Presentation for Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education, February 2011

1. DIGITAL LITERACY AND THE
DEATH OF COMMUNITY
implications for education
John Carter McKnight
Adjunct Professor of Law
Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law
Arizona State University
VWBPE 2011

2. who and why
 adjunct professor of law
 PhD student, Human & Social Dimensions of
Science & Technology
 former officer/director, science education
nonprofits
 Marketing/Communications in SL
communities

3. what’s digital literacy?
 literacy: the ability to receive and transmit
meaning using a particular technology
 (an STS spin on socio-linguistics)
 print literacy: the ability to read and write
texts
 digital literacy: the ability to receive and
transmit meaning using a range of computer
tools

4. that’s probably important
 it’s a world of screens – people probably
should be able to use them

5. but all tool use involves
power
“any view of literacy is inherently political, in
the sense of involving relations of power
among people” – James Paul Gee
“artifacts have politics” – Langdon Winner
“technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it
neutral” – Melvin Kranzberg

6. so what are the power
relations?
 communities
 associations
 networks

7. communities
 you don’t choose your neighbors
 “socially integrative”
 bad side – they can brutally enforce
conformity
 good side – belonging, clarity

8. associations
 de Toqueville and on – American democracy
is built on associations
 where people gain “democratic literacy” by
making political meaning
 “bowling alone” for 3 generations now

9. networks
 “the first fax machine was worthless”
 what would the politics of the network
become?

10. networks
 a democratic renaissance online?
 “declaration of independence of cyberspace”
1996

11. the california ideology
 the electronic frontier foundation
 mitch kapor
 linden lab
 burning man

12. the view from harvard

13. guess what? the hippies lost

14. artifacts have politics
 community: politics of all of us
 association: politics of kinds of us
 network: politics of me and mine

15. sherry turkle says -
- kids these days are feeling themselves victims
of technological determinism
- their parents are more interested in their
BlackBerries
- digital literacy = vast social pressure
- high school social media, the worst
of community and network?

16. who has power in the
network?
 me!
 I can make my echo chamber
 the network owner
 why is facebook free?
 the data miners
 big brother was a punk kid

17. good for community?
 probably not
 everything from transit and housing choices
to high school socializing to gaming suggests,
 we want to choose our ties

18. so we get this -

19. ok, but what about digital
creativity?
 we’ve put a movie studio, a recording studio
and a printing press on every desk
 what about the politics of that?

20. the biggest revolution ever?

21. the empire strikes back
 secret copyright treaties
 “enclosure acts” for the information
commons
 criminalizing the creative process

22. digital literacy – who gets
the power?
 what’s our responsibility as teachers?
 “nothing could be more crucial to democracy
than the education of its
citizens” - Martha Nussbaum
 citizenship and civilization – “playing well
with others”
 we don’t, we don’t want to, and digital
literacy empowers us not to

23. being here is a political
statement
 "May have been the losing side. Still not
convinced it was the wrong one." - Malcolm
Reynolds

24. what do we do?
 ask the network, of course!

25. let’s keep talking
 john.mcknight@asu.edu
 johncartermcknight.com