education and universal access--with an acknowledgement of the important roles libraries have played in making the Internet accessible to those who might otherwise not find their way to online resources. Through the writers’ work, we are treated to reminders that "[n]ot only is Internet use more widespread but creative new methods of online organizing emphasize political community rather than isolation" (p. 51); that the use of online news sources 'encourages civic engagement" (p. 62); and that online discussions "suggest the discourse of the salons of the 1890s that the early proponents of deliberative democracy idealized" (p. 72)--although personal experience provides plenty of examples of online discussions being comparable to a pie fight or a mud-wrestling match. Not surprisingly, "Digital Citizenship", like any book about the Internet, began showing its age as soon as it was published; it does, however, remain well worth reading for its views on how Internet use can foster a sense of civic inclusion--and how much remains to be done to create a fully-engaged and fully-informed digital citizenship.(less)
David Weinberger’s "Too Big To Know" is everything we’ve come to expect from him: engaging, thought-provoking, introspective, and even gently self-eff...moreDavid Weinberger’s "Too Big To Know" is everything we’ve come to expect from him: engaging, thought-provoking, introspective, and even gently self-effacing. We gain a lot through Weinberger's ruminations on the nature of knowledge at a time when knowledge is far from defined solely by what is between the covers of books or peer-reviewed journals. It "is becoming a property of the network, rather than of individuals who know things, of objects that contain knowledge, and of the traditional institutions that facilitate knowledge," he writes (p. 182). This is placing us in a "crisis of knowledge," he maintains. We have to face the fact that the "Internet simply doesn’t have what it takes to create a body of knowledge: No editors and curators who get to decide what is in or out. No agreed-upon walls to let us know that knowledge begins here, while outside uncertainty reigns--at least none that everyone accepts. There is little to none of the permanence, stability, and community fealty that a body of knowledge requires and implies. The Internet is what you get when everyone is a curator and everything is linked," (p. 45) yet that is where many of us currently turn for knowledge. But having read "Too Big to Know," we stand a little closer to a positive awareness of the problems and the strengths of our current relationship to a cohesive body of knowledge--for ourselves as well as for the learners so many of us work to serve.(less)
Many of us, having incorporated online communities into our professional and personal lives, reach the moment when we decide that the idea of place is...moreMany of us, having incorporated online communities into our professional and personal lives, reach the moment when we decide that the idea of place is dead--that geography no longer matters. But it doesn't take us long to realize we're wrong. And reading and thinking about Richard Florida's "Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision in Your Life" (2008) drives the point home. Florida, continuing to focus on the role creativity plays in making communities vital, vibrant social and economic centers, writes clearly and engagingly as he points out how "spiky" the world remains in terms of having peaks of social and economic centers that offer opportunities not to be as readily found in the valleys that exist elsewhere. "Today's key economic factors--talent, innovation, and creativity--are not distributed evenly across the global economy," he reminds us (p. 9). "They concentrate in specific locations" including centers of innovation such as Tokyo, Seoul, New York, and San Francisco (p. 25). The role of place in our lives is clearly evolving to accommodate that sense of place that includes onsite as well as online places. Which makes us embrace as well as go beyond what Florida writes. We find ourselves on terra firma and in terra virtual if we see place in a blended seamless way. The place we call home. The places we temporarily join when we travel in the course of our work. And the online places that facilitate the connections that matter most to us in terms of making us members of a variety of interconnected world-wide communities of learning, interest, and practice.(less)
It's difficult to read anything written on the topic of collaboration and community in the past few years without coming across references to James Su...moreIt's difficult to read anything written on the topic of collaboration and community in the past few years without coming across references to James Surowiecki's "The Wisdom of Crowds"--and for good reason. The book, as he writes in his acknowledgments, "is partly about the difference between a society and just a bunch of people living next to each other" (p. 274)--a concept at the heart of all successful collaboration. His observations in his introduction lead us through a brief survey of those who have disparaged the ability of groups (crowds) to produce any signs of intelligent decision-making--Charles Mackay ("Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds"), Gustave le Bon ("The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind"), and others--then guide us to his well documented premise: "…under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them" (p. xiii). The result is an entertaining, engaging, and convincing argument for collaboration involving people from exactly the same kind of widely diverse backgrounds that Frans Johansson promotes in "The Medici Effect," and leaves us little room to doubt the power, efficacy, and attractiveness of what collaboration can produce.(less)
Few books have had greater influence on the way we perceive communities, community-building, and collaboration than Ray Oldenburg's "The Great Good Pl...moreFew books have had greater influence on the way we perceive communities, community-building, and collaboration than Ray Oldenburg's "The Great Good Place." The terms he introduces have become part of our lexicon: the first place (home), the second place (work), and the third place--the great good place, which is where we meet, socialize, share ideas with, and learn from friends and acquaintances who become part of our personal and extended community. In the first part of his book, Oldenburg describes the history of the third place in America, explores the character of third places, and outlines the "personal benefits" and "greater good" resulting from nurturing and sustaining third places--a tremendous antidote to cynics who claim there no longer is a commitment to the idea of public goods. "My interest in those happy gathering places that a community may contain, those 'homes away from home' where unrelated people relate, is almost as old as I am," Oldenburg writes at the beginning of his book (p. ix), and his obvious love and admiration for and commitment to those places serves as inspiration for anyone trying to justify a commitment to community and collaboration.(less)
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