This…

The implications of our online lives as been in my mind since I first sat in awe of my first online community, Electric Minds. Over the years I have seen great good, but even greater swaths of harm. I’ve never thought it was all about the technology. Nor have I experienced technology as some neutral platform upon which we act. Technology is NOT value neutral. And everything that is wrong cannot be blamed on technology. Today a piece by the brilliant danah boyd nailed it. (And read the whole thing. It is superb. It leaves us with the question, why aren’t we centering children in every aspect of our ecosystem. Tech is not the solution.)

view of Nancy's grandchildren from behind on a sunny spring day

The problem is not: “Technology causes harm.” The problem is: “We live in an unhealthy society where our most vulnerable populations are suffering because we don’t invest in resilience or build social safety nets.”

danah boyd

One more snippet…

By all means, go after big tech. Regulate advertising. Create data privacy laws. Hold tech accountable for its failure to be interoperable. But for the love of the next generation, don’t pretend that it’s going to help vulnerable youth. And when the problem is sociotechnical in nature, don’t expect corporations to be able to solve it.

danah boyd

What are you doing with Hybrid events?

goofy old picture of Nancy
Old picture to connect with the fact that I last wrote about hybrid meetings in 2013!

Hey friends, at least the seven of you who still read here – wink wink. I’m working on some writing about doing Liberating Structures online and one section which needs inspiration is a short section on hybrid gatherings. I last wrote about hybrids in 2013 so it has been a while. I’d love any of your favorite pointers. THANKS IN ADVANCE!

UPDATE: Please read the fab comments from my friends below. There is actual useful insight but it is in the comments!!!

CogDog Does it Again –> Openverse

https://cogdogblog.com/2022/10/open-to-openverse/ is a great post for all of you searching for free to use images. You used to be able to easily find them via an advanced search on Google, but Alan discovered that this was, shall we say, borked? So click in, read and then see all this fantastic visual material you can use from Openverse!

Screenshot from Openverse

Back when there was “social” in the software…

Picture of the head of a dog (Australian shepherd?) looking at you.
Alan Levine’s blog avatar

Alan Levine noted that he is just past his blogaversary and linked to a post of his from 2006 that I just love. It is a story of how he created an artifact from a presentation I gave at NorthernVoice (a BLOGGING conference, can you IMAGINE that?? We were crazy kids back in the day!). What was magical about this story is how Alan’s recording of my talk rippled across our respective networks and how people added to it and amplified it. (Bev, I loved your notes. Still do! Nick, all these years you mashed it up and now retirement is on the horizon! Who would have guessed!) I think this is when I really became a fan of CogDog, aka, Alan.

A picture of a woman in 2006 with shoulder length curly born hair glasses, holding two bags of Dove Dark chocolates. Photo by Alan Levine.
Photo by Alan Levine of a much younger, shaggier me, sharing chocolate

Alan’s post also has me looking back at years and years of Flickr event albums. Mama mia, there are stories. I often think I have few stories to tell. My problem is simply that I just don’t practice telling them! A little nostalgia… And boy, I was a lot younger back then! And with a lot longer hair. Still sharing the same Dove Dark chocolates though!

Edit a few minutes later: I’m listening to the audio. Still relevant.

From the Archives: Are technology and process configuration patterns enough?

In 2009 Etienne Wenger (now Etienne Wenger-Trayner), John D. Smith and I published the culmination of lots and lots of thinking about how to use technology to support groups and communities. Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities was our way of trying to make sense of the tech landscape so that communities could provision their tech without having to be a total technologist.

In my archive of drafts was this post with just one paragraph:

What are the patterns of interaction over time, what are the configurations of technology over time,  and are these distinct enough patterns so that we can simply template the tech and process, or do these change enough with and every interaction?  And we need to know how to do that. 

With the rebirth of virtual and hybrid work, this is again a useful question, even if I can’t figure out what I meant with the last sentence! 🙂

Let me give an example of why this fascinates me. 

We have a group of people who need to work/learn/do something together. At the minimum these days they have Zoom or some other synchronous video meeting tool. Most groups also have a shared document space. For what types of work is this minimal tech configuration (set of tools and how they are used) sufficient? Is there a pattern that says “simple configuration is all you need?”

If the simple configuration is adequate, what types of group need trigger more tech tools and processes? For example, we used to think that groups distributed across diverse time zones needed asynchronous communication tools in addition to the sync (video) and content sharing. 

If a group has more complicated content needs, do they need more tools for the creation, curation and sharing of content? What triggers this next level of need?

If a group is handed a very complicated technology configuration right off the bat (our corporate platform!!) that has more tools and features than the group needs, what impact does this have upon their work? Will they reduce their efficacy messing around and tripping on the tech? Fully ignore the platform? Invent whole new ways of using the tech?

Do you see what I’m getting at… there are both stable patterns AND lots of ways to subvert the patterns. So my question is, is it worth spending time to develop the patterns at all, or just let things emerge? When? Why? (I do NOT have the answer. Just the curiosity!) Oh, I see Ton is also writing about this!

By the way, if you are still reading, I discovered a box of Digital Habitats books in my basement. If you would like a copy and are in the US I’d be happy to mail you one. Let me know in the comments. If you want to reimburse me for postage, I’ll mail one further afield. They do no good sitting in my basement. And you can always get the free PDF on the website.