Gedankenfluß

Danah Boyd’s Gedanken zur Technophilie

⋅ August 24, 2009 ⋅  Print-Version ⋅ Kommentar schreiben

Ach, diese Vorliebe zu Technologien und die Visionen, die ihr Einsatz auslösen kann! Faszinierend sind die Entwicklungen letzer Jahren: Web 2.0, Communities, Social Media etc. Und die Gedanken von Danah Boyd zur Technophilie treffen genau das Kernproblem in diesem euphorischen Hype. Absolut lesenswert: Volltext. Hier stelle ich nur einige prägnante Textpassagen vor:

“It is easy to fall in love with technology. It is equally easy to fear it. [...] Those who are immersed in a techno-savvy, technophilic community are far more likely to embrace technology than those whose social world is shaped by other patterns of consumption and communication. People’s practices are also shaped by those around them. There are cluster effects to socio-technical engagement. In other words, people do what their friends do.
[...]
Rejecting technological determinism should be a mantra in our professional conversations. It’s really easy to get in the habit of seeing a new shiny piece of technology and just assume that we can dump it into an educational setting and !voila! miracles will happen.
[...]
There are also no such things as “digital natives.” Just because many of today’s youth are growing up in a society dripping with technology does not mean that they inherently know how to use it. They don’t. Most of you have a better sense of how to get information from Google than the average youth. Most of you know how to navigate privacy settings of a social media tool better than the average teen. Understanding technology requires learning.
[...]

Understanding technology requires learning.

Along the same lines, keep in mind that the technology that you adore may hold no interest for your students. They don’t use del.icio.us or Second Life or Ning or Twitter as a part of their everyday practices. And the ways that they use Facebook and MySpace and YouTube are quite different than the ways in which you do. [...] Yet, when we introduce technology in an educational setting, we often mistakenly assume that students will embrace the technology in the same way that we do. This never works out and can cause unexpected strife.
[...]

Technology is a wonderful tool but it is not a panacea.

As we talk about the wonderfulness of technology, please keep in mind the complexities involved. Technology is a wonderful tool but it is not a panacea. It cannot solve all societal ills just by its mere existence. To have relevance and power, it must be leveraged by people to meet needs. This requires all of us to push past what we hope might happen and focus on introducing technology in a context that makes sense.

Von: Maxim Grouchevoi
hat insgesamt 16 Artikel auf Wissensmanager.Blog publiziert.

Info: Postgraduate an der Donau-Universität Krems im "Wissensmanagement und Organisationsentwicklung"