Us Now, FE and Government
Steph at DIUS asked about lessons for FE and Govt from the "Us Now" film. My first reaction was something along the lines of "they're going to have problems".
I was watching Us Now with a group of student friends a few weeks back (thanks Ivo for sending openmedia a copy), and one of the things that was mentioned in an extremely interesting debate afterwards was that Us Now didn't deal with anything where there was active conflict - possibly differing priorities - but nothing where there was substantial and vocal engagement of disagreement. This was (probably) by design - it's currently really, really hard to do, let alone explain, let alone on camera.
The current toolset for activists is variants of google services (blogs, docs, email, youtube) and twitter, facebook and mailing lists - swapping in and out of those over time. Twitter's just launched an inclusive SMS service in the UK - you can get broadcast text services pretty much for free - it's currently vodafone only, but that will change over time. But there's one thing that's easy to miss in all of those, which is where DCSF/DIUS should start to worry.
School children, traditionally a group that have been ignored, now have the same or better communications and organising tools as everyone else; even more so than that traditionally active group - university students. The reason they have better use of the same tools is that those in school have as got more time, and as many ideas, as anyone else, but generally fewer preconceived notions or wider political agendas. One thing that will appear is that there's much more diversity in source and ideas, and less inbuilt/systematic experience. As a result, there will be more loosely connected groups doing more in different places, at different times, with similar aims. Trying different things, and not knowing all the conventions and rules that usual protestors think you have to do. There'll be the same splits between those who hope meetings cure all, and painting banners being a good use of time. What happens when your average school gets hit by a highly agile engaged protest; I'm not sure. But I doubt the system as a whole will cope well with it (which is not to say that individual schools or staff wont cope well, some almost certainly will; but someone will also do something stupid and get headlines).
A tangent on that note, I wonder how long till facebook adds a feature to allow group/event admin to push tweet style status messages into a users message stream. That'd make the new layout far more useful, and fix many of the things that don't yet work right with the new layout.
While Little Brother is a (great) work of fiction, it's not fundamentally impossible that someone will get that pissed off with something that disproportionately affects them - University fees will come up next year, with the Universities' having that conversation anonymously, and the parties hoping to bury it, and the NUS doing whatever Labour want. Those in school now will be affected almost exclusively, in ways no one else will be. What happens when an eloquent and photogenic 15 year old asks on youtube why Brown/Cameron want to prevent her going to university for financial reasons. I'm surprised that the equivalent has not already happened in the climate movement - the Age of Stupid's archivist character today is currently around 16 years old.
"Internet mechanisms not actually solutions to problems, they are just networks so that people can talk to each other about what they are interested in and care about. Which is what we spend our time doing anyway, online or off." was the closing note in my notes from a few weeks back.
One question I await the answer to with interest from the engagement aspect; as the Age of Stupid is to An Inconvenient Truth, what will be to Us Now?
I was watching Us Now with a group of student friends a few weeks back (thanks Ivo for sending openmedia a copy), and one of the things that was mentioned in an extremely interesting debate afterwards was that Us Now didn't deal with anything where there was active conflict - possibly differing priorities - but nothing where there was substantial and vocal engagement of disagreement. This was (probably) by design - it's currently really, really hard to do, let alone explain, let alone on camera.
The current toolset for activists is variants of google services (blogs, docs, email, youtube) and twitter, facebook and mailing lists - swapping in and out of those over time. Twitter's just launched an inclusive SMS service in the UK - you can get broadcast text services pretty much for free - it's currently vodafone only, but that will change over time. But there's one thing that's easy to miss in all of those, which is where DCSF/DIUS should start to worry.
School children, traditionally a group that have been ignored, now have the same or better communications and organising tools as everyone else; even more so than that traditionally active group - university students. The reason they have better use of the same tools is that those in school have as got more time, and as many ideas, as anyone else, but generally fewer preconceived notions or wider political agendas. One thing that will appear is that there's much more diversity in source and ideas, and less inbuilt/systematic experience. As a result, there will be more loosely connected groups doing more in different places, at different times, with similar aims. Trying different things, and not knowing all the conventions and rules that usual protestors think you have to do. There'll be the same splits between those who hope meetings cure all, and painting banners being a good use of time. What happens when your average school gets hit by a highly agile engaged protest; I'm not sure. But I doubt the system as a whole will cope well with it (which is not to say that individual schools or staff wont cope well, some almost certainly will; but someone will also do something stupid and get headlines).
A tangent on that note, I wonder how long till facebook adds a feature to allow group/event admin to push tweet style status messages into a users message stream. That'd make the new layout far more useful, and fix many of the things that don't yet work right with the new layout.
While Little Brother is a (great) work of fiction, it's not fundamentally impossible that someone will get that pissed off with something that disproportionately affects them - University fees will come up next year, with the Universities' having that conversation anonymously, and the parties hoping to bury it, and the NUS doing whatever Labour want. Those in school now will be affected almost exclusively, in ways no one else will be. What happens when an eloquent and photogenic 15 year old asks on youtube why Brown/Cameron want to prevent her going to university for financial reasons. I'm surprised that the equivalent has not already happened in the climate movement - the Age of Stupid's archivist character today is currently around 16 years old.
"Internet mechanisms not actually solutions to problems, they are just networks so that people can talk to each other about what they are interested in and care about. Which is what we spend our time doing anyway, online or off." was the closing note in my notes from a few weeks back.
One question I await the answer to with interest from the engagement aspect; as the Age of Stupid is to An Inconvenient Truth, what will be to Us Now?
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