STC Opening Keynote: Howard Rheingold

I only made a few notes in this session. Howard seemed impressed with himself.

He discussed that people get things done due to biology/competition - the strongest wins. He asked whether the threshold for collective action has been lowered? That is something to ponder, particularly as his only mention of mass technology-inspired convergence in Australia was the racially-motivated attacks in Sydney a couple of years ago (my ears always prick up if anything to do with Australia is mentioned, of course). I was also intrigued that while Finland and I think Japan were mentioned as early adopters of SMS/texting technology, Australia wasn't. I remember reading a few years ago that texting was far more prevalent in Aus than in the US at that time, it has possibly changed now. I found it curious because I remember sitting in my WEP classes at UQ in 2001 and one of my fellow students was lamenting text speak in younger students/undergrads and that the language of txtng would mean these students/young people wouldn't be able to spell properly (or wouldn't care to?) and that would create literacy problems in the future. Enough "he didn't mention Aus as early adopters" whining. :)



Rheingold said that literacy is learning the secrets of encoding and decoding language.

We shouldn't be keeping up with technologies, we should be keeping up with the literacies.