Week 6: Thoughts on Digital Collaboration

(Readings at Bottom)

In watching the TED talk, one thing struck me about his examples of a communal value and civic value, with the LOLcats and Ushahidi, respectively. The speaker stated that communal value is created by its participants for each other, whereas civic value is created by its participants but for the whole of society to benefit as a whole. A major distinction I noticed between the two ‘projects,’ for lack of a better word, was that LOLcats are often created by individuals, whereas Ushahidi was created by a group of individuals working together. I don’t think that the speaker was saying it outright in his presentation, but I think this was a point he was getting at. It is not only LOLcats. A lot of things that I would classify as having purely communal value are all created by individuals or maybe a very small group of individuals. Examples would include gamer YouTube channels, someone drawing comics for Tumblr, or people posting funny quotes on Twitter. Similarly, the things that have civic value are more often than not created by a larger group or groups of individuals all working collaboratively. These things might include things like Arduino and VLC Media Player, where all the code is open source for people to work on and improve. I think the speaker was trying to say that as individuals, we can all create things of communal value, that perhaps provide entertainment or help for a group of people interested in that thing. However, it is when we work together and put our free time to work collaboratively that we can really create things of civic value and change society. And I think that the other articles had similar ideas, that this new digital age is an opportunity for everyone to get involved, for everyone to create. In some cases it may be of communal value, like a meme on Reddit, or of civic value, like working together to figure out how things work in the new American society, as was the case with the Karen Brothers.

            

The article talking about the Karen brothers and how they were able to network with others in the community to more easily get adjusted to America is an example of this development of a civic value. However, I wanted to focus on a bit of a different piece that is a bit of an add-on to this concept, which is largely summarized in the following quote from the article:

“For the brothers, their online worlds are their primary sites for socialization and information gathering, and, therefore, their literate lives. Their participation in online spaces provides access to social worlds otherwise denied to them because of their second-language limitations, rural isolation, and outsider status at school and within the host community.” (Karen)

There is a lot of information there, but in general, it states that for the Karen brothers, the digital world was a place for them to actively communicate and collaborate with others with the help of their knowledge of digital tools. I think that this is another piece of the idea of civic values, that anyone is able to participate in their creation. In today’s world, it is no longer professors in their labs or distinguished politicians in their offices that can change society and create these values. Instead, anyone who is able can contribute, like the open source code project of Arduino and VLC Media Player. Anyone can look at the code and look for ways to improve it, add features, or make it more efficient. If it makes the code better, the people implement it in the next version of the products. Of course, you need a baseline understanding of how the programs are coded in order to make a substantial contribution, but even someone without much coding experience can come up with and share ideas about what features they might like or ways that the code can be more efficient. Then, someone else might take that idea and implement it. It becomes a collaborative project among anyone who wants to participate, and in the end, you create something of civic value, as the TED speaker said. That’s why I think that this quotation about the Karen brothers is important, because it shows how anyone can dive in and help in these projects and share ideas, even if it means that one of the only social outlets is this digital world with which we can communicate with people from all over the globe.

            

This concept is present again in the article about the two children in the massive open online course (MOOC). In the article, it talks about how in this course, “everyone’s knowledge and experiences were valued, and participants were encouraged to experiment and play with new tools and ideas, as well as share their experiences and knowledge.” (Course) This fact demonstrates to me that this concept of digital collaboration has already been an important factor in society, since now even school-children are getting engaged in the topic. It again demonstrates the collaborative power of the digital world. Anyone with an Internet connection can get online and contribute to a conversation, and often they are helpful and productive discussions, like the MOOC. The students were able to engage and learn more about what they potentially wanted to do with their life, which I view as just another advantage to this collaboration concept. For me, this can be seen in a place called Reddit, which Victoria and I will be doing a presentation on. It fits really well into this idea because Reddit is a place of community, a place where people that are interested in the same thing or things can come together and discuss it, share what they’ve made, and further explore their interests in it. Of course, Reddit isn’t intrinsically geared toward learning, like the MOOC might be, but the idea remains the same, that people can start collaborating and share ideas with others to ultimately create something of civic value.

            

The article about the writer trying to disappear for a month has some ties to this overarching concept as well, though perhaps that wasn’t quite the point of the article. Regardless, the article demonstrates again how a lot of people can come together to work and accomplish something, in this case finding Evan Ratliff. Ultimately he was only found because thousands of people were working through the small clues they had in a huge, collaborative manhunt. It shows to me again the fact that anyone can contribute to these sorts of things, even you and me. Personally, that makes the internet that much more interesting and interactive, all because of the concept of constant collaboration which wasn’t as readily available before.

Readings for the Week

Reading 1

Connecting and Collaborating Within and Beyond a Massive Open Online Course (Course)

Reading 2

The Role of Digital Literacy Practices on Refugee Resettlement (Karen)

Reading 3

Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened (Ratliff)

Video 1 (TED Talk

How cognitive surplus can change the world