This recent New York Times article provides an interesting perspective on the popularity of networking sites. Some academic researchers argue that the recent growth of online social networking and the popularity of sites like Friendster and Facebook are reminiscent of ancient patterns of oral communication in tribal societies. One of them argues that “the popularity of social networks stems from their appeal to deep-seated, prehistoric patterns of human communication” because “we evolved with speech, we didn’t evolve with writing.” The way we express ourselves online is more like talking and this “orality”, which is participatory, interactive, communal and focused on the present” is what “unites people in groups.” (Walter J. Ong, coined the term “secondary orality” in 1982 to describe “the tendency of electronic media to echo the cadences of earlier oral cultures.”)
An anthropologist studying a tribe in Papua New Guinea now applies the same ethnographic research methods to the rites and rituals of Facebook users. He sees parallels between how ones’ identity in tribal cultures is wrapped up in the question of how many people one knows, not unlike on Facebook, where you define yourself by the friends you have.
Obviously in virtual reality it matters much less who you know, because your real, and not virtual, survival does not depend on it. The biggest difference is the superficial nature of online “friendships” but it is this shallow bond and the elimination of the need for physical proximity which stimulates online intimacy. “That distance makes it safe for people to connect through weak ties where they can have the appearance of a connection because it’s safe.” So how does all this new way of relating to each other affect the way we… relate to each other? Some “worry that the rise of secondary orality may have a paradoxical consequence: It may be gobbling up what’s left of our real oral culture.”
I wonder about one more thing. Apart from their use as purely networking/fun/hobby spaces, these sites are used as pedagogical tools, for instance when we start a Facebook page to encourage semi-academic discussion among our students. And so, when we employ these methods to reach out to our students, who are obviously well versed in them, are we risking that we will make them less “cool”, thus subverting our own purpose and making students less likely to use them in learning/teaching processes? Or maybe a question like this is redundant. In the time I spell-check this message and click the “post” button, a brand new networking site will be up, starting as a small, “cool” outlet, and spreading through the virtual world, until us educators get a whiff of it and make it “lame.”
This article from The Independent finds that students are weary of allowing academics to intrude into their spaces, while teachers often find that their students’ Facebook pages provide insights into the students and offer an opportunity to connect. These sites are private, independent, and can decide on membership, content and the discussions that take place there are not sanctioned by the universities, even if often there is some learning going on and students may be building real connections, something a university will welcome. Some professors are weary of using such a private forum for knowledge sharing and argue that academic work on Facebook is inappropriate while there are plenty of new technologies that can be used in teaching, such as discussion groups, wikis, or Second Life, but social networking is not one of them, unless it’s restricted to an institution’s virtual-learning environment.
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