As part of growing my digital presence (see post from April 30, 2019), I will post a casual post like this every week. The plan behind these posts is to take what I am learning and apply it to my life as I experience events that relate to the MALAT program.
This week’s post comes from a conversation I had at Heritage Park yesterday as I was working my volunteer shift. A co-worker and I were talking about how communications have changed between when newspapers were new to now when most of our communications are digital. My co-worker is young and easily fits into the digital native group, but he chooses to keep his digital presence very low. He has three social media accounts: a blog, an Instagram account, and Facebook Messenger). He uses Facebook Messenger without having a Facebook account, he keeps his blog so hidden that someone has yet to find it, and he has fewer than five followers on Instagram. He explained that he does this because he wants to choose how people see what he does. This got me thinking about the amount of information available online and who can see that information. Information’s misuse can happen if it lands in the possession of the wrong person regardless of the medium used to distribute the information. Being careful online is common-knowledge now, and I suspect that is where his desire to choose who sees the content he posts. This conversation got me wondering if he was missing something by not interacting online. He has taken great effort to structure the tools to his needs, but I wonder if that restricts his learning in a way that he had not considered.
The readings throughout this course have had one constant theme; online publics change and grow with each person and each posting. Online communities, groups, networks, etc., come from individuals’ experiences both on- and off-line and the only way to encourage that is to dive in the open and see what happens.
As I read the last paragraph, I thought about my experiences. (I am a digital immigrant so see the online world through that lens.) What I experienced, so far, in the f2f world is the same as you describe in the online world. Perhaps there are other parallels. Perhaps social skills and abilities learned in one can be applied in the other?
Thank you for your comment Ted.
I agree that skills are transferable between online and face-to-face. No matter how we are interacting with others, it is important to remember that we are interacting with people and not machines. Digital environments present themselves in many formats. Dron and Anderson state, “the powerful driving force behind evolution and change in many aspects of the natural and built environment. Each time a new capacity evolves, it opens up avenues that were not there before” (Dron & Anderson, 2014, p. 24), telling us that new digital environments will come as the need (or desire) shows itself or current environments will adapt to the new demand. As we move into those environments, we need to adapt to the new interactions that are bound to occur.
Reference
Dron, J, & Anderson, T. (2014). Teaching Crowds. doi:10.15215/aupress/9781927356807.01