Our ideas come from a collection of conversations, books, articles, blogs, and videos among many other sources. We are active participants in what is coined the Read/Write Web in which someone takes a little content to produce a little content. We are both consumers and produces at the same time.
It’s very gratifying to receive an email weeks after a training in which I can tell the person was mulling over our content and now has produced some content of their own in the email. Last week I received this type of email from Larry Androes of Bossier Parish Community College.
Hi Tom!
I attended the talk you gave at Bossier Parish Community College about two weeks ago. I was one of the two students who stayed to talk with you (I would have thought everyone would be wildly exited by these ideas). I was the guy with grey hair and a cane, and I talked with you about the exponential curve of all this information.
I definitely want to be included in the information you are getting through the del.icio.us site. Hopefully, my email is enough for this connection.
But I also wanted to take a moment to express how important I think what you are doing is. On one level, it is certainly about advising students to be careful about their online identity and using it to pursue future goals.
…Yet on another level, you are part of a wave nudging young people toward a paradigm shift in how they conceive personal identity, moving from physical to digital. This cultural shift might be the biggest change since one of our ancestors picked up a rock and used it to crack a nut.
So, at a deeper level, you are teaching kids to change their inner software – outmoded beliefs about who they are (physical, local, separated) – toward a new dimension of global digital identity that is supported by our expanding technology.
I am reminded of two current streams of thought. One is by Peter Russell, who talks about different revolutions in our history – agricultural, technological, information, and consciousness. Each is exponential, but they differ in the rate that information/knowledge doubles. If I remember correctly, the information revolution doubles every six years and began in the early 1900’s, and the consciousness revolution doubles every three years and began in the 60’s. So we are now seeing huge changes in who we are and how we know the world.
I also think about the Spiral Dynamics ideas, in which portions of humanity are opening to new memes, or ways of interacting with the world. The turquoise and coral spirals are about global consciousness and new neurological capabilities.
I thought of a couple of ideas – there are probably already five dozen web sites I don’t know about yet (that’s the way it is with exponential curves):
- For our physical identity we generally use a mirror; we look at a mirror for feedback about who we are physically. We need the equivalent of a mirror online for our digital identity –something like a ‘digitalme.com’ – where we could click and see a view of our current digital presence (a Google list just doesn’t do a striking reflection). I am thinking of a page that would look something like kartOO.com.
- Parents need to start at the beginning with the idea of digital identity. We need something like a ‘firstdigitalfootprint.com’. “Hey! Flipoo was born yesterday. Google him – check out his website and profile.”
- I’d also like to see a page one could pull up – oneself as a circle in the center, with online contacts as circles connected to that one (kind of like a mind map). And if you clicked on a connected person’s circle, you could see all of their connections – and so on outward. It would be a fun way to explore how many degrees of separation existed between you and any other person on the internet (What is the shortest path between you and the Dalai Lama?).
Thanks for stimulating some new ideas!
Larry Androes
