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♪[Jazz music]♪

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So yeah, being one of the first

0:00:09.418,0:00:14.398
net culture or computers in society writers

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was, strategically, a poor move for me.

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And I'm living proof, though, [br]you can still survive it,

0:00:22.175,0:00:26.975
if you can get through it somehow, [br]by answering e-mail more slowly

0:00:29.135,0:00:29.971
It's funny,

0:00:30.421,0:00:33.121
I wrote some notes because I thought [br]I should be responsible,

0:00:33.121,0:00:35.591
because you guys are real computer studies,

0:00:35.591,0:00:38.436
computer science people,[br]as opposed to just,

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you know,

0:00:39.856,0:00:44.786
your average,[br]digitally illiterate audience.

0:00:45.736,0:00:50.060
So I don't really need to make the case[br]- I probably don't -

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on why learning something about [br]digital technology is a smart thing,

0:00:54.380,0:00:57.331
because you guys have already[br]made that choice.

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But something that occurred to me [br]on the way here, actually,

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that you might not realize as young people

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if you don't mind being called that

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...is that it's very hard to get

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an accurate sense of the biases [br]of the digital media environment...

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...when you've been raised inside it.

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In other words, what I want [br]to suggest to you is that

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those of us who are old enough to have [br]experienced and consciously experienced

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the shift from a pre-digital media [br]environment to a digital media environment

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actually

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understand something or sense something[br]or experience something

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[br]about the biases of digital technology

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that is relatively difficult for those [br]of you who have been raised

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with digital technology to get.

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Right now this is the opposite argument [br]I made through most of my career.

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In 1995, I wrote a book called [br]Playing the Future, where I argued that,

0:02:06.443,0:02:08.187
"Don't worry, you grown ups![br]

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Digital technology is coming [br]and you feel overwhelmed.

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But you guys are digital immigrants [br]whereas kids are digital natives.

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So you're gonna speak the language like [br]an immigrant, they're gonna speak the language like a native.

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You're always going to feel [br]slightly out of place and unsure,

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and every time you have a hypertext link,

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you're gonna be disoriented [br]because we're not used to that,

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where kids are going to experience [br]that very naturally.

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That what looks disjointed to us, [br]will be a natural terrain for them.

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And they will have command, [br]don't worry, the kids are alright."

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But as I've grown older and [br]as I've watched where cyberspace has gone,

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and where our culture has gone, or hasn't,

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I realize that some of my elders were [br]actually more right about this than I was.

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And in reading all the -

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finally catching up [br]with who I was supposed to read,

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when I was younger, McCluen and Ong, [br]and all the great media theorists.

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I would read about the digital or[br]the media environments

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and this notion that McCluen had that

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if you ask a fish about water he wouldn't [br]be able to tell you what it is, right?

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Because the fish is swimming in the water.[br]The fish not aware of the water.

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If you ask someone who is raised [br]in a television environment,

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"Oh, what about the impact of television [br]on you?"

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You can't say it because you're living [br]in it.

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You're living in that media environment.

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Likewise, those of us who are living in [br]a digital media environment,

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it's very difficult for us [br]to parse its effect,

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for us to feel what it is

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for us to understand the difference [br]between

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what it is to be a human being

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and what it is to be a digital being.

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And

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being able to parse it, though, [br]being able to begin to look at that

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What Norbert Weinert used to call,

0:04:03.210,0:04:04.510
"the human use of human beings."

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He was one of the first people to talk [br]about cybernetics

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I think he invented the word, actually, [br]back when, cybernetics -

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Even though it got stolen.

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He was really looking at as we develop [br]a computer environment,

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how will we recognize, what is the difference

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between humans and the machines [br]that we're in?

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How will we understand how to create [br]a human,

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or a humanity-encouraging, [br]digital media environment?

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Now the reason why I think this [br]is important is because most of my peers

0:04:36.014,0:04:39.384
strongly disagree with this sentiment

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Most of my peers, and call them [br]the sort of,

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the Negroponte, Kevin Kelley,

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Wired Magazine, Chris Anderson,

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all the way to Ray Kurzwhile [br]on that spectrum, Clay Shirkey.

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There's this sense, and I used to have [br]some of it,

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that's uncomfortably consonant with [br]corporate capitalism.

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But that's another story.

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this sort of letter ripped sense [br]about technology

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That

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human beings are merely one stage

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in information's inevitable evolution [br]towards greater states of complexity.

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Right, and they tell this very compelling story

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about the beginning of time all the way [br]through now.

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That matter has been groping [br]towards greater states of complexity.

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That we had - atoms became molecules[br]and molecules became

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sort of these weird pre-proto-life things[br]which became cells

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and now we have this whole life thing [br]that happened.

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And life got very complex[br]through evolution

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and we had people

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And people built machines,

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and machines are just sort of in that big[br]blue, overtake humanity moment.

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And when they do,

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then machines, our computers, our networks[br]will be the real host

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for the evolution of information

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and we human beings can tend [br]to those machines

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or, at best, upload our consciousness

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and then they will continue that journey [br]for us.

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You know, and each one has [br]a different metaphor for explaining it

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You know, whether it's Kevin talking about

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what technology wants, right? [br]What technology wants,

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like it really wants.

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It's not bias towards something, but [br]it wants something,

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we've made this thing.

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Just as God made people, [br]people made technology,

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and this child will go on [br]wanting something.

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Or Ray Kurzwhile who will talk [br]about the singularity,

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which I'm sure you've all read [br]or heard about, even on,

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if you find out about it in Vice Magazine[br]or anything, at this point

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The idea that technology reaches [br]this point of,

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not self-consciousness or self-awareness [br]necessarily, but it just surpasses us

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It becomes this thing and can keep going.

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It's a...I don't know, it's a...

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for me it's a discomforting view[br]of humanity

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but it's also, I would argue, [br]an incorrect one, you know?

0:07:08.672,0:07:11.672
It's one that is...

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it's one that is the result of living [br]unconsciously in a digital media environment

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It's one where you let the digital media [br]environment dictate

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what you are and how you think [br]about the world

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rather than maintaining some [br]sense of humanity in that.

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So, what's interesting to me

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as I look at the history of computing, [br]which now we have

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and as we look at computers in society, [br]which is a real thing.

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I mean, 20 years ago, 10 years ago,[br]when we taught courses like this,

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it was futurism.

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Computers in Society was a course in,

0:07:43.531,0:07:46.331
"What's it gonna be like someday [br]when people have e-mail?"

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I mean, there were times, and I'm sure [br]you were in those conversations

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when people like me used to go [br]to a cocktail party

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or go to a publisher, [br]or explain to a magazine editor:

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someday people are going to have [br]their own computers

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They are gonna send messages to each other [br]using little text editors

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using, you know, word processors,

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and they would literally laugh us [br]out of the room.

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They did not - it seemed so outrageous, [br]that - or they'd walk around

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No, you're not gonna have [br]to implant chips in people,

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they're gonna walk around with phones that[br]are gonna track them everywhere they go

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they're gonna do this voluntarily

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They're gonna give all their information .[br]No one believed us.

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But, of course that happened.

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But, the thing to me that's interesting [br]about computer history,

0:08:25.637,0:08:29.122
if we're gonna follow it from [br]the history of humanity

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rather than the history of [br]technology, right?

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Let's not worry about paper tape [br]to punch cards to tape to discs

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to hard drives to RAM.

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Let's not worry about machine evolution.

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But you look at the difference [br]in people, right?

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If we look at history as the human story [br]rather than the story of stuff

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then the interesting thing becomes

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the big switch, I think, is the shift from[br]a pre-literate to a literate society.

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When we look at the impact of [br]the printing press.

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Do we talk about it in terms of

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"Oh, look! [br]These rooms filled up with books!"

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No, that's not the part [br]that's interesting.

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The part that is interesting is [br]people learned to read

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and then when they learned to read,

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they had personal interpretations [br]of the Bible, right?

0:09:19.962,0:09:23.372
So we had a Protestant Reformation[br]with people rebelling against the Church

0:09:23.372,0:09:25.192
So we had the idea of "one man, one vote"

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because everyone has [br]their own perspective.

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It coincided with prospective painting.

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It coincided with central banking.

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And all of these other, very...

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analogous

0:09:37.642,0:09:41.712
human inventions that were all about [br]people having individual perspectives,

0:09:41.712,0:09:43.712
"one man, one vote" -[br]it led to the Enlightenment

0:09:43.712,0:09:45.712
and all this other stuff, consumerism,

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Industrial Era and everything else.

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When we look at digital technology [br]I think we have to look at it that way.

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In other words, what is[br]the difference between

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a pre-literate digital society and [br]a post-literate digital society?

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You know, I'm over arguing for [br]digital literacy.

0:10:03.722,0:10:07.582
I think digital literacy is inevitable, [br]you know?

0:10:07.582,0:10:11.684
I feel like I'm making that - when I...[br]it's my main talk that I do.

0:10:11.684,0:10:13.254
It's like "Program or be programmed!"

0:10:13.254,0:10:15.094
And I wrote this book,[br]Program or Be Programmed.

0:10:15.094,0:10:17.264
and we have to learn to program.[br]If you don't learn how to program,

0:10:17.264,0:10:20.544
you're just swimming blindly [br]in a sea of information.

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Kids don't understand the biases [br]of the technologies they use.

0:10:23.634,0:10:25.314
If you ask a kid [br]what Facebook's for,

0:10:25.314,0:10:27.574
he'll say Facebook's here[br]to help him make friends.

0:10:27.574,0:10:28.974
But we all know Facebook is [br]really not here -

0:10:28.974,0:10:32.104
it's really here to monetize [br]the social graft and all that.

0:10:32.503,0:10:35.823
And then arguing, you know, that[br]the Chinese are gonna come to take our military

0:10:35.823,0:10:39.083
and the Iranians are gonna take [br]our banking and we gotta take - something

0:10:39.163,0:10:46.773
any argument I can to try to have schools[br]teach basic digital literacy in elementary school,

0:10:46.783,0:10:51.905
in junior high school, [br]so that we're not stupid. Which we are

0:10:51.905,0:10:55.123
And it's like arguing, can you imagine when[br]they invented text, people saying,

0:10:55.123,0:10:58.903
Oh we're gonna have to learn 22 letters[br]which is 22 letter alphabet at the time

0:10:59.074,0:11:01.514
we're gonna have to learn these letters[br]in order to read

0:11:01.629,0:11:04.539
Well, let the rabbis read, [br]let the kings read, but the people don't

0:11:04.649,0:11:06.999
have to read, do we, we regular people. yes.

0:11:07.069,0:11:09.579
it's like people are so confused [br]on this angle

0:11:09.732,0:11:14.522
but we will win this part war.[br]just as people learned how to use e-mail

0:11:14.661,0:11:20.011
and people decided to use phones[br]people will eventually, we will teach kids

0:11:20.159,0:11:25.609
how to use digital technology[br]they won't be completely blind

0:11:25.896,0:11:29.896
the misperception now is that [br]learning how to program is kind of like

0:11:29.984,0:11:32.844
becoming an auto mechanic[br]it's like "well I can drive a car"

0:11:32.919,0:11:35.429
"why do I need to know how [br]it actually works"

0:11:35.570,0:11:39.000
We're not talking about the difference[br]between an allround mechanic and a driver

0:11:39.000,0:11:41.740
we're talking about the difference between[br]a driver and a passenger

0:11:41.740,0:11:45.430
a programmer is the user of the machine

0:11:45.430,0:11:48.280
If you don't understand the code[br]you're not using the machine

0:11:48.280,0:11:52.590
You are the used You are maybe the customer[br]but you're not the producer

0:11:54.200,0:11:57.846
And that's where you get to the real biases[br]of the digital age

0:11:57.846,0:12:00.956
which are easy for those of us who are[br]around before that to get

0:12:01.110,0:12:05.520
The bias of the digital age, [br]of the digital era is toward production

0:12:05.520,0:12:09.520
That's why it's digital[br]where do we even get the word digits from

0:12:09.520,0:12:12.620
Digits are the fingers. [br]They were ten fingers. Digital

0:12:12.620,0:12:19.330
This is digital media. [br]This is media that is constructivist

0:12:19.415,0:12:21.765
It's media that you make stuff with

0:12:21.771,0:12:25.771
The media before digital [br]was all receive only

0:12:26.741,0:12:30.741
It was all... they were no[br]Do you still read write-only

0:12:30.741,0:12:34.741
read only files. Is that still existing?[br]Oh good

0:12:34.741,0:12:38.221
For me, when I understood what digital was[br]was the first time

0:12:38.221,0:12:42.741
when I was asked to save a file [br]on the Princeton mainframe computer

0:12:42.741,0:12:45.451
And you had to save a file

0:12:45.451,0:12:47.291
this is before we used papertape to save [br]your program

0:12:47.291,0:12:49.071
when you actually could save to a disc

0:12:49.071,0:12:51.641
And it asked me "is this gonna be a [br]read-only file?"

0:12:51.641,0:12:55.111
Is this gonna be a restricted file or [br]read-only file or a read/write file?

0:12:55.441,0:12:59.241
And all of a sudden I went[br]"Oh my god"

0:12:59.389,0:13:03.389
You mean all of this time they could have[br]been saving this stuff as read/write

0:13:03.389,0:13:07.389
And I looked back at the media [br]that I had been exposed to

0:13:07.478,0:13:10.968
I mean, I was a Brady bunch kid[br]and television was a read-only medium

0:13:11.134,0:13:15.314
television and radio, all the broadcast [br]medium, all the book, everything I got

0:13:15.398,0:13:19.398
these were read-only media

0:13:19.551,0:13:22.661
and now I was stepping into a world where [br]we had read/write media

0:13:22.661,0:13:26.661
Where everything that was put out there[br]if it wasn't being made changeable by me

0:13:27.533,0:13:31.533
Then it was a conscious choice of [br]the author to restrict that changeability

0:13:32.455,0:13:38.085
but the bias was towards me being able[br]to copy that file and change it

0:13:38.391,0:13:42.391
Or not even copy it, just change the file[br]that was already there

0:13:43.508,0:13:47.508
And that kind of flipped it around[br]that's when I realized[br]

0:13:47.639,0:13:53.289
"Oh my gosh. if this really works[br]If digital technology really happens

0:13:53.289,0:13:58.778
Then it will be as big a change on human[br]society as text itself

0:13:58.996,0:14:02.086
It's gonna be that big a flip[br]And text was a big flip

0:14:02.173,0:14:06.173
When we got text[br]when we got the 22 letter alphabet

0:14:06.279,0:14:10.279
We got contracts, we got accountability[br]We got the judeo-christian religion

0:14:10.529,0:14:12.069
We got linear time

0:14:12.202,0:14:16.202
We got cause and effect ultimately

0:14:16.280,0:14:20.280
Text allowed us to put something down[br]and leave and someone else could read it

0:14:20.623,0:14:22.053
it changed...

0:14:22.194,0:14:25.424
if you think about the difference between[br]an oral civilization

0:14:25.474,0:14:28.304
where other people have to be in the room[br]with you to get something

0:14:28.616,0:14:32.616
and a text civilization where you can[br]leave it, go and then someone else finds it

0:14:32.707,0:14:34.987
all of a sudden everything is different

0:14:35.403,0:14:39.933
This shift that we are undergoing now is[br]as big as that

0:14:40.194,0:14:44.394
and what happens is a -[br]certainly the last 600 years

0:14:44.407,0:14:48.407
but probably the last 2000 years of [br]emphasis towards

0:14:49.249,0:14:53.249
sort of a top-down control of [br]not just civilizations

0:14:53.648,0:14:57.648
but organizations, families and [br]pretty much every thing

0:14:57.890,0:15:04.310
and religion's changes to[br]a bottom-up, peer-to-peer conncected

0:15:07.650,0:15:11.132
not just sensibility but organizational[br]structure

0:15:11.700,0:15:17.080
And it doesn't seem like a big deal[br]if you are in it[br]

0:15:17.312,0:15:21.312
It seems like a very if you lived[br]in a world that couldn't imagine it

0:15:21.549,0:15:25.549
The only way people were able to imagine

0:15:25.588,0:15:29.588
Something like the digital reality before[br]we had digital reality

0:15:29.588,0:15:32.388
were psychedelics people.[br]those were the people

0:15:32.391,0:15:35.091
It was Ken Kesey and the merry pranksters[br]and Timothy Leary and those guys

0:15:35.091,0:15:37.401
getting people to drop acid [br]so they could see

0:15:37.483,0:15:40.763
"Oh I get it, it's all connected"

0:15:40.763,0:15:43.813
People would go off to Tibet and hang out[br]with a Lama and learn Buddhism

0:15:43.813,0:15:45.593
And go "Oh it's all one, every thing is[br]one"

0:15:45.593,0:15:49.323
But it didn't seem real. It was like[br]that was some weird spiritual other thing

0:15:49.610,0:15:52.220
It is if you to look at your computer[br]history

0:15:52.334,0:15:55.824
It's why psychedelics people were hired by[br]

0:15:55.824,0:15:58.514
Sun, Northrop and Intel

0:15:58.514,0:16:00.364
In the early mid eighties

0:16:00.364,0:16:03.924
Because they were the only people who were[br]capable of programming

0:16:04.419,0:16:07.089
They were the only people who were really

0:16:07.089,0:16:09.759
them and children were the only one[br]who could grasp

0:16:09.759,0:16:11.759
this kind of bizarre hallucinatory reality

0:16:12.369,0:16:14.509
but it was that different

0:16:14.796,0:16:18.796
And it is why so much of the psychedelic[br]bandwagon, including Stewart Brand

0:16:18.796,0:16:22.796
who was kind of the publicist for [br]the Merry Pranksters, Ken Keseys

0:16:22.796,0:16:26.796
it was a big 1960s thing called[br]the Merry Pranksters

0:16:26.796,0:16:30.796
Which was a kind of...[br]It was propaganda for

0:16:30.796,0:16:34.796
the acid enlightenment of that period

0:16:34.796,0:16:37.386
He became Stewart Brand of [br]the Global Business Network

0:16:37.386,0:16:41.386
It's Stewart Brand who started [br]or co-started the well for

0:16:41.386,0:16:44.036
The first online bulletin board[br]and really told the counter culture

0:16:44.036,0:16:48.036
It is okay, what led to the homebrew[br]computer club and apple computers

0:16:48.107,0:16:51.867
which was, again, a psychedelic invention

0:16:51.963,0:16:55.963
These were two Reed College acidheads [who][br]came up with it on a bong stained carpet

0:16:56.051,0:16:57.891
of their dorm room