The Future of the Network Illiterate was a topic of discussion in this weeks symposium that ties in well with some of my blogs last week about a new emerging parameter of class distinction, forget serfs and the bourgeoisie, it’s as simple as the literate vs the illiterate. I wrote about this last week with a focus on coding and programing but this weeks symposium touched on an area I only unpacked in the tutorial and just touched on in the last blog; the everyday experience of network illiteracy moving forward from where we are.

It was touched on that future employment options could very likely be heavily dependent on persons network literacy, and extremely limited for those who had little to no network literacy, not just specifically the technical literacy, that is the nuts and bolts of coding required for building virtual spaces on customer and public engagement (touch on in last weeks blog), but also what I’ll call, for lack of better term, a structural literacy; the understanding of the how the network is networked, understanding the sum of it’s parts and the pathways of connectivity between them, and what Adrian referred to as the social literacy of networks, regarding the rules and ethos governing the network. It was basically predicted by some on the panel that, and I would tend to agree, your career progression will rely on an ability to exploit your knowledge of all these literacies to navigate and manipulate networks in order to gain the most from those networks your professional role operates within.

That is to say if you don’t understand how to get maximum value from a network, you have less value to those shaping it or trying to carve out a corner of it for their objectives or messages, as connectivity increases the roles that this will apply to will only increase. If you do not have network literacy you, your experience of the network is blind, unguided, and you are driven by the network rather than you driving the network, like the illiterate hitchhiker from Adrian’s story, unable to read the map or directional signage.