Sept. 17 - Design to Thrive - Chapter 8

Howard's final chapter discusses further applications of the RIBS criteria, as well as the broad implications of new social media in today's digital landscape.  The first section uses a few of the protests via Twitter over the 2009 Iranian national election happening as an example of how RIBS can be used not only to build social media, but also to analyze them.  Through this sort of analysis one can determine what elements are missing, and then what steps need to be taken in order to implement them.  Twitter has become one of the most widely used social media tools today largely due to the fact that its relatively simple involves the RIBS criteria in a very straightforward way.  For instance, Howard explains that Twitter's hashtag and retweet (RT) functions are directly aligned with what we call "protocols of belonging," and the socially charged political moment of the 2009 Iranian election made those who protested via Twitter feel a strong sense of significance.

On a more large-scale level, however, the profound impact social media has on our world every day can be, in Howard's words, a double-edged sword.  Once social media begins to affect larger institutions, issues of control over the information being shared begin to emerge.  And this, people, already is and will continue to be one of the primary issues regarding information technology as we delve further into the twenty-first century.  Intellectual property rights, open-source information, creative control - no matter what angle you approach it from, addressing such a topic is a slippery slope in today's digital environment, and I feel that a single chapter just scratches the tip of the iceberg on the subject.  However, Howard rightly steps back and looks at the grand scheme of things - on the "strategic" level - to get us started in thinking about how information today should be shared.  The first copyright laws were implemented for much the same reason they are today - for protecting not only the legitimacy but also the integrity of information.  As information, still in the form of books, steadily became more available and affordable, issues of control over information become more and more relevant, and possession of information began to shift from the institutional to the authorial - I was reminded by Howard's mention of Gutenberg's printing press of Project Gutenberg; this massive, ongoing effort to digitize existing print media for electronic access is compounding the work of their namesake as they continue to do essentially the same thing Johannes Gutenberg did hundreds of years ago.  Today, with the waning of print culture and the emergence of the "Eye Generation," the rights of authors, artists, and information in general are changing forever.  And with social media as one of our primary forms of communication, Howard would agree that, with our RIBS criteria in mind, our best bet is to focus not on the tactical, but on the strategic impacts of information sharing in the digital age.

Sept. 10 - Made to Stick - Ch. 6 - Stories

Sept. 10 - Made to Stick - Ch. 6 - Stories

This chapter details the various aspects of effective stories.  First, for a story to be effective, it must contain some sort of wisdom.  Heath and Heath use children's bedtime stories as a good example - and Samuel L. Jackson would agree - kids tend to request bedtime stories simply for entertainment rather than some sort of moral lesson or enlightened insight.  For the older crowd, however, Heath and Heath tell us that "stories are effective teaching tools" (205-206).  What does it take for a story to be an effective tool for teaching, then?  It must provide simulation - "illustrat[ing] causal relationships that people hadn't recognized before" - along with inspiration, as was the case of the underdog nurse who offered the right diagnosis rather than the chief neonatologist.  A story that provides both simulation and inspiration, Heath and Heath write, is "geared to generating action" (206).

The reason a story told just for entertainment would be an ineffective tool for instruction is because it involves  a passive audience.  An effective story, however, is both entertaining and instructive because its instructive potential in fact stems from its entertainment value.  Heath and Heath refer to studies showing that an instructive, entertaining story actually puts the audience more in the role of the story's protagonist than the detached observer.  One process that gets an audience more involved in a story is called mental simulation, and is "not as good as actually doing something," write Heath and Heath, "but it's the next best thing...  Stories are like flight simulators for the brain" (213).  Essentially, an effective story is a kind of simulation.  It provides the immersion necessary to get an audience to fully grasp a concept through a combination of entertainment and inspiration, and it requires them to actually get in the story and work through it in their own head as if they actually experienced it.  The story of Jared Fogel, told through Subway's famous advertising campaign, is a perfect example.  It is entertaining, inspiring, and immersive  - all of which are part of what makes a story stick.

Sept. 3 - Getting Involved 

Chapter 3 of Design to Thrive details the various reasons for building communities online.  It lists ten different reasons before describing each one of them in detail, but the main point I took away from the chapter as a whole is that they all relate to interconnectedness.  For instance, the first point, which I feel is the most valuable of the ten as it applies in some way to each one of them except reducing costs, talks about "intellectual capital."  This concept is perhaps one of the most fundamentally useful aspects of social media: through open communication available only through online communities such as blogs and forums, members and visitors alike are able to draw from information posted by others while contributing their own input to what I like to call a sort of collective hive.  The "hive mind" resulting from these unique media can quickly become loaded with information put forth by not one, but every individual who contributes, creating a single entity of collected data.  This, I feel, is the basis of why social media has become such a powerful force in the digital age.

Gillin's chapter on social media engagement discusses the value in tapping into what he calls various "conversations" online, and gets into specific ways one might go about accessing such information.  The first step, he explains, is simply realizing that there now exists a vastly more diverse and extensive network of information online than ever before.  To increase one's social media awareness is to involve oneself in social networks and become exposed to new opportunities and resources online.  Another way to uncover information through social media is to use search engines and websites, as well as the various features available through those resources.  For instance, one little-known Google feature which I've used throughout my college career narrows search results to include only those resources available through academic institutions; simply typing "site:.edu" before a search phrase will yield results coming only from sites ending in ".edu".  One wonders how, without references such as Gillin's text, anyone might go about learning the extensive features of such resources as Google, but it seems the best way to do so is to simply get involved in social media.  In drawing from and contributing to intellectual capital available through those media, it's often surprising how easily one can find useful information online.