“Those connections on your computer aren’t real…” and other falsehoods

I may or may not have heard a speaker recently cite the rampant use of digital devices by millennials. In this discussion, said speaker might have referenced Facebook and other tools by saying, “I have a hard time convincing kids that those people on those sites aren’t real. Even if they’re your friends or whoever else. Those connections aren’t real. You can’t make real connections that way.” This marred an otherwise spirited discussion (that again, may or may not have happened) that was not about social media at all.

I suppose this is a common mistake people make. It doesn’t take a Luddite to believe that social media is all about little e-people who don’t have real narratives, tell real stories and communicate real thoughts. Does it mean people don’t get confused in texts sometime? Sure. But how many times have you misunderstood something a person told you in real time? For me, that happens pretty often even if it’s someone I speak with and see very often or consider very close to me.

If you subscribe to this blog, you’re already a kind of true believer and I don’t need to convince you. I write this instead to illustrate the kind of thinking g that’s still pervasive amongst Boomers and other anecdotal culture experts who see first-hand what happens in the social media purview of their own world and want to extrapolate messages from that. Make no mistake, I recognize there are inherent problems with digital addiction and our first-world societal over-reliance on technology to do things we used to do manually.

But let’s trivialize real, meaningful connections that happen online as silly simply because we don’t understand it. And if you hear someone else being dismissive, speak up. We might know better, but I learn everyday that lots of other people are far behind the awareness of the things happening each and every day.

Starting from scratch

Everyone can’t be on the cutting edge. While most people are having bleeding edge discussions about how to move forward faster, it’s always worth remembering that some institutions are just happy to be driving on the information superhighway at all.

I’m not sure what direction I’m heading with this blog, but I figure it might be an opportunity to reflect on the other side of things. While much of my life is very digital, it’s always nice to disconnect and spend time with people who live differently. For these folks, the internet is a vast array of trouble and something their kids use. When you talk to those kids, it’s not a world that represents opportunity to them, but rather, a tool that helps them achieve very specific aims.

I feel we’re not doing a very good job in higher ed of preparing today’s so-called digital natives for the future. While they might be adept at seeing what’s out there, they’re not really sure what value these tools have. Maybe the kids at Tier I institutions do, but kids living on the fringes of those places are getting the short end of the stick — not because they don’t care — because they’re not getting access to the right information and don’t know where to look.

I’ve always been skeptical of the assumption that every bleeding edge technology needs to be adopted to stay ahead of the curve. I think foremost, our job in higher education is to be responsive to our audience and to the market. Sure, we can go places they haven’t reached. We can also push the envelope. But at some point, there’s a concern that we’ve extended the conversation well past the folks we’re trying to reach and have entered a tautological discussion with ourselves.

Sometimes that can be fun. I’m just not interested in them right now. Last week was my first as the webmaster a rural community college on the border of Wyoming and Nebraska. This obviously presents a diverse array of interesting perspectives to the fore, but I relish the challenge of going into the trenches where people often don’t, to provide the sort of experience that I’ve done in much bigger places. 

To think you’re going to go someplace new and “change their ways” is naive. Much of what I do in a new role is to listen and see what people are doing. Watching how things are done and building relationships is far more valuable than trying to throw perceived weight around, hoping to move an agenda through condemnation. 

It’s hard to crowdsource ideas in a wide swath of land where broadband is scarce and like-minded people are few and far between. It doesn’t make blazing new trails any less important.

We’ll see where it takes us.