Mark Greenfield

I had the opportunity today to return to the classroom and teach a graduate level Anthropology class on Culture Change. I was asked by the professor to get students to think about how this new technological communication might be altering the nature of social relationships, and the very essence of society itself.

The lecture was an abridged version of my “Born to Be Wired: Technology, Communication and the Millennial Generation” presentation. I didn’t need to spend as much time explaining emerging technology to a group of graduate students. Instead we looked more at overall implications of the communications revolution and the sociological changes.

Last week there was a great post on the Freakonomics blog asking Is Myspace Good for Society? Leading thinkers were asked “Has social networking technology (blog-friendly phones, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) made us better or worse off as a society, either from an economic, psychological, or sociological perspective?” They had some interesting answers.

My favorite resource on the use and impact of social networking is Danah Boyd. Her thoughts were included in the Freakonomics post and I provided this link to this Discover Magazine video interview with her as well.

During the lecture we discussed the work of Marshall McLuhan. If you are not familiar with his work, you definitely need to check him out. He was way ahead of his time. I’ve often thought about what he would think about the Internet and Web 2.0.

I concluded my lecture by summing up my take on the best way to approach the use of communications technologies. I created a slide of the album cover of Radiohead’s OK Computer and quoted lyrics from the song “The Tourist”, which includes the line “hey man, slow down, slow down, idiot, slow down, slow down.” I think we need to carefully manage our time online, learn to slow down, and occasionally unplug - something easier said than done.

I’m sitting in my hotel room in Atlantic City finalizing the presentation I’m giving in the Admissions Track at the Middle States Regional Forum tomorrow. The title is “Connecting with Students: New Technologies” and it has two main themes. The first is that “it’s the end of the web as they know it” - that students use the web in a much different fashion than they do. The second theme is that traditional marketing and public relations is dead.

One of the articles I’ll reference is Fear and Loathing in Web 2.0 from Currents magazine. Not only is this a great article, but it’s one of my all-time favorite titles. (I had an interesting night with Hunter Thompson back in the day, but that’s a story for another time and place.) At the conclusion of the article is one of my favorite quotes - “the conversation is the message”.

I’m looking forward to returning to Atlantic City this summer to give the keynote speech at the 2008 eduWeb Conference. This is my first visit to Atlantic City and it is a great place for a summer conference. Hopefully I’ll see you there.

E-mail has been hijacked by the forces of evil. Spam and misuse have caused many people to declare e-mail bankruptcy, something that I may do in the near future. And now the millennial generation is here and they prefer to communicate through IM, text messaging and the communication tools built into social networks making e-mail almost irrelevant to students today. I know there is a problem when e-mail sent from the president at my university is automatically sent to my junk e-mail folder - by filters set up by the university.

While I’m not advocating that everyone stop using e-mail, I would recommend exploring other communications channels, especially those of you who work directly with students. The good news is that there are now numerous alternatives that can augment and even replace e-mail.

Further Reading

• Kids say e-mail is, like, soooo dead
• Report: Spam Accounts for 90-95% of All Email
• E-Mail Reply to All: ‘Leave Me Alone’
• The death of e-mail
• Email is broken
• E-Mail Is So Five Minutes Ago

Previous Top 10 Web Trends

• Web Trend #10 - The End of Print
• Web Trend #9 - Everyware
• Web Trend #8 - Virtual Reality
• Web Trend #7 - The Web as Platform
• Web Trend #6 - Syndication and the End of the Web Page Paradigm

This is the first in a series of posts on my top ten web trends. We will work our way from #10 down to #1.

Trend #10 is the end of print. The web has always provided many advantages over print including greater efficiency, quicker publishing cycles, wider availability, and substantial cost savings due to the elimination of print and distribution costs. That being said, most people continue to print longer web pages because of the difficulty of reading from a computer screen.

The tide is turning. E-reader technology has matured over the past few years. The Sony E-reader was introduced last year and helped revive interest in e-books. Recently Amazon unveiled the Kindle which adds internet connectivity to the equation. The cover story of the November 26, 2007 edition of Newsweek magazine is called “Books Aren’t Dead - They’re Just Going Digital”. Jeff Bezos states “Books are the last bastion of analog… Music and video have been digital for quite some time, and short-form reading has been digitized, beginning with the early web. But long form reading really hasn’t.” Bezos hopes the Kindle will be the beginning of Book 2.0. This article provides an excellent overview of the issues and impact in digitizing books.

Time will tell if the Kindle will become the IPod of reading. I’m a voracious reader, a trait not shared by a growing segment of our population. The recently released NEA report “To Read or Not to Read” reaches a simple, alarming conclusion - that Americans area reading less and their reading proficiency is declining at alarming rates, especially among teens and young adults. Maybe the Kindle can reach this generation using technology that they understand and help reverse this trend.

Related Articles

• Amazon Sets eBook World Alight with Kindle - Finally, Time For Read/Write Books!
• Envisioning the Next Chapter in Electronic Books
• NY Times publisher: Our goal is to manage the transition from print to internet
• Faculty Members Prefer Digitized Texts

For the past few years, colleges have been adapting to a new breed of parents known as helicopter parents. These parents are always hovering, ultra-protective, and unwilling to let go. They will meddle, fuss, and even call their legislators if they feel their special child isn’t getting the best of everything.

Neil Howe and William Strauss have recently published the second edition of their book Millennials Go to College and they say that coming soon will be a new generation of parents - the stealth fighter parents- who are “even more protective, digitally keyed-in for constant surveillance, sharp eyes on the target, and ready to strike at a moment’s notice to defend their children’s interests.”

This new breed of parent is due to the ongoing generational progression.  Currently, most parents of college students are Baby Boomers. But starting in 2008, the majority of parents will be Gen X’ers.  While Boomer parents generally didn’t question the value of a college education, Gen X parents will look at college as a calculated market choice with a focus on their return on investment. “The “no child left behind” parents of the K-12 world will become the “not with my child you don’t” parents of higher education.” Howe and Strauss predict that “the world of higher education could experience institutional shifts unlike any seen in living memory”.

Are You Ready?

I have been showing “Did You Know; Shift Happens - Globalization; Information Age” in many of my presentations in recent months. It fits in nicely with the themes in my “Born to be Wired” presentation. I recently came across this updated version

I personally prefer the original version mainly because the music from “The Last of the Mohicans” is more compelling.

I’ve been a fan of MeeboMe for quite some time. (See my earlier post on MeeBoMe). Now Meebo has launched a new service called Meebo Rooms for group chats.  While chat is nothing new, there are a number of interesting features including a focus on sharing video.  For further reading:

• Meebe Rooms
• Meebo Rooms Launched - “like a very very rich widget” (from Read/Write Web)
• Meebo’s Nifty Multimedia Chat Rooms (from PCWorld)

I came across another article exploring the topic of multitasking in the New York Times called Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don’t Read This in Traffic. Millennial students consider themselves expert multitaskers with an innate ability to so several things at once. But research continues to show that the human brain cannot concentrate on two things at once.

A better way to think about multitasking is continuous partial attention. Last year Time Magazine did a cover story called Are Kids Too Wired For Their Own Good? Of particular interest was the impact of multitasking on learning.

Former Microsoft executive Linda Stone has coined the phrase “continuous partial attention”, which I think a better way to explain multitasking. Technology advances will bring more electronic devices with more capabilities into our lives and the idea of being always on, always connected will become a reality. Having the ability to concentrate on one thing at a time, along with the ability to turn our cellphones, PDA’s and computers off on occasion will be important skills in the future.

Here’s an interesting article from the L.A. Times titled “Gen Y’s ego trip takes a nasty turn”. My personal experience with employing students is similar. In recent years I have had difficulty finding students who are willing to show up to work on time on time, or put any energy and pride into their work. Entitlement describes their approach perfectly. AS I’ve visited other campuses, most people I talk with share the same concerns.

I have been giving my “Born to be Wired” presentation for almost two years now and one of the most discussed themes is the effect that the communications revolution will have on where and how we work. One of the 26 trends mentioned in the “Death of Distance” is the “inversion of home and office” and how the distinction between the two will become blurry.

The front page article in the latest issue of BusinessWeek is called Smashing the Clock and explains the radical transformation of the workplace at Best Buy. This goes way beyond the concept of telecommuting and flextime. Instead, the focus is on production rather than hours. Known as ROWE for “results only work environment”, it “seeks to demolish the decades-old business dogma that equates physical presence with productivity”. Here are some quick stats from the article:

• Average rise in ROWE worker productivity is 35%
• AT IBM, 40% of the workforce has no official office
• Sun Microsystems calculates that they save $300 million a year in real estate costs by allowing nearly half of their employees to work anywhere they want

Will this idea ever reach higher education? I think it will, eventually. What will drive this is student demand. Millennial students have grown up in a 24/7, always-on, always connected service culture. Their service expectations go well beyond the traditional work day and work week. If they can go to JCrew on a Saturday night at 2:00 am to buy a sweatshirt, why can’t they check their grades or pay a bill or even correspond with an advisor during non-business hours? Recruiting and retaining top employees is a challenge. As the private sector starts to rethink the workplace, higher education will need to as well to stay competitive for the best talent. The key is determining how to measure performance.