Lecture 11

pdf version

Cultures of Participation

Gerhard Fischer, Hal Eden, and Holger Dick — Fall Semester 2010

gerhard@colorado.edu; haleden@colorado.edu; holger.dick@gmail.com;  

October 4, 2010

paper: Fischer, G. (2009) "Cultures of Participation and Social Computing: Rethinking and Reinventing Learning and Education." In Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), IEEE Press, Riga, Latvia, p. 1-5. http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~gerhard/papers/2009-ICALT-paper.pdf

Cultures and Media

• cultures are substantially defined by their media and their tools for thinking, working, learning, and collaborating

• claim: a large number of the new media are designed to see humans only as consumers

• television is the most obvious medium that promotes this mindset and behavior
• it contributes to the degeneration of humans into “couch potatoes” for whom a remote control is the most important instrument of their cognitive activities

• consumer mindsets are not limited to television

• educational institutions: learners are often treated as consumers, creating a mindset of consumerism for the rest of their lives
• Citizens often feel left out of the decisions by policy makers, denying them opportunities to take an active role

Cultures of Participation — Fundamental Challenge and Opportunity

consumer cultures

focus: produce finished goods to be consumed passively

?

cultures of participation

focus: provide all people are with the means to participate actively in
personally meaningful problems

Comments about Cultures of Participation

• “The experience of having participated in a problem makes a difference to those who are affected by the solution. People are more likely to like a solution if they have been involved in its generation; even though it might not make sense otherwise” [Rittel, 1984].

• “I believe passionately in the idea that people should design buildings for themselves. In other words, not only that they should be involved in the buildings that are for them but that they should actually help design them” [Alexander, 1984].

• “We have only scratched the surface of what would be possible if end users could freely program their own applications. As has been shown time and again, no matter how much designers and programmers try to anticipate and provide for what users will need, the effort always falls short because it is impossible to know in advance what may be needed. End users should have the ability to create customizations, extensions, and applications” [Nardi, 1993].

Comments about Cultures of Participation

• “The hacker culture and its successes pose by example some fundamental questions about human motivation, the organization of work, the future of professionalism, and the shape of the firm” [Raymond & Young, 2001].

• “Users that innovate can develop exactly what they want, rather than relying on manufacturers to act as their (often very imperfect) agents” [von Hippel, 2005].

• “The networked environment makes possible a new modality of organizing production: radically decentralized, collaborative, and nonproprietary” [Benkler, 2006].

• “The opportunity to generate vibrant customer ecosystems where users help advance, implement, and even market new product features represents a largely untapped frontier for farsighted companies to exploit” [Tapscott & Williams, 2006]

Cultures of Participation: A Reality?

<<source: Jenkins, H. (2006) Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Cultures: Media Education for the 21st Century, available at http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF>>

• a recent study (2005):

• more than one-half of all teens have created media content
• roughly one third of teens who use the Internet have shared content they produced

• characteristics of cultures of participation

• relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
• strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations
• informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices
• members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another

Cultures of Participation: Potential Benefits

• peer-to-peer learning

• a changed attitude toward intellectual property

• the diversification of cultural expression

• the development of skills valued in the modern workplace

• shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement

• more empowered conception of citizenship

The State of “Cultures of Participation” in the USA

Social Participation in US Politics

Social Participation in German Politics

Cultures of Participation — Application Domains

• while “Bowling communities” are on the decline ? new communities are forming

• examples of social media for communication:

• Facebook,
• Twitter,
• Flickr
• YouTube

• examples of Web 2.0 technologies to harness collective intelligence and social creativity

• Web 2.0
• Learning 2.0 ? more in lecture on November 3
• President 2.0 / Government 2.0
• Science 2.0
• Digital Libraries 2.0
• Electricity 2.0 (Smart Grids) ? more: Lecture on Sept 15, Nov 8, Nov 10
• Health 2.0
• Crisis 2.0 (CNN versus Bloggers, Twitter, ……)

Tag Cloud for Web 2.0 Themes

President 2.0 / Government 2.0

• basic idea:

• Instead of a one-way system in which government hands down laws and provides services to citizens
• ? use the Internet to let citizens, corporations and civil organizations work together with elected officials to develop solutions

• assumption:

• "An open system means more voices; more voices mean more discussion, which leads to a better decision

Consumer Cultures

• As the size of the audience and its geographic and social dispersion increased, public discourse developed an increasingly one-way model

• Information and opinion that was widely known and formed the shared basis for political conversation and broad social relations flowed from ever more capital-intensive commercial and professional producers to passive, undifferentiated consumers

• a model easily adopted and amplified by radio, television, and later cable and satellite communications.

Fundamental Changes Based on the Internet

• the Internet presents the possibility of a radical reversal of the domination of broadcast media

• it is the first modern communications medium that expands its reach by decentralizing the capital structure of production and distribution of information, culture, and knowledge

• the Internet has fostered a new culture of sharing, one in which content is freely contributed and distributed with few restrictions or costs

• but: technology alone does not determine social structure ? technology creates feasibility spaces for social practice

Cultures of Participation — Concepts

• prosumers (= producers + consumers)

• pro-ams (= professionals + amateurs)

• user-generated content

• wisdom of crowds

• crowd sourcing

• long tail

? What is needed:

a theoretical model to understand and foster
cultures of participation

Some Enabling Conditions for Cultures of Participation

• the object of production is information or culture which keeps the costs of participation low for contributors

• tasks can be chunked out into bite-sized pieces that individuals can contribute in small increments and independently of other producers (i.e. entries in an encyclopedia or components of a software program)

• the costs of integrating those pieces into a finished end product, including the leadership and quality control mechanisms, must be low

Elements of an Analytic Model: Understanding Strengths

• to engage the talent pool of the whole world

• to put owner of problems in charge

• to make all voices heard

• to reach extensive coverage

• to expose artifacts to public scrutiny

Elements of an Analytic Model: Understanding Weaknesses

• collective is not always better

• loss of individuality

• accumulation of irrelevant information

• lack of coherent voices

• companies offload work to customers ? drawbacks of “Do-It-Yourself Societies”

• customers lack the experience and the broad background knowledge to do tasks efficiently and effectively

Elements of an Analytic Model:
 Understanding and Analyzing Success and Failures Models

• Wikipedia = the Drosophila for “cultures of participation”

• Encyclopedia of Life = online reference source and database for every one of the 1.8 million species (with 6000 curators)

• Second Life

• Open Source

• Google-SketchUp + 3D Warehouse + Google Earth

• CreativeIT Wiki

Encyclopedia of Life

3D Warehouse (more in lecture on October 25)

Richer Ecologies of Participation:
Consumer ? Contributor ? Collaborator ? Meta-Designer

<<more in Lecture on: October 11>>

IKEA—Effect

<<source: Ariely, D. (2010) The Upside of Irrationality — the Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home, HarperCollins, New York, N.Y.>>

• Ariely's "IKEA effect":

• “Not only do we like things that we make more than similar things made by others—but we think other people should value them more as well.”
• building a toy chest for his kids with Ikea material: “I worked a lot, it was not a particularly beautiful piece of furniture, but I was actually quite attached to it. And I think that’s kind of the interesting idea, is that when you put a lot of yourself into it, some sweat and energy and anger and maybe even frustration, you end up loving the end product a bit more.”

• short movie at: http://bigthink.com/ideas/20753

Consumer and Designers — Beyond Binary Choices

• claims:

• there is nothing wrong about being a consumer (watching a tennis match, listening to a concert, ...)
• the same person wants to be a consumer in some situations and in others a designer ? consumer / designer is not an attribute of a person, but of a context
  consumer / designer ? f{person} ? f{context}

• problems:

• someone wants to be a designer but is forced to be a consumer ? personally meaningful activities
• someone wants to be a consumer but is forced to be a designer ? personally irrelevant activities

Research Challenges

• models for knowledge accumulation and sharing in different cultures

• “Long Tail” theory: making all voices heard
             ?  more in lecture on November 3

Model Authoritative underlying Consumer Cultures
“filter and publish”

• Strong Input Filters, Small Information Repositories, Weak Output Filters
• Limitation: Making All Voices Heard

Model Democratic underlying Participation Cultures
“publish and filter”

• Weak Input Filters, Large Information Repositories, Strong Output Filters
• Limitation: Trust and Reliability of Information

Participation cannot be Enforced / Designed
but only
Encouraged / Fostered / Supported

• “Built it and they will not come” (examples: Wiki, knowledge management, design rationale)

• “You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink” 

Conclusions

• 
  
  • one of the most exciting innovations and transformations

• past decades: digital media have provided new powers for the individual
• future: the world's networks are providing enormous unexplored opportunities for groups and communities
• cultures of participation ? opportunities and challenges to provide all citizens with the means to become co-creators of new ideas, knowledge, and products in personally meaningful activities

• 
  
  • engage diverse audiences

• in designing and building their own technologies in new cultural and material contexts, developing tools that democratize design.
• inspire, shape, support participation with meta-design

• 
  
  • study cultures of participation

Relevant Perspectives for Cultures of Participation

• social production ? Benkler, Y. (2006) “The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom”

• democratizing innovation ? von Hippel, E. (2005) “Democratizing Innovation”

• mass collaboration ?  Tapscott, D and Williams, A. (2006): “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything”

• wisdom of crowds ?  Surowiecki, J. (2005): “The Wisdom of Crowds”

• Long Tail ?  Anderson, C. (2006): “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More”

• Web 2.0 ?  O'Reilly, T. (2006): “What Is Web 2.0 - Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software”

• open source ? Raymond, E. S., & Young, B. (2001): “The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary”

• learning / education ?  Collins, A. and Halverson, R. (2009): “The Second Educational Revolution: How Technology is Transforming Education Again”

References for Cultures of Participation (L3D)

• Fischer, G. (2009) "End-User Development and Meta-Design: Foundations for Cultures of Participation." In V. Pipek, M. B. Rossen, B. deRuyter, & V. Wulf (Eds.), End-User Development, Springer, Heidelberg, pp. 3-14.

• Collins, A., Fischer, G., Barron, B., Liu C.C., Spada, H.: “Long-Tail Learning: A Unique Opportunity for CSCL?”, CSCL 2009, Rhodes, Greece, June pp 22-24

• Fischer, G. (2009) "Cultures of Participation and Social Computing: Rethinking and Reinventing Learning and Education." In Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), IEEE Press, Riga, Latvia, pp. 1-5.

• Fischer, G. (2010) "End-User Development and Meta-Design: Foundations for Cultures of Participation," Journal of Organizational and End User Computing 22(1), pp. 52-82.