... and then our tools shape us

My series of retrospective reviews of seminal  learning and technology books continues. I have scoured my personal book library in search of a dozen books that have influenced my own thinking, and share a synopsis of their contents with you. For previous reviews start here. Today's book recommendation is the fifth in the series:

Howard Rheingold (2002) Smart Mobs: The next social revolution. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books.

There are several books that make an impact as soon as you pick them up and start reading. Smart Mobs is one of those books. I first read it whilst a new academic and still finding my way, and I read it in a time that pre-dated what we now know as social media. Mobile (cellular) phones were just beginning to make their impact on society, and were starting to penetrate sufficiently into the public consciousness to provide the media with occasional stories. In writing Smart Mobs, Howard Rheingold, one of the pioneers of virtual communities and internet communication, created a land-mark volume on the social revolution that at the time was only just gaining ground. I don't believe it is too early to declare that Smart Mobs has been instrumental in shaping the way we have come to understand how smart phones can be used as tools to organise, motivate and sustain social movements. The book remains a significant contribution to the discourse around learning technology.

Rhiengold takes us on a global odyssey of mobile communication, telepresence, pervasive computing, RFID, barcode readers, alludes to crowdsourcing and the 'wisdom of crowds' (before these concepts were defined) and even predicts wearable computers and the emergence of tangible computing - the internet of things - as he draws together his arguments to describe a future that is defined by, and through prolific ownership of personal devices. In an envisioned world where information is ubiquitous, Rheingold uses down to earth, accessible prose to argue that the only barrier to accessing this information is the ability to use a mobile device:

'Think of all the public places where inexpensive chips could squirt up-to-the-second information of particular interest to you - such as the time your flight leaves and animated directions to your destination in an unfamiliar city - direct to your phone. Point your hand-held computer at a restaurant, and find out what the last dozen customers said about the food. Point your device at a billboard, and see clips of the film or music it advertises, and then buy tickets or download a copy on the spot. Not only will products and locations have websites, but many will have message boards and chat-rooms' (p 95).

Howard Rheingold is prescient indeed in his predictions. He uses the language of the time, declaring correctly that customers will demand conversation to supplement business and retail experiences, but within a decade, this functionality would be taken up by Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. The implications for education were also implied within this passage of text. Any educational organisation still ignoring the supplementary techno-social dimensions of the learning experience is anachronistic, and out of touch with reality.

The final chapter of Smart Mobs poses some interesting philosophical questions. He exposes many of the psychological and moral dilemmas around wholesale adoption of new technologies, describing the impact of technological disruption including the changing (and possible eroded?) role of centralised media and services, personal choice, privacy, freedom and democracy, relationships, and legal issues. He reveals some rich complexity when he says:

'For most people, individual decisions about the roles of mobile and pervasive technologies in our lives are more likely to involve matters of degree rather than crisply binary choices. I suspect that thoughtful technology usage in the future will require each person and family to decide which settings and which times should be sequestered from the reach of communication media' (p 184).

Rheingold then poses perhaps the most important question in the entire book:

'Will we be wiser in our choices of how to use the small screen in our hands than we were with the TV screen in what used to be the family room? (p 184).

In hindsight, we failed to learn from the lessons of the television. As Marshall McLuhan once said: 'We shape out tools and then our tools shape us.' Just how has the smart phone shaped us? Perhaps we are still finding out. The final word in my review comes from a conversation Rheingold reported he had about new technologies with an Amish gentleman:

'It's not just how we use technology that concerns us. We're also concerned about what kind of people we become when we use it' (p 185).

Photo by Biser Todorov (Wikimedia Commons)


... and then our tools shape us by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.