BFTP: And who needs tech skills?

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post September 4, 2007.

The lunch speaker at Kiwanis today bashed public education using slide after slide of dubious statistics. Schools don't graduate enough engineers. Too few 8th graders take algebra. Kids need tech skills. Yada, yada, yada.

Oh, he used: 

• slides that were packed with text
• slides without pictures or graphs
• slides that he read to us

And who needs tech skills? 

I am becoming increasingly frustrated by the today's Cassandras who expect skills of all students we are graduating that they themselves don't have.

Johnson’s Test Fairness Plan: Require no high school tests that the adults who insist on them can’t pass. 

Google knows what you're looking for - so what?

egocasting: Reading, watching, and listening only to media that reflect one's own tastes or opinions. -Word Spy

What ties all these technologies [iPod, TiVo, etc.] together is the stroking of the ego. When cable television channels began to proliferate in the 1980s, a new type of broadcasting, called “narrowcasting,” emerged—with networks like MTV, CNN, and Court TV catering to specific interests. With the advent of TiVo and iPod, however, we have moved beyond narrowcasting into “egocasting”—a world where we exercise an unparalleled degree of control over what we watch and what we hear. We can consciously avoid ideas, sounds, and images that we don’t agree with or don’t enjoy. As sociologists Walker and Bellamy have noted, “media audiences are seen as frequently selecting material that confirms their beliefs, values, and attitudes, while rejecting media content that conflicts with these cognitions.” Technologies like TiVo and iPod enable unprecedented degrees of selective avoidance. The more control we can exercise over what we see and hear, the less prepared we are to be surprised. It is no coincidence that we impute God-like powers to our technologies of personalization (TiVo, iPod) that we would never impute to gate-keeping technologies. No one ever referred to Caller ID as “Jehovah’s Secretary.” Christine Rosen, "The Age of Egocasting," The New Atlantis, Number 7, Fall 2004/Winter 2005, pp. 51-72.

Your filter bubble is your own personal, unique universe of information that you live in online. What’s in your filter bubble depends on who you are, and it depends on what you do. But you don’t decide what gets in — and more importantly, you don’t see what gets edited out. Eli Pariser's TED talk, Beware online "fliter bubbles" extends ego-casting

Alan November at ISTE 2012's SIGMS Forum shared bits of the Pariser's TED talk quoted above - and his personal concern about how Google uses one's personal search history to select only search results that adhere to one's interests and political values. Pariser and November both worry that showing only results that agree with the searcher's present belief system will result in the country will be come increasingly ideologically polarized.

As Rosen's nearly 10-year-old quote above suggests, selective information accessing is not a new concern. When the Internet started sending us far more information than was possible to digest, all of us necessarily developed strategies to select what we viewed and read. And naturally, we tended to select authors, pundits, news sources, blogs, etc. with whom we shared common interests and, in many cases, common values. Our own ed-tech and library PLN's are often referred to as "echo chambers."  

What is different today is that this selection process is being done for us by Google, Yahoo! News, and other search engines - in a somewhat clandestine, or at least not well publicized, fashion. Their motive, of course, is to increase brand loyalty by providing "better" search results which then increase their advertising revenue. Not unlike Amazon and the local library mentioned in the last post.

I am not quite as horrified as November and Pariser at this latest wrinkle in a long trending situation.

• Historically, all news sources have had political leanings with many cities having two or more dailies that reflect different views.
• We may limit the amount of information Google collects about us (and should be teaching our staff and students how to do so as well). It takes a bit of digging, but it is simple to turn off one's "web history" and control other privacy settings in one's personal Google account (see Google Web History privacy FAQ).
• If very concerned, a search can be conducted on Google without logging in at all.* 
• If you are logged into a Google Apps for Education account, your information is private as well. (see Security and Privacy)
• It's easier than ever to purposely find and learn views and values that may differ from one's own.
• "Customized" search results do save one from wading through a lot of stuff that simply is not of interest. I don't want or need to see news or adverts about women's clothing, hunting rifles, or the plight of endangered mountain goats in Lower Slobbovia. It's in Google's best interests to be effective in providing the returns I like and want. 

Genuinely curious people have always sought to learn all sides of issues. While I lean somewhat to the left of center politically, I consciously seek the writings of conservatives - David Brooks, George Will, and Cal Thomas for example. - Sorry, I can't bring myself to listen to Rush.) For those of my "older-than-dirt" generation, the newspaper in print (or print style online layout) exposes one to a wide range of information and opinions. And despite what some conservatives believe, NPR does a pretty fair job airing multiple views of most issues. 

Decrying (or limiting) Google's customization of search results will not result in a less divisive political climate, I'm afraid. But good teachers and librarians teaching students how detect bias when evaluating sources of information, along with the skills to browse more privately, just might.

*Online entities can draw some conclusions about you without you having to log into their site. Your location, type of computer, and type of web browser all impart some information about you. For example, since I access the web using a Macbook Air running Chrome from a lake in Minnesota, Google already knows I am a manly guy of above average intelligence, exceptional good looks and great wit. They know me so well.

Amazon knows what you're reading - so what?

I expect the less tradition bound [reader] will expect and use some content flexibility [built in to the book of the future]. Main character’s name is the same as your ex’s which spoils the mood? Do a little find/replace, and “Call me Ishmael” becomes “Call me Ralph.” (or whatever). Set the latest Stephen King to mild, scary or terrifying, or your Harold Robbins to suggestive, lurid, or Don’t-Let-Yer-Mom-Catch-You-Reading-It! Only like happy endings? Select that version. The Future of Books, Doug Johnson, 1995

Readers of "Great Escapes," an erotic romance series co-written by Linda Wisdom and Lynda K. Scott, can customize the hero's appearance and the intensity of the love scenes. Your E-Book is Reading You, Alexandra Alter, 2012

We protect each library user's right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired or transmitted. Code of Ethics of the American Library Association, 1939

I will admit that I find engaging with a friend, a librarian, or a bookstore clerk who knows me and my reading interests a very happy experience. While the NYT Book Review is authoritative, I have to wade through a lot of "literature" reviews to get to the stuff I really liked - mysteries, gritty historical fiction, and hard science fiction. The knowing librarian doesn't bother trying to pawn any book off on me that may have the word "sensitive" in its review or to suggest anything that a high school English teacher would assign.

Amazon, my e-bookstore of choice, uses a form of artificial intelligence/data mining to provide a reader's advisory service as well. By examining my past purchases and the degree of interaction I've had with them*, my Amazon screen displays long lists of recommenced titles. And yes, they do it to increase the number of books I will be tempted to purchase. And yes, it works. However, the human librarian and the bookstore clerk are also motivated by the same somewhat self-serving objectives - to increase circulation and sales.

Alexandra Alter in her Wall Street Journal article "Your E-Book is Reading You," (read the whole article - it's really fascinating) writes:

Barnes & Noble, which accounts for 25% to 30% of the e-book market through its Nook e-reader, has recently started studying customers' digital reading behavior. Data collected from Nooks reveals, for example, how far readers get in particular books, how quickly they read and how readers of particular genres engage with books. Jim Hilt, the company's vice president of e-books, says the company is starting to share their insights with publishers to help them create books that better hold people's attention.**

What? - a publisher studying the interests, needs, and buying habits of consumers to better tailor its product to meet those interests, needs and habits! Heaven forbid this were applied to athletic shoes, fast food, or automobiles. We, as consumers, might get what we want instead, perhaps, of what's good for us.

It's a double-edged sword, this others knowing your tastes, interests, and political learnings.  You go online and people are going to learn something about you, like it or not. But this kind of information can help marketers filter out the irrelevant in the fire hose stream of information that blasts at us everyday. And that is a good thing, not just for the marketer but for me, the consumer, as well so long as I understand that I AM being targeted.

We'll look at the dark side of the "what others know about you" force in the next post.

* I wonder what Amazon will make of me purchasing Fifty Shades of Gray (more erotica?) but then only managing to read the first half before giving up on it (less erotica?)

** Could apply the same data mining techniques be used to create and select books for reluctant readers in our schools?