These are my
liveblogged notes from ASTD Tech Knowledge 2013 Opening Keynote kicking off
today January 29, 2013 in San Jose, California.
Apologies for typos and incoherence.
danah boyd
Microsoft Research
Networked Learned:
How Tomorrow’s Workers Will Challenge Today’s Organizations
@zephoria
http://www.danah.org
Thinking through
organizational change that matters.
She has been tudying teenagers for the last decade: from
Friendster to Facebook to fragmented apps today of Instagram, Tumblr, etc…
Interested in the inflections where technology meets with
society
What is the culture around the production of new
technologies?
How technology sector
has radically changed its way of working.
Transformation happening around the boundaries of
organizations. We used to think of people working in contained organizations.
Young people are saying this makes no sense. In a networked world why would you only talk
to people in your org? Why not talk to everyone?
Young people assume information flows faster. Where you
don’t keep secrets from people who can help you. This is confusing and counter
to organizations.
Young people find ways of challenging the status quo of how
boundaries work.
Technology Sector
In last 15 years, a shift in how programming happens and how
it’s changed the industry.
Back in the day you read a book on programming and you
followed the rules. And you slowly understood the code through simple
implementation.
She studied computer science – where they had a formal
planning process. How will I use this
code in the future? Compiling code took time – you made sure your code was
perfect. It was very formalistic.
About 10 years ago, the way people coded changed. It didn’t take hours to compile. Young people
were taking code from all over the place and shoved it together. And they
didn’t know how it worked. Building collages of code. Frankenmonsters of code.
This was alien to software engineering. This is not how
you’re supposed to code.
Now you have ecosystems where people share code (GetHub) –
the process of sharing has become part of the process of building.
Code is now a social, communal, collaborative process. This practice of sharing has created reorgs
in major start ups.
You will find co-working spaces – tons of people from
competing companies sitting side by side and working together. People who “shouldn’t” be talking together
because they work for competing orgs…There are no cubes – open space to
encourage conversation.
Companies do this because sharing knowledge builds up
everyone. This is disruptive!
Geeks are really social in term sof engaging in certain
activities. They don’t stay at
organizations for that long. The average tenure in Silicon Valley is around 3
years. They switch jobs to learn new skills. Because they are highly social
networked.
A lot of this is happening off hours – outside the core of
the workforce. In NY there are “data drinks” – the social networks become the
fabric of the tech industry.
Outside of tech sector, the idea of people moving from
company to company, spending hours after hours to network, sharing code – is
Teenagers
How do they understand the world of public vs. private.
4chan (the underbelly of the Internet – not for work! A
community that creates deeply problematic content – but also fun content.
Started by a 15 year old boy).
In order to look at 4chan, you can only see what’s on the
front page. Once they scroll off the front page, they disappear and are gone
forever. He did this because he was in his bedroom and didn’t want his mom to
know. It became part of the culture for 4chan. And this is where the meme
started – lolcatz. People repost,
reown, modify.
Rickrolling started on 4chan – “I got rickrollled!”
A culture of pranking and punkstering.
Anonymous emerged out of 4chan in response to Scientology.
These people are trying to hack the ATTENTION ECONOMY. They
mess with the flow of attention in society.
They play with the status quo and play with the boundaries of Internet
culture.
Remix culture – let’s take Monty Python Holy Grail and mix
it with Star Wars. Oblivious to copyright, but finding ways to engage and play
online.
Teenagers on Twitter, Instagram, with millions of followers.
They’ve created an ecosystem that exceeds the adults.
These teenagers live in a world where they are not let out
of the house. So young people are trying
to find some place where they have control – where they have control in
public. Finding a space where they have
some level of power.
They see the Internet as their own.
We see teenagers going public, but this doesn’t mean they’ve
given up their privacy. Privacy is not control of information; it’s the ability
to control a social situation. It requires understanding the social situation
well enough to control it.
Ability to achieve privacy in these spaces. They want to be in public, but to not always
be public.
“Hiding in plain sight.” Teenagers know that they can’t
control the access to the content, but they can control the access to meaning (by
using in jokes) – danah shares a story of a teenager of Facebook (whose mom is
also on FB and comments a lot in a lame, mom way). So instead of posting the
sad song lyrics to show how sad she’s feeling, because she doesn’t want her mom
to overreact she posts lyrics to Life of Brian “Always look on the bright side
of life.” Her mom thinks she’s having a great day; her friends get the joke and
send her txt messages.
So how do we think
about the 21st century?
Loose ties that get reinforced. People making sense of a
networked public. This is a radical
shift.
15-20 years ago we organized by groups….now we’re organizing
through networks.
Success in today’s workforce is about being networked in a
way that makes sense. How do you build
relationships that help you sustain the right kinds of connections?
In traditional higher-ed, the elite college in the US – not
a place to learn skills. Professors give horrible lectures on esoteric
subjects. They teach so they can do their research. Why people go to those institutions
is really about social networking. Negotiating the dynamics of the dorm room –
you start to build relationships that help sustain the elite connections of our
country.
But this has gotten messier now with social media. Young
people find their network of people like them even before they get on campus.
So they’re rebuilding homogeny. This is dangerous as a long term practice. We see people on social networks connected
with people who are MOST LIKE THEM.
On LinkedIn you see this.
Google’s application form you fill out all the people you already know
at Google. They are asking “are you like
us?” Because they might stay longer with
them, too.
People recommend people who are like them.
So we are reinforcing homogeneity.
We need to train people about thinking how DIVERSE their
networks are.
Start up networks in the late 90s – they got to know each
other but no reach beyond their world.
We see certain industries contract…how do you take your
skills and apply them to a new sector, outside of your field?
As new educational technologies are coming into your
landscape – MOOC, automated instruction.
Making learning more accessible to a larger group of people. But we lose
the ability to build networks. When you’re learning together you’re building
relationships.
As you build skills, how to you build social networks and
relationships?
Kids who live at home in college – we’re losing the weaving
of networks and connections.
When we see young people experiementing with networks – we
want to encourage them. Help people
connect with networks. And yet young people are told not to meet strangers.
We need to meet people who are NOT LIKE YOU in order to
build and learn.
Building out relationships through social networking is not
just an HR issue – it’s connected to your ability to become a lifelong learner.
Exposing people to other people who know what they don’t know.
Grow your networks to expose you to possibilities.
How to help people build skills and make connections?
We may need disruption to help grow things (e.g., outsiders
coming into your organization).
How do we prepare learners for the skills of the future, but
also how do we prepare them to engage with the ecosystem?
Questions from the
crowd
Mobility –
teenagers have very little control over their time. Mobile phones don’t give them mobility
(because their lives are so scheduled), but it provides interstitial
connection. Provides social grooming – they’re saying nothing, but maintaining
a meaningful relationship because they can’t be together (“hi. What are you
doing.” “nothing” etc.) Kids aren’t
allowed to run around time anymore.
You’re reliant on your parents to drive you around. Even if you’re
allowed out, your friends probably aren’t. So teenagers are more organized
around PCs or mobile phones.
Go through your Twitter
list and see who you’re following. And then go out there and find someone who
is radically different than you. Make sure your network on twitter is full of
different voices. It shapes how we think, keep it broad.
Diversity within
workforces – more diverse teams outperform less diverse teams. More diverse teams perceive themselves to be
underperforming homogenous teams. AND they perceive themselves to be less
happy. So how do you explode out
diversity, even when it makes you uncomfortable.
Strategies to help your employees move beyond their network?
(The woman who asks this question works in tech sector and says her org hires
people from same colleges/universities – so her challenge is to help them
broaden their network). Idea: Here are a list of people on Twitter to follow
that are ALL different.
Coding Freedom http://www.amazon.com/Coding-Freedom-Ethics-Aesthetics-Hacking/dp/0691144613
– a book about the hyperindividualistic culture of programmers and open
source software – the tension.
How do we incentivize people collectively vs. individualization?
Can you get a team to buy in to be collectively evaluated?
