Category: Popular Culture

Balancing Your Physical and Virtual Life (Tip #1)

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Da-ding, Da-ding!  Is that your phone notification of something incoming?  Hadn’t you better check it?

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Over the past few years, as more people utilize smart phones for instant access to information and communication, I keep running into the same concerns.  Time and time again, a new smart phone owner will tell me “It has changed my life!”  Then, I observe them exit our physical reality to enter the “other places” that await us on mobile devices: news sites, social media, photos, memes, content creation tools, curation applications and innovation entertainment activities- just to name a few.

We all see it everywhere we look….people staring into screens.  Yet, what do we reach for the moment we awaken each day?  Our phones.  How do we feel when we forget our phone at home?  I have heard people say they feel everything from vulnerability to actual fear.  

Just where IS everyone heading?  I took this picture on the bus because everyone near me was on a mobile device.  Nobody was “on the bus” with me!

Eric Pickersgill, an artist who photographs digital culture, shares some haunting images at Removed.  We all see people “removed from our world” every day.  I have heard jokes about the zombies around us- people who are not really with us.

My daughter, a tech savvy creative and intelligent young woman, recently suggested I write a blog post with tips on balancing physical and virtual life!  She had not heard of FOMO and realized she had personally felt that sensation (FOMO= fear of missing out) that her phone was beckoning her to a world beyond….a world where important things were happening.  The world beyond our physical surroundings, on our digital devices, takes us to a place where boredom no longer exists and where we can be both active and passive with no rules or constrictions.  Yet, deep in our souls, we feel a slight discomfort (if not horror) knowing that we can never master keeping up with the incoming and never really exit the small reality of our tiny individual life.

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Which leads me to…

BALANCE TIP #1 Intentional Disconnection Time

Find a time to leave your device and do not touch it!  Schedule yourself a PHYSICAL WORLD ONLY time, if only an hour a day.  During that time, focus on physical reality:  deep breaths, trees, textures, hot tea, smiles, and your five senses.

You could add prayer, yoga, meditation, or a walk outdoors, or even housework!  But, the idea here is to be consciously disconnected.  While connecting with others across distance is an amazing new opportunity, it can overtake and overwhelm us unless we can find a balance between the physical and the virtual world.

Contemplate your disconnection time.  This may seem too obvious or too easy.  But it really isn’t when you think about it.  Our phones are always with us and it takes intentional effort to disconnect for a period of time. More tips to come!

Think Before You Speak or get #digitalvertigo

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My mom used to remind all of her kids (and grandkids) that “everything you think does not need to come out of your mouth”.  You can keep some ideas and words to yourself.  If you don’t think first, you may regret it later.

A new way to phrase this idea might be, “Think before you post”.  As social media sites urge everyone to share life in digital formats, many rush to the opportunity.  The idea, like most ideas, is not new.  Napoleon Hill was one of the first to say “Think twice before you speak” and also one of the first “motivational self-help” proponents of the modern personal success genre.

Here’s another book on the topic that cautions us (think Sherry Turkle and Nicholas Carr) about the pleasures of sharing our lives online.
Title:  #digitalvertigo: How Today’s Online Social Revolution is Dividing, Dimishing, and Disorienting Us Author:  Andrew Keen

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I like the clever use of a hashtag in the title.            

Notice all the post-it notes sticking out the side of my copy?  On a side note, I really like physical books because I can put those tangible notes inside!  Sure, I can highlight on an ebook, but going back to find my notes is not as “obvious” to me and I end up forgetting I even have an electronic copy.  (More on that another day.)

Many ideas for blog posts can be seen in the numerous post-its.  But I will only share one because I have learned that the chance of anyone reading a long blog post is nil.

Participation in social media has changed the way we live, think,  and interact.  Jonas Lehrer states, “While the Web has enabled new forms of collective action, it has also enabled new kinds of collective stupidity”.  Lehrer is a contributor to Wired magazine.  He cautions that we are moving from “the smart group” to “the dumb herd” and reminds us that real insight means “thinking for oneself” (Keen, page 51).

Following the crowd has always been dangerous but #digitalvertigo gives some real world examples about how the phrase “think before you speak” is taking on new meaning in digital culture.  We all have digital voices now.  We all can speak and can be heard.  The keyword that we mustn’t forget is…..THINK.    

No Need to Read This

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A blog poem

Thousands of posts, millions of voices
sharing thoughts and tips
the important
and the tiny glimpses into tidbits of life

Everyone participates

Everyone has a voice

Everyone is someone and (perhaps) everyone is nobody
“I’m Nobody, Who Are You” (Emily Dickinson)

She hid her poems in dresser drawers- not caring who might read them.

May we write what we write

not to market ourselves
not to “go viral”
not to even care who reads
but because

it must be said.

In Defense of Virtual Worlds

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A colleague sent an email expressing concern over posts criticizing librarians for “still being involved in Second Life“.

I replied by email and she suggested I share.

I wrote:

“The ability to “fly” in virtual worlds? That’s nothing! A generation of video gamers now considers gaming a literary genre (and many are cinematic and well-researched). Virtual worlds are not video games- but this evolution of literacy changes everything. The argument that the majority of mainstream culture uses Facebook is ridiculous. The majority of mainstream culture also values convenience over quality, triviality over authority or accuracy, and self-absorbed “packaging” of our personal lives over anything meaningful.

This conversation is not about Second Life, but about virtual worlds….and they are not going away. My physical library is only half of what I do. We all have both physical and virtual lives (after the digital revolution and the toppling of the information hierarchy). The question is whether to spend my virtual life in a flat, narcissistic, space where popular culture and cute photos are streamed nonstop or seek out interesting, intelligent people on a global scale who can help me move toward a better future for this post-physical world. You all understand that…..and that is enough for me.”

Yes, I also read Roy Tennant’s blogpost when ALA closed an island in Second Life. I did not reply, mainly out of respect for this esteemed colleague. I have credited Roy Tennant as the first library professional that I heard state that in our information world today, “convenience trumps quality”. His statement was a turning point for me. I began to see a different kind of information-seeking behavior in my physical library. I began to actively explore digital literacy and changing formats.

I understand that SL is not the “be all end all” of education or libraries. Virtual worlds are just one piece of information literacy. I am humbled by the amazing colleagues I have worked with in virtual worlds and I am proud of the huge amount of effort it took to earn a PhD on the topic (not to boast because I understand I am just one small person contributing one tiny piece of the research on the future of information literacy). I have worked very hard to understand how to separate my “personal” perspective from my professional contribution to my field. My experience includes organizing five virtual world exhibits, numerous presentations, discussions, learning machinima, and networking on a global scale. I could not have accomplished any of those experiences in my physical library- even through using webinars and other distance learning tools (of which I am familiar). Second Life is only one company, which happened to provide a great array of tools for early adopters of virtual worlds. Having explored many other virtual worlds, for many other purposes (business, military, medicine, and so on), I certainly am not attached to one in particular. Slamming Second Life is not offensive to me, but putting down librarians?! Whew…don’t get me started.

For more information on my dissertation topic, I will be presenting an overview on Nov. 18th in Second Life. For information on other virtual worlds, contact me. Meanwhile, I return to my awesome physical library where I struggle to teach critical inquiry to students who want to play apps and interact on mobile devices.

New position in librarianship: Infoculturist

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Publisher of Community.  I couldn’t help but think about content creation and user-generated content.  I have been creating content for my school library for 20 years, through producing a weekly edited news show called “EETV” for Ethridge Elementary TV.  The show has evolved from old VHS format to DVD and mp4 (among other file types). So, content creation has been a part of librarianship for decades.  However, user-generated content shared online has been growing like crazy since Youtube launched. The core values of librarianship promote acquisition of the best content available and much of the user-generated content we find online today hardly qualifies as even watchable. Our culture is becoming, we all know, a participatory one.  The library stacks are no longer perceived as top dog in information.  What Melvil Dewey called “man’s heroic deeds” in the literature of the 800 section has been pushed back behind Pinterest and Instagram. I enjoyed the blogpost from Michael Stephens contemplating new roles for librarians. The online name I chose for myself, Valibrarian, is out-dated but (I hope) remains quaint.  We do need new titles that emphasize services we provide with better nomenclature!  One of my favorite metaphors for a library is that of a garden. One of Ranganathan’s 5 laws for library science stated that “a library is a growing organism”. I am remindeed of how the gardener plants and weeds.  So, I thought about the word horticulturist or agriculturist. Here’s a nomination for a librarian job title:  infoculturist.  Whaddaya think?  Any more ideas?]]>

The Emperor’s New Clothes (you and me)

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I am the child who is calling out, “Look!  The Emperor is wearing nothing at all!”

Hush!  You cannot say such a thing.

The emperor, in my analogy, is us.  Those of you scanning blogs, nings, social personal network sites, twitter, and a host of Web 2.0 user-generated content spaces (which I should name but I know people only stay tuned to a post for an average of 12 seconds) may identify with this blog post.  With our smart phones in our pockets and our many computer portals close at hand, we have built up a momentum of constant sharing.  Each of us, if we are honest, has personal interests and goals- one of which is simply to “keep up” with the current information (r)evolution.  We can’t.

Just as mankind always has, we look to each other (friend/follow) for guidance.  And in that quest to stay onboard the fast moving train, we gracefully glide from station to station (phone, computer station, portal, email check, tweet, Facebook post, network check, IM, text message).

Secretly, in our hearts, we think about getting off the train.  We remember days when an hour was spent in contemplation.  We remember things like:
the joy of making something with our own hands
reading a book
baking bread
no ringtones to distract us to some other place

The emperor is wearing nothing.
Nothing at all.
I am taking a break for a moment….just to reflect.