Who's pulling the Net strings?

The good news in The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is hiding from you by Eli Pariser (www.penguin.com) is that as billions come online in India, Brazil and Africa, the Internet is transforming into a truly global place. But the worrying message in the book is that, ultimately, a small group of American companies may unilaterally dictate how billions of people work, play, communicate, and understand the world.

The author cautions that in the next few years the rules that will govern the next decade or more of online life will be written, and that the big online conglomerates are lining up to help write them. “The communications giants who own the Internet's physical infrastructure have plenty of political clout. AT&T outranks oil companies and pharmaceutical companies as one of the top four corporate contributors to American politics. Intermediaries like Google get the importance of political influence…”

Not in the fight

Given all the talk about empowerment through Web 2.0, Pariser finds it ironic that the old adage still applies: ‘In the fight for control of the Internet, everyone's organised but the people.' He reasons, however, that the situation is so because most of us are not in the fight. Reminding that people who use the Internet and are invested in its future outnumber corporate lobbyists by orders of magnitude, the author notes that there are literally hundreds of millions of us across all demographics with a personal stake in the outcome. His call to arms, therefore, is that protecting the early vision of radical connectedness and user control should be an urgent priority for all of us.

To those who see only the positives about the Internet — dazzling array of sources and options, new opportunities to grow and experiment with our identities, and the potential to decentralise knowledge and control — the author alerts that the pervasive, embedded filtering that is on the rise can change the way we experience the Internet and ultimately the world. At the centre of this transformation, he explains, is the fact that for the first time it is possible for a medium to figure out who you are, what you like, and what you want. “Even if the personalising code isn't always spot-on, it's accurate enough to be profitable, not just by delivering better ads but also by adjusting the substance of what we read, see, and hear.”

Taking control away

What bothers Pariser is that the shift towards personalisation is largely invisible to users and, as a result, out of our control. “We are not even aware that we're seeing increasingly divergent images of the Internet. The Internet may know who we are, but we don't know who it thinks we are or how it's using that information. Technology designed to give us more control over our lives is actually taking control away.”

Rather than lose hope about the medium, he avers that it is still possible to shift course through a combination of individual action, corporate responsibility, and governmental regulation. And that it is still possible “to erect systems that don't trap us in an endless loop of self-flattery about our own interests or shield us from fields of inquiry that aren't our own.”

Prescribed read for anyone wishing that the good things of the Net endure.

Ensuring accountability of virtual learners

The book The Learning Explosion: 9 rules to ignite your virtual classrooms by Matthew Murdoch and Treion Muller (www.franklincovey.com) opens with a twitter summary, in less than 140 characters, thus: “A creative explosion is taking place. For the first time in history, pieces of knowledge and information are accessible to nearly everyone.”

The authors capture vignettes of what people do around the world with technology – such as a teenager in Kobe, Japan, learning a new skill on his mobile phone; a mother in Johannesburg, South Africa, searching a medical Web site for how to treat her feverish child; or a woman in Copenhagen, Denmark, sharing information with others through her blog, Web site, or wiki about a topic she is studying.

In all these, what the authors see is a learning explosion, explained as the perpetual explosion of knowledge into countless learning fragments. “Fuelled by ongoing technological advances, this explosion is resulting in the worldwide distribution of new ideas, innovation, and education.”

Finding that technological advances are taking the traditional learning model and breaking it into billions and billions of pieces of information (or ‘learning fragments') accessible through Web-enabled devices or traditional offline media, the authors observe that the ability to share these fragments with friends or colleagues is a great attribute. For, “the act of sharing something we like or have learned strengthens the learning experience that has just taken place and provides additional opportunities for reinforcement and even deeper learning.”

Verbal, visual

One of the nine rules for the new learning environment is the rule of virtual accountability – verbally, visually, and kinaesthetically – to facilitate effective behaviour change. A set of ‘nine methods to create verbal accountability' in virtual classrooms begins with the power of clear expectations, because people generally like to know what is expected of them in any given learning setting. “Prepare your audience right up front with the expectation that you will hold them verbally accountable. Say something like, ‘I will be calling on you throughout the virtual classroom, sometimes by name, to answer some questions verbally. Please feel free to speak up if you have a comment or question.' Then make sure you meet the expectations yourself.”

Another technique recommended in the book is about the ‘first' question. The first time you ask a question and request a verbal answer, slowly count to 15 without saying a word, the authors counsel. Wouldn't that be uncomfortable, especially since you cannot see your audience? Yes, but by doing this one thing, you are conditioning your audience to know that you are serious about holding them verbally accountable, the authors instruct. “If you jump in and answer the question yourself, you have immediately conditioned your audience to not be verbally accountable.”

To create visual accountability, the book prescribes five methods, such as creating appealing visuals. Instead of showing PowerPoint slides endlessly, find ways to change what your learner sees in the virtual classroom, the authors urge. They suggest that you can switch where you place the chat box, poll questions, presentation slides, and other tools, if your platform allows it. “On certain text-intensive slides, you should instead consider showing just an image that visually represents what you are saying… Showing relevant videos is another great way to reinforce what you are teaching.”

Kinaesthetic accountability

Well, how do you create kinaesthetic accountability? Try the two- to three-minute rule, and create interactivity every two to three minutes, the authors guide. Acknowledging that the common standard in the industry is three to five minutes, they hasten to remind that it is getting easier and easier for learners to be pulled away and distracted. By interactivity they mean not just asking questions but coming up with ingenious ways such as polls and chats, whiteboards, tests and assessments.

Another kinaesthetic tip is to provide short offline activities, so that the learners can actually get up and do something, leaving the safety of the virtual classroom to venture into the real world and complete a task, then return and report what they discovered. Interestingly, in a section titled ‘future kinaesthetic tools,' the authors mention Kinect for Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii. “Thanks to these products, movement simulation and reinforcement can now be packaged up into small boxes, shipped anywhere in the world, and set up very easily. Some industries, like medical and government sectors, already use these forms of ‘active' learning technologies in training.”

A book that can prepare you for the unfolding life that will have learning unobtrusively woven into it.

dmurali@thehindu.co.in

Tailpiece

“The boss wanted his dashboard to be filled with so many icons…”

“That you had to put a second screen on his table?”

“No, we were already cluttering the third!”