Catalyst: “Network literacy is not merely knowing about this, it is doing it. It is in this doing that we can understand that literacy is an applied knowing, or if you prefer a knowing through doing.… It is being comfortable with change and flow as the day to day conditions of knowledge production and dissemination, and recognising that all of this may change, and appear differently in six months. What underlies such change, however, are the principles of distributed content production and sharing, folksonomies, trust networks and having access to skills that let you collate and build with these varieties of content and knowledge….. Network literacy means recognising that there are no longer canonical sources and having the skills to find what it is you think you want, of being able to judge it, and then of being able to incorporate this, in turn, into your knowledge flows. Finally, networked literacies are marked by your participation as a peer in these flows and networks — you contribute to them and in turn can share what others provide.”

The following extract addresses several concepts and arguments related to the idea of network media and literacy. For example, the seemingly ever changing and never ending development that society has witnessed with media and technology, as well as the importance and relevance of promoting oneself online in todays predominantly digitally based consumer market.

Firstly, network literacy is traditionally defined as “the set of skills and competencies related to understanding how networks, particularly the Internet, function”, while media is commonly seen as “the main means of mass communication”. The evidence suggesting that the importance of practicing network literacy and understanding how the Internet functions as a media platform is overwhelming. Ever since the start of the 90s, we have witnessed the birth and rapid growth of the online and digital world, namely, the Internet.

This then raises several questions as to what will happen in the future. If digital technology and media are growing at such an extensive rate, will the madness ever end? How can I use what I know about network media to effectively “advertise” myself online? Will the Internet survive, or will it eventually die out?

Why this image? With respect to the idea of the Internet potentially dying out, I thought of a current situation where this theory could be applied. As noticed by several people, books and “physical” text documents are gradually being replaced by digital text and webpages. This idea was touched on in The End of Books – Or Books Without End? : Reading Interactive Narratives by Douglas Yellowlees. Books are ancient; I am sure any young person would agree with that. We live in an age of Kindles and online webpages, who has time for books? I can simply Google what I want to know, I do not have to sift through umpteen pages of otherwise unimportant information. In today’s world, time is money people. Read a novel you say? Why? I will just download a movie for free in high definition.

When all of this is taken into account, the future of media is inevitably uncertain. Books have been around for centuries, but there is undoubtedly a significant decrease in their use and importance, particularly amongst the younger side of a population. Seeing as all of this attention has been shifted onto the Internet where so many things are easily available online to people all over the world, this must be taken into account by a network media professional. If you want to gain recognition and build up this “online persona”, there are several ways to go about it for free. People all around the world attempt to make viral Internet videos that spread amongst a community at an unbelievable rate. A recent example can be seen with a phone reviewer showing YouTube how easy it is to bend the new iPhone 6 Plus, receiving over 20 million views in just one day.

Humans are all about progression and change. Douglas suggests looking at book as “a highly refined example of a primitive technology,” (Douglas, 2000) yet the new ways in which we consume media are seen as “primitive examples of a highly refined technology” (Douglas, 2000). These seemingly contradictory labels co-exist with one another because the Internet and digital media are still seen as a new trend. For the vast majority of our existence, we have not had to rely upon the importance and use of technology, yet so many people can’t imagine a world without it. In fact, it has been around for such a short time that many people still consider modern technology to be “still at the icebox stage” (Douglas, 2000), suggesting that there is undoubted a great amount of potential room for improvement and innovation in the future.

The Internet has become the new marketplace, where arguably rules that apply in real life do not apply there. Perhaps this will eventually lead to its downfall, and what has happened to books several times throughout history as seen with the Nazis and the Soviet Union era will repeat itself. People will do anything in their power to silence the spreading of free ideas and different opinions, the start of which can be seen with the ongoing battle to stop online piracy.

This music video explores the issues of how technology can be seen as a bad part of our evolution, and that this digital period is ultimately unnatural. I feel that George Landow and his theories on hypertext and how important media has become with modern education echoes these points further. Having laptops in schools was unheard of and ridiculous! Now if you don’t have one, you’ll probably fail and be left far behind. Landow goes as far to say, “all individual texts will electronically link to one another,” (Landow, 2006) suggesting that hypertext will eventually take over and dominate the ways in which we are presented with text. Books and physical pages are a thing of the past, and the consistently new ways to communicate with people that are being introduced must be adhered to, should one want to succeed in the digital world and not be left behind in what many consider to be “the stone age”.

I was born in 1994, so I have been able to see and experience the beginnings of old and new technology and media. I only got my first mobile phone when I was 13 years old, and the best thing it had to offer was a colour screen, not even a camera. Nowadays, you see kids playing around with iPhones and iPads as if it is no big deal. More high tech phones come out every 6 months with useless applications like a 70% chance of success rate heart rate monitor. When is this madness going to stop? However, these crazes can be seen as a positive thing for people in the media industry as the creation and viral promotion of these new fads and trends open up the possibility for completely new projects to take place (like the hash tag for example). Therefore, keeping up to date with this “online fashion” allows one to understand how the digital market operates, and how to effectively promote and maneuver oneself around this vast, public system. It is as if networked media has become “a fact of life so basic that we cannot imagine being without it” (Watts, 2003), comparable to every day basic tasks such as showering or eating food.

“Internet 3D” by Giuseppe1999 – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Finally, this is when the literal “networking” idea within media is brought into context. Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age by Duncan Watts fascinated me, and reminded me about what my drama teacher told me when I was in year 8. She told us about a game people played called six degrees of separation, where you name people you know who name people they know and so forth. Eventually, the trace may end at someone famous or noteworthy. After hearing about this, I went home and told my Mum who then told me that the nephew of a family friend of ours was dating the lead singer of Wheatus (Teenage Dirtbag FTW).

It is amazing how connected we all are in the world thanks to the Internet, but with such power to publicise yourself comes great responsibility. Anything you post online or store on a device is there forever, cyberspace is a complicated thing but there are people out there who know what they are doing. Any comment you leave on any page will remain there, and any photos you upload are available to people all over the world. Media professionals must keep this in mind with regards to their online portfolio, and the potential desire to strongly keep their professional and personal life separate. Any future employers can Google your name to see if he or she can surface any unwanted secrets…so be aware! However on the other hand, we should most definitely be abusing this potential for sharing to its full extent! Create free accounts on services that can help you out like blogging websites that aim to exercise your potential. Being so connected and having such a high level of involvement in the online world has never been more important as it is now, get out there and utilise these free services to your advantage. Who knows…maybe you have a hidden talent that awaits your recognition?

In conclusion, there is a lot to take into consideration when entering the digital world and predicting what shape the future will adopt. By looking at past and current trends that people, accurate predictions of the future of media start to take shape. Although the more “seasoned” readers may maintain that it was better in their day and that books are good and technology and digital media is bad, it has allowed an enormous amount of potential and room for development. Regardless of whether or not the Internet will be around for as long as books, it goes without question that any form of future media will uphold significant similarities with the system we are currently using. The Internet is one of the most ingenious ideas to ever be executed, and this seemingly simple and innocent online space where people from all around the world can share anything with one click has lead to large-scale events, such as overthrowing a government. The future of the Internet remains uncertain and ever changing, and by constantly immersing yourself into it and taking the time to read, research, collaborate, and share ideas, new areas for growth can be unleashed and explored.

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Bibliography

• Douglas, J. Yellowlees. The End of Books — Or Books Without End?: Reading Interactive Narratives. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.
• Landow, George P. Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006. Print.
• Watts, Duncan J. Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. London: Vintage, 2003.