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Reflections on...

Personal Connections in the Digital Age by Nancy K. Baym

This reading immediately reminded my of Zadie Smith's speech from my New School graduation ceremony. In Personal Connections in the Digital Age, Baym questions the tendency to focus attention on the negative effects that technology has had on our communication. Communication through digital messaging is often viewed as preventing human connection. Young people are described as disconnected, lacking interpersonal skills because they don't communicate face to face, etc. Offline communication is valued over online. However, this is only one side of the story. Baym describes the positive ways in which people use the internet for innovative and useful communication. As we read in Program or Be Programmed it is not the technology, but how we use it. Technology has both negative and positive effects on our lives and our interpersonal communication. 
Zadie Smith's specifically spoke about the millennial's reputation for phone gazing in her 2014 commencement speech. Her words have stuck with me since. I often felt like one of those millennials who is always on their phone instead of in the world and felt guilty about it. I love how Zadie Smith reframed this phenomenon. "For aren’t you always connecting to each other? Forever communicating, rarely scared of strangers, wildly open, ready to tell anyone everything? Doesn’t online anonymity tear at the very idea of a prestige individual? Aren't young artists collapsing the border between themselves and their audience? Aren’t young coders determined on an all access world in which everybody is an equal participant? Are the young activists content just to raise the money and run? No. They want to be local, grassroots, involved. Those are all good instincts. I'm so excited to think of you pursuing them. Hold on to that desire for human connection. Don’t let anyone scare you out of it."

I also loved how Baym referenced science fiction writing that puts its finger on the ways humans interact with and are effected by technology. I also find science fiction an underrated way of playing out our potential technological and societal futures. 

New Opportunities for Arts Learning in a Digital Age by Kylie Peppler 

Takeaways 

• Digital media as a gateway into students interests 

• Greater access- ability to self teach and learn by doing outside of school 

• Potential of Social Learning Networks- combining online networks with offline networks (schools, libraries, museums etc.)