In the symposium, Adrian refuted the claims that most of us born in the digital age are network literate, which surprised me because I too had come to that conclusion. Adrian argued using the example of FaceBook that simply because we know how to use it doesn’t mean we know how it works. FaceBook exploits people by letting them unveil personal information about themselves; who they are, where they go, what they like, and then sells that information to other parties. In this sense, we are what he coins as “The Worker Ants”. “Just because I know how to change the wheel on my car doesn’t mean I am a mechanic.”
Most network literate individuals are self-tought, and maybe that is because we never really learned how to ask good questions. As Adrian said, ambiguity is often more helpful for learning outcomes. But for those who don’t take it upon themselves to question and find answers, they end up having no literacy to know otherwise, and end up being just a part of “the system” as we so often hear it being called.
If, on the other hand, we do delve deeper into it, we can begin to understand that no longer can we say “I didn’t get to the end”. That logic becomes obsolete with the invention of hypertext, the individual parts are interconnected and there is no end to it in sight. This is also why, Adrian remarks, that gated services such as Myspace cannot survive. It is those (such as FaceBook) which allow for growth and exploitation that will inevitably succeed.