The video first explores the concept of hyper-connectivity. Hyper-connectivity says that things no longer have to be arranged in linear or hierarchical fashion to be connected and coherent. For most of recorded history, ideas and information have been organized in linear, hierarchical fashion: we tell stories in linear narratives (beginning, middle, end) and reason deductively (general > particular) or inductively (particular > general). But on the Net, information is not arranged linearly or hierarchically. Rather, it is arranged in a fluid network in which any bit of information can be hyperlinked to any other bit of information, regardless of where it is. Actually, this is much closer to how nature arranges information, say in our brains or in a galaxy.
We've already started talking about hyper-connectivity through the notion of co-presence, which is a kind of hyper-connectivity that links person to person regardless of physical location. This blog is performing a hyper-connective function by connecting the 50 people of the classes together regardless of when and where we are when we write or read on it. It is also connecting each of us to Michael Wesch's video above.
Hyper-connectivity implies connections, and who or what makes all those connections in a network of information? The video says that we do. And this is the second big concept that the video explores: Web 2.0 is very democratic. How? Most anyone can join the conversation, say pretty much anything they want, to just about anyone that they want. The communication tools are there for all of us to use, and we can say most anything we want to say. This, of course, is one of the key points that Benkler makes in The Wealth of Networks:
The networked information economy improves the practical capacities of individuals along three dimensions: (1) it improves their capacity to do more for and by themselves; (2) it enhances their capacity to do more in loose commonality with others, without being constrained to organize their relationship through a price system or in traditional hierarchical models of social and economic organization; and (3) it improves the capacity of individuals to do more in formal organizations that operate outside the market sphere. This enhanced autonomy is at the core of all the other improvements I describe. Individuals are using their newly expanded practical freedom to act and cooperate with others in ways that improve the practiced experience of democracy, justice and development, a critical culture, and community. I begin, therefore, with an analysis of the effects of networked information economy on individual autonomy (8,9).
This power of anyone to create the connections among the Web's countless bits of information is what makes Web 2.0 so democratic. I am creating links to other bits of information within this blog, and you can do the same. Even though I am the teacher and exercise much power because of that industrial-age position, you are free to contribute, to make new connections that I didn't think of and may not even approve of. You could start your own IDST-2215 blog, showing how everything on this blog is just so much drivel, so old-school, so irrelevant.
Of course, as Benkler also notes, lots of people are not happy with this power in the hands of the great unwashed and uneducated. Many people don't like this hyper-connectivity in the hands of everyone. Your professors, for instance, don't like you hyper-connecting through cell phones and laptops when in their classes. They want to control your attention and make all the connections for you. They don't want you doing it for yourself.
Of course, as Benkler also notes, lots of people are not happy with this power in the hands of the great unwashed and uneducated. Many people don't like this hyper-connectivity in the hands of everyone. Your professors, for instance, don't like you hyper-connecting through cell phones and laptops when in their classes. They want to control your attention and make all the connections for you. They don't want you doing it for yourself.
- What kinds of hyper-connectivity do you see at work in your personal/professional lives?
- What are the potentials of all this hyper-connectivity?
- What are the dangers?
- At what age and under what circumstances should people be free to hyper-connect?
- What personal/professional connections have you created recently?
