Trend study: Veen/Vrakking: "Homo Zappiens"

Transcription

HOMO ZAPPIENS AND ITS
CONSEQUENCES FOR LEARNING,
WORKING AND SOCIAL LIFE
DELFT UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
FACULTY TECHNOLOGY, POLICY AND
MANAGEMENT
SECTION EDUCATION & TECHNOLOGY
homo zappiens
volume 2
wim veen & ben vrakking
THE NETHERLANDS
Studies for Innovation in a Modern Working
Environment –
International Monitoring
(www.internationalmonitoring.com)
Department of Information Management
in Mech. Engineering
Center for Learning and Knowledge Management
Ass. Institute for Management Cybernetics e.V.
IMA/ZLW & IfU – RWTH Aachen University
Editors
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Klaus Henning
Dr. Frank Hees
Copyright © 2009 by IMA/ZLW & IfU
All rights reserved
2. Edition, Aachen
Volume 2
Germany
Wim Veen & Ben Vrakking
Homo Zappiens and its
consequences for learning,
working and social life
Delft University of Technology
Faculty Technology, Policy and Management
Section Education & Technology
The Netherlands
Preface�� 6
Summary �� 8
Part I: The World Around Us��12
1. Characteristics of a New Generation��14
Iconic preferences · Technology is air · Inversed education · Networking is their
lifestyle · Cooperation · Virtual is real · Multiple identities · Multitasking · Critical
evaluation · Zapping · Instant pay-off · Self-confidence through self-direction · Outlook
2. Core Competences of Homo Zappiens��23
Dynamic Experimenting · Modelling · Imagining identities for multi perspective
enquiry · Prosuming · Multitasking · Networking · Outlook
3. Major Trends in Technology ��32
Networked Devices, Networked Applications · Open Source, Open
Everything · Convergence · Tools · Outlook
Part 2: New Frameworks�� 40
1. The Age of Reconnection�� 41
The Empire · The Faith · New ideals · New structures · The End of the Line? · Main trends
2. The Dynamic Problem��47
The World is not 2D · Solve problems instead of fixing solutions · Fear leads to aggression,
paralysis or hiding · Society can relax · Afterthought
3. Get back in the Network��62
Possible scenarios · Life is Play · Quad-Core society · Power to the user
Bibliography��72
Imprint ��75
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Preface
You are currently holding a document which is popularly named a ›Trend study‹. In
it, you are supposed to read about trends in the world around you, possibly some predictions about where these trends are going and what you could or should do about
them. That is one of the things that you will find contained herein as you
might have rightly expected.
Trends are progressions of concepts. We identify something as starting at some point in time and then
through a series of successive time points, a trend
tells the story of how something has evolved. We
look for them to have an inkling of a clue as to
where the world around us is going, where these trends might be evolving to. This gives us
the confidence that we can not only survive
in the present, but in the foreseeable future
as well, excluding of course some catastrophe. We cannot predict catastrophes so in
the interest of certainty we expect one and
then forget all about them. Until it hits us.
If you are expecting to read in this trend
study about where the world is going, you
are wrong. The world is not going anywhere.
There. We have said it. That might have been
all you were looking for. Now, to answer the
question that just popped into your head: yes, there is a lot of change; we can see a lot of change happening in the world around us and we all have an imminent feeling of great big things about to happen. Exactly!
»WE SEE«. The world is not changing, we are. The frameworks
we have imposed upon the world to make it neat and tidy, manageable
and predictable, at least or so we thought, are failing us. The dust that we had
so carefully swept under the rug is coming through. What we did not allow ourselves
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to notice for the past four centuries is now coming back into view, seemingly with an
attitude. Or is it just that it has always been there and some part of us and our society
is now no longer willing to go without it?
What we are about to give you in this trend study is a new set of glasses.
The world is fine and you are fine, but the frames through which
you look at the world are failing you.
Now, we are not saying that there is something wrong
with you; not at all. You are just as much a part of the
world around you as anything and that world just
IS. You might be looking at yourself through the
same dirty glasses though. So, if by now you
think that the authors of this publication are
crazy and you don’t need new glasses, save
yourself the time reading this. Put it away.
In the very near future this book will call
out to you, to pick it up and read it. Until
then: goodbye.
Good! You are still interested. Beware though: we may have just said that the
world just is and that maybe all that you
need is a new set of ›glasses‹. That does not
mean that we are going to be reassuring you
that everything is alright. Your world (and ours)
IS about to change profoundly and the last thing
we would want to do is reassure you. We don’t want
you to find new ways to take back your grasp on the
world you have so comfortably lived in. We want you to experience chaos. Experience a turning over of everything you believed was fixed and certain. We want you to participate in turning
the whole world upside down, because only then can you discover what is solid,
true and real. Be still and let go! See the changes and then be ready to play!
Mapping infrastructure and traffic of the internet: Courtesy of Bill Cheswick, Lumeta
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Summary
Prominent characteristics of Homo Zappiens include their preference for images and
symbols as an enrichment of plain text, their seemingly effortless adoption of technology and their cooperation and sharing in networks. They use technology in a functional manner, not touching what they can’t use, and increasingly, this generation seems
to take exploration and learning, discovering the world, into their own hands. This can
be seen when we see Homo Zappiens gaming, zapping television, or handling multiple
tasks at the same time: they choose their own frameworks for developing themselves
and structuring the information that technology is making ever more pervasive.
Underlying these characteristics are a few competences which they have noticeably made more of a priority than any previous generation to this scale. This generation
seems to be challenging every framework offered to them, not accepting any limits
on their experimentation and lear-
Homo Zappiens is the new generation that is growing up with modern communication technologies
shaping their views on the world around them.
Through these technologies they are learning to
develop new skills and exhibiting new behavior
that may show us a way how future society will
be organized and dealing with technology.
ning. They learn to model their own
experiences and structures early on in
childhood, when they must make sense of the myriad of apparently different ways in which various media offer
their abundant information. As they
become fluent in the meta-language
of each medium, they pro-actively demonstrate these skills by sampling and
remixing content or producing content
themselves, no longer being the passive consumers that many older generations became used to. Homo Zappiens
learns to participate in society through networks, anticipating that different situations
may require different roles and developing the competence to quickly switch between
roles just as they switch between streams of information
The technology that is allowing this generation to demonstrate such differences
from previous generations has three main trends responsible for this contribution.
First, technology is linking everything; many devices are converging and functionality is being transferred from traditionally separate devices into combined single units.
Secondly, technology is increasingly organized in a distributed, parallel network, relying on the contribution of many different parts to increase its usefulness and addition to our lives.
Lastly, technology is becoming ever more open sourced; in the true sense of sharing
many new and emerging technologies are being developed by the community instead
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of being patented and protected, subject to development in small teams behind closed
doors.
These trends in technology are driving society to mirror the same trends.
Of the many possible scenarios that can be extracted from these visible changes in
society, this trend study chooses to follow a trend of continued innovation, whereby
these changes are not seen as the upward phase of a sinusoidal wave, but rather the
start of an exponential change process. We see technology being developed through
its potential benefits, rather than as a means to more efficiently maintaining a status quo; we see old power structures being torn down and replaced by new emerging
forms of organization; as we se society slowly comes to loose its fear of technology, we
expect technology to be embraced for its opportunities, offering new possibilities for
exploration and development.
At some point in time, through a demonstration of effectiveness, a structure of hierarchical control came to dominate our view on creating order in the complex world
around us. It has through various changes been with us for the past two millennia,
never truly being shown as the limiting form of compartmentalization that it is in
essence.
Although hierarchical structure as an ideal seemed to work for a long time, there
were three trends in society that make it inevitable that at some point in time, hierarchy must make place for a more natural form of coordination. First, every opportunity
to reach across a barrier and create a connection between separate parts of society is
embraced.
Second, we have always had to maintain a precarious balance with technology, both
trusting the provision of many of our basic accomplishments to technology as well as
using technology to reach those accomplishments. Third, the individual has maintained a similar balance with society to such an extent that each time society became to
much of a restriction to individual freedom, individuals tended to disconnect from
society leading to its change.
Realizing that we need a flexible structure for organizing ourselves and the world
around us, we can look at Homo Zappiens for a clue. They show us that our structure
for attributing value to concepts is too limited; employees are not determined by their
education, politicians are not their political party and roles are not static.
In many of our efforts these last two decennia, we have been aimed at combating
symptoms, looking at external sources of threat rather than relying on internal sources of opportunity. We have come to dig in our heels when we noticed the opportunity of technology and this has set us at a disadvantage. By embracing opportunity and
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exploring the essence of technology, as we should with our educational and business
organizations, we can come to again determine what makes them most valuable to us.
Much of our current reluctance to embrace the changes occurring in society can be
attributed to fear. By clinging to something we think we have, rather than relying on
our ability to continuously find better things of value, we are holding to a ghost of the
past; a ghost that is being caught up by the spirit of innovation. When we operate on
a basic instinct of fear, we are limiting ourselves to scan for threats, where we should
be out hunting for opportunity. Homo Zappiens shows us that the time for society to
cling to the accomplished status quo is dying, because we can increasingly rely on
technology to connect us and allow us to organize and preserve our society as a group.
In a networked society, the individual has more room for contributing its unique value and innovation and knowledge reside in a network, rather than in each separate
individual.
As we perceive that we must change to a more networked view on organization of
our learning, work and society, it is important to single out a few of the discerning aspects that will help us implement this new view on organization. Realizing that essentially every experience in our lives may be a source of learning, we can choose three
of the most important aspects for redesigning our educational settings. Most importantly, we should depart from the setting of goals up front, because essentially these
limit our experimentation that ultimately leads to increased competences. We should
stimulate exaggerative, playful learning, realizing that all learning is essentially a continued refinement of more basic skills and understanding. We must also, rather than
seeing learning as a means towards an end, encourage learning as a continuous process, stimulating increases in skill and competence with a decrease in structure and an
increase in complexity, tailored to each individuals level of mastery.
Businesses and other forms of establishing economic value would do well to compare the changes in society to those occurring in the development of multi-core computer processors. As the creation of value is becoming more networked and distributed,
we should not cling to a logic code for structuring and organizing work that is linear
and thus creates the potential for waiting. Businesses should invest in their platforms
for communication and sharing for their human assets, share with every employee the
company’s purpose and allow them to contribute as they see fit. Instead of trying to
control their process and market, clinging to their current offering, businesses should
come to rely more on innovation for sustained existence.
For society as a whole and each individual trying to incorporate these changes into
their lives, it will be important to realize that everything that makes one unique is a
source of potential value to the network. With a networked view on organization, we
may come to see similarities on different levels of scale in the world around us and this
provides us with the opportunity of transferring lessons learned between levels and
from one situation to another. As it is increasingly important to advertise individual
abilities, we also see society shifting from guarding privacy to competing for attention. Actively participating in society, work and learning, by taking charge of your own
knowledge and development is precisely what makes Homo Zappiens so interesting.
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Part I: The World Around Us
This part of the study will describe major changes in social behaviour of those who have
grown up in a digital world; a world in which scarcity of communications and scarcity of
access to information is vanishing to a large extent for all of us. Across Europe high rates
of Internet access using broad bandwidth connections have become a commodity for all,
fading away former concerns about a digital divide between the poor and the rich.
Major trends in society often relate to slow or sudden changes in social behaviour.
The above-mentioned quotation marks the time when adults started to notice particular children’s behaviour and publications on a digital generation first appeared in
books and studies (Tapscott, Gee, Lindstrom). Ever since numerous studies has been
describing the very characteristics of the generation that has never known a world
without a variety of electronic devices
»›All of a sudden, children coming into our
school that year showed a quite different behaviour: direct, active, impatient, unbridled and
somewhat undisciplined; it seemed to me something had happened over summer. It frightened
and excited me at the same time.‹ This is how a
Swedish teacher described her feelings when
she started a new school year in the outskirts
of Stockholm in the mid-1990s when six-year-old
children came back to school after the summer
holidays.«Veen & Vrakking, 2006, p. 27
and the Internet. Today, as the early
wave of this new generation has aged,
the changes they bring about become
ever more apparent to society.
Homo Zappiens is1 ›the first generation born with a mouse in their hands
and a computer screen as their window
on the world.‹ (Lindström & Seybold,
2003); they had access to a computer at
age 5 and a mobile phone before they
turned 10 years old. Technology is no
stranger to them, and they do not fear
pushing buttons on a Dora computer2 at the age of four. Marc Prensky
called them the digital natives (Prensky, 2002) and they exhibit all kinds of
exciting new behaviour that should be
useful at school and at the workplace.
The OECD started a research programme on this generation called The New Millennium Learner in 2006. The PEW studies on the uses of ICT and its role in American Life
have been extended by a 50 million dollar research programme on the characteristics
and competencies of the net generation. More recently studies have also been published indicating some negative sides of the Internet generation or describing the same
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phenomenon from the dark side (Keen, 2007). The net generation should bring a culture of mediocrity and shallowness; expert knowledge should disappear as page ranking technologies do not bring up what is true or extremely relevant, but what masses
have frequently clicked on. However, characteristics or functionalities of technology
are not the main issue in the discussion on the pros, cons, concerns and dangers of
recent developments of Internet uses of people. It is recognized that not technology
but people are most important when trying to understand what is going on (Jenkins,
Purushotma, Clinton, Weigel & Robison, 2006). Their uses of technology matter more
how future trends in our society will evolve than technology itself.
In order to give meaning to what we may observe as major trends in social behaviour of nowadays’ youngsters, this first part of the trend study will describe the characteristics of the net generation as they act in their daily lives. Consequently, these
characteristics will be described in terms of competences that might be relevant for
schooling, learning, working and life as a whole. And finally, in order to better understand the way technology is being currently embraced by today’s young people, enabling them to do what they want to do; we will indicate the most important trends in
technology.
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1. Characteristics of a New Generation
Trying to describe the characteristics of a specific generation is tricky. First of all a generation never is a homogeneous entity and so it is impossible to make statements for
all of its constituent parts. Secondly, there are many ways to define a cohort of people
as a generation varying from cohorts of 15 years to 25 years. Having said this, for the
purpose of this trend study, it might not be crucial to define exactly the boundaries of
the ages of the net generation nor the exact percentage of young people showing the
characteristics described below. It might be sufficient to say that in this study Homo
Zappiens is the generation that was born in the mid nineties of the 20th century when
the Internet took off being a commodity in many households of Western Europe. This
study wants to highlight trends in society as a whole which by definition cannot encompass one hundred percent of the generation involved. Rather than a percentage
the authors prefer to adopt the point of view that the characteristics and competences
that will be described below will have an important impact on future social systems
and institutions. This study describes a vision on what the authors think as relevant for
future schooling, working and society as a whole. Other visions might well be drawn
from the very same observations such those that Andrew Keen (2007) has drawn in
his book on the culture of the amateur. We give a more positive meaning to the behaviour of young people and draw conclusions that focus more on opportunities than
on threads.
Below, we will go into detail on the characteristics of the Homo Zappiens and specifically what we see them doing differently from previous generations.
Iconic preferences
Using television and computers from an early age on, children are confronted with a
multitude of icons and images. Iconic skills relate to the ability to understand the meaning of a picture or icon without using words. Iconic skills belong to the language of
images, and images play an important role in the childrens’ life today. Computer software contain many icons, ads rely on images much more than on text, and films and
documentaries and strips represent typically a language of images. Homo Zappiens’
preference for images can be said to be the result of their exposure to visual cues. Lindstrom and Seybold (2003) counted that children are confronted with 8000 brands a
day, most of them being logos. Television offering mainly visual cues helps children to
exercise and interpret the meaning of an image even when there is no text explaining
what the child should understand from the image. Iconic preferences are at the same
time a very necessary attitude to survive in an era where older generations complain
about ›information overload‹. Homo Zappiens never complains about this phenomenon (Veen&Vrakking, 2006). Older generations are trained in semantic cues as can be
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seen when
invariably they start
searching a webpage for textual
cues, starting in the upper left corner. This training is the result of years of
education in reading books and newspapers.
Children nowadays train themselves to understand
icons and images and include these in their searching for
and processing of information. Icons can be encountered across different media and thus allow easy recognizing of a particular
type of information or environment.
In its communications with peers Homo Zappiens is increasingly using
icons and abbreviations as well. In part, because they are used to the speed
of communication and a symbol may say as much as a whole sentence; in part
because the mobile devices they use are getting smaller are not suited for fast typing of large sentences. In addition to the iconic language, Veen and Jacobs (2005)
mention the rise of an entire new most textual language, the SMS language, including
icons as well. There appear to develop a multitude of ›dialects‹ in SMS language, no
standardization yet to be agreed. Lindström and Seybold (2003) have labelled this
language of shortcuts ›TweenSpeak‹. In spoken conversations this generation may
have the tendency to communicate only the core of a message, making it seem to older generations as if they were speaking in telegram-style. When children explain
to their parents what a certain game is about, often their parents lose attention,
because it is hard to follow the concentrated information in their
children’s sentences.
technoloGy IS aIr
Technology and new media are a natural part of the lives
of this new generation. They are hardly fascinated by them
and consider them just tools for a certain purpose. Contrary
to their elders who are almost obsessed
the technology works and thus how
their daily lives, the Homo Zappiens is
it works and will just as easily pick up
needs better. They often have little
with learning how
it could best be applied
t o
merely interested in technology if
something else if that suits their
understanding of the
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fundamentals of the technology they are using, yet they can explain the functions that
make a tool useful.
Technology to this generation should be intuitive, just as it is invisible. Tapscott
(1998) formulates this perception of technology as: »It doesn’t exist. It’s like the air«.
Oblinger and Oblinger (2005) take note of this phenomenon where technology is
taken for granted and mention: »Technology is only technology if it was invented after
they were born«. They pose that this holds true for any generation.
Inversed education
Up to about the age of five, children seem to ask their parents how to use a personal
computer. Most children start using the parent’s computer at the age of three, playing
around with CD games suitable for their age. But more and more children now have
a children’s computer on top of their anniversary wish list, and these computers do
not require instructions from parents anymore. They are self explaining. From the
age of six most children have learned how to use the personal computer and will often
first resort to asking friends, before they will ask their parents. From the age of eight
upwards, typically this generation is educating their parents on how to use the technologies and tools that are available, such as email, chats, and online banking, to name a
few (Veen & Jacobs, 2005). This ›inverse education‹ is typical for this generation.
Previously, elder people knew more than young people in practically every field.
Nowadays, this distinction in expertise by age no longer holds. Through the use of the
Internet, with many available sources, Homo Zappiens has learned to educate itself.
Nowadays, it is more frequently true that anyone can be an expert in certain topics,
while being new to other concepts. The example comes to mind of 14 year old Blake
Ross, being hired by Netscape for a summer internship and less than five years later
aiding in the design of the new Firefox web browser after being frustrated by corporate
decision making at Netscape (McHugh (2005) in: Jenkins et al., 2006)
The examples of children knowing more on topics than their elder generations do
not restrict to technology. When making decisions on whether information is true or
false, where to buy certain products as well as what to buy and where, children may be
better educated than their parents. They have often learned where to find the comparisons that will give them the information they need to base these decisions on (Veen
& Jacobs, 2005).
This self-education does not restrict itself to knowledge and concepts; it extends to
norms and values as well. Because the Internet is full of values, norms, and opinions,
You cannot go around them. Veen and Jacobs (2005) argue, this generation has learned to be critical of the information they partake as they get to choose from various
sources; parents may notice this increase in critical stance at an earlier age than was
common to previous generations.
Networking is their lifestyle
To the net generation, living in networks is as normal as breathing. Although this
might be true for any generation, Homo Zappiens’ networks include both virtual and
physical networks. Through the many technologies available at their fingertips, they
are almost constantly connected to electronic networks, through which they stay in
contact with their friends and a wide source of information available. Combined with
mobile devices, these technological networks allow them to communicate, to game,
learn and be productive, irrespective of their geographical location.
Cooperation
Homo Zappiens has made the use of networks a lifestyle. Where former generations
might go looking for the answer to a problem in books, manuals or in online repositories, for this generation, the first option for finding answers is asking a friend; they
actively know. They use their network of contacts to provide them with the information they need and if this network does not suffice, they ask an online community consisting of many individuals they do not know but who are willing to help. Knowledge
sharing is common even with those who you do not know at all. A cooperative attitude
also occurs when young people meet others who are looking for the same answers;
they often team up. Just as they expect others to be available for them, they will share
their knowledge when a friend is looking for something they know about.
Virtual is real
Youth today does not make the same distinction between the ›real‹ world and the ›virtual‹ world that so much of society still does. To them, when they communicate with
a friend through chat or in a game, this communication is not less real than a physical
meeting. They also apply this attitude to persons they meet online but who they do
not know in physical life. They consider them as if they were friends although they
realize that they have never met them physically. They do not seem to bother, a virtual
friend being as real as real. When for instance a gamer has agreed upon meeting his
online friends at ten o’clock and someone passes by (physically), they will not hesitate
to say they are busy; virtual friendships being just as valuable to them. Dunkels (2007)
notes that it is always hard to describe new phenomena and therefore understandable,
though unfortunate, that pioneers of modern technologies chose the word ›virtual‹;
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it almost certainly delayed the development of our thoughts, because it was hard for
people to move past the notion that virtual is opposed to real.
Not only are online friends just as valuable to this generation, frequently they tend
to communicate with their real-life friends through electronic means as well. Communities and social networks appear to be physical, virtual and hybrid at the same
time. (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005). Contact through email, sms or MSN is not necessarily less; it is just different. Surveying heavy users of Second Life (Attema, 2007) on
this issue they say that their virtual life is just an extension of their physical life, it is
not different.
Dunkels (2007) describes an online interview with a young girl: »I asked a child
about the difference between chatting and talking and she told me that in real life she
is rather shy. I wanted to encourage her and said that it does not show at which she replied: Well, that’s exactly my point.«
Multiple identities
Homo Zappiens has online and face-to-face identities as is illustrated by a boy describing a friend: »Online he is okay, but at school he is a nerd«. (Veen & Jacobs, 2005).
Multiple identities also occur in many online games where players might have up to
eight or more characters. In the World of Warcraft gamers choose to play with an avatar or character. The game offers many different types of them and gamers can choose
from two main categories of characters: those from the horde and from the alliance.
You can choose to be a dwarf hunter, a priest or a warrior for example, and many gamers try all of them. Young people are accustomed to play with different characters or
roles and feel the consequences of these different roles as other gamers react on them.
In fact, gamers are experimenting with social roles much more than they could do in
›real‹ life.
Experimenting with social roles in virtual worlds does not have the same consequences as playing a role in physical life. There, negative consequences might be difficult to repair, whereas in games it is just game over or if death is at stake, it is just a
matter of walking back to your body. Okay, you do not want to invest much time to do
so, but it cannot be done in real life. Through developing different identities children
learn within different worlds and in different circumstances you might have different
roles. It makes it easier to be a leader somewhere and a follower somewhere else. You
choose the most appropriate role according to your needs and you have learned to appreciate performing in different roles.
Multitasking
One of the most frightening characteristics of this net generation is their ability to
multitask: the ability to perform multiple tasks more or less at the same time. Parents
and teachers are alarmed by their apparent lack of attention and focus. These young
people seem to be online, watch TV, talk on the phone, listen to the radio and write
a document, apparently all at the same time. (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005). They are
capable of switching fast between tasks and ignoring the things they don’t find interesting. They will hear the television only on those moments that something of importance to them is being displayed. It further seems that they can use this ability on both
audio and visual streams of information (Veen & Jacobs, 2005). Although research
does not show yet clear findings on how multitasking works in our brains, by observing children it seems that they do not process the information flows all at the same
time. They seem share their attention across the different information flows, focusing
only on one, but keeping a lower level of attention on the others. It might well be that
multitasking is rather a way of leveling attention and flexible switching of attention
than fully processing all information flows at a time. However it may be, multitasking
requires a lot of attention, and elder people get tired soon after trying to imitate their
children. By using their attention flexibly, Homo Zappiens seems capable of handling much more information than generations before them. We can consider this as a
very useful strategy for dealing with the large amounts of information available today
through the Internet. By keeping track of different flows of information, Homo Zappiens may actually process information streams three to four times faster (Veen &
Vrakking, 2006).
Critical evaluation
Critical evaluation of information what children must do when selecting and filtering
information flows. In fact, this activity is related to multitasking or ›fast switching
serial task completion‹ (Veen & Vrakking, 2006). Processing more information is only
part of multitasking. By learning how to raise and lower their attention levels, this generation has trained itself in handling multiple tasks. As a consequence, they instantly
and almost subconsciously value different streams of information to decide where to
place their attention. Homo Zappiens is confronted with a lot of information, not all
of it to be taken at face value. They have learned that people may represent themselves
differently on the Internet and may have hidden motives. They have also learned to
distinguish between advertising and objective information. Children are keen on the
trustworthiness of information as long as they are motivated to search. When visiting
a website of a 14 years old girl profiling her with pictures or clips of her room, children
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might quickly notice that the whole site is an advert, as they see cans of a specific drink
in different places. They immediately consider this as a commercial expression and
click away. In a future, where knowledge workers will often have to decide on complex
problems in situations of incomplete information, having learned how to select the
right information or how to judge the accuracy, source and intent of a particular media stream, this selecting and judging of information is an important skill.
ZaPPInG
Ever since the television got the option of switching between multiple channels, zapping, or the selecting of channels of information, has been a known concept. Today,
with access available to almost any channel in the world, from Dubai television to
National Geographic, selecting which sources you would like to watch is not only an
option, it has become a custom to many: with hundreds of different sports channels,
almost anyone who watches sports on television, for example, has learned to tune in
to the specific channels that transmit a high volume of the sports they prefer to see at
the times they prefer to see it. But Homo Zappiens does not zap channels just because
there are so many of them. Homo Zappiens seems to show a zapping behaviour that
is specifically aiming at fi ltering information from different programmes at a time.
The purpose is to get the message in order to understand. It allows them to select only
those bits of information from each channel that are critical for understanding what
the fi lm is all about.
This way of zapping involves more than just selecting channels; it requires some
basic knowledge about the structures and formats in which information is delivered
on the various channels. Veen and Vrakking (2006) describe how young people can
zap between different channels, sometimes keeping track of four or five channels at
a time. To someone else, not holding the remote, zapping seems erratic behaviour.
Yet often, Homo Zappiens is able to summarize all five separate channels after having
watched only bit and pieces of each channel. Apparently,
ens has acquired skills in processing discontinuous inmation, making up a meaningful whole out of them by
connecting them. By doing so it seems they search
for visual cues rather than searching for spoken
words in a fi lm. They interpret the meaning of
an image or sequence of images, understanding the principle of a fi lm being
a pictorial story rather than a traditional stage play.
Homo Zappifor-
21
InStant Pay-off
This generation has little patience and short attention spans. Their skills are aimed at
processing various flows of different information quickly, but they have also come to
expect this kind of high-density information streaming; anything less and they will
become bored. Youth today are looking for almost instant gratification in many of
the things they do, which has made Lindström and Seybold (2003) also label them the
›instant generation‹. They have difficulty in following a complete sequential storyline,
expressing a preference to make their own choices and choose their own order. They
have the technology to hop between applications, which allows them to switch between information sources and learning environments. Oblinger and Oblinger (2005)
mention that this generation is developing ›hypertext minds‹, just as in 1962 Douglas Engelbart predicted that computers would liberate people from linear thinking
through, for instance, the use of hypertext (Veen & Jacobs, 2005).
Self-confIdence throuGh Self-dIrectIon
The Internet, the remote control for a television decoder, and many other
devices; it is
22
the user that decides what information is consumed, for how long and why (Veen &
Jacobs, 2005). ICT offers youth control over, not just devices, but communication, networks and situations as well; situations which they will often have to master as adults
(Tapscott, 1998). Through the use of technology, this generation has added options for
exploring their own individualism. Virtual environments allow the creation of online
identities through which Homo Zappiens can experiment with the different roles they
may need to assume in life.
The added value of games is that they allow any gamer an infinite number of tries to
attempt to reach certain goals; games don’t pass negative judgment or punish the gamer and this stimulates learning and discovery (Veen & Jacobs, 2005).
Games help children to master levels of performance, each of them providing an
experience of ›Yes, I made it!‹ Positive support help people to better perform and make
them think to be able to achieve goals that set to themselves. But even if the next level
is very hard to achieve children feel challenged and show considerable time on task.
If you have experienced that you can master levels, it might well be that young people
transfer similar attitudes to different situations, such as mastering applications, information flows and even mastering social interactions.
Being able to find and choose the information needed, making a choice on how they
represent themselves and knowing the frameworks in which information is presented
are all invaluable skills in today’s knowledge economy.
Outlook
Having described some of the behaviour of children growing up in a digital age, we
now will try to understand this behaviour in terms of competences. By doing this we
aim at formulating behaviour in terms of abilities that may be applied not only in
playful environments of computer games or online environments but also in day-today life in general. The assumption that these competences of playful and online behaviour will be transferred to daily life is still to be proved by research as there is still
little evidence how this transfer is taking place. However, from frequent conversations
with representatives from industry and public organizations we have indications that
young people coming into the labour market do show similar behaviour as described
in this chapter. They ask for unlimited access to the Internet, for the use of tools for
communication such as MSN, and other means to work to way they have been doing
as teenagers. If their behaviour can be defined in terms of general competencies or
abilities, these abilities might well be social building blocks for our future society. In
the next chapter we will first analyse Homo Zappiens behaviour and define the competences. We will deal with a future vision on societal consequences in chapter 3.
2. Core Competences of Homo Zappiens
We have identified twelve characteristics that are typical for Homo Zappiens’ behaviour.
This chapter aims at giving meaning to these characteristics in terms of competences.
Competences are abilities describing a combination of skills, attitudes and knowledge.
A competence is something people acquire by practicing and training both in unintended and intended learning situations. The characteristics that have been presented
in Chapter 1 stem from unintended learning situations such as computer games and
online environments. Games and the Internet have in common that they immerse
users, interact with them, and in the case of multiplayer games, engage them into
communication with others. As a gamer you are immersed in situations where you
have to act and to make choices continuously, each of these choices leading to feedback
from both the system and other gamers. Surfing the Internet is similar in that sense
that it demands acting and choices to be made by the user, and as a consequence, users
get feedback from both the system and peers. Immersion, interactivity, and communication are critical characteristics of the technologies Homo Zappiens has been using
from early childhood on. What we try to say here is that technologies have induced
forms of behaviour that will last in our future society and will further evolve as long as
technologies will continue to offer new opportunities and windows for societies to use
them in ways that are very hard to predict as they depend on choices societies make
adopting or rejecting technologies. Let us now try to define the competences of what
we have seen in chapter 1.
Dynamic Experimenting
Huizinga (1948) published his book on the Homo Ludens far before computer games
were invented. He stated that most activities in life can be described as play, both in
childhood as in professional life. He described professions such as engineers, lawyers,
scientists and architects as playful professions in which participants acted as gamers
facing problems to be solved. We may conclude from his illuminating study that preparing for professional life should include exercising solving problems in a way that
allows for mistakes and failure from which the student can learn. This is exactly what
playing computer games is about. Playing is an important method for learning when
children are young. It embeds the various concepts of trying, fun, immersion, exploration and manipulation of resources. In essence, it is a state of mind that allows
for unhindered exploration and discovery with a passion, dedication and engagement
that is not often seen in the learning activities that are set for us in regular educational
institutions and unfortunately rare in many jobs as well.
Where we see this competence of dynamic experimenting expresses itself best is
when people are playing games. It is through the completely imaginary and thus
23
24
interestingly new game world that people who play hone their skills in particular areas,
possibly those for which this game world was created. Through exploring the boundaries and limitations of virtual playing fields, gamers find the limitations of their intentions or the expectations of the game developer. That is where playing may touch
of on cross-boundary interest. In gaming, Homo Zappiens often engage in discussions
with the developers of the games they play, after having invested a certain amount of
time in the game and thus become knowledgeable about the virtual world and its rules. They often comment on how the game rules are flawed or how the game may be
made more interesting. Gamers may also come to discover concepts previously unknown to them such as architecture, history or military strategy in a game such as Age
of Empires; this may then set them off seeking more information on the subject. This
learning of related cross-boundary topics should seem to be a coincidence to you, as it
is, but nonetheless, we may pile a game world full of coincidences for a wide range of
people to have an epiphany.
Games teach gamers to explore, to learn the rules of the world, to reflect on the
consequences of their actions. They allow them to scout the world with a safety net,
simulating results before we need them for real. Like children playing ›hide and seek‹,
or lion cubs in a mock hunt, playing is the first style of learning we are born with. It is
our most basic and thus most effective style of learning. And learning, after all, is at
the core of our being as humans.
Modelling
When we imagine the likely outcomes of a particular approach or envision an alternate reality, we are using our brains to simulate and create imaginary models. We let go
of normal conscious restrictions and fall back on our brain’s natural ability and tendency to link every piece of experience. Models are based upon facts and relations that
we know from previous experience and are structured using the rules and hypotheses
that we want to test (Jenkins et al., 2006). Models allow us to explore parts of our
knowledge in detail and, in a structured and engaging way, to learn the implications
of our assumptions. Animations allow abstract concepts and formulas to come to life,
allowing us to reflect on them using a different mental set of tools. Both are dynamic
representations of models. Games are a special form of animated simulation with a
high degree of interactivity.
Models allow us to capture part of reality in a framework in order to reduce the
complexity and allow closer examination. The building, testing and refining of models
is at the core of our current scientific practice. There is consequently a thin line between reading and understanding models and (re)designing them. The use of models
25
in digital simulations has significantly increased with the emergence of systems-based
thinking in science (Jenkins et al., 2006); system-based thinking is a way of modelling
that will try to analyze data by compartmentalizing it into systems and subsystems,
yet at the same time, studying the behaviour of the system as a whole.
Learning from simulations happens through a process of trial and error, whereby
the model is constantly refined or variables adjusted to test different options. Through
the use of simulations, students may learn concepts much more thorough than from
textbooks or lectures; they engage in a simulation, come to understand the concepts
and end up feeling that the discoveries they made are their own. Looking at computer
games as a highly playful way of offering often very complex interactive simulations,
computer games foster procedural literacy: capacity to restructure and reconfigure
knowledge (Jenkins et al., 2006).
Imagining identities for multi perspective enquiry
When playing a game, as was said in Chapter 1, gamers assume the identity of an
in-game persona; they may well play many different persona, and sometimes simultaneously, depending on the game. While interacting with the game world through
their character they will come to identify with their character and they will also invest
something of their own in their character. Gee (2003) discusses ›projective identity‹ in
both senses of the word project; the gamer both projects himself into the game world
through the avatar or character, and makes the building of the characters persona his
project. This can be seen in strategy games, where aggressive children tend to adopt
aggressive playing styles, whereas quiet children may well adopt a strategy of growth
and deterioration. In role playing games, gamers do not control abstract representations such as nations or armies, but rather they may choose an individual character;
this choice of a characters strengths and abilities matches closely with the choice of
playing style and thus the personality traits that the gamer intends to invest in the
character.
Assuming identities is a form of bringing the world around you, or at least the modelled and simulated world, to life; it allows you to animate the concepts and models
that are part of your understanding of a character. It is a fundamental method for
using multiple forms of expression to look at a concept from as many sides as possible.
Animation often draws on all sources that may have relation with the models, structures or concepts being animated, thus often opening paths of association that were
not actively sought; associating through enactment may bring information to the conscious forefront that often surprises even the developers of a model. This may be you,
when you both grasp a concept and model it and then enact it, as children do.
26
When you see children playing out their favourite movies, books, stories or when
you see them adopting the role and attitudes of their in-game characters, they are similarly enacting what they have understood, integrating it with their own experiences
and reproducing it augmented with their own vision or preferences. Their play is valuable in many ways: it allows them to add their new models to their existing knowledge,
test it and adapt it if necessary; it also allows parents or educators to see a part of their
core identity as children will exaggerate certain aspects of a character and omit others.
It is however necessary to have an equally good grasp of the model being represented
to probe this identity and separate it from the concept generally understood.
Prosuming
Prosuming is the mix between two words: Increasingly, we can see Homo Zappiens
producing digital content. Software tools enable them to remix MP3 files and video
clips. Lenhardt & Madden (2005) show that 57% of American teenagers created digital
content in weblogs, webpages, pictures, stories or videos. Veen (2008) surveying 570
children in the age of 10–11 years, shows similar results; 57% produced a website, 53%
created profiling sites or weblogs, 13% produced videoclips, cartoons or animations,
68% downloaded MP3 files, and 33% downloaded videoclips from the Internet. When
children produce content, they do not often create out of thin air; they will use exis-
27
ting media, text, imagery or sounds to experiment on and develop their skills. They
will not bother with such aspects as copyright.
One of the basic ways in which we learn to be creative is by building on the work of
others, often picking it apart and refiguring the pieces. Children in preschool do this
when they are asked to make collages, designers do this when they want to present the
results of a brainstorm, DJs do this when they are performing live for an audience and
artists do this when they are making use of accepted imagery to reform it and surprise people.
Dissembling pieces of our culture, experiences and media and then reassembling
them, is how our creative expression works best.
When we use existing formats or examples to shape our own creation, it is often
because we may not want to change everything. A music producer making a contemporary version of a hitsong by the band ABBA, might just want to change the tempo
and drumbeats, leaving the vocals and instrumental track intact. A teacher directing
the new school play, might just want to teach children to act and build stage props, so
he might consequently want to borrow an existing play and just enrich it visually.
Working with existing cultural traditions and breaking conventions, however small,
has always been the work of artists (Jenkins et al., 2006). Many of the stories and
authors we read have sampled from Biblical, ancient Greek or folkloristic tellings to
create their own story around a few recognizable themes. The creation of fan fiction
nowadays, where fans of a particular book, series or writer use characters or plot from
the work to spin off their own stories, often augmenting the created world, is building
on the same competence to produce adapted expression as a vehicle for creativity.
Homo Zappiens is increasingly using content from the Internet to create parody or
fan fiction or exaggerations. Children may piece together video recording from a dozen different concerts, where the artist is singing the same song in each of them, just
to create a richer visual composition. Teen magazines piece together photos of different celebrities all wearing a pink dress to express their perception of current fashion.
Through the technologies offered nowadays it is much easier to use and restyle multimedia, audio, images and video, whereas before we mostly had written texts available.
Children put (remixed) content massively on YouTube or Flickr and reach a worldwide
audience that will value their content by number of views and ratings.
This generation might have been called the ›Napster Generation‹ (Jenkins et al.,
2006), because of their perceived massive ignoring of copyright, yet we have allowed
children to cut out clippings from magazines and newspapers and glue them to pieces
of paper for decades.
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Producing involves active analysis of what the content being used means in a cultural context, how it can be changed to produce different meaning and how it is
formatted.
Producing is the competence of expressing one’s creativity within the frameworks
of the culture and traditions of the audience. What Homo Zappiens is doing differently from previous generations is that they simultaneously learn to distribute their
creations to a wider audience for sharing and feedback; they thereby infringe on the
capacity of traditionally structured media production businesses to hold a monopoly
on particular content for the purpose of increasing its economic value. Yet, although
expressing creativity is a process of recombination and partial substitution, valuable
creativity is only expressed if it is distributed to a large enough group, so that it can
be valued.
Multitasking
Homo Zappiens is a multitasker. They have learned to navigate the various different
flows of information and understand how these are formatted. Through using these technologies they come to understand the different contexts, cultures, values and
assumptions. Media provide us with a wide variety of information, often intended
for a specific audience and purpose or coming from biased sources. Being able to select information as valuable, based on critical assessment of the context in which it
is presented, is a very important ability. Since the Internet has created the possibility
of connecting to many different communities, we can see that this filtering of information is increasingly taking place in social communities, where the users alert each
other through various mechanisms of the most interesting or useful information. Still,
Homo Zappiens needs to navigate the various communities to select, aggregate, and
filter information.
Multitasking is also the ability to follow storylines through different media or process different storylines simultaneously through discontinuous absorption of information. Here again, the skill of multitasking relies mostly on the individual’s ability to
keep a framework or map; the individual must know the relation of the different flows
of information to each other and must be able to understand how these different flows
usually format information; the individual must thus know the contexts in which information is offered in order to select the most important parts and skip over what is
less relevant, as time is limited and many flows of information seek attention.
Multitasking is an ability having a negative connotation and conflicting with focused attention, where the ideal is to have an individual focus on one task only. Howe-
29
ver good this ideal might have been though, there are two main objections to be made
in favor of multitasking.
For one, in a society as networked and connected as it is nowadays, individuals must
be able to switch very quickly between performing the task at hand and communicating either results or questions with the community they are involved in. Not only is
this a prerequisite for teamwork, it is often necessary to team up in order to complete
the task, because the individual does not hold a complete overview of all relevant information. In knowledge intensive industries professionals often face complex problems where more than one discipline is required to cooperate. It is just at the conjunction of disciplines that new ideas can flourish.
Secondly, by our very nature we are multitaskers. We have been biologically programmed as hunters to be able to scan our surroundings, constantly being vigilant
for either threats or food. Only when we perceive either of these do we focus most of
our attention on the target to the exclusion of all else. Multitasking thus involves the
ability to keep an overview of one’s surroundings while being able to judge and select
which part of your surroundings requires immediate attention. Multitasking and focusing attention are complementary competences (Jenkins et al., 2006), where both
work together to control the flows of information being processed. Attention works
as an internal gatekeeper for short-term memory, allowing only relevant information
to enter the brain’s consciousness. Multitasking works as a retrieval mechanism that
keeps track of external sources of information and how to acquire them.
Networking
In his book Knowing Knowledge, Siemens (2006) discusses how knowledge is increasingly in the network; how knowledge is no longer a product, but rather a process of
interaction and negotiation. As we see society becoming more connected and thus
creating all sorts of subdivisions such as Communities of Practice, Communities of
Interest and Communities of Participation, it is not hard to see why being able to
select, filter, share, and disseminate information through networks is one of the main
discerning competences of Homo Zappiens.
Networks offer a means of distributed processing, allowing a search for information to be aided by a community of like-minded and similarly interested people; these distributed processes include association and filtering, with community members
judging the accuracy and value of information as well as bringing new information to
the attention of the group. Distributed processing can also be seen as dividing a work
in tasks, where each member can perform part of a complex operation.
30
Working in networks requires the individual to be able to keep track of the external activities and resources taking place. These may be the interactions one has with
technology, whereby part of the processing is done by machines; think for example
of children using calculators to solve math problems. External resources are also the
members of a community; keeping track of the values, interests and contexts of different communities is similar to handling multiple resources. Where society is becoming ever more one condensed network, mapping subgroups as clusters based on relative distance, using the selective competence of multitasking is also becoming crucial
to working in networks.
If technical networks enable masses to communicate and collaborate, human networks appear to bring new dimensions of knowledge creation. In his work The Wisdom of Crowds, Surowiecki (2004) explains the surplus value of crowds working together in a loosely coupled system. He defines four elements that make a crowd wise:
a crowd must be diverse, decentralized, organized and fostering independence. A
crowd must consist of independently operating individuals, contributing diverse information based on their own values and frameworks, without someone dictating these contributions while the crowd combines the contributions of each member. In fact,
a network offers the opportunity that the whole of its constituent parts is more than
the sum of its parts. Just as our brains create from uninhibited association, so may
networks. Example abound where large groups of interested people manage to unravel
information that controlling media would rather have kept contained and secret.
To be able to work in a network, one must be able to outsource some of the tasks
to be completed. One must also be able to keep a map of all the connected resources
and retrieve them when needed. Furthermore, one must be able to value information,
context and sources. Most of all, however, one must be able to combine with others,
making the most efficient use of each part of the network, being the knowledge of an
expert or the computing power of a laptop or the communicative ability of an artist,
while rising up to the occasion of contributing what one as an individual does best.
Outlook
We have now described six competences that we consider critical in a networked society that is service oriented and knowledge intensive. We have derived these competences from observations of behaviour of young people who have adopted technology
without fear and who seem to apply these competences when coming into the labour
market. Young employees presume that their working place will look just like their
homes: unlimited access to the Internet and a variety of applications for social networking. As more young people will enter the labour market more pressure organiza-
31
tions will experience for these requests. However, these requests are not merely about
technology, they are about a different way of organizing information, knowledge,
knowledge sharing and collaboration. In fact, they touch upon the very organizational structures of companies. We already can see companies realizing these Web 2.0
integrations into the organization. CISCO is one of these companies which has recently
started to implement a Web 2.0 infrastructure and applications in its organization.
Technology in itself is not the driving factor for organizational changes. Nor are
the functionalities of tools and technical systems decisive for future developments in
societies. What matters are the interpretations of people making use of the technologies at hand. It took decades before the steam engine was used for purposes other than
a train, and it took about 40 years before the telefax became a commodity for many.
Nevertheless, technology is an enabling catalyst and this is the reason that we should
take a quick tour on the major trends currently taking place in technology. We will
describe these major trends focusing on the meaning they might have for people to
use technology.
32
3� major trendS In technoloGy
When lookInG at the technological developments of the last decades, a few trends can be
discerned. Obviously, the speed of development of ICT, both quantitatively and qualitatively, has been a catalyst in the changes that we see in today’s society. Seely Brown
and Duguid (2001) note that computers and other technical systems seem to obey four
growth-laws; the processing power of chips doubles every 18 months (Moore’s law),
storage size doubles every year (disk law), the bandwidth of networks doubles every 9
months (Gilder’s law) and the value of a network increases by a factor of 2n, whereby n
is the number of people connected (Metcalfe’s law).
Below we want to focus on three specific trends in technology that have great influence on the behaviour of Homo Zappiens and which have inversely also been influenced by this new generation.
netWorked devIceS, netWorked aPPlIcatIonS
The first trend that can be seen is that technology is increasingly networked. We already had the telephone system and the cable networks, national mail delivery and
transportation networks. With the Internet we have a global spanning network of
computers that function as a platform for many different services. Mobile telecommunications and fibre optics also add to our possibilities. Devices become interconnected and multifunctional, providing possibilities to do tap into multiple networks
for different uses.
Not just in hardware do we see the increase of networking technology.
Soft ware applications such as instant messaging and online gaming
also are networking applications, and many others are emerging. For
instance, the application you use to scan you computer for viruses
is nowadays connected to an online network of servers and possibly other users to provide an early warning in case a dangerous virus
is discovered. The mobile satellite navigation device that you may have
in your car now comes equipped with technology to automatically send
back the routes you have travelled to the provider of the mapping soft ware so they may
continuously update their maps and
routing algorithm. Your camera may
come equipped with technology to link
it wirelessly to a photo printer and in some
countries, new passports will be equipped with chips to make them electronically verifiable and readable.
33
Users of smart phones and personal digital assistants already had the ability to link
their device to a corporate Microsoft Exchange server, thereby getting access to their
email, but recently Microsoft announced that it would be launching ›Live Mesh‹, a
platform that would allow sharing for photos, instantly between a mobile phone or camera and a digital picture frame. Google and other soft ware firms already offer or are
working on similar initiatives.
oPen Source, oPen everythInG
A second trend occurring in technology is that of Open Source. Where inventors previously tried to keep new inventions to themselves, the last few decades have seen
a rise in the number of collaborative, shared and open developments of, especially,
soft ware.
The operating
system Linux is a good example that has
drawn media attention
worldwide. Developed loosely on
34
the same logic as the operating system Unix, it was in part because of the need for ever
more computer users to take control of the very basics of their computer that made
the initiative take flight. The dominant desktop operating system Microsoft Windows
does not release its source code, making it inherently less safe, say Linux enthusiasts.
Linux by contrast releases all its source code, making it easy for computer users to select only those functions that they want for their computer; also, should a vulnerability be found, openly available source code allows for potentially anyone to contribute a
solution, instead of just a handful or even an army of employed programmers.
Another interesting example of open source is Project Wonderland, an initiative by
Sun Microsystems to create a development kit for building your own virtual worlds.
After the media hype and success surrounding Second Life, this initiative aims to allow
for a more secure, robust and scalable platform for individuals and organizations to
build virtual working environments worlds and design their virtual presence. Second
Life is a virtual 3D world, where users are represented by avatars. The world itself as
well as the avatars is highly customizable, making it possible to do virtually anything
in virtual 3D that you would want to imagine. One of the main drawbacks was that the
systems it ran on were, until recently, proprietary software and in order to buy plots
of land or virtual goods, one had to convert real currency to virtual currency. Many
other open source applications are emerging and worldwide communities of users and
developers help to develop the software, Ubuntu, Moodle, Drupal, just to name a few.
The essence of the Open Source movement is not the technical side of it. It is the
social side of it which is the availability for users and developers to collaborate. By
making an application available when it is not yet finished and without aiming for big
profits, every application which has merits and uses, will soon find a team of volunteers, developing it. Open source allows for self-direction, interactive collaboration
and personal customization, making it an ideally suited initiative for the net generation who is willing to share and cooperate on issues and artefacts of interest.
Large corporations such as Sun, HP, and IBM have recognized the importance of
this Open Source movement and are already supporting open source initiatives free of
profit, expecting the services they can deliver to clients to be more profitable than the
selling fee of a single application platform. The implications of Open Source initiatives
for businesses are huge, traditional business models no longer hold. Companies have
to reinvent themselves and redesign their business models.
35
Convergence
A third major trend in technology is convergence. Just a few decades ago, we had a
video recorder, a television, a telephone, possibly a pager all as separate devices. Nowadays there are laptops and even mobile devices no larger than the palm of your
hand which can offer the same functionality. Where we used to have mostly receiving
devices, designed for broadcasting networks, most new devices now have transmission capabilities; transforming the networks they connect to into multicast networks,
where anyone may be a source of information.
In software we see applications combining functionality as well. Messaging applications include video-telephony, email software includes your agenda, tasks and contacts
and video editing software allows you to instantly upload the results to a webpage.
Other examples include: websites offering banking software integration, mobile
phones used to authenticate users through SMS, and automobile windshields being
developed with an integrated see-through display for assisted navigation.
Not only is technology converging, it is also disappearing. Devices are shrinking
and an increasing number of devices and functions are becoming mobile as engineers
find ways for producing smaller microchips and longer lasting batteries. Examples of
foldable ›digital paper‹, foldable computer screens and computers the size of a credit
card, are already being prototyped. In British airports, engineers are working on automatic face recognition through the camera surveillance system they already have in
place. Biometric scans are removing the need for keys and cards. Computer technology is finding its way into everything we see around us, often in a way that does not
attract that much attention. This makes technology more easily accessible for playful
discovery and natural use, ideally suited to the Homo Zappiens’ expectations and way
of working.
The above mentioned trends of networks, open source and convergence are revealing in numerous applications that are freely available on the net. Some of them
have proved to be that omnipresent among young people that we would like to shortly
describe them below.
Tools
All tools described below have one aspect in common: interactivity. Homo Zappiens
prefers technology that allows for interactivity. It seems to be at the core of their culture. (Veen & Jacobs, 2005). Ramaley and Zia (2005) propose seeing the concept of
interactivity broader than just pushing buttons and find four distinct type of interaction: between humans and humans, tools, concepts and contexts. Indeed, when Homo
Zappiens surf the Net they are actively engaging with the technology they use.
36
As Tapscott (1998) says it: »Time spent on the Net is not passive time, it’s active time.
It’s reading time. It’s investigation time. It’s skill development and problem solving
time. It’s time analyzing, evaluating. It’s composing your thoughts time. It’s writing
time.«
By creating their own weblogs and publishing their own music, photos and videos,
these youngsters interact with each other. They interact within the contexts of society,
but also within the contexts of a new emerging virtual society or within the worlds
of games.
Instant messaging
Instant messaging is the ability to send messages to your contacts instantly. Messages can contain text, but also audio, images, video and even files can be transferred.
Rather than email, which is relayed through server and stored to be picked up at the
readers’ discretion, instant messaging requires that both sides of the communication,
or at least their computers or other devices of choice, are connected to a network. MSN
is one of the most well known and widely used services for instant messaging.
When trying to understand MSN, one might best compare it to a modern version
of the telephone. Of course, we have added text, video and file-sharing, making it a
much more versatile tool, but the basics of being able to connect with your friends and
acquaintances on a personal basis remains. It has been augmented with links to several online games that you can play against each other and also contains the option of
sharing a background for the text to be displayed upon. In short, it is a personal tool
for communicating with others one-on-one or for setting up a conference. You can be
listed in a public directory or can choose to just be visible to people who specifically
add your contact-email to their MSN Messenger. The program shows whether you are
online or offline, but you can also indicate ›away‹ or ›busy‹. This is displayed to others
who may see your status.
Typically, MSN is very popular among teens. Veen and Vrakking (2006) cite a national Microsoft study showing that a typical MSN user may have up to ten ›message
windows‹ open simultaneously. A typical ›contact list‹ will contain between 200 and
up to more than 400 contacts. As of 2004 there were 4 million users of MSN in the
Netherlands sending 22 million messages a day (Veen & Vrakking, 2006).
Blogging
A weblog, blog for short, is an Internet-based application that allows you to write
thoughts, ideas, stories or opinions and share them with others. Blogs are used as
newsletters, personal diaries, discussion tools and magazines. One might best compa-
37
re blogs to the modern version of the newspaper column. A website can offer many of
these threads and so blogging is also well described as the modern newspaper.
A blog allows for text to include hyperlinks to other webpages or sources such as video, audio or photos. Most weblog software, which is installed on the webserver it is
hosted on, will allow for pictures to be displayed besides the text. What makes blogs
more than a mere electronic upgrade of the newspaper is that they include the option,
at the writer’s discretion, for viewers to directly contribute their comments and for
these comments to then also be viewable to anyone reading the blog.
The software will allow you to keep your blog a one-way communication medium or
enable it to serve as a collaborative experience. Blogs can be accessible only to members who log on with a username and password or they can be open to the public. There can be more than one writer contributing to one single blog.
Blogging is very popular among the net generation. Blogs are used for publishing
small stories or an online account of activities; for instance, when on vacation, a Homo
Zappiens is increasingly using a blog to keep interested friends and relatives updated.
They are not only efficient in that a blog allows for writing once to many readers, you
can now show pictures of the places you visit while you are still abroad, simply by uploading them.
Social profiling
Another popular tool among today’s young generation are the various sites for social
profiling and networking. Sites like Hyves, Myspace, Facebook, Plaxo Pulse, and LinkedIn allow for the user to detail a profile containing personal information, hobbies,
interests, etc. They also allow for the user to have small gadgets, a blog, links to favourite websites, and music or videos. Typically these sites revolve around networks. You
add friends to your profile and may allow them to see more than an anonymous user
can. By adding friends you can then also see who they have added to their profile and
how many shared friends you have or, for instance, how many hops you need in your
network to be connected to someone you are interested in.
Games
Playing games is one of the favorite activities of Homo Zappiens. There are many types
of games, including adventures where the user will have to complete a main quest,
roleplaying games, where the gamer develops a character in a fictional gameworld,
and first-person shooters, where the gamer can play combat missions seen through
the eyes of the character. Also, games are available for all ages from the age of two
upwards. For the very young, there are games where you can use the mouse pointer to
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target balloon, training basic motor-skills. As kids grow up, the complexity of games
tend to grow with them. The results are noticeable: in preschool, children of this generation demonstrate that they have already learned about basic shapes (circles, triangles, squares) and through games they have also learned the elementary principles of
sorting, ranking and the value of money. (Veen & Jacobs, 2005).
A particular form of gaming that is very popular nowadays is Multiplayer Online
Gaming, often in the form of roleplaying. World of Warcraft is such a game. It mainly revolves around solving quests and developing your character. In the early stages,
the players can solve these quests on their own, but as their character grows stronger,
so do the quests. From a certain level quests become so difficult that they cannot be
solved by one player alone and thus require the cooperation of a team of players with
their respective characters. Preferably, a team consists of different characters, each
with their special abilities, like healing, strength, mysticism, spell casting or others.
Through these team quests, gamers learn to cooperate and negotiate with other players
to form a team with the right mix of skills.
Often, gamers do not just play one character. They may have three, four or even
higher numbers of different characters with which they play. This way, they get to
experiment with different roles and may express different parts of their personality
through different characters.
Games are mainly played for relaxation, but at the same time they immerse you into
a game world that is often very complex. They challenge you to seek an understanding
of the game world. They also force you to reflect on your own actions even including
the feedback of others when, for instance, you commit a serious mistake during a
quest and the team dies as a result.
Games stimulate cooperation and thus offer a platform for learning from your peers.
Homo Zappiens is known for starting a game without reading the manual (Veen & Vrakking, 2006), yet they often make use of ›walkthroughs‹ or ›cheat guides‹, written by
other players, to get them further along in the game. Apparently they still make use of
a sort of manual, just from different sources and with different purposes.
Every popular game has its own robust community where gamers discuss the game,
share tips and criticize the designers (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005). The games themselves, such as EverQuest, Ultima Online and the afore mentioned World of Warcraft are
not finished; they are continuously being modified and expanded, often in cooperation with enthusiastic gamers, to keep the game challenging and refreshing even when
one has played a long time and the virtual characters have accumulated a lot of skills.
Outlook
Until now we have described major trends in the uses of technology, in technologies
as such, and we have give meaning in terms of competences that young people are
developing. We may notice here also that the phenomenon of Homo Zappiens is not
a hype, a specific typical but unique generation. We believe that the trends and competences we have described are illustrative for a fundamental change going on in our
societies as a whole. In fact, we see that our societies are in a process of change that
is not directed by technology but by processes of individualization and globalization.
We consider Homo Zappiens a metaphor and an expression of these change processes
coming from inside our own communities. In the following chapters we would like to
turn to the consequences of the observed behaviour and competences of Homo Zappiens for three main areas: learning, working, and social life.
39
Part 2: New Frameworks
In the previous three chapters we showed you how Homo
Zappiens is a generation that will be doing many things
differently from what we have been used to these past decades, or even centuries. The technology that is available
to them has opened doors for new, more participative
behaviour. We have mentioned a few of the main distinguishing competences of the Homo Zappiens and how
this may enable them to contribute to a changing society.
Overall, we have shown you that there is a lot of positive
signals to be seen in this new generation and that most
of the fears and negative valuations that we tend to heap
upon them and their behaviour, may be unjust.
In the following chapters we will take our analysis of
this generation one step further. We will show you how
their changes in behaviour may actually be a response
to the changes happening in society; changes which may
affect us all and which will not be exclusively beneficial
to just this new generation. In this part we will be discussing how we have come to call our current time »The
Age of Reconnection« and how the changes it brings with
it will affect the various aspects of learning, working and
social life.
1. The Age of Reconnection
Douglas Rushkoff (2005) writes of a new renaissance in his excellent book Get back in
the Box. In it, he compares our current age to the last time when people on a mass scale
were awakening to changes; changes that brought unrest, uncertainty and new opportunities; changes that have fundamentally influenced our thinking and frameworks
for centuries since. The Renaissance was an Age that gave birth to a massive influx of
new ideas, inventions and concepts. The Americas were discovered, corporations were
invented to do so, some people slowly began to formulate the concept that the world
was not flat and many great works of art originate from these times. The Renaissance
gave rise to the concept of Homo Universalis, liberating man from the beliefs of the
feudal system and the idea where each man was supposed to have a predestined place
determined by birth.
However, before the dust settled and these positive influences came to dominate our
opinion of this time period, there was major unrest. Church-controlled society simply was not ready for ideas giving man greater influence over his own destiny, nor was
it ready for the sciences to dilute its control over society by suggesting that man and
evolution may have had a greater influence in shaping the perceived world than what
was accepted doctrine. This period consequently also gave rise to such phenomena as
the Spanish Inquisition; efforts by the established order to squash the opposition and
return control of society to the elite. Looking back through history will show that any
time of change has brough unrest and as a response saw established forces trying to
restore simplicity, order and structure. Luckily, every period of change has eventually
resulted in a critical mass of people embracing the changes, which has led to the overturning of old power.
The Empire
Changes inevitably challenge the way we look at and think about the world around us,
or else they would have been called improvements. During periods of change and enlightenment, society as a whole comes to realize that the framework that has up until
then been accepted as a means of understanding the world, may no longer contain all
our experiences and emerging insights. We then come to redefine our view of how the
world might be and with it we come to formulate a new ideal for our active role in it.
In democratic ancient Greece, nation-states were ruled by the people who elected
the wisest or most able among them to perform the tasks of organizing collective action. Society imbued a large sense of responsibility in each citizen to contribute to his
best ability and to accept responsibility if he or she was so called upon. This period
gave rise to many of the philosophical fundamentals that still form the grounds for
thinking in the western world.
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42
It was only when Roman military organization came to dominate and control food
resources that Greek society was slowly conquered, merged into the Roman Empire
and subdued. Since then, the Roman military organization, which proved such an effective means of seizing control and power, has permeated all parts of society and has
consequently been the basic framework through which we view any form of authority.
Regardless of whether new forms of organization were thought of, since none could
overcome the military efficiency of hierarchy, they were all ultimately rejected.
Take note, however, that hierarchy was not invented by the Romans. The benefits of
alpha dominance in a group to the structure and organization of that group are implicitly recognized throughout the animal kingdom. The Roman innovation of the concept was to remove the self-thinking ability of the individuals, making them largely
obey a single voice, through a chain of command.
The first crack in this scheme was provided by the Empire itself, which, in its final
days, had become so large as to be unmanageable from a single, or even double, throne. The Roman Empire fell to its inability to provide pay to its military and its parallel
inability to control taxes through the military. Having integrated too many different
cultures and people, with too many different likes and thoughts into its Empire, the
system, whereby one official set of worldviews was accepted, no longer sufficed. What
actually killed the Roman Empire was its inability to give equal voice to its many multicultural groups. These many people, tribes and nations simply could no longer be
convinced that what worked for the Romans in Italy would also work for everyone
else.
the faIth
The Renaissance brought a second crack to this framework of control. In its final days,
the Roman empire, through the central authority of the emperor, accepted monolithic
religion as the dominant framework for giving meaning to our existence on earth. It
discarded with the diversity adopted from the ancient Greeks and further imposed
hierarchy upon religion in an effort to solidify state control of the populace.
Roman religion had until then known many different gods; each part of human
society was ruled by a set of norms and values and a corresponding god. When the
empire was threatened by a growing group of people flocking to new ideals of religion
and, more importantly, this gave them a means of seeing themselves free from Roman
authority, the empire sought to reestablish itself. In an attempt to reunite the empire,
the emperor embraced the new faith and transferred his authority to the church.
Although the demise of the empire was inevitable, the structure of power was
preserved.
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The symbols of power were broken and the illusion of freedom was given; the empire
split into many different autonomous parts, each again embracing their own interests
and beliefs. Yet the concepts of control had taken hold and no new structure had yet
emerged that had demonstrated being able to directly improve upon the Roman concept of control.
Over time, some nations again rose to power and the Roman Catholic faith rode to
power with them. As it was becoming the dominantly accepted religion, it also grew
in influence. The Church, through the monarchs of the most powerful nations, controlled the empire. Although nations might quarrel, the dominance of the church over
the populace was such, that when the Pope chose sides, kings would tremble.
neW IdealS
The time of the Renaissance brought a new wave of enlightenment and freedom to the
individual; it was a time when part of the ideals of the ancient Greeks resurfaced. The
self-direction and self-actuation of the individual troops, so inefficient in the Roman
military command structure, was equally absent during the centuries of serfdom and
feudal rule.
Renaissance is the french word for rebirth. As Rushkoff says it
(2006, p.12):
»For what was reborn in het original renaissance were the
high ideals of the Ancient Greeks. The Renaissance innovation in the arts and sciences allowed some very old, long suppressed idealism to rise back the surface.«
As the monolithic faith had done during the times of the
Roman Empire, so did the concept of the Homo Universalis and the rapidly accepted belief that man should seek to
make the best of himself, return to the people some hope
that they were not completely relegated to mindless parts in
a machine; in order for people to seek out their maximum
potential, they must logically be able and thus have some
say in their own destiny. The single most important
contribution of the Renaissance was that it broke the
power of the church.
The second most important influence during the Renaissance was that it again transferred the structure of
power, that had still not been overcome. People began to
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see through the doctrine of the church and its influence has waned ever since. Yet people did not throw away their belief in hierarchical power as a natural concept; kings
and nobles were still thought of as having the right to dole out power and influence.
By focussing on the individual and its power to excel, intellectual freedom was retaken from the church, yet society was compartmentalized; there were many different
fields of science and discovery where people could explore and master their abilities.
This was seen as an efficient structure (of hierarchical organization) to keep discoveries and changes manageable. The paradox here is that in order for people to measure
how they did, they would have to compare with other people and with other sciences
and this required a judging authority. Who would be the judge of people if they each
could be in control of their own exploration? That role came to those who had the control over food and value, the monarchs, merchants and nobles. Their means of giving
power, influence and authority-by-proxy was still the same: money.
New structures
The concept of hierarchical power thrived. During the golden age there was invention,
exploration, discovery and colonization; there was, at least for some, an increase in
freedom for individual contributions and creativity; each could see room within their
life to improve and make a meaningful contribution and so there was relative peace
and prosperity. Yet over time, again the concept of control became constricting to
The fundamental flaw with a hierarchy is that
a few come to decide the collective action for
the many; they will invariably choose the best
course of action to themselves and this is
seldom the best course of action for all.
people. Those in power reasserted their
might and through increased taxation
and unequal treatment of individuals,
many came to feel again uneasy. The
end of war and conquest brought back
to the public eye the openly seen limits
to individual creativity and exploration that was the Monarch, Nobility and
Clergy.
So came to be the French Revolution
and the American War for Independence and with them followed the Industrial Revolution. The control of power moved accordingly, from a system of genetic transfer to
those who had in the previous two centuries created much of the actual value. While
those in authority had kept the peace and judged value upon what would work for
them, the tradesmen and merchants had increasingly been creating the real value and
loaning money back to authority. Now, the pompous assumption of power was overtly
overturned in another moment of Enlightenment. Yet, the power structure prevailed,
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following money as the means of attributing power. With all the liberation of the individual from tried and failed systems of power, society still held firm to the notion that
hierarchy was a proper way of organization.
The End of the Line?
What may have caused us to adopt hierarchy and efficiency as leading
principles was the competition for settlement locations and the uniformity
of purpose that guarding our wealth required. At the same time, by adopting a view of hierarchical power as a good structure for organizing our
lives and society, we implented a uni-directional purpose for the individual; if we were to be meaningful to society, there was only one way to go: up!
— Laszlo, 2003
Places at the top of the hierarchy are scarce and so with a system of hierarchy, the individual will always be in competition with others, removing the possibility of genuine
cooperation and mutual benefits from the equation; a valuable individual to society,
was to be one at the top of the hierarchy of value and to get there the individual had
to think of how to serve society. Our thinking has in this way brought pretty much
everything in our lives under structured control; our belief-system and values are dominated by wanting to become as valuable as possible, maximizing your own contribution to society, conquering a spot at the top of the ladder to attain true freedom.
Those at the top must have been valuable to society, so they are logically recognized as
having authority. At the same time, many people feel useless because they cannot see
for themselves a way up the ladder; they thus live with a continuing resentment.
The fundamental flaw with a hierarchy is that a few come to decide the collective action for the many; they will invariably choose the best course of action to themselves
and this is seldom the best course of action for all.
Since the Industrial Revolution, our technological advancement has been rapidly
increasing. Through these tools, we have enabled ourselves to evolve, as individuals
and as a society. In the process, we have become more and more reliant on technology
for our liberation of spirit. By automating many of the most basic tasks necessary for
our survival and wealth, we have freed a large part of society to pursue higher goals.
With the current technology of the Internet, we have allowed ourselves to start a
global spanning society, but more importantly, we have created a new structure where,
by relying on technology, we can finally see means for restoring essential democracy (Aristotle, 2000) as a form of organization and structuring the world around us.
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Technology has become so abundant that we need no longer compete for it; similarly,
technology has become so transparant and powerful, that we can rely on it to help us
create and organize our own lives around us. We are finally ready to let go of hierarchy
as a fundamental view on power and to begin experimenting with new and improved
concepts.
Main trends
There are three main trends to be discerned throughout history. Firstly, mankind has
always sought to unite in as big a group as possible. Throughout the ages, every time
an empire rose to power and came to fall, in its ashes the many different peoples it had
conquered still retained a greater sense of connection, through common history, than
before the Empire came to power.
Secondly, every time the collective society became oppressing to the freedom of
the individual, these individuals would be increasingly motivated to find ways to
again express themselves freely, which ultimately led to the breaking of the oppressive structures.
Third and last, our wealth and knowledge has increased and to ever higher extent we
have captured our knowledge and understanding in tools and technology, time and
again freeing ourselves to take on more complex tasks, while relying on technology to
keep the basics provided for.
History shows an upward trend along aforementioned three axes towards a society
that is more connected, yet leaves more room for the individual; a society which at the
same time maintains a delicate balance of power with the technology it has spawned
and in turn became dependent on.
It is not yet foreseeable how this changing balance will come to an end or if it even
should. We will leave the debate to philosophy as to whether the tension between these axes creates a positive dynamic. What should be noted is that, although there are
real and fundamental needs for balance and delineation, structures of power should
always remain flexible enough to grow with the balance they serve. Should we cling to
them too strongly, eventually counter forces will rise to bring them down and restore
the balance of power.
2. The Dynamic Problem
The previous chapter showed you how many of the innovations in society have had their
roots in the fundamental struggle between community and individual and how the adopted structure of power, if held to rigidly, may defeat its own purpose of holding a
balance and may itself become an obstacle to restoring that balance.
In this chapter we will explore the many ways in which our beliefs about organization
have shaped the way we do and see things and how these structures of power are conflicting with the emerging culture of the Homo Zappiens.
The World is not 2D
One of the first things that can be learned about how Homo Zappiens operates and
organizes in their daily activities, is that cooperation and multiple roles are an integral
part of human nature. We cannot complete the most complex and satisfying challenges on our own and thus we must cooperate with others. This cooperation requires
coordination, communication and sharing, things we see Homo Zappiens doing naturally when they are, for instance, playing games.
This principle of working on problems together is also used in teams and can thus be
seen in the workplace, in educational settings, as a form of organization between businesses and even in the strict hierarchy of the military; joining forces and capabilities
to tackle challenges is also fundamental to innovation and the progress of science. We
build on the work of others and make use of theories developed by one set of individuals in one discipline to examine another discipline from a different point of view. We
make use of the special skills of many to perform better in the projects we undertake.
To this end, the individual has always had a very useful value for the community; by
developing particular abilities, other individuals were free to develop other abilities,
while at the same time, all abilities were available to the group.
When we imposed hierarchy and structure to the way we live and organize ourselves, at first we captured these notions of diversity and explicitly recognized them
as valuable. Because they were valuable to use, we sought to preserve them and thus
fixed them. We gave tasks to individuals, making them a mason, an engineer, a doctor,
a student, a teacher, an employee, a parent, each with a well-defined set of behaviour
that we saw as valuable. By doing so we simplified the world. We still had to come to
terms with the reality that one individual could have many different faces, being both
a father and a mason for instance. So we codified the situations, places, times and processes when each of these faces would apply. A person would be a mason at work and
a father at home.
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Simplification of the world, or the capturing of reality in models (source?), can only
happen by omitting parts of that reality; parts that we usually find insignificant or
unwelcome. In the case of most of our labels and views on roles and contribution of
the individual to society, what was omitted from the models was the uncertainty and
dynamics that make the world complex. In our very simple example, we would not be
able to explain how a person can also be a father at work, when his children come by.
This simplification is still apparent when we look at many of the forms in which
society has organized itself. Although the business world recognizes the importance
of team work for its contribution of different skills to the solving of complex tasks, it
does so through often too rigid structures. Often employees get labelled by their job
descriptions and what they are expected to contribute, their value, is limited by this
expectation.
When teams are formed, we need a manager, an associate, an engineer and a financial expert for instance, so these are drawn from the different departments in the
company.
We lack to consider that the engineer may also be a father of three children and
consequently has very valuable skills in leading and taking care of people; or that the
associate has through previous experience a better knowledge of engineering than the
engineer who has only recently graduated.
Homo Zappiens has learned that they can have multiple roles in life, just as they may
have different roles in different communities and not unlike how they play games with
different characters, investing each with part of their identity. They have also learned
that these roles are flexible and dynamic, to be applied when needed. They may have
the same identity online as they do at school, when they are communicating with friends. Yet they may also adopt different identities within the same community, when
at one time they can know something about a topic that others don’t, assuming the
role of expert, while at other times being just as new to a concept and assuming the
role of student.
To Homo Zappiens the world is not linear; it is not delineated along the lines of high
and low, many and few, skilled and unskilled. Although these observations may hold
true at any particular point in time for a specific situation, they hardly ever hold true
in a complex world where individuals communicate with many others in parallel.
Looking at the way how teams are nowadays more often organized in an ad-hoc
manner or how coalitions shift allegiance with the shifting of political tides, we can
already see how society has been increasingly incorporating this concept of flexible
structures to the organization of dynamic reality. Too often however, we still look at
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organizations from a rigid perspective and this is the first lesson we can learn from
Homo Zappiens.
Solve problems instead of fixing solutions
Many of the changes that are happening in society have been enabled or in the very
least aided by technology. Globalization of society and internationalization of markets
have been able because our transport and communication technologies are such as to
make borders transparant for most purposes. For those with a bit of entrepreneurial
spirit there seem to be plenty of opportunities. Many businesses however have come
to look at technology as a way to get an advantage on the competition or, in most cases,
as something that they must incorporate into their processes if they are not to be at
a disadvantage. They focus a lot of their attention in making the best use of the technologies available, often thinking entirely too much of how to use technology and not
enough about whether they really need it to improve their business Rushkoff (2006).
When looking at educational institutions, we can see the same external focus and
difficulty with adopting to changes. These institutions have been designed to provide
a firm basis for individual quality and standards and have remained fixed on this role
too much to allow for new processes. Over the past decade, computers and the Internet
have been adopted into curricula and courses as an instrument of increased efficiency,
often taking the form of webquests or e-learning courses: computer-based material
that is nothing more than a linear combination of reference material and possibly an
electronically administered memory quiz. Very few electronic course formats included true interactivity, non-linearity or pre-tests of the users knowledge.
The adoption of the calculator showed the same characteristics: schools could only
cope with the added benefits of the calculator by increasing the quantity of the same
subject material. Even then, only in cases where math was itself an auxiliary source of
knowledge, were they initially accepted.
Parents have also had a hard time accepting computers into their home. While
many parents got experienced in working with a computer through their job, they had
difficulty accepting the other uses of a computer that their children soon discovered;
spending hours upon hours behind a computer, gaming or chatting, was something
they simply could not imagine as being fun; at the same time they saw their children
taking less time to go out and play or sit behind their books and study. As a result,
many parents have placed restrictions for their children on the use of the computer.
This was reinforced by the fact that they often had little grasp of the computer, besides
the skills and applications that were necessary and useful to them in their work, whereas their children seemed to often be the ones explaining them how certain functions
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worked. Frightened for the consequences of something they did not fully understand
and could not completely control, many parents have, similar to large parts of society,
clamped down on authority and control in a way that has only distanced them further
from understanding the true benefits of the technology.
We have been living in a marketing age for the past two decades. Realizing that we
had all but exhausted our venues for traditional innovation and that there was large
demand for service and personal value, we sought to control how people determined
and responded to value and invested heavily in our understanding of how trust and
brand-recognition was established and could be manipulated. This led entire industries to focus even more of their energy on appearance and the grooming of a customerbase that was being broken down into niches and target groups to do so. Mass media suddenly saw a huge rise in demand for their delivery platform while, in effect, the
populace was being brainwashed.
Society has been slow in accepting technology as simply a tool. The great hype that was
given to the personal computer and later the
Internet has created such an external focus
on possible benefits that everyone is out there looking for the latest advantage that they
can draw out of a computer. This often makes
them forget the uses that are already there.
Homo Zappiens show us how our
efforts have been misguided and disconnected from the purpose they were
intended to serve. The focus on marketing brought us further from our customers. The focus on a strict curriculum has brought us further from the
most important competences that we
should be helping this generation to
learn. By trying to limit our children’s
use of technology, we have actually
attempted to deprive them of valuable practice that will serve them well as
participants and shapers of tomorrow’s
society. Our focus on the value of technology has brought us to look almost exclusively
at those functions that are quickly and widely adopted and further from asking ourselves whether we truly need technology and what functions might actually serve to
improve the processes we have in place.
In order for our frameworks to still be effective in understanding and managing the
complexity of today’s reality, we downplay the importance of anything that does not
fit, so we do not feel pressured to pay more attention to something we do not yet fully
understand. This happened when certain genres of books became fun to read and we
dubbed them lecture as opposed to higher-valued literature. Comic books have in our
eyes never held a fully developed story, often being only around 50 pages long with 5
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pages worth of text. The fact that they can similarly be construed such that meaning
and complex thought can be inferred from them, eludes us. Video games (Gee, 2003)
are seen as a means of fun and relaxation, simply because we cannot yet understand
how we may control the other benefits they can serve and since we do not understand
them, we ignore them.
What we see in schools is yet another form of disconnection, when we look at the
teaching of creativity and reflection. Students writing reports are strictly forbidden
from copying material from others or reputed sources. We want to focus so purely
on fostering creativity and reflection with students that we forget that all creativity
is grounded in cultural traditions and existing knowledge. For instance, we do allow
children to make collages. Getting quoted is one of the fundamentally accepted means
for scientific publications to gain recognition and one cannot even call a publication
academic without including at least a dozen or so references to other reputed sources.
In fact, the quality of the sources used for scientific work often determine in part the
quality of the work itself, because scientists know that if the existing knowledgebase
has been taken into account, then the contribution might have the biggest possibility
of being a valuable contribution, be it a summary, a new insight or a critical rebuttal
for existing views.
While students making exams are not allowed to copy answers from other students
at the risk of being punished, we recommend workers who manage to copy the most
valuable processes from competitors and improve the business. Building on the work
or knowledge of others is, in other parts of society, highly valued, as was shown in the
example of team work. Yet, because of our incompetence to develop a form of testing
whereby we are able to adequately provide feedback on each team member’s contribution to a team result, we have not yet been able to release our old framework of individual quality assurance. Schools focus on teaching children to develop their own
creativity, their own opinions and their own values; they forget that it is through evaluating the opinions of others, from our parents, siblings and family to our teachers,
bosses, co-workers and peers, that we come to pick those insights that we call our own.
They are so focussed on looking for signs of these developments, that they disregard
the process that in each of us precedes this.
What these examples point out is that society has been slow in accepting technology
as simply a tool. The great hype that was given to the personal computer and later the
Internet has created such an external focus on possible benefits that everyone is out
there looking for the latest advantage that they can draw out of a computer. This often
makes them forget the uses that are already there.
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Society has taken a hypocritical view on technology, but also on processes and people; like a headless chicken we want to deny the obvious, while clinging to views and
expectations. We stare advantage in the face and go looking for its brother. Often, we
even come to reject the very things that can benefit us, because they have not yet been
discovered by others.
It is important for us to learn from the Homo Zappiens that tools are just tools and
what works, works. Time and again they are showing us that we are too focussed on
external characteristics, images and frameworks, that we miss the texture underneath.
When children can hand in issue papers, directly copied from sources on the internet,
society cries murder and quickly tools are developed to test for plagiarism, whereas
these children have only shown us what should have been obvious to anyone: when
using technology we can do more, so we should have expected more. The same goes
for jobs; when a mechanic can complete his round of chores for the day in only 3 hours,
then the business employing him has a very valuable asset that should consequently
be rewarded with either free time or an increase in valuation and challenges. Rather,
by holding to the view that employees should be at their jobs between working hours,
often eight to five, businesses are creating a drudge for those employees who find challenge in doing their jobs well. This same mechanic will consequently work at a lower
pace in order to stay noticably busy, while loosing much of his job satisfaction.
By holding too rigidly to our images, focussing on the means rather than those
things of core importance to us, we shape the wrong frameworks and structures; we
focus our attention on things of lesser importance. Thus we are loosing potential to disgruntlement and ignorance, where we could have been gaining through innovation.
Fear leads to aggression, paralysis or hiding
The basic nature of every living organism on earth is to survive and reproduce. Basic
behaviour is consequently aimed at seizing chances, avoiding threats and sustaining
growth. Although humans have evolved a long way from needing to be concerned
with basic survival, our current mechanisms for behaviour are still built upon our
primitive instincts and reactions. To learn how to truly move forward as individuals
and as a society, we must learn to recognize which of the fundamental mechanisms is
driving our interpretations and actions.
Many of our fears of technology and our drives for control stem from the perception of a threat. We interpret the emergence of new phenomena that do not fit our
known worldview as an increase in chaos and uncertainty and this immediately makes us scan for threats: safety first. Consequently, we have always been very cautious
in adopting new technology and very eager to focus most of our attention on debating
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whether there were possible downsides to our status quo. When the printing press was
invented, one of our initial reactions was to fear for the benefits that we derived from
the storytellers of that age. As with the telephone, we fear we may be loosing personal
touch when we allow the virtual communication of the Internet into our lives. People feared that part of their soul was being extracted when they first saw the workings
of photography. Ancient cultures were only too eager to attribute seemingly magical
phenomena to a deity and deliver some of their autonomy in the hands of the priests
who seemed so capable of appeasing this deity. The war in Iraq was started by similarly
playing on people’s fear of nuclear catastrophe and immediately suggesting a solution through the use of the »all-powerful American military«. Now that it has become
known that this might have all been a ruse, we see that fears are hard to banish once
they have taken hold; many people are still not completely certain that what we rationally perceive as an error in intelligence or a deliberate act of misleading, was not in
some part indeed a true threat.
When looking at how Homo Zappiens adopt technology and how this is different
from how previous generations adopt technology, we can see a difference in behavioural foundation. Older generations approach new technology with a fear of loosing
the technology and benefits they currently have, whereas this new generation, that has
known no other world but one wherein this technology is readily available, approaches modern ICT with eagerness and inquisitive mind.
Homo Zappiens at the same time demonstrates that it is much more beneficial to
approach innovation with exploration and inquisitive thought. Through their exploration they gain earlier experience of the workings and benefits of new technology and
consequently gain the advantage that they are more free to pursue new innovation
because of this technology. When other generations try to catch up, fearing that they
might miss out on the benefits that technology seemingly has to offer, they frequently come to realize that they will never attain the same level of apparent ease that they
see in this latest generation. What they fail to see, is that it is merely their own fear of
going out there and experimenting, which is holding them back from using their larger experience to more quickly understand the full benefits of technology.
When we see Homo Zappiens adopting new technology, we are sometimes amazed
by their proficiency with new tools. At the same time we notice how they seem to be
paying less attention to learning mathematical skills, grammar and memorization;
rather, they rely on calculators, icons and search engines to provide them with the
same information.
We fear for a future time when they may not be able to rely on this technology and
how they would then be at a disadvantage for not having learned the more basic skills
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preceding their current skills. This fear may be justified; we may, after all, arrive in a
world where all electrical and mechanical energy sources besides animals and human
beings have been rendered inaccessible or unusable; a world where we would again
need to rely on ourselves. Yet, projecting this fear into Homo Zappiens apparent lack
of learning more basic skills and competences, is withholding society from moving
forward. If we do not allow technology to help us, we can never rise above the needs
that we have now covered with technology and we will not free ourselves to increase
our abilities as individuals and as a society.
When we truly look at Homo Zappiens’ behaviour, we will not see an incapacity to
learn grammar, math or memorization, but rather latent abilities, which have not sufficiently been stimulated by their surroundings. When you look at Homo Zappiens’
behaviour, you won’t see disinterest for ›old concepts‹, but much more often you will
see a form of prioritization; they choose to learn the most important things first. In a
world where technology is available, the most important skills are those that enable us
to use that technology to enrich our lives.
Would you take a group of Homo Zappiens into the woods and outside the reach
of technology, they may at first feel ackward, but they would quickly transfer their
inquisitive mind and procedural knowledge to discovering how to make the best use
of their new surroundings, thereby opening themselves to learning more basic skills,
for instance hunting, camping, fishing, making fire and acquiring a knowledge about
plants and animals. They would still engage in an inquisitive and cooperative rather
than consumptive and clueless manner, showing us that the basic competences, which
they have been developing through technology, can be equally beneficially applied to
other tasks not requiring technology.
When we look at our economic and political systems, we can see that in many cases, fear seems to have a firm hold on interpretation and decision making. Politicians
will, close to an election, do and say almost anything to gain voters’ favor and refrain
from any action that might render them a bad reputation. Consequently, our political system grinds to a halt as elections approach. In determining which technology is
more appropriate for large infrastructural projects, new digital security or communal
transport payment, the political system will often very carefully weigh any known
option. Yet, much more often, in such large scale projects, we see that once an option
or means to a goal has been chosen, decision makers will refrain from any action that
may reflect badly on their capacity to make these complex decisions, most notably including action in going back on their choice of technology once flaws become known.
In business, we can see plenty of companies going after strategies that may put a halt
to the decline of their customers; they react from a fear of loosing value. Rather than
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seeing a herd of prey decline and starting a hunt for fresh meat, fresh innovation, they
envision themselves under threat from their competitors, moving into a state of defense, that is as much cripling as it is immobilizing.
When we approach the world through fear, we are in a state of limiting our exposure, seeking for cover, cautious in our approach of the unknown. This will not bring us
to discover the unknown quite as fast as we would when hunting for new means for
improving our lives. When we let go of our state of fear, we will experience more freedom to explore and partake of the many rich experiences that our surroundings and
technologies still have to offer. We can approach any problem posiwith a care for making things better for ourselves, rather than
holding on to something we think we had, but which was in
fact never ours.
When we fear the loss of customers, we fear for our
ability to deliver value. We think that our competitors
must
logically be delivering more value, so we
t ively,
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focus on trying to outdo our competitors in what they seem to be doing best. Often,
we don’t go looking for ways to start a new product life cycle of emergence and growth,
but we try to prolong the mature phase of a product in an attempt to extract maximum
value from minimum effort.
When we do this, we are motivated by our fears that we may not be capable of innovating in such a way that we will again provide true value to our customers.
When we look at the system of law that we have installed in our society, it has for
the last centuries been ever more focused on limiting damage and threatening consequences, instead of the repairing damages and enabling equal opportunity. Fear of
legal claims now drives many businesses and organizations as well as individuals to
implement measures that restrict their use of technology, products and services, just
to ensure that they do not commit acts for which they may be sued. It should be apparent that by structuring our society this way, we are limiting our growth and innovation; by operating on a basic premise of fear, we preprogram our response to be inaction,
avoiding or aggressive response, rather than the active engagement that it could be.
A final example of how society has been operating from a basic behavior of reacting to threats is our need for privacy. Part of our individual competition, which has
been part of our society for many centuries, is our need to protect our competitive advantage; our hard-earned position of certainty may be taken away or diminished by
others discovering the same techniques and resources. So we created a shell of privacy
around ourselves, to further delineate our individual identity and competences from
the collective of which we are all a part. Although this has made distinctions much
clearer and has allowed some individuals to rise to great prominence through a monopoly on a particular set of ideas or skills, this has deprived the collective of discovering how combining the different skills and competences of multiple individuals might
have been better for all of us.
What we can learn from children’s uninhibited exploration is that by adopting an
inquisitive, eager approach to the unknown, we will much faster come to experience
exactly what it may offer in terms of new experiences, new innovations, new frameworks and new threats. Only when we discover a true threat this way, is there a need to
take action and fall back on our cautious approaches. Even though large parts of society have been fearful of losing gained status and advantage, rather protecting a threatened niche than building a new one, the most successful discoveries and advancements
of the past centuries have been made by those who were, in a way, genuinely fearless.
Now, an entire generation is showing us how to be fearless and inquisitive again,
enabled by technology and only hindered by the rest of society that is still reluctant to
aid them and see them, not as a threat but as an addition to our established way of life.
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If we wish to add new technology, knowledge and abilities to our bag of tricks, we must
not be afraid to open the bag in fear of letting something out.
Society can relax
When we consider society as a network of individuals, then we need to consider that
a network consists of two characteristics: nodes and connections. Individuals in a
network represent the nodes and their relationships represent the connections. Every
node and every connection in a network may be unique; even though there are similarities, the combination of priorities and values, competences and insights, strengths
and proximities, may differ greatly. This makes every node and every connection valuable.
Society has for centuries been focused on strengthening itself through strengthening the individuals. Furthermore, we have been trying to strengthen certain aspects
of individuals to make our society better suited for a particular type of challenge and
complexity. Through education and by demanding only particular types of intelligence, we have created a network that is rather unbalanced in its abilities to contain
and share all of our capacities and interests as human beings.
When we created jobs, we were asking people to improve their skills in performing
certain tasks. By creating structures we encouraged people to develop analytical skills.
Through competition, we stimulated a focus on performance, the realization of quick
gains and the ability to present ourselves and our solutions.
When we dubbed painting, music, spirituality and sports as hobbies or recreational
activities, we relegated them to the personal sphere, giving off the signal that these
skills and interests were of less value to the network as a whole. When we learned to
raise a curtain of privacy around ourselves as individuals, these were the characteristics that we kept hidden.
Creating a veil between the part of ourselves that we would share with society and
the part that we could not share with many caused many people to feel disconnected.
People with particular primary skills in the artistic or paranormal, were often forced
to develop their secondary skills in order to create a living.
People got disconnected from society. Workers doing their jobs only for the purpose
of having some money so they could go home and spend time on what truly enthused
them, are no exception. By trying to impose uniformity on the network, in effect putting stress on the connections and nodes to change, we destroyed part of its value. As a
result, we now have plenty of employees who see work as a chore and are consequently
hard-pressed to really give it their best effort. Still, many companies and human re-
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source departments try to push and educate their employees, ›empower‹ them so to
say, to put their best efforts in their work.
When a network is dynamic, relations will be formed and reformed and individuals
will move in relation to one another. Both opposites and similarities attract, so on the
one hand we would see groups of people forming around common interests and skills,
common connections. On the other hand, we would see people contributing in places
where their views are as opposing as they are refreshing. For example, connections
would form between people who love golf, but consequently they might contribute to
Courtesy of Marcos Novak
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7973 Chapter 5 (227-258)
each others perspective on business; people who find each other through a shared love
of music, might open each others eyes for different cultures.
Through the Internet, many repressed groups and interests have found a venue for
sharing and connection; a voice in society. This same reconnecting of the network is
causing the veil of privacy to slowly come down. As people learn that there are others
who share their dark desires or personal hobbies, their less valued but often equally
defining characteristics, people are becoming more open towards each other about
Imagining cyberspace
who they are at work as well as in their free time. The very concept of ›free time‹ implies that there is also time spent in captivity or service of others (Veen&Vrakking,
2006). Again, we see here the signs that we have taken autonomy out of the individual
nodes.
Homo Zappiens are leading society in reconnecting and rediscovering the fun and
venue for sharing their complete selves. Consequently, we see emerging interests in
eastern philosophy, feminine skills, arts and cultures arising in a mostly competitive
and analytical western society. Suddenly, there is a huge rise in occurrences of paranormal abilities; alternative therapy has taken flight over the past decade; even the
concept of empowerment and more self-decision for employees can be seen as a rediscovery of repressed qualities. Not that these characteristics where non-existent before,
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Courtesy of Marcos Novak
but rather, as a society we did not pay attention to them and thus we did not see them.
We have yet to see how these emerging interests will change our views and beliefs as a
society, but their emergence is striking.
Not only are these concepts and competences crossing over from a personal into a
societal sphere, from the individual into the valued domain; as a consequence of people now sharing more of themselves, we slowly see people getting back in touch with
themselves. The mixing of sciences is bringing new insights to each discipline and has
spawned innovation across domains, in such new fields as nanotechnology, biomechanical engineering and sustainable energy science. Employees are bringing ideas of relaxation and meditation into the workplace. We see more people preferring free time
and fun over the relentless pursuit of money. Even though the traditional religions do
not yet see a steep increase in their numbers of subscribers, it can be noticed that there
is a huge increase in spiritual interest, especially among young people.
What is also interesting to note is that because of our rediscovery of hidden talents
and abilities and because we are slowly letting go of our need for privacy, we see a
strengthening of connections. Homo Zappiens are communicating more about a wider range of topics with a larger group of contacts; they have released their fear of communication and sharing and our need for privacy is being replaced by their need for
attention. All of a sudden, the last decade has seen a surge in reality television; people
choosing to allow themselves and every aspect of their lives to be filmed.
The cry for attention is also apparent in, for example, the explosion of marketing
efforts or the competition for guests in prime-time talk-shows; shows and magazines
are looking for exclusivity; brands are looking to buy into the established images of
celebrities.
Yet, while we see commerce responding with giving us more of the things we are
already doing ourselves, we can also see the collective response, from a network of
Imagining cyberspace
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60
increasingly liberated individuals, that attention cannot be bought or forced. Where
ever more sources are competing for attention, we see individuals preferring sources
that fit with their particular skills and interests; sources that rather provide in-depth
coverage of single issues, instead of the flash-bulletins that we call the evening news
nowadays.
Traditional society is at a loss how to deal with these changes. We can see doctors
unable to explain how a cancer could have disappeared between two visits or how a
blind man has suddenly regained his vision after using aspirin for two weeks. Patients, being increasingly knowledgeable, are encountering doctors who are increasingly vague and indirect about symptoms and the need for treatment. Politicians, who
are still talking in general terms about their plans, ideas and opinions, have alienated voters who increasingly want specific issues to be addressed. Businesses, at a loss
to continue innovation, are focusing much of their attention on the acquisition of
competitors.
Teachers, who see students in their classes with sometimes more knowledge, sometimes different interests, blame methods, books, curricula, management and politics
for their inability to teach.
In every aspect of society it is becoming apparent that those individuals and structures, businesses and organizations, that are retaining a structure of scarcity, privacy
and not sharing, are missing out on the reconnection that this age seems to be bringing. Not only are they less connected, but as a consequence they miss understanding
of what is truly going on around them. Their clinging to old frameworks is making
them blind.
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Innovation is not contained in structures, nor is it contained in individuals or in
their relationships to others. Innovation is contained in the dynamics of a network; its
ability to continuously form and reform is what makes society innovate and learn. Innovation is only limited by the boundaries that we place on a network, the space that it
is allowed to possess. What ís contained in the network’s connections and nodes is the
knowledge and values that we accumulate as we innovate (Siemens, 2006). As we see
in online computer games, a network derives it power through its users.
Afterthought
We must be ready to let go of our notions that power and organization cannot be distributed. We must also let go of our fears that we must cling to what we have gained,
because just as this may maintain for us a status quo, it is also holding us back from
innovation. We must let go of our habits of compartmentalization and division, giving
everything a label and a limited purpose. We must stop our focus on parts of the network, parts of the individuals and parts of their relationships.
Once we do, we will see that we can reconnect with our more natural inclinations
to seek value as we need it and provide value where it is asked. By reconnecting with
the network of our species and releasing our fear of being absorbed by it, we open
ourselves to a myriad of new possibilities for play and innovation. We will embrace
uncertainty as a given constant and rise to the challenge that this dynamic playing
field brings. By reconnecting with ourselves and the network, we open ourselves to
again seeing the world as connected, freeing ourselves to explore its aspects that we
previously ignored.
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3� Get back In the netWork
In this final chapter, we intend to show you how to reconnect with a networked view on
organizing our lives. As we saw in the previous chapter, many of the concepts that we
use to organize our lives, learning, work and society have become obsolete from Homo
Zappiens’ point of view. Technology has taken dominance over society as a means of providing organization to our lives. This has cleared the way for the individual and society
to become more intertwined. This chapter will attempt to provide you with new frameworks, a new set of glasses if you would, through which you may take a more positive
look at the changes we see occurring. We will discuss how, through a new perspective, we
can come to redesign society to match this networked view on organization.
PoSSIble ScenarIoS
It should be noted that predicting the future is difficult at best, with any trend. When
we try to draw conclusions from the past or present and say something about the
future, we inevitably have to make assumptions. Looking at the possible scenarios
for the future, we can discern three main axes or choices. We might develop different
scenarios based on our assumption that technology will be embraced or rejected. Another deciding influence on future developments will be whether the momentum for
change is strong enough to conquer
power structures. A third factor
ther the direction of techno-
resistance from established
of importance is whelogical innovation
will continue or consoli-
date.
At one extreme we
may
scenario where oras we knew it and
changes. Tech-
find
a
der is restored
nothing much
nology may be
seen
as
conti-
nuous improvement
of existing processes and will be adopted for known purposes
only. As a result, the
development of
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technology will aim less at the exploration of possibilities and more at satisfying the
need for increased ease and efficiency.
In this publication however, we will opt to describe another opposite, because we believe that, given the trends and characteristics we notice, society is ready for a change.
In this chapter we will therefore assume a scenario where technology is readily adopted for its possibilities, creating opportunities for added benefits. We see established power structures slowly disappearing and a new, networked form of organization
emerging. As a driving force behind continuous change, technology will increasingly
be seen as an opportunity rather than a means to control.
lIfe IS Play
Ever heard the expression: »Life is just one big game«? Looking at how Homo Zappiens
playfully accepts technology, how they immerse in multiplayer gaming and how they
deal with complex problems through a hands-on, self-directed approach of exploration and cooperation, one could easily imagine it so.
Looking at little children and how they first learn to walk, talk or respond to signals from their parents, the word ›play‹ may come to mind more than once. It might
be even more readily apparent when describing how lion cubs learn the first basics of
hunting prey, by practicing on each other. See how the basics of sports are taught to
children and one can see again the elements of playing being used to transfer the most elementary understanding of a sport, be it rowing,
sailing, football, hockey, judo or any other form of personal
exercise.
Play offers to any living being a means to explore without
the fear of mistakes or the blinding of expectations. When
we play for winning instead, we call this competing. Playing
in itself is not about the end result, but about the game itself
(source?). Through playing we allow ourselves to experience
any occurrence and respond to any experience, without our
pre-determined judgment pushing us in any particular direction. People can explore different sides of themselves by playing a part, pretending to be someone they are not and completely immersing themselves in their role. Through this experience
they may consciously learn more about their values, opinions and
abilities than if they were to seek them in a pre-qualified manner.
Learning any basic skill or competence often requires the continuous refining of crude abilities and notions. One starts with only
64
a very limited view of an ability and little to no control over it. Through practice and
continued use, possibly aided by a teacher or the examples of others, one may come
to improve and refine basic constructs, leading after possibly years of practice to the
subtle mastery of an Olympic sportsman or lauded musician.
Every person has a unique set of abilities and as a consequence may have greater
difficulty or ease in learning specific things. Certainly there are many different ways
to learn for equally many different people. Falling back on the basic premise of play is
then the only natural way for exposing everyone to the richness of possible experiences free from preconceived notions of structure and order.
The logical direction for education and learning to develop, as we see society ever
more embracing the uniqueness of each individual, is for the process of learning to
become more natural. By recognizing that people will learn from any new experience
and what they learn may often not be predicted, we should be able to see that there is
really no way in which we can reach the optimum level of development for each individual through structured education, as we have been trying to do. We will need
forms of mass individualization, flexibility and playful exploration to allow children
and adults to develop the necessary learning skills they need to deal with any new situation. When redesigning our educational systems, we should strive for a minimum
of restrictive structure, so that as mush as possible, people may retain their natural
ability to learn through play.
No goals
There are certain aspects that may be beneficial to creating an environment in which
this more natural form of learning is better facilitated. First, we must realize that we
cannot control the outcome of learning up front. Setting goals for education is therefore completely contradictory to natural learning. For example, suppose a lioness wanted to teach her cubs about hunting, but were to impose a goal whereby one cub had
to ›win‹; the result could just as easily be an awkward situation with a dominant cub
displaying unnatural ›prey‹ behavior as it could end up teaching both cubs to anticipate each other.
A better approach would be to use increasing levels of difficulty for each cub as they
demonstrate increased abilities. By siding with the weaker cub, the teacher in our example can restore a balance in challenge for all participants, leaving each to explore
their skills at their own level.
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Exaggeration
Second, playful exploration is encouraged by a rich and unknown set of experiences.
Actors playing a part, being assigned a role or pretending to be something they are
not may have the positive effect of enhancing their range of experiences. Where the
example of a lioness setting goals was counterproductive because it was not responsive
enough to each individual, it may equally be beneficial for providing experiences that
would otherwise be hard to come by, thus opening the way for new paths of discovery.
A better method and example could
be the process of exaggeration.
Exaggeration is the process of exploring skills and abilities, experiences or concepts to their extremes, thereby more quickly defining the limits
of one’s scope for learning and improvement. By exaggerating the nuances
of speech, for instance, speaking eit-
Nowadays, too many businesses try to hold
on to a state of maturity, often artificially
prolonging the value of their products and
services through artificial concepts such as
marketing or target group differentiation.
her very slow or very fast, pronounced
or with a purposeful accent, one may
learn to sample the different flavors of speech, getting more of a feel for the limits
within which one must operate and may encounter most of one’s experience. Exaggeration can be described as learning from the outside in, first practicing the most crude
behavior, movements or abilities, before refining each towards the core of a mastered
competence.
Immersive challenge
A third component for a naturally playful environment is the characteristic that challenges and experiences may become more complex and challenging as one learns.
Rather than seeing a student coming ever closer to a targeted state of mastery of
particular concepts or competences, a naturally playful environment should decrease
its level of structure and organization, while allowing for the increased complexity of
everyday life, in order to keep challenging a learning individual to test his or her increased abilities in a wider range of situations and connecting learned experiences to
a wider range of associations. In a job-related training, as an individual learns more
about a particular task or problem, an optimal learning environment would offer that
individual an ever increasing chunk of the problem or task to handle. This would be
the equivalent of functional promotion.
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As we live our lives we continuously learn. By harnessing our innate ability for learning playfully, without restrictions or fears and by shaping our environment to offer support for this immersive, unrestricted and safe exploration, we can offer each
individual the means for exploring their own unique set of abilities and preferences
and developing an internally motivated drive for continuous improvement in areas
of interest.
Quad-Core society
When looking at the ways we have structured our economic value system, we can see
that we have created businesses and organizations that serve a specific purpose and
employ human assets as means to producing that effect. In essence, a business has a
purpose that is valuable to mankind. Economists have described a product life cycle,
which may be equally applied to any concept of value, describing 4 stages from birth
through growth and maturity to and end-of-life state. This cycle in essence describes
how every thing of value may be discovered, refined and ultimately distributed to
everyone with a need for it, before it will eventually be replaced by something else.
Nowadays, too many businesses try to hold on to a state of maturity, often artificially prolonging the value of their products and services through artificial concepts
such as marketing or target group differentiation. While they may be creating new
value from marketing or specialized attention, this does not detract from the fact that
their basic value has eroded and should be replaced by something new.
If we look at how Homo Zappiens is dealing with the monopoly of record companies
and their restrictive copyright system, one can see a perfect example of how a true value, the distribution of music, is in dire need of innovation, while an entire branch of
business is trying to hold on to a mature, yet hopelessly outdated and overpriced, scheme of delivery. In a previous chapter, we already made note of the fact that structures
held too rigidly will increasingly give rise to forces aimed at taking them down.
Connection
The main trend in value that we see emerging in society is the creation of value through
connection. Indeed, in many aspects of society, we can see initiatives taking flight that
provide new value by adding a connection to a network of other individuals. Television has discovered this concept in its reality TV and sms-voting, creating a sense
that the viewer has some interactivity; open source software is providing networked
value by allowing the collective knowledge of an enormous potential in individual
programming skills to contribute; Voice over IP is emerging as the new standard for
voice communication, because it effectively lowers the cost-barrier for communica-
67
tion between people; smart devices such as set-top boxes, smartphones and integrated
ordering systems provide value through integration, linking and integrating several
separate functions into one product.
When designing a network organization for the delivery of value, a replacement for
our current economic infrastructures, we can distinguish several essential elements.
A true network is based on unique distinguishable elements, their relations and a distributed means of traversing, a means for any element to form relations with any other
element without a preconceived format. To realize how people can create value together through a networked form of organization, one can best compare society to the
emerging parallel processors that are being developed for computing applications.
Parallel processing
Comparing a networked society to a parallel processor, we need to explain concepts of
communication, shared memory, bandwidth and specialized cores. By increasing the
bandwidth of society through our increased means for communication, we have in effect opened the way for multiple parallel processing. We are continuously integrating
the available memory and cache, because information is ever more pervasive and we
are thus removing the need for hierarchical structuring and defined tasks. A network
enables every separate unit to make the same decisions based on the same logical
rules. More and more, because of our interconnectedness, we are joining to become
one unit, one substitutable group of nodes, where each node may substitute another,
each node may direct others and each node may take lead, keep track or process. The
logical structure that allowed a hierarchical society to divide tasks between separate
entities, will need to make way for a new form of code that allows for distributed coordination through communication. For example, programming for a single processor
involves planning of tasks so that they may be completed in the right order, with the
optimum use of active memory and a minimized number of logic steps. When programming for a parallel, distributed processing structure, the main distinction in how
you structure codes and tasks is that you will need to make sure that as few tasks as
possible will require waiting on another task. In effect, because each core has the ability to communicate with every other core at every possible moment, you will want to
make optimum use of each cores abilities by reducing this number of interactions to a
strict minimum. This may need a little explaining: the speed of the interactions is still
slower than the internal processing speed of the core. (Translating this to humans: humans can still think and process information much faster and more complete, or, with
a higher bandwidth (intensity), than they can communicate this with other humans)
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Distributed logic
The speed of processing of each single core is very high; in fact it is still much higher
than the speed of communication between cores. What has changed is that the speed
of communication between cores has been greatly improved whereby it is no longer
impractical to use this communication and on top of that, the resources that the cores
use to do their work are now shared, making it feasible if not interesting even to cooperate.
However, because the cores still work best on their own internal processing, we
will want to divide the total work into equal tasks, equal in number to the number of
cores or a multiple thereof. Instead of the aforementioned optimizing of the order of
the processing queue, which was the standard operating procedure for a single core
programmer, we now have a new main focus in multi (parallel) core programming,
in that we want as few tasks as possible
The new important competence is that we learn how to discern and filter between useful
and useless sources. Instead of relying on
someone else to filter information for us, we
must learn how to filter it ourselves. This is
where groups of people with similar interest
or experience come in.
to require other tasks, thereby triggering a wait. Any dictated sequence of
tasks will dictate waiting and cooperation, thereby slowing the speed of
processing.
Interesting from this development
of parallel versus sequential linear programming and processing is that we
see these same changes and challenges
in society. The main problem comes
from a bottleneck in the communication speed between cores, thereby pro-
hibiting, for the moment, the creation of one single-core hive-mind. The mere fact that
the core’s internal processing is still faster than the speed of cooperation drives the
necessity of tasks. Differences in cores (cpu, gpu, physix, etc.) drive the diversification
of tasks and the specialization of core’s processing or picking up of these tasks. But the
huge increase in cooperation bandwidth and shared resources has enabled the current
reconsideration of a share-oriented order and division structure, rather than a hierarchical, logical, linear/sequential structure.
What we have been trying to point out by using the above example is that society
has been given the opportunity of providing each individual with a better contribution to the group result, through an increase in communication and sharing. A better
way for organizing such a networked single entity is a system of distributed tasks that
minimized reliance. For businesses to increase their ability to provide for their human
69
assets an environment where networked problem solving and working is encouraged,
they will need to invest in their platforms for communication and sharing and reduce
their efforts at control. Instead, they should distribute to each individual the essence
of the value they are trying to provide through cooperation and leave it to each individual to contribute to that shared purpose to the best of their abilities, through their
own decisions.
Power to the user
For the individual, these are exciting times. While we are still, and even increasingly
so, dependant on each other for our survival and many of our experiences, we can
now take a more active approach to shaping how we participate in this society. Where
hierarchy dictated a competition for scarce resources, positions or complexity, a network offers to everyone an overwhelming opportunity to experience. To deal with this
increased complexity, we need to prioritize a different set of skills.
The sum of the parts
One of the most striking emerging phenomena is that of group filters. Because information is no longer filtered for us by refereeing and trusted sources, such as television,
newspapers, radio, politics, libraries, record companies or educational institutions, we
no longer need the skills of knowing how these sources structure their information;
we don’t need the skill of searching a library index or the knowledge of which page in
a newspaper hold the financial information.
Nowadays, anyone can produce and broadcast information to anyone else, without an intermediate referee. The new important competence is that we learn how to
discern and filter between useful and useless sources. Instead of relying on someone
else to filter information for us, we must learn how to filter it ourselves. This is where
groups of people with similar interest or experience come in. Already, on the Internet,
we can see such groups gathering information that is relevant to them and recommending it to others within the group. Through a form of internal recommendation,
information is filtered based on perceived value and importance. Cooperation seems
to provide an excellent mechanism for distributing this new increased load in determining for ourselves what is valuable.
70
Removing the veil
Another notable change in skill is our ability to keep our most prized knowledge and
competences private and thus scarce. In an organizational system that promoted competition, this skill made sense. Yet in a network, where negotiation and communication seem to be the key elements, privacy is an outdated concept.
As we can already see Homo Zappiens doing, for the individual participating in the
networked society of tomorrow, it is increasingly important to broadcast to everyone
else what one’s abilities, interests and needs are so that anyone who may have something to offer or may be requiring your services is able to find you. The need for privacy
is thus changing into its exact opposite, the need for attention. For us to
Everything connected
A final essential change for the individual as well as for the society of which we are all
a part, will be the realization that everything is connected. As with a networked view
on organization, creating value and learning through associative, exploratory play, we
must also see ourselves and all our experiences as being a part of us, just as we are all
an equal part of society. This means that not only is the need for privacy disappearing
71
and not only does our contribution in several groups of similar interest help both
ourselves and the other group members, but also we may come to see that those parts,
skills and interests of ourselves that defined our very uniqueness and which we often
kept hidden, are the source for the most essential contributions we can make to society.
Your personal life will become more important to organizations seeking to employ
you than where you were educated; your previous job experience will become more
important than your degree of education.
More importantly however, the things you do in your personal life, the way you interact with your children and the things you do to organize your household are the
same things you will be doing in your work and those are also the same processes you
will see occurring between groups of people and networks on both larger and smaller
scale. By embracing a networked view on life, we are returning to more basic, underlying views of natural organization and dynamics. Realizing how everything is connected and how one may learn from each level to implement this knowledge on other levels, is very valuable to any individual trying to reshape his life; it is also very valuable
to a society that is still struggling with the fear of releasing control: we will be able to
make sense of things.
l
72
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Imprint
IMPRint
Contact:
Dr. rer. nat. Frank Hees · [email protected]
Sven Trantow, M.A. · [email protected]
Department of Information Management in Mech. Engineering
Center for Learning and Knowledge Management
Ass. Institute for Management Cybernetics e.V.
IMA/ZLW & IfU – RWTH Aachen University
Dennewartstraße 27
52068 Aachen · Germany
Phone: 0049–241–80911–68
Layout
Alexander Vieß · [email protected]
Photo Credits
p. 6 / 7: Mapping infrastructure and traffic: Courtesy of Bill Cheswick, Lumeta.
in: Martin Dodge & Rob Kitchin (2001): Atlas of Cyberspace. Harlow, London:
Pearson Education Ltd.
p. 15: piksel / StockXpert
p. 20 / 21: Nadezhda Bolotina / StockXpert
p. 26: Cathy Yeulet / StockXpert
p. 31: Nessi / StockXpert
p. 32 / 33: Hallgerd / StockXpert
p. 42 / 43: Philip Date / StockXpert
p. 55: Ella18 / StockXpert
p. 58 / 59: Mapping the Cyberspace: Courtesy of Marcos Novak. in: Martin Dodge
& Rob Kitchin (2001): Atlas of Cyberspace. Harlow, London: Pearson Education
Ltd.
p. 62 / 63: Iryna Shpulak / StockXpert
Web
www.internationalmonitoring.com
www.zlw-ima.rwth-aachen.de
The project on which this publication is based received funding from the Federal
Ministry of Education and Research (ALK00200) and the European Social Fund.
Responsibility for the contents of this publication lies with the authors.
The world is not changing, we are. The frameworks
we have imposed upon the world to make it neat and
tidy, manageable and predictable, at least or so we
thought, are failing us. The dust that we had so carefully swept under the rug is coming through. What
we did not allow ourselves to notice for the past four
centuries is now coming back into view, seemingly
with an attitude. Or is it just that it has always been
there and some part of us and our society is now no
longer willing to go without it?

Trend study: Veen/Vrakking: "Homo Zappiens"

Transcription

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