In my video testimonial for Digital Nation, I talked about how I'd like my son's childhood to remain as screen-free as possible. Although there are times where a video comes in handy, I'd rather he play creatively than get sucked into the TV. (He gets waaay too into it - trust me, he gets the zombie face)

But that's not to say that I'm not a totally geeky lover of tech - I am. Checking out my Google reader is my first to-do every morning. Traveling today, I am keeping in touch with what's going on in the office via my Blackberry. At 5 months pregnant, I'm getting a constant stream of info about my baby with our online pregnancy calendar. We're letting our readers know about fresh new content as soon as it's live on Twitter. And I'm getting constant feedback about our mag and site from the folks on our boards and our Facebook page -- no more waiting for letters to the editor to come in to find out how we're doing.

So suffice it to say - I don't know how I could live without the many screens in my life. But, at least until he's a little older, I'd like my son to.

Rachel Fishman Feddersen

Along the way, we've partnered with some great organizations who share an interest in exploring this new virtual frontier. Our colleagues at MTV recently launched a campaign called "A Thin Line." The effort is aimed at helping teens recognize and deal with abuse online (a topic we covered in our previous FRONTLINE report, Growing Up Online.) We went with MTV to the Woody Awards to hear how teens are coping with digital life, and we discovered a mix of perspectives: teens are plugged in all the time, some sending "thousands of texts a day" (Sonya Arias), and yet many still prefer face to face communication for serious conversations. (Olivia Wong)

Through Smith Magazine, another partner, we received more than 850 entries to the Six Words on The Digital Life contest. Submissions like "Introverted autistic son blossoms on internet" by Claire Luna-Pinsker and "Sexting is saving our relationship" by Dana Newsome revealed that the digital frontier is no less complex for adults. Here's a video compilation of some of the best entries:

We still want to hear from you. Take a look through the site and share your thoughts, and after the broadcast on February 2nd, send in a video telling us about your own Digital Nation experiences.

We all know the stories about people who have met online, rekindled old flames through Facebook, and texted their way to marital bliss. We know that the Internet and digital technology have helped bring us together in ways that would have been impossible in the past. Now, we're looking to go a little deeper.

We're seeking to find a true love story; a tale of heartbreak, a struggle with infidelity and temptation, or a seemingly hopeless situation that was turned around due to technology's role. For example, an innocent text message that spiraled in to a steamy back and forth and almost broke up a happy marriage. Or, alternately, a story about someone in a committed relationship who finds a way to rekindle excitement and danger through Facebook messages, Skype or some other digital tool.

According to Alice Mathias in the New York Times, "Communication has been streamlined by the Internet, and something essential to the process of falling in love has been lost. We can type up carefully crafted statements rather than go face-to-face and improvise from the heart, thereby risking embarrassment, vulnerability or Oscar-worthy dialogue. We can Google our way into the museums of each other's identities -- and fall in love there." Digital Nation wants to find out if this is indeed true: we want to investigate if we're losing control in the face of the limitless possibility and instant gratification technology provides.

Ideally, we'd like to hear from people between the ages of 30 and 50. We all know that teens are texting and sexting, hooking up and breaking up online, but what is really of interest to us is mature relationships in the digital age.

We're of course looking for people who are good talkers and willing to share their stories, and we're also hoping to find people for whom these experiences with love online have been deep and meaningful. We're searching for a story that will hopefully work its way in to our film, so we're looking to go beyond just casual anecdote. In other words, we're looking for real drama, with real stakes and consequences.

If you know someone who has a story or if you can think of someone we should talk to who might know someone who has a story, please let us know! You can comment on our site, twitter with the #dig_nat tag, or just send us a good old-fashioned at yourdigitalnation@gmail.com. If you've got an idea for us, please write out as many of the details as possible, and also be sure to include a way for us to get in touch with you.

photo credit: cc flickr pyrogenic

--Caitlin

In 2008, the Army shut down five recruiting centers in the Philadelphia area and replaced them with a multimillion dollar facility where kids as young as 13 can play military-themed video games for free and fire at digital enemies from inside a simulated humvee and Apache helicopter. Army recruiters circle around, ready to chat, answer questions, and sometimes even play Xbox with the kids.

It's all part of a new experiential marketing strategy inspired, in part, by the Apple Store. The idea is to give people a "sampling experience" of the Army, just as the Apple Store gives people a sampling experience of what Apple is all about.

The AEC has been targeted by protesters who accuse the Army of deceiving kids into thinking war is fun, and chant slogans like "war is not a game" and "there is no reset button in war."

But the irony is that increasingly wars are being fought by remote control, with UAVs flying over the mountains of Afghanistan, operated by 25-year-olds based thousands of miles away in the desert outside of Las Vegas. We just came back from a shoot at the Creech Air Force Base, where we interviewed pilots who spend their afternoons tracking and sometimes killing insurgents and are home in time for dinner. (Read Caitlin's blog about it here.)

You won't get all this from the four minute clip here, but you will get a taste of the AEC and some of the controversy around it. Watch the Digital Nation documentary in February to see more!

-- Rachel

We witnessed this symphony of multitasking recently while we filmed at Creech Air Force base in the Nevada desert, about an hour from the Las Vegas strip. Here, the Air Force flies constant, round-the-clock missions, gathering surveillance, supporting ground troops and sometimes unleashing weapons. The pilots are not physically inside the planes -- they sit at Creech, working from small, heavily air-conditioned rooms and trailers. The planes themselves are at least 7000 miles away, somewhere over Iraq or, these days more likely than not, Afghanistan. Each plane can carry a number of Hellfire missiles, and the larger models can release 500-pound bombs.

A lot of people have been tempted to analogize remote flying to a video game. While the agile brain work required to dominate Call of Duty may be similar, each pilot and sensor operator I met at Creech firmly insisted on one major difference: when they fly, and when they fire weapons, there is no reset button. Despite the great physical distance and the experience of war mediated through screens, the pilots and sensors must convince themselves that they're right there in the fight, in the mountains and towns of Afghanistan or Iraq. They say the mental acrobatics help them from becoming detached.

One pilot described the feeling of being pulled in to a battle that's occurring thousands of miles away via video screen:

"It's very easy to go from, oh, I'm looking at an intersection, I'm looking at an intersection. And then all of a sudden, you hear troops in contact. You hear the guy calling on the radio and you hear, I mean, gunfire and explosions and everything ripping by his nugget there. And you're just like, yeah, I need to get there right now and help this guy. It's very easy to go from zero to completely spun up in this aircraft."

-- Caitlin

Fascinated by what you have to say, we decided to add a new platform for you to share your stories:

Digital Nation just launched a really exciting contest with SMITH Magazine to hear your stories about life in the digital age. In 6 words. Yes, in six words, tell us how the web and digital technology are changing the way you think, work, live, or love.

I was immediately excited by this contest: What better way to comment on digital life than in the "language" of the age: Twitter- or text message- sized bytes.

In the first two days of the contest, we received over 200 submissions, including:
"Stay on-line, miss out on life."
"Son won't friend me. Step-daughters will."
"Mom on cell, kid in carseat."

Six word submissions that are accompanied by photos/drawings/images will be posted on Your Digital Nation on the FRONTLINE Digital Nation website.

Here are some examples, from the Digital Nation team:

"Three kids. One dog. Five laptops." Rachel Dretzin

"Who's the person behind that avatar?" Ramona Pringle

Whether you've done things unimaginable just a few years ago ("I have even Twittered during sex") or are trying to make sense of how rapidly the world is changing ("Dull persona. Second Life ego enormous"), we want to hear who you are, in you digital life, in six well-chosen words. We're giving away prizes, too: Winners will receive a DVD of the FRONTLINE shows. The top six will receive a copy of a Six-Word Memoir book from SMITH Magazine, and be featured in a Digital Nation video.

On Twitter? Help us spread the word! Just copy and paste the following Tweet:
RT @dig_nat CONTEST "6 Words on the Digital Life" (or:"My dad has more MySpace friends"), from PBS & SMITH @smithmag http://ow.ly/polN #6WM

I can't wait to hear from all of you!

-- Ramona

This reminded me of the studies Jeremy Bailenson has done at Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction lab, where he gives people a tall avatar in a virtual world, and then has them conduct a negotiation in real life with someone who is the same size they are. He finds that people are more successful and confident negotiators if they have a tall avatar, even if in real life they have no height advantage. See him talk about his studies here.
We'll have more from our BlizzCon experience coming up.

- Rachel

No, life is not more exciting online. Live is exciting when you live each moment in touch with your friends or relationships, and share things together (fun, sad, etc.). Then you have a lot the anecdotes to remember. Life online is superficial, you really don't know the people who is talking to you.

If anyone answers yes to this they can't have done too much offline.

yea it is like someone told me its the path of least resistance. You can get yourself known make blogs and be a better cyber version of yourself online.

Life is more Exciting online for me because I love going on fan sites and having fun and talk to my friends on Msn Messenger. I couldn't live without the internet.

No, life is much less exciting online. But some of the harms of modern life are less apparent -- we're more removed from them. The degradation of our neighborhoods and of the natural world, the loss of civility in our communities, the loss of our communities, the loss of choice and of our democracy -- all this seems more manageable and less tragic. No. Life is not more exciting online. It just seems less sad.

LOVE GOD. LOVE TECH

My name is Mr.Krystian I am a internet safety Instructor for special needs people. I am starting up a internet safety for special needs people program at people in motion and I did a few internet safety presentations already and it went over, now people in motion is looking into funding. and Yeah I teach special needs people how to be safe using the internet as a volunteer. I love this Volunteer Job. I can't live with out the internet, the internet opens up a whole new world and its educational and fun and great and super. People just need to be aware of the risks and how to be safe at the same time when having fun. Stop, Block, Tell. and do something for 5 Minutes when something upsets you online. we are in this together. Have fun and be safe out there on the world wide web. Put your Best foot Forward and be nice and use nice words online and show compassion and kindness online. Be a good Cyber Citizen.

The internet brings us knowledge at our fingertips. I enjoy that aspect of it and I require it for work. Technology has made some parts of life easier while doing untold damage to other parts of modern life. Technology often takes us away from moments with friends and family, allows our jobs to be in our lives even when we are not in the office, allows predators into our homes to take our identities and hurt our children. Technology has helped some men replace intimacy with porn addiction. It enables online writers to be rude and offensive in anonymity and our children to be exposed to things in the world for which they are not prepared. I enjoy being able to write my friends in other countries, research interesting topics, and explore the world. But I am cynical as to whether the overall effect is positive.

Be the first to tell us.

Absolutely not. If we fight wars where we don't risk the loss of life of our own what is to preclude us from fighting. Remember there are people on the other side who are dying. Also, while we may now have the technology to ourselves the military complex will desire to ship that technology elsewhere, perhaps China, Russia, N. Korea, Iran.

No. Of course not. How can it be that we even ask that question. Where is our honor?

It depends on how you define "book." I define a book not in the physical form of the pages but as a large collection of words that contain a story or a nonfiction information source. Therefore, I believe that people that use E-readers still read books, but not in the form of pages. I don't think that people who love pages are ever going to go away.

I read all the time. i dont understand how people can read a whole book on a computer. you dont get the sound of turning pages, the smell of an old book, and plus, its just cozy to sit and read curled up in bed until 2:00 in the morning. also, i like things that dont have light coming out of them. i prefer a dim light.

I teach composition, so you would think reading was natural to the English teacher, but actually, few of my colleagues read outside of what they have to for their classes. Now I have always loved to read and I am a voracious reader. I read newspapers, romances, mysteries--lots of stuff. I will read until I can't. Don't want a Kindle or Nook because I like the feel of books in my hand and I like to have them on my bookshelves to pick up again and again (if only to re-read a favorite part).

yes and I still buy and own books as well as use computer technology, i prefer to not say that "this is better than that" I enjoy reading as much as visual media and use and keep both.

Yes, I still read books but am currently stymied by my foray into the chaos of dedicated electronic book readers. I have two of the things and both are so unsatisfactory they make me want to scream. At the same time, I realize that paper publishing is on its way out. I feel caught in a no-man's-land and it's so frustrating that the joy of reading has virtually vanished for me. At this point, I am licking my wounds and appreciating paper books more than ever in my 69 years, roughly 63 of them literate. I will not live long enough to see the outcome, but I certainly hope electronic reading can be improved, and fast. The biggest obstacle: corporate greed, resulting in incompatible standards, along with our obscenely restrictive DMCA.

Yes. It's the smell and the texture and something about the turning of the page that keeps things closer to the author, and I would rather go blind from bad lighting whilst reading at night than by radiation from a screen.

Seem to start fewer books every year, but much more non- fiction online. My failing eyes seem to prefer the screen.

I still read books. It's a cozy way to end my day - my book, my nightlight, and me.

I've switched to e-books -- they're easier to control, a handful of DVDs is a full library. They're easier to choose a readable typefont and size. I read more now than I ever did, but it's all via the computer.

Yes I love to read books!

Yes I read Books. I love Books. I still read Books once in a while. I love the internet and the internet opened up a whole new world for us to live in, its not all that scary the internet. but you need to know the risks and how to be safe. The internet is very useful. the internet has its good parts and not so good parts but still its fun to use the internet. its not that bad.

Yep, all the time, though I do find myself online reading articles and short stories. However, I don't think I'll ever give up reading books ever. Something soothing and satisfying about flipping pages and running my finger over words. Technology may fail eventually and the book/ink-written word doesn't need electricity or batteries to work.

Love to read books and still do every day. But I really love the internet too and someday hope to own an e-reader because I am out of shelf space!!

Dang right! I read them in print all the time, but now I also read them with my iPod Touch using the Kindle app, and also as PDFs downloaded from the 'net. The word 'book' now means a digital book in all its iterations, not just ink on paper.

I'm a rabid technophile, I'm online literally all the time, and I still read--mostly novels--voraciously. I haven't yet switched to an e-reader, though. High price tag aside, I love the feel of turning the actual paper pages.

There's much to explore on this very deep website. Check out the interactive body map of a digital native in Living Faster, and watch writer Abby Pogrebin talk about how she and her husband read Kindles under the covers at night. In Virtual Worlds, watch our footage of a virtual therapy session with a vet from the Iraq war; in Learning, see our short film called How Google Saved a School. On our Your Stories page you can see a grandmother and her grandson bond over Twitter and hear from a professor who took her sabbatical in the virtual world Second Life.

There are countless stories to tell about how our crazy non-stop culture of connectivity is changing the very nature of what it means to be alive. Some of them are already on this website; we hope many more are to come.

Starting just about now, we at the Digital Nation headquarters in Brooklyn will be turning our attention to editing some of the material we're gathering on this website into a documentary for broadcast on FRONTLINE early next year. Stay tuned.

Rachel Dretzin

Philip and I had a conversation about the difference between flying in real life and flying in the virtual world. He mused on the danger inherent in flying a real plane versus the safety and whimsy of flying virtually. Here, the division between the real and the virtual is stark. But he also mentioned a fascinating fact: some people haven't been able to jump off bridges in Second Life, because their connection to their avatar is that strong, that visceral.

Here's a little teaser of the footage from the flight; enough just to get us off the ground. Now we're working to find landscapes in Second Life to match our soaring real-world aerial shots (and, by the way, if you're active in Second Life and know of some beautiful places for us to visit and film in-world, speak up here!). We'll see how it all comes together, and we'll show you in the documentary when it airs next year.

-- Caitlin

I spent Friday at the Frontline Digital Nation booth, talking about the project, meeting bloggers and hearing their stories about life in the digital age. I met so many incredible women (and yes, a handful of guys came by too). We heard stories about parenting, information overload, multitasking and dating, (One woman met a guy through Twitter, only to discover he lived in the same apartment building as her!)

Friday evening we went to the community keynote organized by Eden Kennedy (who shared her own great stories with us on Saturday) where blog posts were read aloud. What struck me at this particular event was seeing all of the bloggers blogging about the blogs they were listening to!

After the keynote we went to the Friday night cocktail party, hoping to hear more stories. There was a photobooth on site, and Sam (our videographer) and I couldn't resist (though also couldn't separate from our phones!)

Aware of our own need to be connected at all time, we decided that our tactic for talking to people that night would be to be on the lookout for people who couldn't detach from their phones/laptops/Blackberries even at the cocktail party.

That was a late night, reading over the profiles of some of the amazing women we had scheduled to speak with us the following day... And Saturday started bright and early, with a full day of interviews for Your Digital Nation and the PBS Youtube Channel.

I was so impressed by the women we spoke with, and their candor to open up and share their stories about life in the digital age. Elisa, the cofounder of BlogHer shared a story about being forced to unplug during a recent trip of Africa; Dr. Gwenn told us about how she has to instant message her daughter to get her to come to dinner, even when they are in the same room. Both were common experiences we heard repeated throughout our time at BlogHer; this is the new normal of our Digital Nation.

Raney Aronson-Rath, Frontline's senior producer, was part of the panel at the closing keynote moderated by Elisa Camahort, alongside Danah Boyd, Eszter Hargittai, where the conversation was focused on the future, and a lot of the questions we've been addressing (and asking) were raised. This was a fascinating discussion, especially so the dialogue between experts and "real people" the bloggers in the front line of the digital age.


We'll be posting stories to Your Digital Nation from BlogHer over the next few weeks, so definitely come back to hear some of the wonderful, touching, funny and very timely stories this great group of women had to share. Thank you to everyone who shared their stories with us at BlogHer, and for those of you reading this blog, we look forward to hearing your stories about life in the digital age.

Ramona

I knew that Duncan was a big believer in standardized assessments, but those didn't come up in our conversation. He came off as solidly on the side of those who think that schools need to move with kids instead of against them, and that means using the toys kids love--games and cellphones--to teach them, inside and outside the classroom walls.

Here's a brief excerpt from our conversation. We'll post the rest of the interview on this website in the next week or two.

- Rachel

When students use their cellphones and internet to access test answers, are they cheating, or developing their problem solving skills? Don't we, as adults, turn to others for their expert knowledge when we don't know an answer?

Weigh in with your thoughts.

If you're at NECC, come by booth 1904 to share your story. Or, share your story online in Your Stories.

On Twitter? Join the conversation: "Students texting test answers: cheating or problem solving? Share your digital story online or @ NECC booth 1904. #dig_nat #necc09 #pbsnec"

Thanks and look forward to hearing from you,

Ramona

We're live at the NECC Conference today, and want to hear from you. We had an amazing day yesterday, meeting interesting educators and hearing a huge range of stories about how digital technology is impacting their classrooms, personal lives and attention spans.

Here's a sample:

MollyLynne, a teacher from Virginia, told us that despite being in an amazingly hi-tech one-to-one laptop school, her students still want their assignments on paper... And she wonders why?

So, we showed some other people her video submission, and encouraged them to respond.

Jennifer Downey, an instructional technologist thinks that some of it may have to do with resources, and students not having computers at home (though MollyLynne is in a one-to-one program). She says that in her classes, they have the digital tools and still use them, but are ultimately more comfortable with paper. She also suggested that cellphones be integrated into learning.

Susan Davis, an English teacher from Houston, has had a different experience. She says that in her classroom, students write with media, no longer just words, and that digital tools have allowed them to become more thoughtful storytellers.

Stay tuned to the Digital Nation website, and our Twitter feed dig_nat as we continue to post responses to this question, as well as our own new prompts and questions throughout the conference.

Share your ideas and experiences in Your Stories, on Twitter using the #dig_nat hashtag, or by emailing YourDigitalNation@gmail.com

Video submissions received before July 6 are eligible to win a flip cam (WOW!!) so create a video response for Your Digital Nation, or if you're at NECC, come by booth 1904 to record yours!

More soon,
- Ramona

The DN team is heading to the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC 09) in Washington DC on Monday, and we'll be trying something new:

Digital Nation will be at Booth 1904 to talk about the project and help record Your Stories, so if you're planning on attending the event, please come by to share your stories, experiences and opinions on life in the digital age. You don't need to worry about camera setup or uploading footage, all you have to do is come by and talk to us, to be a part of the project. This Digital Nation "your stories booth" is something we're hoping to do a lot more of, and we're excited to be running the concept at NECC.

Here's where the launch of our new Twitter account comes in: We want to engage not only those of you attending NECC, but anyone who is interested in following along, or joining in on this conversation. So, over the course of Monday 6/29 and Tuesday 6/30, we will be posting questions on Twitter for everyone to weigh in on. (For instance: "Tell us how digital tools are affecting your attention span.") If you're at the conference, come by and share a story with our cameras; if not, join the conversation on Twitter (#dig_nat) or by sending in longer comments, photos or videos to the Digital Nation website.

Keep checking in here for new prompts so that you can stay up to date with the conversation. Everyone who submits a video at the NECC conference will be eligible to win a Flip cam! And, even if you're not at the conference, create your own video response to one of our NECC Twitter questions and submit it before July 6th to also be included in the drawing!

We want to hear from you, so let me know your thoughts too.

- Ramona

Photo credit: A 2006 NECC booth by CC ajc3/Flickr

Guests included Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation and a professor at Emory University; Marc Prensky, author of Don't Bother Me Mom -- I'm Learning and a leading proponent of video games as educational tools; journalist Todd Oppenheimer, who has followed technology's role in education for many years and compiled the findings in his book The Flickering Mind, which was a finalist for an investigative book award; and Debra Socia, principal of the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School, a public school in Boston, MA.

Digital Nation: Good morning, and welcome to Digital Nation's live discussion about education and technology.

Marc Prensky: I'm here-Marc

Digital Nation: We'll get started in a minute or two as our panelists join us

Mark Bauerlein: I'm in--Mark B.

Debra Socia: I'm here as well - Deb

Marc Prensky: Hi Mariana!

Digital Nation: And there's Marc Prensky! Marc is the author of Don't Bother Me Mom -- I'm Learning.

Digital Nation: Mark Bauerlein is a professor at Emory University and author of The Dumbest Generation.

Marc Prensky: Now that's being respectful :-)

Digital Nation: And Debra Socia is principal of the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School, a public school in Boston

Digital Nation: Looks like Todd isn't here yet, but hopefully he'll join in shortly.

[Comment From mariana affronti ] ´This discussion is only by chat or we can hear you...?

Digital Nation: Hi Mariana, it's just text!

Mark Bauerlein: True, Marc, not respectful, but provocative--which I've found on occasion works better with students than does the encouragement-support-inspiration approach.

Digital Nation: Let's go ahead and get started!

Marc Prensky: Students?, I assumed that the gneration you were talking about it was yours :-) !

Digital Nation: Our first question comes from atmzeal: Distractions in the classroom have always existed going back to days where kids blew spit balls through straws. With cell phones, we also face the issue where it has evolved from a safety net with our 911 into a cheat tool, an sms tool, or a mini "black box" electronic gateway. I've seen small high school classrooms and large lecture halls become power struggles between professor and student. How will we face problems like cell phones or computer games which can distract not only the using student, but surrounding students as well?

Debra Socia: Great question. We have to make the actual lessons far more interesting and engaging. We have to insist that students are on task. We can and should have high expectations - which students will meet if we give them the opportunity.

Mark Bauerlein: Indeed, the question is excellent. The difficulty with digital tools in classrooms is that while they provide miraculous access to information and resources, they also empower so many adolescent mores and expressions. How do teachers support the one and limit the other?

Marc Prensky: Computers don't support the "lecture" or "tell-test" pedagogy at all. If you are sitting with your laptop during a lecture it's Facebook City for all of us!

Marc Prensky: If on the other hand studet have something challenging to dso on their computers that realtres to the class...

Debra Socia: My suggestion is that we change our thinking about what a lesson looks like. We should not assume that a lecture is an effective tool.

Digital Nation: Another reader wrote, and this seems related,
That history teacher in Growing Up Online said something that really stuck with me, that teachers have to also be entertainers to keep kids' attention. Do you feel that's true, and if so, is it a problem we should be working to solve?

Mark Bauerlein: Yes, the pedagogies will have to change with the new technologies, and finding ways to hold students' attention will become all the more crucial. But what if the kids, equipped with the latest tools, keep moving faster than the teachers, at least in terms of what they find relevant?

Marc Prensky: Attributed to marshall Mcluhan: Anyone who makes a distiction between education and entertainment son't know the first thing about eiyther one!

Debra Socia: As a 30 year educator, I have to say that I always felt i had to be "on" when I was teaching. That meant that I had to be engaging and interesting!

Marc Prensky: Relevance is not the answe--make it REAL and students will be interestdd

Digital Nation: Can you talk about ways that you've seen technology used in a classroom, either really successfully or really unsuccessfully?

Marc Prensky: Hdelp kids affect and change the sworld while they are in your class!

Digital Nation: More specifically?

Mark Bauerlein: Agreed, and what too many teachers give up on, I think, is that The Aeneid, the Federalist Papers, Macbeth, and The House of Mirth are all deeply REAL, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Debra Socia: We have used technology to read and listen to themselves as they learn English. A very effective tool. Students save their practice sessions and critique their efforts over time.

[Comment From mariana affronti ] What does that say about all the information that our students recive, and have to contrast, filter, what do you say about "cut and copy" in students work?

Marc Prensky: Sure. A lesson on Malaria. Kids link t Nothingbutnets.com, then make a movie urging others to do so

Mark Bauerlein: Since I disallow laptops and cell phones in my classes, and stick to activities such as memorizing and reciting poems, I can't give examples.

Debra Socia: Mariana, I would say that 35 years ago, when I was in college, I copied and quoted. It was just like cut and paste, but it sure took longer!

Marc Prensky: Hamlet - How many versions of 2b or not 2b are there online? Which do you prefer? Why?

[Comment From DignationFAN ] Semantically, there's a different between "entertainment" and "engagement"....

Marc Prensky: Note to software makers--I hate thqt you can't hit enter to send

Mark Bauerlein: Not sure, Marc, but an exercise in comparison/contrast using the Web would be great.

Digital Nation: From RMY in Honolulu:
Often times we draw attention to the learner and learner capability to be taught in the digital world (focusing on tech tools and gadgets - and not on experience and content), when the reality is that our educators are a key component to the success of the next generation. What should education institutions do to ensure teacher conversion from Digital "Refugees" to at least be Digital Immigrants - if not New Natives themselves?

Marc Prensky: Mark-Of course, that's just one of the things it allows us 2 do that we couln't do before

Marc Prensky: We need to partner and each do what we do best. Kids crete with technology. Teachers evaluate, provide context, quality and rigor

Debra Socia: At the Frederick, we have a whole series of learning opportunities. We differentiate the instruction, we make some of the sessions voluntary, others mandatory, we get students to help, we have teachers helping teachers.

[Comment From mariana affronti ] yes, Debra, but for a lot of teachers "Copy/paste" is a problem, because students use it a lot,

Mark Bauerlein: I think as more teachers who grew up with digital tools enter the classroom, the problem will diminish. But teachers groove habits over time, and it's a lot of work to re-tool. They need and deserve incentives (i.e., cash) to do so.

Debra Socia: We make learning fun for the teachers as well as the students.

Marc Prensky: BS Mark. Do doctors need incentives to keep up with the profession? Or any other professionals?

Marc Prensky: It's expected. Why is it not for teachers?

[Comment From UrEnglishTeacher ] If "cut/copy and paste" is a problem, the assignment needs to be changed.

Debra Socia: We have not provided financial incentives, though we do give stipends to teachers who are teaching other teachers.

Marc Prensky: Teachers who get into real discussionas and learning with their students have fun

[Comment From maureen Greenbaum ] I am a professor at Union county College in Cranford NJ. I listened to the interview of James Paul Gee who talks about using computers to play games ..since what we are trying to teach is problem solving not memorization of facts (content)

Marc Prensky: Games can be a great learning tool -- if they are well constructed

Mark Bauerlein: Fair enough, Marc, but with doctors you're looking at immediate incentives to keep up--that is, fears of litigation, pressure from peers, etc. With teachers, the impact is less immediate. Yes, teachers are expected to keep up, but they have so many other things to handle every day, keeping up with technology can be a secondary motive.

Debra Socia: Maureen, I love your point. Our end goal is that students are educated, that they meet the expectations, that our objectives are met. We can and must use all the tools we have to get there.

[Comment From Linda F ] I use the digital probe technology with either graphing calculators/computers, and find that it takes science education to a whole new level

Debra Socia: Mark, I think that it becomes a priority for teachers when we make it a priority.

Marc Prensky: I just don't buy that teachers are overloaded. They overload themselves, in many cases, by focusng on the wrong things, l(like preparing lectures, for example)

Mark Bauerlein: Quick admission--I think memorization of facts is a crucial element of learning.

[Comment From Linda F ] The trouble with teaching incentives is that they so often don't relate to what is useful in the classroom. Most PD activity is worthless

[Comment From Gregg Festa ] Teachers do not see themselves are professionals because they are not treated as such which is why they do not expect to continually learn throughout their professional career. Schools have to get over the whole punch in and punch out culture in order to foster a more professionally curious culture for their faculty to thrive in (like Doctors)

Marc Prensky: Fact are important. Memorizaton of them is not.

[Comment From Joan B. ] To Mr. Baurlein: what can we change so that for teachers, there IS the incentive/ability to keep up

[Comment From henrybuz ] memorization of facts can sink in better if it's fun, relevant, concrete.

Debra Socia: We have to show folks that use of technology can save time, improve their efficacy, and allow for more creativity. Then teachers weill actively engage.

Mark Bauerlein: Pay them to do so. I'm in higher ed, so I can't speak with authority about K-12, but from what I see among colleagues, if you don't align salary and working conditions with an activity, it won't much happen.

Digital Nation: Speaking of memorizing facts, here's a question:
Standardized testing seems like it is becoming increasingly less relevant to the real world, but students should be evaluated in some form or other. What are some ways we could be testing real knowledge -- problem-solving, comprehension, communication, etc -- instead of fact-memorization on a grand scale? Could we -- should we -- get rid of the SAT?

[Comment From Linda F ] Stop rewarding "seat-time" in PD, and give teachers credit for learning technology, even if on their own

Mark Bauerlein: Memorization of facts works best when the facts become part of a meaningful story or image. Make them atomic and they are forgotten.

Debra Socia: on-line grade books, digital drop boxes, connections to web based learning tools...all are great ways to engage teachers.

[Comment From Gregg Festa ] Incentives will only be yet another band aid on a broken system. Teachers know that they are going to be rich when they decide to enter the profession. They are in it for other reasons.

[Comment From Gregg Festa ] Their incentive is to see their students do well much like a Dr. likes to see his/her patients do well

Marc Prensky: I think every teacheer should take the SAT and make their sores public. Then we'll see just how useful a test it is

[Comment From UrEnglishTeacher ] If you need some facts, text message Google (466453), anywhere, any time. We'll still learn our multiplication facts though.

Mark Bauerlein: A quick point about standardized testing. Many tests do involve real knowledge or "higher-order thinking" than just multiple choice selection. Many of the NAEP questions, in fact, ask for paragraph responses (which are graded as adequate or not).

Debra Socia: I would love to see a new way of looking at success. Standardized testing so rarely identifies students who can solve real world problems that arise in the curent job market.

[Comment From holly a ] some colleges have stopped using the SAT as a way of knowing if you get in. Wake forest for example

[Comment From henrybuz ] Can teachers somehow collaborate with their students (who may know the technology better) to help them use the technology better, rather than feel they must do it all on their own?

Mark Bauerlein: Agreed, Marc, have the teachers take the tests. Debra may recall what happened in New York (I believe) when some of the teachers' scores were made public.

[Comment From Gregg Festa ] why do we continually try to fit technology into an already broken system expect that it will improve?

[Comment From Dan N. ] I have a question for Ms. Socia... how have you seen technology impact the culture of your school?

Marc Prensky: Making students memorize the multiplication tables is a mistake. If we cut out that, the long division algorithm and cursive handwieing we would have yreas in elementary school to teach problem solving and other things that are important today

Debra Socia: Gregg, agreed, we need a new way of thinking about teaching. We should not be using the technology to do the same old "stuff" we did before!

Digital Nation: I'm curious about that too, Dan - Debra, can you describe a little how your school is using tech?

[Comment From Gregg Festa ] Testing is an area where technology can make huge improvements. Instead of these drive by assessments, technology can observe student progress in real-time - we need people to innovate in this area to help drive the culture to individualized learning

Debra Socia: Dan, we are far better communicators, much stronger educators, more able to engage parents, and we have seen the students' ability to creatively respond to a dilemma.

Marc Prensky: Personal plug: I'm writing a "how to book for teachers on "Partnering with your Digital native Learners" Would love to hear good examples

[Comment From Linda F ] The same with kids - the Carnegie unit measurement has to go. Let's have mastery learning. When they can prove that they understand the content, they get to move on. Scores on standardized tests are useful, but need to be put into context.

Marc Prensky: You mean like their video games?

Mark Bauerlein: The problem with regarding facts as simply something to retrieve from Google is that it denies facts any significance beyond information. Some facts, though, are deeply suffused with value and meaning, such as the opening sentence of the Gettysburg Address. Students shouldn't have to go to Google to remember it.

[Comment From Linda F ] I do collaborate with students; they get points for what they do, over and above the expected. The incentive (and copious public praise) lead my students to work to be the uber-geeks.

Marc Prensky: If you are level 60, everyone knows what yu know and can do

Debra Socia: We use video, digital portfolios, blogging, on-line courses, email with parents, chatting between colleagues, on-line language learning, differentiated literacy tools...

Marc Prensky: The opening snetence of the Gettysburg address is not a fact

Debra Socia: Mark - why shouldn't it be OK to go to Google to get a fact or an openning line?

Marc Prensky: But I do agree that that and other things are worth memorizing

[Comment From Linda F ] Interactive systems are a START - I've used them, and they do give quick feedback, as well as focus attention for the entire quiz (poor students often "shut down" midway through a test/quiz)

Marc Prensky: Becuase you can reflect on them.

[Comment From Gregg Festa ] debra - all of those apps you are using can inform a larger system that measures individual student learning progress and inform the teacher and parent each day where the student needs to focus

Mark Bauerlein: Because certain of these materials should be taken to heart. They rise to the level of being essential to an educated, informed adulthood. They are the raw materials of character and belief.

Debra Socia: Absolutely, Gregg. We know where students are, what else they need to know, and how to better respond to their needs.

[Comment From mariana affronti ] but mark P , some information we have to memorize... to make wisdom..

[Comment From Joan B. ] yes, but I find that the facts most students end up remembering are facts that they never were forced to memorize in the first place--facts that they picked up in the course of, say, writing a paper on Egyptian pyramids (or something)

Marc Prensky: Yes Marc, but good people might disagree profoundly on what the important things are

[Comment From UrEnglishTeacher ] Marc: What is worth memorizing? I never really learned ALL that multiplication stuff anyway, so . . . going ok so far. PS-40 Texas Teachers "listening" here right now

[Comment From henrybuz ] Out of curiosity, are any of you using technology in the classroom to get students to collaborate on projects? If so, any examples?

Marc Prensky: I agree with Mark that some important thoughts (not facts0 are worth knowing by heart--if you recall them and reflect on them periodically

Mark Bauerlein: Indeed, Marc, and that's the difficulty in a multicultural society. Which cultural traditions are respected? Other nations, for instance, have no trouble laying out a set reading list for their language classes. Everybody in Italy must read Dante. We can't agree on any such core in English in the United States, not even Shakespeare.

Marc Prensky: Nor should we

Digital Nation: Let's turn to reading, another area where I know Marc and Mark differ...

Debra Socia: We lots of collaboration - digital storytelling, peer to peer editing of written and oral work. Google docs make collaboration EASY

Digital Nation: ANother question: Do you foresee a day when eReaders like Kindle replace textbooks in schools?

Mark Bauerlein: The state of Massachusetts laid out a large recommended reading list for English a few years ago. Some like it, some hate it.

Debra Socia: We don't have textbooks now. We do, however, have lots of novels. I do think Kindles are like to replace those!

[Comment From Linda F ] Do students have to memorize all the dates of Amercan history? No. But, they do have to have a sense of which events follow others; that the War of 1812 followed the Revolutionary War, as well as the fact that the Constitution was ratified before 1812. Those facts help students put the flow of history into perspective.

Mark Bauerlein: The Kindle is great, and it may ease some spinal problems for 7th-graders.

Marc Prensky: I forsee the day when most informaton will be delivered in non-textual frm, and reading will be unnecessary, (as it already is for 80 percent of the population, who can get the info (e.g. news) in other ways

[Comment From Gregg Festa ] re: critical information - information is evolutionary by definition. We need to teach hardcore fundamentals like reading and arithmetic at the primary grade level to mastery then unleash the literate students from grade 3 -12 on learning and making sense of the vast volumes of info they now have at their fingertips through project based learning with technology as a tool

[Comment From Linda F ] However, the Kindle, right now, is fragile - I doubt it can take childish abuse.

Mark Bauerlein: What, though, is the quality of the information they get, Marc? I think that reading a newspaper in paper form produces a more informed individual than readiing it in electronic form.

Marc Prensky: Reading and writing is a temporary, inefficient disconnected (before the web) form of information storage and retrieval -- we will do better

Debra Socia: We agree here at the Frederick - technology is a powerful tool in our teaching toolbox. Not the only tool!

[Comment From Joan B ] ...reading will be unnecessary? Come on, Prensky. You still read, even if it's on a screen

Marc Prensky: I'm old!

Mark Bauerlein: So am I!

Debra Socia: me too!

[Comment From Gregg Festa ] I don't know if reading skils will be evolve out - but they will certainly be less important than media literacy skills in the future

Marc Prensky: and there is a portion of the population that will read for a long time. But it may e worth the struggle to teach that particular form of literaqcy to everyone, when other forms are available
not b

Mark Bauerlein: Regarding information, I sometimes think that with knowledge so available to young people these days, they take being knowledgeable less seriously.

Marc Prensky: it may not be worth the struggle

[Comment From henrybuz ] Can you briefly elaborate on why reading the news in paper form is better than electronic?

Marc Prensky: Fihe, teach them -- it's your job!

Debra Socia: I suspect that our children will always be readers, but I think the manner in which they receive the written word will differ.

Marc Prensky: I*s hearing an ebook "reading"? if so I agree. But its' reading with our ears"

[Comment From Steve J. ] Ms. Socia... has having more technology in your school impacted attendance? behavior issues?

[Comment From maureen Greenbaum ] you say" I think that reading a newspaper in paper form produces a more informed individual than readiing it in electronic form. " but that is YOU. Today's generation feel the same about reading online with its links and comments...

Debra Socia: Steve J. - We have seen a huge decrease in student behavioral issues and have seen our attendance increase. In addition, students do not transfer out - we have the lowest transfer rate of any middle school in Boston.

Marc Prensky: I went to an alrernative HS is Texas where dorpout can come back, wok individually at computers and get the credits they need to gradualte. Pretty full.

[Comment From Gregg Festa ] Again, depends on your definition of reading - if reading is defined as consuming information then we are not teaching ALL of the skills students need

Mark Bauerlein: Well, it's more a matter of disposition and habit. When you read the newspaper in paper form, it takes longer, you tend to look at headlines and stories more carefully, and you find a spot for a moment of reflection. You also spend a bit more time with things you aren't interested in. On the screen, readers tend to move quickly and cull their news in bits and pieces, attracted to things that they already care about. The screen, for most kids, is a customization, personalization tool.

[Comment From maureen Greenbaum ] It is the teacher's job to teach how to evaluate the information found on the internet or on paper for veracity

Marc Prensky: Disagree- that's opinon, not fact

Digital Nation: MrsLFox from Rock Hill asks, Who are likelier to be the main force in online education, private or public schools?

[Comment From maureen Greenbaum ] yes ...to teach what is opinion and what is fact..

Mark Bauerlein: I base the reading habits online vs. offline on excellent research conducted by Jakob Nielsen.

Marc Prensky: That's a pert of what needs to be done, but student can do it too

Marc Prensky: I'm in general not a fan of his (I disagreed with almost eerything he said on interface design) but I'll check it out.

[Comment From Gregg Festa ] this debate will be moot in a few years since we will not be able to put the genie back in the bottle

[Comment From Guest ] what about the issue of financing technological updates in school? who can afford to keep up with this- is it even possible?

Marc Prensky: How do you define "excellent research?" Most research is terrible.

Marc Prensky: And, at least in scin ece, needs to be reproduced several times before we tke it as anythng but hypothesis

[Comment From Guest ] What would be your recommendations of standards for "excellent research"?

Marc Prensky: There is far too much jumpint to conclusins in education based on poor or little data. Very little talking and listening to students

Mark Bauerlein: His studies seem well-designed except for occasional problems with small sample sizes. But his use of eye-tracking technology to study reading habits on the screen looks warranted and illuminating.

Debra Socia: RE sustainability - if we stop purchasing the "stuff" we don't need (like paper, copiers, and texts), and as the cost of the computers goes down, we will more easily move the cost of the laptops into our general school budgets.

[Comment From mariana affronti ] what do you think about the experiences in "Uruguay" and other countries about "1 PC kid"?

Marc Prensky: Maybe. But who os verifying his conclusions. And ONLY small sample size?

Digital Nation: Here's a related budget question - If you were the Secretary of Education and were suddenly granted an unlimited budget, what would you do to improve schools right now? What's the most important thing we should be looking at on the national level to improve education?

Marc Prensky: Did neilson doing eye tracking on paper and compare? Or are u drawing these conclusions of one thing being better meshng his reasearch and your conjectures?

Mark Bauerlein: A word about the techno-savvy of the young. In 20067 when ETS released the findings of its study of tech skills of high school and college students, it found that while they are adroit with lower-order skills of searching and retrieving, they floundered when it came time to do more complex things such as evaluate the material they retrieved. Their conclusion: "Few test takers demonstratedkey ICT skills."

Debra Socia: RE budget, I think we must provide teachers with preparation to be teachers - currently they are so engaged in content learning that they are not able to focus on the ART of teaching. This training must include the opportunity for teachers to deeply engage in understanding the use of technology in the classroom.

[Comment From Gregg Festa ] unlimited budget --- hmm. shut down schools for a year - redesign from the ground up and start over - it is too broken to improve :)

Marc Prensky: of course-these are not things you are born with--their teachers have been deficient in teaching these skills

Mark Bauerlein: His work doesn't examine paper, so far as I know, Marc, but he did find that when people did encounter page-like sites, such as with pdf. files, they tended to print them up, then read them.

Marc Prensky: Joel Klein patted himself on the back in HuffPost about the new iSchool (i've been there andI like it). But it's taken him seven years to get 100 kids out of 1.1 million a 21st century education!

[Comment From Todd Oppenheimer ] I'm finally on -- sorry, as coincidence would have it, I was experiencing, uh, technical difficulties

[Comment From maureen Greenbaum ] give every child a computer and spend the $$ teaching today's teacher to be coaches NOT "lecturer's" Per J Papert it needs to be ONE ($400 each) per child

Mark Bauerlein: Yes, this is the question, Marc. Are the huge costs of technology in schools justified by the outcomes?

Debra Socia: In my humble opinion, yes. The question is how do we measure success and what are the outcomes we wish to see?

Marc Prensky: They will be, if we use the technology in the right way.

Mark Bauerlein: Question: How much does a music teacher in a school cost? And how much does a tech support specialist cost?

Marc Prensky: It took business decades to figure out how to do this.

Digital Nation: Trig Inkpen from Burlington, NC asks,
How do you see MUVEs (multi-user virtual environments) benefiting student learning? Is this something that teachers should be focusing on or are they a waste of time?

Debra Socia: And we can learn from them.

Marc Prensky: The kids can be the tech support specialists

[Comment From Guest ] Excellent point Debra...what are the outcomes we need to see. Are the ones we're using still in the 19th century?

Digital Nation: I think Trig is asking about Second Life and similar.

Mark Bauerlein: Also, we should ask about all the evaluations of big tech initiatves in schools that demonstrated some improvement in attitudes of students, but absolutely no impact on academic achievement?

Debra Socia: We do have student tech support at the Frederick. It works VERY well. :)

[Comment From Gregg Festa ] prohibitive costs cannot justify maintaining an education system that does not educate.

Marc Prensky: May I recommend my "Five Meta-Skills for the 21st century" online at www.marcprensky.com/writing.

[Comment From Gregg Festa ] Mark - please define academic achievement?

Debra Socia: What is the measure of academic achievement, Mark? Whether or not someone has memorized a formula that could be found quickly from google? Or is it the synthesis of a variety of data into a cogent argument?

Todd Oppenheimer: Sorry to be late on this. Have any of you adequately looked at the great moment of opportunity we have now with today's economic troubles. That is, as the government, and schools in particular, face drastic cuts, this is a great moment to lose the stuff that is most expensive for the least bang (technology) and spend more for what counts: good teaching.

Mark Bauerlein: One study by two University of Chicago economists examined the impact of E-Rate, the federal program of subsidies to schools for Internet access. Their conclusion: "the additional investments in technology generated by E-Rate had no immediate impact on measured student outcomes." The achievement such evaluations focus on is test scores.

Marc Prensky: The main reason those technologies didn't increase achievement, IMHO, is that the teachers didn't change their pedagogy. Teachology doesn't support tell-test, except in the most trivial of ways (e.g. showing picytures and videos)

Digital Nation: Weelcome Todd Oppenheimer! Todd has followed technology's role in education for many years and compiled the findings in his book The Flickering Mind, has managed to join us now.

Mark Bauerlein: Could be, Marc, but then this adds a whole new layer of cost to implementation.

Todd Oppenheimer: Glad someone mentioned e-rate, which has been an open invitation to the less ethical among the technology companies to basically swindle one school after another. It is government sanctioned robbery, and that's putting it politely.

Marc Prensky: it doens't have to be costly -- we put in lot of stuff that becmes obsolete before it is ever used.

Mark Bauerlein: Remember, too, that E-Rate is something paid by every person who has a phone, every month.

Digital Nation: Ouch! Todd, I'm curious how you'd respond to an earlier question -
If you were the Secretary of Education and were suddenly granted an unlimited budget, what would you do to improve schools right now? What's the most important thing we should be looking at on the national level to improve education?

[Comment From Gregg Festa ] Mark - one of the requirements of eRate is to have Internet blocking software on the server it pays for - limiting teachers and students access to sites like youtube - talk about a waste of money!

Marc Prensky: if i were to equip a classroom, I'd suggest great WI-FI and a bunch of iTouches (say one for every 2 students. Cheap.

[Comment From Joan B ] I've heard about that, Todd---it makes me very erate, so to speak

Debra Socia: there are many netbooks and nettops that work very well in schools -- and cost as little as a good science text might cost.

[Comment From Gregg Festa ] I have seen LCD projectors stacked in Principals closets for years because they were afraid the students would steal them - in effect - the principal stole them

[Comment From Tom B. ] Having taught in schools without computers and now a school with technology, the contrast is like night and day. Technology has opened more of the world to my students, some of whom have never left their neighborhood, nevermind the country.

Marc Prensky: Does anyone wathch the kids? it's about handhelds and clell phnes?

Mark Bauerlein: Do you mean, Tom B., that without the computers the students were lost and benighted?

Debra Socia: FYI, we have never had a student computer or LCD projector stolen by any of our staff or students! We are an inner city school with many neighborhood issues. Not a problem. Students are proud of their computers and take the responsbility quite seriously.

Todd Oppenheimer: Thanks for the question. If I were secretary of ed, I'd invest first in much more robust teacher training. And I'd strike a bargain with the teacher's unions -- they only get this if they, in return, offer schools greater leeway (and union hands off) in getting rid of dead wood teachers, which are numerous. I'd then try to articulate the proper hierarchy of learning, beginning with real inquiries in the real world -- not on screen.

[Comment From Gregg Festa ] yes Marc - I run an after-school program in a depressed urban area - no digital divide there - all of the kids (300 plus) have cell phones and are facebooking

Marc Prensky: I try to make the distiction between verbs (problem solving, creative or critical thinking, communicating, presenting) and the tools or nouns that we use to do these things

Marc Prensky: The verbs change very little, but the nous change rapidly

Digital Nation: Another question on the use of gaming in schools from maxwell judd:
Ever since I first began playing video games as a child, I've been enthralled with the genre of adventure games like Myst. Here in America very few people make, or play, these games any longer. However there is still a sizable volume of titles that stream out of Europe and Asia. These adventure games often require patience and logic solving. So my question is this.
Do these types of games promote a tendency towards problem solving and patience in real life situations and as a follow up, why do Americans seem to be so opposed to this genre?

Marc Prensky: And our kids should be using the latest, best nous (tools)

[Comment From Gregg Festa ] That's right Debra! They know a good thing when they see it!

[Comment From Guest ] @Mark B: Is your class required?

Digital Nation: Can you comment on using games for education? Should we be doing more of that, or are there dangers to look out for?

Marc Prensky: Gaming in schools if fnally catching on -- but it's still not easy for a teacher to do

[Comment From Guest ] WoW is an adventure game and plenty of students play that.

Mark Bauerlein: Check out the film "Flunked" for good profile of renegade school principals who implemented innovative policies and got good results. And no, my class isn't required.

Debra Socia: I think that games for education works just fine - as long as the anticipated outcomes match those we wish to see.

Marc Prensky: Mostly we lack good curricular games, and g

[Comment From Kevin ] Principal Socia... is this your school's website? www.lgfnet.org ... I particularly like the "LGF On Camera!" page.

Marc Prensky: ood ways t integrate them into teaching

Todd Oppenheimer: The best of these games (like Myst & the Journey of the Zoombeenies) do teach some great logic skills. The key is not to exaggerate or over-romanticize those skills. They are only one small skill set, they are not worth sidelining other activities to make room for them.

Debra Socia: Yes, it is! Thanks, Kevin.

[Comment From asajohnson ] @Mark B: So, you don't have to teach the kids who don't want to learn your subject.

Marc Prensky: Yucan use a game to teach any skill. Try me-I'll design one on the fly, right hre

[Comment From maureen Greenbaum ] teachers are so concerned about covering content - getting the students to learn facts - games teach problem-solving

[Comment From maureen Greenbaum ] they are doing ..they keep students focused

Mark Bauerlein: It is a course that meets a general requirement, if they wish to use it that way, and many of the students in it are not English majors. Surprisingly, they often perform better than the humanities types.

Todd Oppenheimer: Lots of things teach problem solving. Why not have them solve real problems?

Debra Socia: And use the computer to do so!

[Comment From TX Teacher ] Game for prime factorization . . . or do we need to know how to do that?

Marc Prensky: Kids should be mastering the verbs and ,for the ontent, answering good guiding questions. They should be using the latest available tools to do so

Digital Nation: Another question, from Brooklyn:
What's the most important skill for kids to learn before college, in this generation and, say, the one following?

Marc Prensky: Not just probem solving. Fighuring out the right thing to do. G

Mark Bauerlein: Big question: WIth so many kids playing video games and doing other digital diversions that involve problem solving, why is it that problem solving skills for students in high school and college are so low?

Debra Socia: Our students identify issues of social justice in our community, do research, and create presentations that are given to a "real" audience, like folks in the Boston Mayor's office.

Marc Prensky: etting it done. Doing it with others. Doing it creatively. Continually improving

[Comment From asajohnson ] @Mark B: However, you still have a choice to take your class. They probably pick-a-prof'ed it and know what to expect. It's hard to lay down the law and demand old school memorization and reading to kids who have never experienced that and it is not their learning style.

[Comment From asajohnson ] IMO

Marc Prensky: Befuase teachers son't help kids make the leap.

Marc Prensky: Transfer, for most kids, is a skill that has to be taught.

[Comment From maureen Greenbaum ] the sage on the stage is gone ..schools must be about students being learners (games players ..2nd life??) creators, does"r - rather than "teaching quality" - a quote I like is "the less I teach, the moe they learn"

Debra Socia: Collaboration, making connections, determining real vs fake, ability to use tools to solve problems.

Marc Prensky: Realy, Mark, teachers should stop blaming the kids, and look in the mirror

Mark Bauerlein: The reasons why students drop out in their first year of college (about 30 percent of them) are many. One, they have poor study skills, such as doing homework while watching television. Two, they don't study enough, not realizing the hours needed to do well. Three, they have skill deficiencies (note the rise in remediation). And four, they lack cultural literacy needed for the context of their liberal arts classes.

Todd Oppenheimer: To Brooklyn: I wrote about this in my book ("The Flickering Mind") and in a recent Op-Ed (SF Chronicle, 12/08): the most important skills in today's global world are reasoning, history, writiing, work habits, math, and more broadly cultural anthropology. Just read the great business theorist Peter Drucker, who was no enemy of technology. He emphasized the same things.

[Comment From maureen Greenbaum ] collaboration works because the students become teachers...

Marc Prensky: Four- their teachers have never integrated their intersts and passions intor their teaching

[Comment From asajohnson ] Kids now a day won't work in a factory or one job their entire life. They need versatile skills to sell themselves and be mini-entrepreneurs to "sell" themselves for the multiple jobs they will have.

Mark Bauerlein: Agreed, Marc.

[Comment From asajohnson ] To be adaptable.

Todd Oppenheimer: collaboration also connects to a great teaching style that too often goes overlooked. It's called "constructivist" teaching. Bank Street Teachers College in NYC is probably its greatest practitioner

Marc Prensky: Shal we end on agreement?

Debra Socia: Mark, perhaps a 5th reason? Not all higher ed folks are comfortable teaching students using tools and methods that are exciting and engaging.

Digital Nation: We have to wrap it up pretty shortly, but here's a question that came in that might provide some interesting background on our panellists:
How many hours a week do you read for pleasure?

Debra Socia: Honestly - I read 3 to 5 novels a week. At the same time, I am often reading a few non-fiction books about education and/or technology. I am a reader!

Mark Bauerlein: Higher ed folks at research institutions, Debra, operate on two principles, one is inertia and two is "Don't bother me, I'm doing research."

Todd Oppenheimer: Interesting story in today's NYT -- that even in today's job layoffs, companies are starving for properly trained specialty workers. It's not hard to figure out why: excellence and attention to real world detail have been on decline for decades. And not just in our schools

[Comment From asajohnson ] Is there a written transcript for this? (I will READ it!) :)

[Comment From maureen Greenbaum ] 5) because the material is not relevant to their goal or at least they don't see it and6) because the teaching methods are not real world...no cell phones...not open book...no use of the internet...just go to the library and read as well as

Mark Bauerlein: I read about 12 hours a week for pleasure, these days mostly tough-guy mystery stories such as the Travis Magee series by John McDonald.

Marc Prensky: At least 1hr/night Try to balance fiction (mostly science fictiona dnc lassics with current stuff

[Comment From maureen Greenbaum ] The reasons why students drop out in their first year of college (about 30 percent of them) are many. One, they have poor study skills, such as doing homework while watching television. Two, they don't study enough, not realizing the hours needed to do well. Three, they have skill deficiencies (note the rise in remediation). And four, they lack cultural literacy needed for the context of their liberal arts classes.

[Comment From mariana affronti ] but looking for information or investigation in the web...is reading or not?

Marc Prensky: I read Travis in the 70's!

Todd Oppenheimer: Maureen -- great observation

[Comment From maureen Greenbaum ] " properly trained specialty workers. " do you do that by teaching facts or problem solving...of course problem solving

[Comment From Joan B ] Or Five, they can't afford it any more (or find that higher education isn't worth working three jobs + classes)

Todd Oppenheimer: Marianna -- that is ONE layer of investigation. One must go well beyond that, and today's computer culture completely forgets that.

Marc Prensky: But mostly they're not engaged, and don't have something they WANT to learn

Marc Prensky: In the words of Will Wright: When someone wants to learn something you can't stop them!

[Comment From maureen Greenbaum ] you read books because you learned the pleasure of that as a child...today's teenagers and 20 are enjoying themselves when reading on the internet ...forcing them to read will not get them to remember what they read

[Comment From mariana affronti ] yes, todd but for argentina´s teachers and educators it's difficult to think like that...

Marc Prensky: I don't read books becuase it's pleasurable -- I wish there were and easier wy to get the same info

Marc Prensky: and faster!

Debra Socia: Our students read every day in school, out of school. You see students here walking down the hall with a novel open...computers and technology integration are not mutually exclusive activites.

[Comment From maureen Greenbaum ] they will remember what they learned by doing..following hyperlinks and finding information to solve problems'

[Comment From henrybuz ] agreed

Mark Bauerlein: Yes, if kids want to learn, they'll carry their ambitions beyond the classroom and make their leisure hours more intellectual.

Marc Prensky: Nobody remembers the books they read, except in the most general way

[Comment From Guest ] Kids read tons of things online, just not the standard novel.

Marc Prensky: A great book: How to talk about books you haven't read

Mark Bauerlein: Unless, Marc, those books hit them in a personal way, such as by identifying with a hero.

[Comment From maureen Greenbaum ] ahhh but it is that general knowledge that can be put to good use

[Comment From Guest ] Probably kids are reading more because of rabbit-holing through Wikipedia and other news sources, than if they were limited to paper books.

Marc Prensky: I'm not saying there's no impact--of course there is, but most of the details fade fast

Debra Socia: We hope we are teaching children to read for pleasure AND to read for purpose. On-line, in books, in newspapers...

Mark Bauerlein: Another big question. Kids are, indeed, reading more than ever before. Why then, have 12-grade reading scores been flat since the early-70s and have slipped since the early 90s?

Marc Prensky: Mark - Have you read Pierre Bayard's book (above?)

[Comment From maureen Greenbaum ] yess...personal way, such as by identifying ...again this is the need for each student to have his/her own computer and follow the stuff that interest them under the GENERAL guidance of a coach

[Comment From Guest ] Do you concede that at least kids have more access to books and literature via technology as compared to lower-income kids who have no paper books at home?

Mark Bauerlein: Yes, Marc, some of it, and it was a wicked (and witty) theme.

[Comment From maureen Greenbaum ] you can't teach to read for pleasure

Debra Socia: BUT, we know that the ability to differentiate the levels, to provide non-fiction content, to engage more senses (sound, video) is important to the teaching of literacy to students who come to us with a very wide range of abilities.

Mark Bauerlein: On book access, today in the U.S. we have more public libraries than ever before.

[Comment From mariana affronti ] yes , Debra y like look at the world with another eyes, read in different formats...

[Comment From mariana affronti ] in a world in movement the one that remains quiet backs down

[Comment From asajohnson ] What do you have to say for the fact that engineering companies would require their engineers to do calculations with computers or calculators rather than risk hand-work?

Mark Bauerlein: But there are some things, Maureen, that kids must read whether they like them or not: the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, Huck Finn, etc.

Todd Oppenheimer: Back to the queston of what a Secty of Ed should do, which I think is central. (After all, we could beat up on what technology misses all day.) It's just like any industry -- the basic infrastructure of schooling has been neglected. And NCLB didn't help, with its overemphasis, first, on testing; and second, on only two subjects: math and reading. The physical, experiential material needed for sophisticated inquiries in the real world -- test tubes and field trips and the like for the sciences; library skills for history and social studies; writing and discussion skills for the whole gamut -- all of this has been buried under the demand for superficial numbers suggesting improved academics. We've got to get back to the basics -- or, what I call in my book "Enlightened Basics" -- how to think for oneself, how to fully investigate a problem, any problem, at whatever age; how to talk about it, and then write about it clearly and intelligently. How to know what you don't know, and then find out what's missing. That takes some equiipment but it mostly takes smart, motiivated teachers -- who will be paid properly, rewarded for their creativity -- and given the freedom to use their creativity -- and will be penalized promptly when they fall short on these fronts.

[Comment From asajohnson ] What are the demographics of library users?

Marc Prensky: We are so stuck on reading, in an age where it is becoming less and less relevant and important to sucess. 20 years ago yu couln't success without i. Now i bet, at some level, you can, and even thrive. And in ur kid's liftimes, the shift will be even more dramatic.

[Comment From Linda F ] Years ago, I turned off the TV in my home during the day. It wasn't turned on until my husband came home. My kids made their best academic progress during those years.

Debra Socia: Yes, Linda, but the television is not interractive, does not allow for the creation of content, and does not allow for a "search" for that which is interesting to the user.

Marc Prensky: But they know little about TV ,our most common cultural medium and thread

[Comment From maureen Greenbaum ] I volunteer for www.ReachOutAndRead.org but I think it is Sisafian (sp) task to beings books back as the primary source of reading. But as a community college prof I am concerned with their distaste for reading anythng...which means theat if they can't watch a video they can't learn new stuff. So maybe the way to do it is to let them read things they enjoy in jr high and high school not Shakespear and Beawolf!

Debra Socia: Computers do!

[Comment From asajohnson ] What do you have to say for the importance of differentiated education per the states?

[Comment From asajohnson ] What kids need in New York might be different from those in Louisiana?

Mark Bauerlein: What is a life, Marc, without reading? Think of what Frederick Douglass said about reading: it was the path out of slavery. Or what John Stuart Mill said about reading poetry: a medicine for his mind.

[Comment From Matt Taylor ]
Haha. Success without reading. You are dreaming. It will always be an under the radar form of communication. Why is text based chat (like this) successful? Reading will simply change to be more packetized. Smaller bursts from multiple sources.

Digital Nation: This has been an amazing discussion! But I'm going to stop publishing questionsin the interest of letting our panel get on with their day.

Marc Prensky: You're OK with "if they can't read they can't learn new stuff" but you're not OK with "if they can't watch a video they can't learn new stuff." Media prejudice!

Debra Socia: I think we are moving toward national standards, Asa. According to Duncan, we are going to be there in a few years...along with a national test to go with the national standards.

Marc Prensky: That's becuasde, in FD's day, there were no alternativs! Come on! Enter the 21st century

Mark Bauerlein: Yes, the national standards movement is moving forward, led by the National Governor's Association.

Todd Oppenheimer: I have to leave you all now, but I thank you. And I hope you will all at least glance at my book ("The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology.") Ironically, although it was writtten in 2003 (then updated in paperback in 2004), its basic message remains nearly as relevant today as it was then. I say this for two reasons: 1. the education ship is still drifting in the horrible directions set by Clinton (too many computers) and Bush (too much NCLB); and 2. signs are that Obama and Arne Duncan are sympathetic and open to the smart ways of reversing this course.
Good luck. Sounds like each of you are doing some very smart thinking.

[Comment From mariana affronti ] our kids read all time, hipertext, books, etc, dont forget that

Digital Nation: Any parting thoughts from any of our panelists before we sign off?

Todd Oppenheimer: Mine just sent. Many thanks!

Marc Prensky: I will read it, but i sure disagree with your premises!

[Comment From Cristina ] Hi there! I'm an EFL professor in Brazil and the situation of schooling infrastructure is not that different here from what you are describing...and what's worse! common tech gadgets like Ipods and stuff are expensive for our stds... even so, my stds tell me they download loads of books on pdf format and read them on their computer screens!

Mark Bauerlein: An enjoyable back and forth, DN--many thanks to you and Marc, Debra, and Todd.

Digital Nation: Todd, thanks for joining us!

Marc Prensky: Thanks

Debra Socia: I invite you to come visit LGF! We are a school where lots of interesting things are happening! Computers galore and lots of great teaching and learning. Right in the heart of Boston!

[Comment From Matt Taylor ] Technology has been found to not necessarily improve learning. But just to help it stay engaging.

Todd Oppenheimer: Marc -- my premises are more nuanced and balanced in the book than they were here. just fyi

Digital Nation: And Mark, Marc, and Debra, this was fantastic.

Marc Prensky: I'm sure they are -- but they are leading you to false conclusions that are bad for our kids!

[Comment From mariana affronti ] clap, clap, clap, thanks to all of tou

Todd Oppenheimer: Oh, Marc. Take a look at what's happening to our youth cultuer. what's really happening.

[Comment From henrybuz ] Yeah thanks! I hope we can do more of these in the future.

Marc Prensky: I tak to thousand of kids. We dont listen to them, we don't respoect them.

[Comment From Matt Taylor ] You can still shape the youth culture. You're not powerless.

Marc Prensky: Let's focus on what they CAN do, and what they WANT to do.

Todd Oppenheimer: yes, matt hit it right. who is in charge here?

[Comment From mariana affronti ] evolution

Marc Prensky: But what if they're right and we're not?

Todd Oppenheimer: i have kids, so i don't say this out of ignorance. we respect them, we listen to them. but we are in charge of what's wrong and right.

Marc Prensky: Sorry, but I think you're the South in the Civil War. I hope the North wins!

Marc Prensky: But it's going to be a big fight!

[Comment From Malinda ] Here's a view from the kids themselves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kra_z9vMnHo

Todd Oppenheimer: by all. good luck. it's been fun...

[Comment From Cristina ] Hi Marc...I don't talk to that many kids... but I couldnt agree more! and speaking about what we CAN do, I guess we need to be humble and learn a bit from and with these kids

Marc Prensky: Thanks Christina--I agree.

[Comment From Matt Taylor ] Well, Marc, at least there's strength in overall diversity. Perhaps there will be an evolutionary need for kids with ADD -tendencies over those that can focus in the more said-to-be-outmoded ways.

Digital Nation: Clearly we could extend this discussion all day - it's definitely interesting enough! But unfortunately we're out of time.

Digital Nation: I want to thank all of our panellists again for their insights, and to everyone who joined in the debate today.

Marc Prensky: K- Thanks. People can contact me online at marc@games2train.com

Digital Nation: And please feel free to discuss further on the Digital Nation site!

Marc Prensky: l8r

Digital Nation: There will also be a transcript of the discussion, so you can review anything you may have missed.

• I, as everyone else, love connecting to my friends and family on the Internet. I am sure you will find many stories like that, but what I really love is not only being able to connect with loved ones, but being able to connect with people in power. For example, this evening I read on Twitter that the WSJ wrote that Siemens Corp. and Nokia were aiding the government of Iran in tracking down the innocent protesters. I immediately decided to write to both corporations and complain and expose the fact that what they are doing is evil. I don't know if that will have any impact on them, but if everyone did that, I believe it would.

  In addition, I was extremely annoyed at a story on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" in which Chuck Todd the White House reporter was congratulating himself on asking the President such a wonderful question today. I wrote to the program and reminded them that in the Bush years there were no heroes among the press who allowed all of the scandals and incompetencies go on without asking challenging questions in the Bush White House.

  One other thing, I am so glad that the people of Iran have Twitter to report to so that we can have daily and up to the minute reports from there, and can reply back with suggestions of help in their terrible struggle against the cruel Ayatolla there.

  Sincerely,
  Gail Z. Dawson
  

Do you have a story to tell about how digital media have helped you get a message across? Tell us at Stories from Your Digital Nation.

And check out our other posts on Twitter.

Photo credit: CC faramarz/Flickr

Join us Wednesday morning (June 24th) at 11 am EDT to discuss how the digital revolution is -- and isn't -- changing our schools and how we learn.

Guests include Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation and a professor at Emory University; Marc Prensky, author of Don't Bother Me Mom -- I'm Learning and a leading proponent of video games as educational tools; journalist Todd Oppenheimer, who has followed technology's role in education for many years and compiled the findings in his book The Flickering Mind, which was a finalist for an investigative book award; and Debra Socia, principal of the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School, a public school in Boston, MA.

The panel will discuss the pros and cons of technology in the classroom, what skills we should be teaching our newest generation of students, and the changing face of education in the digital age.

Join the forum here.

http://www.demotix.com/

Demotix, a site for "citizen journalism," collects user-generated photos taken by amateur and freelance journalists from around the world and markets them to mainstream media. In Tehran, where the government has stifled foreign reporting and cracked down on Internet access, the fastest stream of update-to-date news and images are coming from outside traditional channels. Twitter feeds, while difficult to verify, have played a part in bearing witness to the fallout from the recent presidential elections. Demotix looks to be playing a similar role, in images instead of words, and then a step further. This week, Demotix photographers provided images from Iran for the front pages of the websites of both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

In circumstances like these -- when a country's political situation boils over, and a draconian government tries to prevents contact with the outside world -- is this networked, responsive site the future model for breaking news journalism?

-- Caitlin

Walking up to the Apple store in Manhattan's Meatpacking district this morning, I suddenly realized it was probably stupid to have walked by Dunkin' Donuts without stopping in for coffee, because it was obviously going to be a bit of a wait. The line for walk-ins was perhaps 10 times shorter than the line of online reservations. That line extended from the Apple store on the corner to the La Perla store a few buildings down, maybe fifty people.

As we waited, Apple employees walked down the line handing out bottles of water and offering umbrellas to folks in the sun. Thanks, Apple!

An hour later, I was pretty sure people were cloning themselves ahead of us - this was taking forever! We'd moved up as far as the old Western Beef, now home to Hugo Boss and Moschino. The woman in front of me lamented the gentrification of the neighborhood. Later on, she described sitting down to her mother's PC to check e-mail, "I couldn't do anything on a PC. Everything was just so ugly."

Pretty much everyone in line was checking e-mail, reading the news or chatting (mostly about the wait) on their current phones -- many, like mine, earlier generation iPhones. By this point, we'd established the rules of the line: they'd let in six reservations and one walk-up at a time.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Wait. Wish for coffee. Wait more.

Waiting, past a certain point, transmogrifies into a sort of forced Zen meditation. You've waited so long that leaving no longer seems like an option, and all you can do is settle into it. I reflected that, for all the high-tech pre-registration and the high-tech gadget I was waiting for, this particular process of consumerism still relied on a human body taking up a physical space for an extended period of time. There are fewer and fewer moments in our lives that demand such long, forced inactivity these days. There's something liberating about knowing you can't go anywhere or do anything but be right where you are.

Meanwhile, rumors abound: AT&T stores are completely sold out of the new phones. They're back-ordered online, you can't get them. The rumors have the ring of a lie you tell yourself to try to feel better. (At any rate, I wasn't able to substantiate any of them when I got back to my computer later on).

Finally, we reached the head of the line - at last! Our orange-shirted shepherds finally let my group of six up to the front, where we were passed off to individual sales reps to pick up and pay for our coveted devices. The actual purchase and activation took all of ten minutes - almost a let-down after all that waiting.

Success at last! Stumbling out of the store, still bleary-eyed from getting up two hours early to join the queue, I took one more photo of those poor still-waiting folks on my shiny new phone. Then I switched over to one of the features new to this model, the compass, and started navigating back to the subway, with one last thought: I hope for the next model, they can eliminate the physical wait. Where's the app for that?

- Fedde

Our correspondent Douglas Rushkoff explains what's going on at The Daily Beast:

The net result proves that the age of the totalitarian dictatorship is over. Pictures of protests, police violence, and the reality of life on the streets in post-election Iran manage to seep out through the social networks. It's impossible for any American user of Twitter to remain focused on the iPhone's new features with this much real world life-and-death stuff crowding the inbox.

On the Internet, content is not king--it never was. The value of Tweets right now is less the information they contain than the solidarity they promote. Like civil-rights protesters who sang rousing hymns as they were carried off to jail, Twitterers are bearing witness to what's happening around them, and calling out into the darkness of cyberspace for confirmation. I'm here. You're here, too. We are present.

Read the full piece at The Daily Beast.

-Jeff

I have a fifth-grade son who's graduating from his decidedly low-tech public elementary school in a couple of weeks. The search for an appropriate middle school for him consumed most of last fall, and by the time we had finished touring most of the public and private schools in the area, there were only two schools left on the list. One was a laptop school, and the other one essentially uses no technology at all.

If I'm going to be honest, I have to admit that the choice we faced mirrored my own ambivalence about the issue of computers in the classroom. On the one hand, I saw firsthand through my work on this project how exciting technology can make learning for children; how much more it allows them to do; how it can cater to all sorts of learners and how much more easily kids can tailor their education to their own strengths and weaknesses when technology is in the picture.

On the other hand, I found myself wondering if it was all really necessary. Our kids will be spending the rest of their lives at a keyboard. They already spend large chunks of their time in front of one. Isn't it now that we need to expose them to the things that they may not get a chance to experience otherwise? Things that take time, that don't split their focus, and that don't provide instant gratification -- like reading a book for hours, or writing a paper longhand, even though it makes their hand cramp up, or memorizing the Declaration of Independence?

In the interviews we've done with teachers and principals at IS 339 and elsewhere, they laud the skill of multitasking as an essential tool to success in the 21st-century workplace. Schools that don't acknowledge this essential reality, they say, are closing their eyes to the new world our children are already living in, and risk seeming irrelevant.

Agreed. But I also identify with Rose Porpora, the English teacher at Chatham High School we interviewed for Growing Up Online, who said: "They are so overexposed to the quickness of things and the immediate responses. It's just all at their fingertips. So when you have to reverse that and have them be quiet and give answers and carve out meaning, I think it's difficult for a lot of students."

In the end, we decided to send our son to a laptop school. For a bunch of reasons, it was the best place for him: closer to home, filled with kids he knows, smaller and more intimate. Truth be told, I'm still mixed about the laptops. I feel like I'm going to have to work that much harder to make sure he continues to indulge in the old-fashioned, technology-free pleasures he does now.

But I think I know my kid, and I suspect that no laptop in the classroom is going to fundamentally change him. For the most part, he still has the precious ability to slow down and lose himself in a task, and thanks in part to loudmouthed me, a mindfulness of how important it is to hold onto that.

With his permission, I'll continue to blog about this as he gets his first laptop and starts school in September. Stay tuned.

- Rachel

Facebook must be hoping the name change will not only make the site more user friendly, but also get people to start thinking of their Facebook pages as their public faces for both personal and business activities: true home pages.

That's a problem. Facebook's relative detachment from the Internet is not a bug, but a feature. Its only competitive advantage in the Internet space--its only reason for being--was that it was more personal, more closed off, and arguably more private than the Internet itself. Even then, the biggest problem has never been how to get people to find you, but how to not friend many of those who do.

Read the entire piece at The Daily Beast.

Why do that? I can assure you it's not to amuse my colleagues (although it does, without fail, every time I try to get them to take me seriously while I bounce up and down. It's really hard not to bounce). It's not because I'm dead set on getting ripped abs. I sit on a ball because recently, my body put up a huge protest sign: bad posture will make you pay.

For years, I did my toiling hunched over a small laptop, in a standard old desk chair. As the afternoon hours wore on, a slow deterioration would occur: my shoulders would hunch almost up to my ears, I'd get sucked closer and closer in to the screen, and deep concentration (or, in some cases, frenzy) would keep me from ever really noticing my awful posture and habits.

After long enough of these unhealthy practices, my reckoning day came. One morning, not too long ago, I woke up and I couldn't turn my head. If you were talking right next to me, I had to swivel my whole body to look at you. Sitting, walking and sleeping became exercises in extreme discomfort and humility. I was officially A Person With Back Problems, and it didn't take long to identify the cause: too much screen-staring, too much slouching, just too much.

Fancy furniture companies are always coming out with solutions for our over-stressed, poorly aligned bodies that have spent most waking hours withering in the dim glow of a screen. I'm finding that the low-tech option from the sporting goods store around the corner is working perfectly well so far. But, I gotta say, I really never thought I'd be that person -- someone with chronic back problems, a thick Rolodex of chiropractors and the habit of relating in mind-numbing detail every tweak and surge of pain from the coccyx to the nape of the neck. As we all know, no one ever thinks they're going to be that person, until they are. And now I am -- years of screens, and punishing my body in service of screens, have exacted a revenge.

There are, of course, lots of other forms of work that wreak even more havoc on the body. If I were drilling oil wells all day, say, or dancing professional ballet, I wouldn't have the option of trying to salvage daily posture on an exercise ball. But my work is mostly in front of a computer, as it is increasingly for more and more people. I supposed my body's protest tosses me squarely (or roundly) in to one of the cruel little realities of the digital age.

-- Caitlin

Twitter, Facebook and cell phones didn't create this desire or problem. I've known people all my life who turned the television on as soon as they woke up in the morning and left it on until they went to bed at night, just to insure there was never complete silence in the house. All that the new connectivity, on-line virtual game options, and instant messaging do is make it easier to avoid the awful specter of silent, alone time. And yet ... just try to imagine Henry David Thoreau writing his masterpiece about Walden Pond while twittering, texting, and watching CNN.

Thoreau went to Walden in part to escape the Industrial Revolution, and I imagine prior to that he experienced temptations of distraction similar to those we face today. The mechanisms were different, but the temptations the same. Those who hold Blackberries or Facebook responsible for their chronic distraction misplace the blame. These technologies are enablers of our own innate desires that have existed far longer than transistors:

We also have an ingrained habit of constant connection that makes disconnecting more difficult. And potentially more painful. Where there's a will there's a way, of course. Which is what makes me suspect that at least part of the constant connectivity movement and technology stems from an inherent desire, within many of us, to have all that distraction. We are not, as a species, hard-wired for solitude. We're social animals, made to exist in tribes and packs.

-Jeff

Rather than go for the "MySpace angles," though, here's a Photo Booth shot of where Rachel and I spend vast amounts of time in front of computer screens:

-- Caitlin

This seven month old baby is my babysitter's niece. She loves all technology, but especially laptops. We decided to shoot her playing with one, figuring it might be a good image to use in the DIGITAL NATION documentary somewhere.

-Rachel

We feature three pieces of her footage here. They give us an intimate glimpse of the role digital media plays in the lives of soldiers on one of the most isolated fronts of the war in Afghanistan. In one scene, two soldiers show Rubin their MySpace pages and describe how they keep in touch with girlfriends and wives at home via computers set up in a wood shack on the base. In another scene, Rubin captures a bunch of the soldiers playing war games against each other on PSP hand held gaming devices during their down time. And finally, Rubin and a Battle Company scout sit at a laptop and look at video after video produced by the Taliban; the videos are made for training and propaganda and are disseminated online and on the black market. Each scene shows the exact ridges, roads and outposts in the Korengal where the American soldiers and Rubin sit -- an eerie look at the contested valley through the ghosts' eyes. As Rubin points out, however, the 18 and 19-year-old American soldiers fighting today grew up taking pictures and videos of themselves and each other. It's not a huge surprise to them that Taliban are now employing viral digital media; both sides share the impulse and fluency with digital technology.

The 173rd have since left the valley, but the fight for the Korengal grinds on. Recently, the Taliban and the unit that took over for the 173rd have traded bloody ambushes, and last month, another American solider was killed.

Rubin, the 2008-09 Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a New York Times Magazine contributing writer, has reported extensively on Afghanistan since October 2001. Partial funding for Elizabeth's 2008 work in the Korengal came from the Dick Goldensohn Fund at The Center for Investigative Reporting.

Unless something changes radically, Elder told me, the United States will be surpassed in cyberskills within a single generation. The best of our kids design videogames; the Indians, Chinese, and Russians' kids write the code on which those games run. Our competitiveness in war, as well as in the high-tech market, is already being propped up by outsourcing contracts only as durable as the bank loans they're being funded with.

Read the entire piece at The Daily Beast. ]]> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/blog/2009/06/new-cyber-czar.html /wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/blog/2009/06/new-cyber-czar.html Military Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:16:08 -0500 As you've probably seen in the news this week, the White House is making serious noise about some oversight for this whole internet thing. In today's cartoon I nominate a new cybercommander-in-chief.

In one case, a white-supremacist group criticized a current reporter for the York Daily Record in Pennsylvania because of an article she wrote while attending Penn State University which denounced the "hook-up culture" on campus. The reporter asked Penn State's The Daily Collegian to hide the article from search results, but the editor refused.

"I'm an education reporter, so I do a lot with schools and kids," Ms. Dobo said. "It just didn't make me look like a professional."

Professional journalists aren't the only ones who have faced embarrassment from their old writing. In another case, a former student opinion editor asked that his columns on politics, wars, and economic policy be removed from the archives because he had joined the Marines and didn't want his comrades to know his political leanings. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that "many college papers report similar incidents."

While student papers grapple with balancing the journalistic responsibility of maintaining a public record and the individual concerns of former writers, there is a larger point at issue. The Internet itself is archived in a number of different ways, whether by Google or other organizations like the Internet Archive. BBC reported last week on a Cambridge University study that found photographs posted to many social-networking sites can still be found even after the user has deleted them. Long story short, if you post something to the Internet, you should be prepared for it to stay there.

As Jared Newman wrote in his post "What Happens On The Internet Stays On The Internet (Duh)" on Technologizer:

In the end, though, the Internet is far too vast for people to demand retractions for everything that doesn't sit well in retrospect. If someone really wants to dig up dirt on you, they'll find it anyway.

Bottom line? Whether you're a professional writer, commenter or occasional forum poster who doesn't use an alias, be willing to stand by your writing for as long as the Internet exists, or be ready to explain why those words are no longer relevant. Otherwise, don't write.

There's no shortage of stories about embarrassing online photos costing people job opportunities. A 2007 survey by PEW found 47% of all teens who go online post photos, and 21% of those never restrict access to the images they upload. The number of teens who post photos online has surely gone up since 2007, and while PEW says that "just" 21% of teens who don't restrict access, that's still one in five. Moreover, controlling access to your own photos doesn't prevent someone else from posting ignominious photos of you. With improving face-recognition technology, simply untagging yourself from undesirable photos may not keep others from finding you.

I wonder if in another 10 or 20 years anyone will be able to run for public office without humiliating writing or photos emerging from the Internet? Then again, with expectations of privacy slowly shrinking, perhaps what is now considered scandalous will soon cease to be politically damaging.

Do you have a story of embarrassing photos or content you posted on the Internet coming back to haunt you? Share it with Stories from Your Digital Nation.

-Jeff

Reading on the web is almost certainly affecting the way we process information, but it's not making us stupid. Instead, it's changing the way we're smart. Rather than storehouses of in-depth information, the web is turning our brains into indexes. These days, it's not what you know -- it's what you know you can access, and cross reference.

In other words, books taught us to think like they do -- as tools for storing extensive knowledge. Now the web teaches us to think like it does -- as a tool for recall and connection. We won't be so good at memorizing everything there is to know about a particular small-bore topic, but we'll be a lot better at knowing what there is to be known about the broader category the topic fits into, and what other information might provide insight and context.

This is a common theme amongst some education reformists, such as Mark Prensky, who consider memorizing facts a relic of the last century. In a 2008 op-ed called "Using Cell Phones for Exams" [PDF], Prensky wrote:

The attitude that we should know as many facts as possible, and hold in our heads every trivial piece of information we might need to use in our lives was useful in a time when the body of knowledge was much smaller and information was much harder and slower to find. Memorizing phone numbers allowed you to dial faster. Memorizing the multiplication tables saved you the trouble of adding. Memorizing the names of places was helpful when maps were not always available.

But those were, in the words of one 10-year-old, the "olden days." Today's kids store numbers on their phones, use the calculator in the phones to multiply and divide, and, increasingly, tell the time from the phones as well. This frees their mind, ideally, to think of more important things than what is increasing known as "trivia" - IF they are taught to do so, and IF they are evaluated on that ability, rather than on what they have memorized.

Now, I may be a little biased. I attend a trivia contest on a weekly basis, and I relish the ability to recall obscure information. But I believe there is still value in knowing facts in everyday situations, as well.

It's true that it's now easier than ever for amateurs to look up information on topics they're curious about and develop broad, indexed knowledge on a vast array of subjects. This assumes that they have the motivation to consult the Web and the sophistication to select trustworthy sources, but let's assume that they do. Generally, some expert had to write each of those sources that the amateurs look up. This is where reliance on an index of knowledge breaks down. For experts, it doesn't suffice to look everything up. Knowledge is cumulative in many respects, and, if you don't have a solid foundation, it is hard to build anything terribly complex. Treating our brains as an index and relying on computers for the heavy lifting is great for amateur knowledge, but it essentially eliminates the possibility for expert knowledge. And this has any number of negative repercussions. As one of the Suderman's readers points out in the comments:

Would you want a doctor who said, "I can't really remember all those interminable details about body parts and diseases and stuff like that, but that doesn't matter, because I'll have Google on hand when I perform your surgery"?

Perhaps this is a hyperbolic scenario, but, when you think about it, we're all experts in something -- our jobs. Most of us wouldn't last a day on the job if we had to Google each task before performing it. The idea of indexing this knowledge is simply unrealistic. We wouldn't be able to function as a society.

Advocates of outsourcing knowledge frequently deride the requirement of memorizing historical dates in school. And students, too, ask, "Do I have to know that date?" Why would that be useful?" Admittedly, there are many significant historical dates that most people can get by without knowing. But surely there are some dates that should be known. The dates of the Declaration of Independence, the Civil War and civil rights movement provide the backdrop for the civic knowledge required to function in our democracy. So, where do you draw the line? If you had to look up these types of dates, you'd never make it to the level of deep knowledge or discussion that comes easily when you remember them in your brain.

Unfortunately, that deep knowledge appears to be lacking, as 71 percent of American adults failed a 2008 civics test on American history and institutions conducted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Similarly, only 27 percent of twelfth-graders scored at or above the proficient level in a 2006 civics assessment conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

This reminds me of when I wrote papers in elementary school. I didn't have an expansive vocabulary, so I would frequently turn to the thesaurus and find just the word I thought I was looking for. But I ended up misusing many of these words because I hadn't actually read them in context before. Sure, I could then also look them up in the dictionary, but if you haven't seen a word used properly by someone with an excellent command of language, you won't tend to use it terribly well.

In the end, I think the mistake these futurists make is they assume that accessibility of knowledge and memorized knowledge must have an inverse relationship. But this is surely not the case! I can use Google to learn about anything, even subjects that I'm passionate for, such as journalism. But this doesn't imply I need to know less about journalism. If anything, it means I can and should learn more. The indexing of knowledge is useful for my amateur interests, and it happens naturally through the process of searching. But, even then, why not remember if I can?

-Jeff

Toward the end, when they were answering questions from the audience, the topic of concentration came up. Rachel made the point that, due to the unceasing demands that digital technology places on her attention, she finds it harder to concentrate now than she used to. And Rachel is certainly not alone. Nicholas Carr raised this same concern in his 2008 essay for The Atlantic, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?":

I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn't going--so far as I can tell--but it's changing. I'm not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I'm reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I'm always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

The discussion at the Second Life event centered on education. In this context, concerns about maintaining focus raised the question: will students brought up on ubiquitous digital technology ever know the deep concentration that Rachel and Nicholas Carr feel they have lost? I'm almost 25 years old, and, while I remember a time before the Internet, digital technology has been with me as long as I can remember. The old desktop computers I used in my childhood probably caused less distraction for me than smart phones, laptops and high-speed Internet access cause for children today. Nonetheless, I've been surrounded by much of this attention-sucking technology throughout my development.

So do I fall into the young group of "Digital Natives" that are somehow "different" due to the effects of digital technology? I'm not sure. But I do know that I don't feel like I've lost any ability to concentrate. If anything, I find it's easier for me to sit down and read a book today than it was five or 10 years ago. But maybe that's just a product of my maturing. It's not as if this ability to concentrate has come at a noticeable cost to my capacity for multitasking and the attention-splitting potential Digital Natives are known for. I enjoy chatting with many IM windows open and browsing the Web using 100+ tabs as much as the next Gen Y'er.

As I listened to Rachel lamenting her concentration loss, however, I wondered if it was actually me who was missing something. Perhaps the reason I felt no loss in my ability to focus was because I never had it to begin with, at least to the degree Rachel and Nick Carr were talking about. If I never had this ability of deep concentration, how would I know it was missing?

While this was unsettling when it first crossed my mind, it now seems rather silly. I can sit down to read a book or reflect deeply about an issue without reaching for my iPhone. What more could I want? Perhaps the loss of concentration that this older generation has lamented is simply a matter of aging. Or maybe it's just a trick of the mind. With all the potential digital distractions out there, it might be easy to feel you've lost your focus when really you haven't lost anything, you've simply chosen to organize your time in smaller chunks. In any case, in the face of the worry about distraction in the digital age, I present myself as evidence that all is not lost.

-Jeff

The announcement will coincide with the long-anticipated release of a 40-page report that evaluates the government's cybersecurity initiatives and policies. The report is intended to outline a "strategic vision" and the range of issues the new adviser must handle, but it will not delve into details, administration officials told reporters last month.

Cybersecurity "is vitally important, and the government needs to be coordinated on this," a White House official said Friday, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "The report give conclusions and next steps. It's trying to steer us in the right direction."

The topic of cybersecurity came up several times in our live forum today with military technology experts, including Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder, who served as the first commander of Air Force Network Operations and led the development of the cyberspace mission for the Air Force. You can view the full transcript here (click the "replay" button), and below are some excerpts from the discussion:

Digital Nation: Elaborating on Mr. Nguyen's comment above: He states that the financial investment required to secure all the various networks is borderline excessive. General Elder, how do you approach the costs of securing networks?

General Elder: The cost to secure networks is not nearly as large as physical security costs; however, the key is to get individuals focused on self-defense rather than depending on just security. There are a variety of ways to protect data at rest and in motion; few people or organizations use them.

Digital Nation: Mr. Nguyen states: "The commanders will always side on getting more intel from more sensors but ultimately the cost of obtaining information is lost." General Elder, do you agree? How serious a problem is this?

General Elder: We need to spend more money on information fusion and decision support capabilities. We must remember that sensors only provide data; we need to do analysis of data to get intelligence that we can use.

Comment from atacms: Gen. Elder, isn't this our Achilles heal? Software and its reliability? Consider all the hacking and phreaking that has been going on courtesy of Russia and China and yet our software DOESN'T seem to be getting more secure.

General Elder: We are more vulnerable to hacking than groups that are not dependent on cyberspace to do their missions, that is true.

Digital Nation: Regarding the issue of cybersecurity, General Elder, what do we consider to be an act of war in cyberspace?

General Elder: Act of war is not yet defined ... that is a political assessment; however, it seems that something that impaired public safety (air traffic control), or degraded our economic systems would be viewed as a possible trigger.

Digital Nation: General Elder, looking down the road, what do you see as the biggest cybersecurity threats to be dealt with in the next 5 years?

General Elder: Biggest threats are altering data or code so that we lose trust in use of the internet to enable our business and soclal networks. We focus on loss of data ... but we have technology to protect against loss of data today, we just need to use it. Protecting against alteration of data is a bit more complex.

The discussion was very interesting, covering topics as diverse as virtual-reality treatment for PTSD and the use of drones in a counterinsurgency, so I suggest you check out the full transcript.

-Jeff

We were joined by Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder, commander of the 8th Air Force, Air Combat Command, at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, where he served as the first commander of Air Force Network Operations and led the development of the cyberspace mission for the Air Force; Christian Lowe, award-winning military journalist and current editor of DefenseTech; and Dr. Albert 'Skip' Rizzo, research scientist and professor at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) and developer of the Virtual Iraq treatment for combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Lt. Gen. Elder is also commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Global Strike (JFCC-GS), underneath US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM). The JFCC-GS plans and executes strategic deterrence and global strike operations for USSTRATCOM.

The discussion touched on a wide range of topics from cybersecurity to virtual-reality treatment for PTSD to the use of drones and much, much more.

To read more about the forum and join in the discussion, click here.

-Jeff

A panel of three distinguished experts discussed the issues and answered visitor questions about the U.S. military's applications of modern digital technology. Guests included Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder, commander of the 8th Air Force, Air Combat Command, at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, where he served as the first commander of Air Force Network Operations and led the development of the cyberspace mission for the Air Force; Christian Lowe, award-winning military journalist and current editor of DefenseTech; and Dr. Albert 'Skip' Rizzo, research scientist and professor at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) and developer of the Virtual Iraq treatment for combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Lt. Gen. Elder is also commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Global Strike (JFCC-GS), underneath US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM). The JFCC-GS plans and executes strategic deterrence and global strike operations for USSTRATCOM.

Digital Nation: Welcome to Digital Nation's live discussion on military technology. We're about to get started here in a minute, as our three panelists join us.

Comment From Mr. Nguyen: Hello

Digital Nation: Today we'll be joined by Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder, Christian Lowe and Dr. Albert 'Skip' Rizzo.

Digital Nation: I've been notified that Lt. Gen. Elder is en route to his computer and will be joining us in about 10 minutes. For now, we'll start passing along questions to our panelists.

Comment From Mr. Ariel Gonzalez: Hello

Comment from Devra S Renner, MSW: I remember a time, not so long ago, when I had to sneak into the JAG office at 8th Air Force to email my deployed husband during the Gulf War. I cannot tell you how much better things are now that families can communicate via email and cell phone without having to sneak around! Can you please share what the military sees as the future of cyber communication as it relates to how families can remain connected to their deployed active duty loved ones?

Defense Tech: From my perspective, I'll say that the DoD does a lot to make digital comms more available. In every war zone I've been in, there's been a cyber cafe. And the more cell phone technology is developed and deployed, the easier it will be for troops to stay connected. In fact, my Blackberry worked better in Iraq than my satellite phone.

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Greater effort is also being put on the homefront with a variety of Defense Center of Excellence programs as well to break down barriers to care due to access and stigma.

Digital Nation: I think that's something that many people would find surprising. Skip, how do you think this type of close connection to their families impacts soldiers who are deployed?

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Overall very good for families, but I have to wonder about getting an immediate "dear John" call and how that may effect someones concentration in the field?

Comment from Mr. Nguyen: Does the panel believe that America is becoming over reliant on technology, and is it worth it?

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Regarding Tech and over reliance, Tech is neither good or bad in and of itself. The key to find well matched applications that do some good with the tech, while minimizing unintended consequences. Sometimes a challenge. And regardless of your view of the ethics of tech. I believe that the country that has the best technology will always be the safest.

Defense Tech: I can weigh in on the impact of closer comms from the boots perspective...good and bad...good to hear a loved one's voice, bad because the day to day problems can be a real distraction from the job. I'll say I think that the overreliance on tech is mitigated by the crawl walk run approach to training...first map and compass, then GPS... but i will say, those basic (low-tech) skills atrophy with time.

Digital Nation: Is that something to be worried about, Christian?

Defense Tech: Yes, it is a potential problem...but it's all about keeping that basic approach in training and practicing it.

General Elder: One issue we have in the US is that we often assume that we are well ahead of everyone else ... false sense of security.

Comment from atacms: In regards to reliance on tech, at some point don't we also have to show a mastery of tactics that rely more on infiltration and stealth rather than always seeking firepower solutions that can cause negative effects, COIN-wise?

Defense Tech: Tactics have evolved considerably on COIN over the last several years... and I would say from my experience that commanders in current conflicts take the tactical approach first, then they deploy the hammer only when necessary.

General Elder: The internet has great promise for COIN -- allows us to interface directly with populations.

Digital Nation: General Elder, can you expand on how you use the Internet to interface directly with populations? How exactly does this work?

General Elder: The internet is its own area of operations, and whether it is college students or government employees communicating with others, it helps establish a social network.

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: I dont think there has been a decline in tactics, rather better tech tools for training them.

Comment from atacms: Dr. Rizzo, I based my point on a book called Phantom Solider by Gunny Sgt. Poole which says we're a bit too reliant on arty/CAS rather than other methods of close combat.

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: I haven't read that book. But I think Gen. Elder is more qualified than I to address this.

General Elder: AFG is a "hearts and minds" campaign. Kinetic action is used only when necessary, according to my friends currently working there.

Defense Tech: Hey atacms...arty/cas is a tool that makes up for lack of ground power and unwillingness to sustain casualties in many situations. Clear an afghan village with a platoon of coalition forces? Or pound the building with a JDAM...that's the calculation commanders have to make every day over there.

General Elder: It is a basic Law of Armed Conflict principle to minimize collateral damage (civilian casualties) to the maximum extent possible.

Digital Nation: All: what about the technological advances of unmanned aerial vehicles? Is this a promising alternative to the tough calculations made in the field Christian describes above?

General Elder: UAVs are useful, but require a lot of bandwidth.

Defense Tech: Why do you think the Army and MC is scrambling for more UAVs at the company level? And Gen. Elder could comment on the food fight between the Army and USAF on control of UAVs...

Digital Nation: What is the status of the Army's UAV program?

Defense Tech: (status) not sure what you mean?

Digital Nation: Is the Army using UAVs to the same extent as the Air Force?

Defense Tech: Their Hunter UAVs are attacking targets... USAF/CIA used to have dominance in that arena with Predator/Reaper drones.

General Elder: The different services each approach UAVs very differently. Army and Marine Corps use them as tactical aids where AF uses them in ways much as they would other theater aircraft.

Defense Tech: On army using drones as attack planes: http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003714.html

Comment from atacms: The problem is many of these UAV's aren't stealthy. I know we're working on "robo-fly", but when will our troops see this so that we have a covert "fly on the wall" that is mass deployed?

Digital Nation: Here's a relevant question we received earlier: "I understand the military uses light-projections to aid in combat training and to create unexpected scenarios for soldiers. One of my concerns comes from a moral perspective that naturally always emerges from Any change. Seeing as how we have gained numerous technological advances from the military, like creating the internet or the Navy's Supreme Court Case for radio, we can't live in fear and should instead act responsibly with such things.

However, what is to stop the military from creating robots and developing ever-more realistic imitations of humans? Will we have to just Hope that the possible consequences will always be considered from a military, economic, and moral standpoint?"

General Elder: Ultimately, war is a form of human conflict; we might use machines to fight, but the conflict is still about human relationships.

Digital Nation: That same reader continues: "Also, perhaps if it's a more appropriate question, how secure will our military be when we start using non-human technology to fight our battles?

While the threat of breaking into our databases or hacking UAV's isn't as large with less developed countries, what happens when we face a more modern industrialized threat that could similarly use or turn our technology against us? (god forbid a third world war occurs) Technology isn't perfect and it is still difficult to control and prevent leaks or breaches, as paper documents were back at the beginning of the 20th century."

General Elder: Regarding autonomous machines, we do not let machines attack without a human in the loop. The point about hacking systems is a good one--but we are less concerned with loss of data than we are integrity of the data and code.

Defense Tech: From earlier question, check out the "outer limits" of what the army is working on: http://www.defensetech.org/archives/004507.html#comments

Comment from Nick (atacms): The NYT had an interesting article on MRI's and autopsies on soldiers helping improve protection and medical treatment due to a better appreciation of the tech we currently have.

Comment From Robert Bloomfield: Question: Are you familiar with the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds, and do you think their work has promise?

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Not familiar enough to comment

Defense Tech: Virtual World Consortium: http://www.ndu.edu/IRMC/fedconsortium.html

General Elder: Air University has done some work on use of virtual words for education and sees great promise.

Digital Nation: Here's a question we received earlier: "The 21st Century is being equiped with more and more electronic devices, all of which require electrical power. What is being done to reduce the load of batteries that must be carried?"

Defense Tech: Very good question on power...lots of work and interest in fuel cells going on with new vehicle development in DoD...

General Elder: As for batteries, there is a great deal of work at AFRL to improve their efficiency and find ways to recharge them in the field to reduce what must be carried.

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: On the power storage issue, that and medical advances will be the two immediate areas for civilian transfer of tech.

Comment from Mr. Nguyen: I believe the military has taken Metcalfe's law to the extreme and we are at the point of over saturation with regards to networks and sensors.

Defense Tech: Nguyen...I'd say field commanders would disagree with you... They're always asking for more sensors not less...

General Elder: Our sensors are producing more information than we can currently manage; that is why the field of knowledge management is so critical ... consider Google for example.

Comment From atacms: Excellent point Gen. Elder, but where is our mastery of Infowarfare, I've yet to see it. The enemy seems to win the propaganda war every time.

Comment From Mr. Nguyen: I am familiar with the Afghan AOR and observed the amount of sensors and technology is dominating but makes it cumbersome to make a simple phone call because you have 4 phones on your desk. I think in comparison with the Taliban and their TTPs they are respectively effective considering their low tech approach.

Digital Nation: Is it important for our troops to have multi-tasking skills, in response to Mr. Nguyen's observation?

Defense Tech: Troops in all services are getting more familiar with the "Four Block War" concept and making "multi-tasking" part of their everyday lives in the AOR ... or "three block war" that is ... though the fourth "block" could be considered "pre-conflict".

General Elder: I spent almost three years working in AFG, and although dated, did not have a problem with communications. We do have gateways to help with the multiple communication systems, at least in the field.

Comment from atacms: Isn't it better to develop a oversaturation of sensors to blanket an area with good intel so that you can identify your target prior to engaging? This isn't even with just COIN, but deals with fratricide issues. Even now after following about 10 years of IFF programs, I think we don't have a reliable system.

General Elder: As long as you have a way to process, exploit, and disseminate the data, more sensors are always good.

Comment From Guest: Any consideration ever given to providing network access to indigenous populations?

General Elder: We do provide indigenous populations with radios.

Defense Tech: (radios) which is a BIG DEAL in an underdeveloped country like Afghanistan. In Iraq, there's a thriving digital market -- cell phone networks, internet cafes, sat TV...

Digital Nation: Like you said, your Blackberry worked better there than your satellite phone.

Comment From Guest: Radios are nice - us as ISP could be potentially useful in other ways.

Comment from atacms: Dr. Rizzo, do you see us developing in some time soon the ability to remotely detect explosives or firearms from extended distances?

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Sorry, not really my area of expertise to weigh in on (explosives detection, etc.)

Digital Nation: Skip, when you treat patients, do you find there are different mental effects for soldiers who are more "removed" from the combat via technology -- e.g. flying drones vs piloting an aircraft vs fighting on the frontlines?

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Our work thus far has mainly focused on "ground-pounders". Have heard stories about sort of a "conceptual" PTSD effect from the knowledge of the actions that may occur at a remote distance compared to first hand presence.

Comment from Heather: With regard to the Internet and its role in the "general public," as General Elder mentioned, do you find that the Internet has played a significant role in getting non-military folks either more involved or less involved in military operations (be it the war or what have you)?

Defense Tech: I feel that blogs have been a very powerful tool in getting people more invested in the conflicts.

General Elder: The Internet has been a great social networking tool, but we Americans have not yet seen the value of social networking with our competitors.

Defense Tech: Good point, Gen. Elder... But it's coming... There are no barriers in the Web 2.0 world so anyone can be a part of the coverage nowadays.

Digital Nation: General Elder, can you expand on your point: what do you mean that we have not yet seen the value of social networking with our competitors?

General Elder: There has never been a technical impediment to expanded use of the internet for international political purposes, but we primarily use the Internet to build relationships with those that share common interests rather than using it to help understand others or share our interests.

Comment from Greyhawk: Dr Rizzo: How many patients have experienced "virtual Iraq" treatment, and how would you characterize DoD/VA support?

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: From the 32 sites that currently have it, I would estimate about 100 have receive treatment. Regarding DOD support, it was previously as much of a persuasive argument as a scientific one... So in some quarters in the DOD there was resistance to using Star Trek tech for mental health treatment. But now with the data coming in on treatment effectiveness using VR for exposure therapy, the ones who are resistant, are quite frankly uninformed about the how and why of treating PTSD using VR exposure. Virtual Iraq in and of itself doesn't fix anyone... It is a tool in the hands of a well trained clinician versed in PTSD and exposure therapy.

Comment from Greyhawk: Is VR treatment available via VA?

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: The VA is slowly embracing the use of VR... I would say about 10 sites have it. Sometimes its a hard sell though, since a lot of old school clinical providers still cling to the idea that "supportive counseling" is the way to go in spite of the data showing minimal effectiveness when you don't directly confront the trauma memory.

Digital Nation: Dr. Rizzo, in the segment we produced on the Virtual Iraq treatment system, it's apparent that the graphics are not up to par with some of the latest military videogames. How realistic do the graphics need to be in order to provide effective treatment? And can you explain a little bit about how this works?

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: One thing that has been found is that a little vagueness is fine for helping a patient to add in their own experience into the mix... It is not a video game in that regard. For someone with real PTSD, sometimes just the sound is enough to trigger the deep reminiscence of a trauma experience... Sound is powerful driver for emotion... The graphics really serve to set the stage for a lot of that.

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Regarding the comparison between a flashy computer game and Virtual Iraq (and now Virtual Afghanistan), aside from the theory of immersion that we operate from regarding leaving the graphics vague enough to encourage individualized imagination, there are also financial drivers--modern high level computer game=5-20 million to create vs. Virtual Iraq=less than a million.

Digital Nation: Here's a question we received earlier: "General Elder, I have read that a "once in 100 years" solar flare would knock out communications and GPS satellites. Do you agree, and does the US have a backup plan?"

General Elder: We monitor solar flare activity everyday, and they can have some impact on communications, but we have extensive alternative capabilities to the frequencies that would be affected. And if a GPS is INS-coupled, it will have virtually no effect.

Digital Nation: General Elder, recently there was a story in the news that the GPS satellites were in danger of suffering outages in the future because they need repairs. Is there any danger of this happening and what is the Air Force doing to prevent it?

General Elder: I am not an GPS expert, but there are spare satellites on orbit, so if a satellite does "age out" another can be put in place. Until in place, the outages would be temporal only since the satellite constellation is constantly changing.

Comment from atacms: I spoke with Peter Singer, author of Wired for War and asked him about tamper proof tech for our ground drones and he responded that the firms he's covered don't seem to be worried about the issue. Considering the pervasiveness now and in the future of these "battle buddies" shouldn't we be concerned that there aren't fail safe methods to prevent enemies from getting a hold of them and using it?

Digital Nation: Elaborating on the comment from atacms above: in general, what steps need to be taken to ensure that the U.S. military's technology does not fall into the wrong hands and get used against it?

General Elder: The steps to prevent technology loss are both technical and procedural. In some cases, we protect the technology by making it tamper-proof; but if a system gets into adversary hands, we lose some advantage. Procedurally, we take steps to minimize the utility of a system if we think we might lose control of it.

Defense Tech: Like a downed F-117?

Digital Nation: Sure

Defense Tech: As far as I'm aware, drones are pretty low tech and cheap to buy and develop, but much more difficult to use and maintain... So, it's not so much an issue of "falling into the wrong hands"... I mean, Hezbollah used an armed drone to hit an Israeli ship in the Lebanon war in 2006.

Comment from atacms: Or a ground drone, apparently Iraqi insurgents were able to use one against soldiers already!

Defense Tech: atacms...hadn't heard that...what kind of UGV?

Comment from atacms: I think it was a Dragon Runner? It's mentioned in the book I believe.

Defense Tech: atacms... I've seen a lot of hype around Dagon Runner but never seen a single one used in combat.

Comment from atacms: Defense Tech, I'll try and find the place I've heard that and email you Christian.

Defense Tech: Thanks atacms... Again, USMC warfighting lab has been pumping that little UGV for years... And I've never once seen one used in the field.

Comment from atacms: The VR program is being used for PTSD treatment, but do you see its application evolving to the point of also pre-prepping soldiers where they seem to be combat veterans rather than novices by virtue of the simulation they've "fought?"

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Pre-deployment use of Virtual Iraq has always been on the table for stress inoculation training... But I don't believe that JUST VR is sufficient---it would be optimally combined with "appraisal training" and some real world challenge and dilemma exposure.

Comment from Guest: Do you feel the the PTSD is becoming a larger problem, say since WWII?

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Regarding comparison to WW2 etc. there are many factors here. One is the fact that we see in many people with PTSD a different brain response to emotional stimuli that helps document that we are dealing with an actual source of psychopathology. The climate for admitting you are having a problem with your combat experiences has changed considerable since WW2 and that may add to the numbers.

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: The uptick in PTSD, while due to many sources, may be akin to the uptake in Alzheimer's--while older folks would be called senile before the elements and biological roots of Alzheimer's became specified, it was likely still Alzheimer's, just didn't have a name other than senility... Same with going from Soldiers Heart to shell shock to battle fatigue to finally PTSD.

Comment from Mr. Nguyen: I am currently standing a Comms watch in the Afghan AOR, how ironic. In my opinion we are over reliant on technology. The myriad of sensors and the abundance of intelligence they produce require securing. The financial investment required to secure all the various networks is borderline excessive. We need to share information while at the same time keeping it secure which produces a lot of overhead in manpower and fiscally. Information sharing also requires a lot of resources such as satellites which are vulnerable from China's demonstration a few years back. The commanders will always side on getting more intel from more sensors but ultimately the cost of obtaining information is lost.

General Elder: While I disagree that we are becoming too dependent on technology as a Nation, it is critical that we provide for mission assurance should our technology be degraded. Mission assurance is what commanders do in preparation for information assurance to fail.

Digital Nation: Elaborating on Mr. Nguyen's comment above: He states that the financial investment required to secure all the various networks is borderline excessive. General Elder, how do you approach the costs of securing networks?

General Elder: The cost to secure networks is not nearly as large as physical security costs; however, the key is to get individuals focused on self-defense rather than depending on just security. There are a variety of ways to protect data at rest and in motion; few people or organizations use them.

Digital Nation: Mr. Nguyen states: "The commanders will always side on getting more intel from more sensors but ultimately the cost of obtaining information is lost." General Elder, do you agree? How serious a problem is this?

General Elder: We need to spend more money on information fusion and decision support capabilities. We must remember that sensors only provide data; we need to do analysis of data to get intelligence that we can use.

Comment from atacms: Gen. Elder, isn't this our Achilles heal? Software and its reliability? Consider all the hacking and phreaking that has been going on courtesy of Russia and China and yet our software DOESN'T seem to be getting more secure.

General Elder: We are more vulnerable to hacking than groups that are not dependent on cyberspace to do their missions, that is true.

Digital Nation: Regarding the issue of cybersecurity, General Elder, what do we consider to be an act of war in cyberspace?

General Elder: Act of war is not yet defined ... that is a political assessment; however, it seems that something that impaired public safety (air traffic control), or degraded our economic systems would be viewed as a possible trigger

Digital Nation: And how vulnerable are we to that sort of impairment, in your estimation, General Elder?

General Elder: These areas get a lot of attention and so are better protected than routine use of the Internet. I don't have a good assessment beyond that.

Comment from Heather: Do you find that training with virtual reality-type games, troops become desensitized during actual battle because they've practiced on a screen?

Digital Nation: Christian, here is a comment we received earlier that maybe you can answer: "Does the panel see Afghanistan as a perfect reason as to why exoskeletons for troops should be developed or is that generally seen still as too sci-fi-ish?"

Defense Tech: On Exos...they're being developed and pretty close to becoming a reality... very slimmed down versions that give some added performance to an operator.

Defense Tech: http://www.defensetech.org/archives/004778.html

Comment from atacms: Christian, just like IED's shined some light on our vulnerability to mines, don't the mountains of Afghanistan and issues of troop protection and mobility SCREAM for the need for an MRAP like program for exoskeletons?

Defense Tech: Hmmmm... hadn't thought if it like that... Though I think there are other ways to approach the load vs. distance/altitude than developing Exos...

Digital Nation: Here's another question we received earlier: "Does the restructuring of FCS have a positive impact for achieving netcentric warfare in difficult terrain such as urban, or mountainous areas filled with noncombatants?"

Defense Tech: On FCS...maybe...a decentralized development program for FCS I think will help since it is less likely to get hung up in overall architecture debates and more likely to spin out to troops faster... develop sensors, spin them out, develop UGVs, spin them out etc... Rather than waiting on one before deploying the other.

Digital Nation: We are starting to run low on time, do the panelists have time for a couple more questions?

Defense Tech: Sure...

General Elder: I need to depart NLT1215 for a "traditional" meeting

Digital Nation: Any other questions for General Elder before he has to depart?

Digital Nation: General Elder, looking down the road, what do you see as the biggest cybersecurity threats to be dealt with in the next 5 years?

General Elder: Biggest threats are altering data or code so that we lose trust in use of the internet to enable our business and social networks. We focus on loss of data... but we have technology to protect against loss of data today, we just need to use it. Protecting against alteration of data is a bit more complex.

Digital Nation: Ok, well General Elder, I know you need to get going. Thanks for taking the time to join us this morning.

General Elder: Thanks for the invitation to participate today. I hope the participants found it useful!

Digital Nation: Absolutely, thank you again.

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Thanks for adding your expertise to the mix here.

Digital Nation: Dr. Rizzo, could you layout what you see as the future of PTSD treatment? Where is it going from Virtual Iraq?

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Lots of areas for expansion... more to follow. Developing the optimal protocol for treatment time is one... need research in that. Also, the use of the drug D-cycloserine -- an antibiotic that speeds up fear extinction -- very promising results with reducing number of treatment sessions is emerging on that front. Also, use of simulation tools like VI for determining who may have an extreme reaction to stress and then develop ways to use the stress inoculation approach to reduce development of PTSD when finally deployed. Also, use Virtual Iraq as an assessment tool for emotional reactivity that could predict who will develop PTSD... provide earlier and better reset care armed with that info.

Digital Nation: Dr. Rizzo, the use of Virtual Iraq as an assessment tool for emotional reactivity is an interesting concept. Is this done at all currently? Could it be used to screen out potential recruits?

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Pre-deployment not yet... We are fighting every day to get work like that funded. The use upon redeployment home as a predictor of those who may run into trouble is about to begin in a project at the Providence VA and Brown University using Virtual Iraq.

Digital Nation: Christian, amongst the members of the armed forces that you've spoken with, does the changing nature of training come up often? Both the shift to COIN, and also the increased reliance on virtual/live simulations of villages in Iraq and Afghanistan? What is the perception amongst these new training systems by the troops?

Defense Tech: Some bemoan the days of combined arms training (like artillerymen), but most like the shift to COIN and see huge gains from virtual training -- especially with the shrinking availability of land to use for wide training.

Digital Nation: Christian, is there something lost in the virtual training? Or is it starting to come up to par with the live variety?

Defense Tech: Obviously the smells and cues and feel is lost, but at the end of the day, it's either train this way or wait six months for a range. Remember, pilots have been trained in simulators for years.

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Some things can be trained well at the current level of simulation technology... As the tech evolves more and more options for simulation tech will emerge and be beneficial... The key to use what you have now to build a simulation tech base to work off of.

Digital Nation: In terms of preparing troops for the mental effects of facing live fire, do you think a virtual simulation can help prepare for that?

Defense Tech: I mean, it has to right? Better than just shooting at paper targets and trying to decide shoot-no-shoot scenarios...

Comment from atacms: Yes thanks Digital Nation, that was what I was trying to get at in terms of VR training. Can we create combat veterans that seem for all purposes battle hardened as a result of all their simulated battles?

Defense Tech: I mean, for all of its flaws, virtual training helps ensure that a trooper won't freeze up at the moment of contact.

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Regarding live fire... Why is that so compelling--because of the element of potential risk... We need to embed consequences for screwing up in a simulation that engenders similar negative consequences.

Comment from atacms: Dr. Rizzo, simunitions together with VR?

Digital Nation: Yes, I suppose virtual training has to be better than nothing. I guess what I was getting at was if there were danger of a virtual simulation creating false expectations in a soldier's mind.

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Ah negative transfer from a low fidelity trainer to the real world...

Defense Tech: Skip, you just reminded me of training done with "simunitions"... Paint balls that sting like hell...

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Yes, exactly. There are actually shock vests that folks are experimenting with.

Defense Tech: Again, there are downsides to VT, sure... Skip, wonder if we could embed the MILES tech with sims... beeping when shot.

Comment From atacms: Yes, this is all gaming tech, they are leading the field.

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: It may seem cruel at first blush, but if it makes you more thoughtful in training that carries over to the high stress real combat situations, then you have your cost-benefit case made for you.

Defense Tech: Totally agree.

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Absolutely, all learning requires feedback as to outcomes of action.

Digital Nation: Well, unless you have anything else to add, I think we can wrap it up there and let you go.

Comment from atacms: Thanks gentlemen for this interesting panel discussion!

Defense Tech: Thanks for the invitation.

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Thanks for having us on board... quite a lively and diverse multitasking endeavor!

Digital Nation: Thank you for joining us. I found the discussion to be fascinating. And it was certainly an exercise of our multi-tasking skills.

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.: Talk again soon!

Digital Nation: Ok, take care guys. Thank you again for joining us and for your thoughtful answers.

The number of online adults who have used online classified ads has more than doubled in the past four years. Almost half (49%) of internet users say they have ever used online classified sites, compared with 22% of online adults who had done so in 2005.

On any given day about a tenth of internet users (9%) visit online classified sites, up from 4% in 2005.

Young adults are leading the way:

Free online classifieds sites like Craigslist are tremendously popular with young adults moving to new cities, looking for jobs, or trying to find inexpensive goods or roommates. Internet users ages 25-44 are significantly more likely than any other age group - including 18-24 year olds - to use classified ads. Fully 62% of online 25-34 year olds and 57% of 35-44 year olds use online classified ads, compared with 49% of online 18-24 year olds and 48% of online 45-54 year olds.

At the same time, sales of newspaper classified ads are plummeting. Classifieds previously accounted for between 30 and 40 percent of revenue for many daily newspapers, so their move to online sites has been devastating. Although traditional newspapers are being forced under, the bright side appears to be that news and classifieds are more accessible to young people than ever before.

-Jeff

We will be hosting a live online discussion next Tuesday, May 26, at 11 am EDT on the topic of "Digital Warriors: Our 21st Century Military." A panel of three distinguished experts will answer your questions and discuss the U.S. military's applications of modern digital technology. The forum will cover a wide range of issues raised here on the blog and in the videos of our Features section, including cyber-security, drones, virtual reality training, virtual reality medical treatment, and the "Soldier 2.0".

We'll be joined by Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder, commander of the 8th Air Force, Air Combat Command, at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, where he served as the first commander of Air Force Network Operations and led the development of the cyberspace mission for the Air Force; Christian Lowe, award-winning military journalist and current editor of DefenseTech; and Dr. Albert 'Skip' Rizzo, research scientist and professor at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) and developer of the Virtual Iraq treatment for combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Lt. Gen. Elder is also commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Global Strike (JFCC-GS), underneath US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM). The JFCC-GS plans and executes strategic deterrence and global strike operations for USSTRATCOM.

Unlike our previous live discussion, this military forum will not be held on the blog. Instead, we have a separate page set up here, where the discussion will take place. On that page, you can submit your questions in advance via an online form and sign up for an email reminder.

We hope you'll join us.

-Jeff

Friday arrived, and a relative lent me his car for the weekend so that I could head to Jersey to see my family. It was my first time behind a wheel alone since redeploying back from Iraq, and I started the near 40-mile journey without concern or hesitation. I had no reason to -- or at least I thought, since prior to Iraq I had made this journey from Manhattan's Upper East Side a hundred times before. As the highways began to condense and the roads turned into overpasses, the same anticipations I had felt on the many MSRs (military supply routes) once traveled while in Baghdad began to start up again. The only difference was this time I was not in uniform, I was not carrying a weapon, nor was I in any immediate danger. The difference, oddly, was that I was home..."safe" and approaching symbols that I had, for some reason, still associated with my year as a Military Police officer. The anticipations started to grow, and my heart started to race. My palms were sweating and I had no idea why. Throughout my life I have always been an avid athlete. In the Army, I was awarded the Expert Physical Fitness Badge twice, but my mind had started to race thinking this was a heart attack on the rise and I was going to collapse any second, right here on the road if I wasn't careful. So instinctively I pulled over and just tried to wait it out, cursing the passersby and praying to God for help. I sat there, alone, on Route 280 West for almost twenty minutes before I headed out again slowly, focusing on my breath and eventually soaked from the sweat of my anxiety toward this completely upending experience.

This occurred several times over the next year, before I realized that maybe I needed to look into it with the guidance of a professional. It was that which led me to the Manhattan VA and Dr. Michael Kramer. And it was there where, after playing the skeptic through many sessions, I came to embrace the notion that I had been suffering from panic attacks -- ones related to combat -- and was about to become 'One of those Guys' who was diagnosed with PTSD. It was the biggest hurdle for me to accept because I had never thought of myself as penetrable in this way before. Only in my accepting of this fact and allowing my time with Dr. Kramer to evolve therapeutically did I agree to take part in a brand new, state-of-the-art and cutting-edge way of treatment: one that would look to help the almost 80% of America's soldier population who suffer from similar, if not worse, experiences when readjusting back into society. The treatment is called Virtual Reality.

March 2009

I think one of the funniest things I remember before starting VR was how, after looking into the video image for the first time, I blurted out to Dr. Kramer: "What, you want me to play video games now! How the f--k is that going to help!?" I was very naive. So much of what I have now learned about how this treatment works is that it's not meant to offer you actual images that assist your stress levels, only video prompts that are mainly designed to trigger memory. Our minds are so powerful. As I described before, when I went under those overpasses for the first time at home, my mind was telling me 'overpass=danger=ambush!' Everything that I was trained to experience and prepared to face, day in and day out for 365 days, had now carried itself over traumatically. But it wasn't THOSE images in NJ that were causing it. Rather, it was the similarities those images held with the ones I knew from war. It wasn't anything more than what my mind had yet to tell my body to believe in differently since arriving home. And, as easy as that may seem for me to describe now, trust me, it's a lot more difficult to identify initially. So, I panicked, I stressed, and well...the rest is history.

Could the absence of my weapon, the symbol of security and control to me and every soldier, have been a part of the trigger? Possibly. But what VR gave me is something more -- it gave me an understanding of the great power that memory can hold for an individual. It taught me to learn that you can continue on through your stress levels in these situations and NOT have to pull the car over. And that is it in a nutshell, because with the lack of this guidance I couldn't put a face to the reasons. I couldn't build confidence enough to apply the VR work toward its greatest goal: my life. I have been working with VR for well over a year now, on and off, and have taken part in numerous sessions. Though the imagery and combat scenarios that VR provides are only part of the process, I would have to say that the most important parts of the work are within the individuals themselves. I don't believe this program can '"save" anyone completely. I don't think it's meant for that. Being a veteran with PTSD is a very complex identity to understand, and each soldier is different and may spend a lifetime trying to balance this. I know I've accepted that. But if given the chance, maybe the best thing VR can offer is an opportunity for it to become a very effective tool in the individual's process -- one that, in my belief, leads toward the truest form of adjustment and recovery: understanding.

~Gerald Della Salla,
SGT, US ARMY-Reserves (OIF 3- Veteran)

We got in touch with Evan earlier this year and asked her to contribute yet again, this time to Digital Nation. After a conversation with her about what's on her mind now, we sent her a camera and some tapes. Here's the video diary she sent back...

US government officials are concerned that the quality of the Global Positioning System (GPS) could begin to deteriorate as early as next year, resulting in regular blackouts and failures - or even dishing out inaccurate directions to millions of people worldwide.

... The satellites are overseen by the US Air Force, which has maintained the GPS network since the early 1990s. According to a study by the US government accountability office (GAO), mismanagement and a lack of investment means that some of the crucial GPS satellites could begin to fail as early as next year.

"It is uncertain whether the Air Force will be able to acquire new satellites in time to maintain current GPS service without interruption," said the report, presented to Congress. "If not, some military operations and some civilian users could be adversely affected."

"Adversely affected" may be an understatement of the impact on those of us who have become dependent on GPS devices to find our way around. I live in New York City and don't have a car, but I still use the GPS feature on my iPhone on a daily basis. It's how I find restaurants, orient myself coming out of the subway and navigate unfamiliar terrain. Could I do without it? Sure. But now that I've grown used to it, like anything, it will be harder to give up because I know what I would be missing.

I imagine the transition would be just as frustrating for drivers. We've gone from planning out our routes on paper maps to printing out directions from sites like MapQuest and Google Maps to hopping in the car and presuming the GPS will show us the way.

But while these conveniences are nice, perhaps we're missing out on things we took for granted before GPS. Now that I find nearby restaurants on my phone and peruse the reviews on my way there, I no longer experience the pleasure of finding a charming hole-in-the-wall shop and enjoying its food with no expectations. There are no longer any surprises, and the joy of discovery is lost.

Similarly, in my travels, I spend so much time with my head buried in my phone, looking at my blinking dot move across the digital map, I fear I'm overlooking the amazing sights and sounds along the way. Some of my favorite discoveries in life have come from getting lost. Now I've become so focused on the destination that I've neglected the journey. What have I been missing?

Then again, I'm not ready to turn in my phone or lose my GPS service. Perhaps these experiences -- stopping and smelling the roses, so to speak -- are simply unavoidable casualties of a modern life. What do you think? Are we GPS-dependents missing out or just getting more done faster?

-Jeff

While the laptop program has indisputably been a success, the kids, being kids, spend a good chunk of time goofing off. Since they all have laptops with wireless access to the internet, they tend to goof off online. They all have the proxies to get around DOE restrictions on sights like YouTube and MySpace. The boys play video games, and the girls in particular love Photo Booth, which allows them to use the camera in their laptop like a live video mirror.

One of the highlights of the day was when Assistant Principal Dan Ackerman showed us how he can access what's going on on every student's laptop using a program called Apple Remote Desktop. Ackerman has access to the laptop of every kid in the school through this program, and he can switch from one to another and watch what the kids are doing on their computers in real time. The sixth and seventh graders all have cameras enabled in their laptops, so not only can Ackerman see their screens, he can see their faces. He can push a button and see a seventh grade girl in social studies class two floors away, peering at herself in video, putting on lip gloss, fixing her hair. He can also communicate with her: to freak the kids out and remind them they're being watched, he sometimes will take a picture of them (he can control their laptops remotely) in Photo Booth, or interrupt their IM conversation with his own message, telling them to get back to work.

Sitting next to Ackerman watching him watch his students was a really profound experience. Sure, the kids all know they're being monitored, and they don't seem terribly upset about it. After all, they're in middle school, and the laptops don't belong to them, so they have no real expectation of privacy. But there's something about having access to a moment as intimate as someone else looking in a mirror that says volumes about how our relationship to privacy as a society is changing. It rattled me, not because I necessarily disapprove of what Ackerman is doing, but because I realized how relatively easy it has become for anyone to watch anyone else at any time.

Today, I had two meetings via video Skype, a relatively new thing for me. The meetings went well, but when I signed off and the camera went to black, I had a momentary shudder. I realized I wasn't completely confident that the camera in my laptop was no longer recording me. Was there a chance that the people on the other end of the call-- or anyone else-- could still see me? After all, there was the camera in my laptop, still pointed straight at my face. Who's to know if anyone was watching?

As far as I can tell, the thing you are missing about Twitter it's raw collection of thoughts is not meant to be read as a stream or an update. As far as my usage goes, if you're not directly in my peer group, I don't think they should be read in their original form at all.

As a friend or family member, I want to know about what's happening around me, complete with attached media. My sister sends an update, "at the party, having a great time." Twitter is absolutely useless in this situation, and it doesn't need to be because there are already companion services that can add a linked photo and geotag. But nevertheless, people don't use these, and 'high information density' is no where to be found. Furthermore, her stream is completely out of context to anyone not in her peer group.

The power of twitter is in Trends. Twitter is a massive garbage dump of incomplete thoughts and opinions. However, when we use applications to sift through this mess, we get common themes and trends; we can get an idea about what's going through the culture's head. This notion of high information density messages are just gibberish, but gibberish that is useful to people in marketing and politics. Of course we've already heard about this in the blogosphere; the Twitterverse is a hundred times as big.

-Jeff

you can research the internet on subjects for school work or home work, and its wonderful. this is the public space now in the virtual world of the internet.

people need to know the risks of credit cards online and how to be safe when using it. and the benefits of credit cards online and online banking.

and all the members of the dating sites and even disability dating sites, need to update their personal info, if it changed every year. and there is an automatic message that says go to the update membership info. and they can track any bad people down, on dating sites, to make it safe. people should feel safe and secure when dating online.

dating sites should look into safe guards for example police checks, to make sure who is bad and is not. Dating sites should keep sex offenders off of dating sites. Dating sites should be safe. Dating sites should protect its members to make sure who you are dealing with, are nice people, not bad people. Dating sites should screen its members before anyone, can have full access to the site, like activation codes that the company sends thourgh the mail, and you have to enter your phone number and your real name, and your zip/postal code. and enter your birthdate and this will make sure you are, who you say you are. Keep Bad people off of these sites and make sure they are accountable for their actions. and the activation code has an id code. everytime you sign up, you get the activation code in the mail. and have the personal information on a private network, and use a company called Hacker safe. to make sure no one breaks in and steals the information you gave. and this will keep everyone safe. Please put this in a follow up report thanks. for dating sites to have tips to know how to keep its members safe. and its free. Bad people don't give out personal info, they want to hide, behind a nickname for no one to know who they are. so this will make sure good people are the only ones on dating sites.

have activation codes for disability for dating sites mostly but for other dating sites too. and the internet opened up a whole new world now, you can date people in the same country as you or in the same town/city as you. and its wonderful but the sites need to be kept safe and secure. and the activation codes get sent in the mail when you sign up and its free. and you only can sign up once for an account. and have codes of conduct and rules for the dating sites for disability people and other people as well. the sites need to do something, to make people feel safe and at ease when dating online. its fun and exciting to meet people online but it needs to be done in a safe and secure manner. the dating sites need to look into putting in safe guards thanks.

Talk in a report about safe guards for dating sites for disability people. people with disabilities are more venerable then most. and they need to protect their members. some of the examples are activation code with an id code, that you only enter once to gain full access to the site, its different then a password. and screen the members by their real name and birth date and phone number and zip/postal code. keep bad people off of dating sites for disability people mostly. but on other sites too, there should be safe guards as well. and keep sex offenders off of dating sites and disability dating sites. to know who they are. and who you are dealing with are nice people. there are sites on the internet for disability dating but there has to be safe guards in place at all times. because people who are bad wants to hide behind a nickname and not give out their personal info. but have the personal info on a private network and have a company called hacker safe. that will be safe.

main rule someone goes by is never give out any info you would not give out in the off line world , you wouldn't give out your personal info to a stranger on a street corner , then don't do it on the net . and someone never uses credit cards ,I dont trust them

this is my bullying story. Bullying happens, and it is a learned behaviour. Students in my classrooms bullied me. They were copying the behaviour of the teachers. People should say "sorry" and own up when they bully someone. Nobody is perfect--yes, you might get in trouble when you own up to your bullying. But lying about it is worse. Once I accidentally bumped into a teacher and to "teach me a lesson" a teacher's aid body-checked me and asked me how I liked it. I did apologize and said it was an accident when I bumped the teacher. I think the teacher's aid bullied me by treating me this way. Another teacher aid told me that when I got to high school, she would feed me my pills like a baby. I can feed myself! I felt anxious and confused when teachers bullied me and when a teacher aid stamped her foot. When I was little a school bus driver hit my face. Nothing happened to the driver. One teacher put me in time out because I was cold and didn't want to take my coat off. My nose started bleeding. At least he said he was sorry, but other teachers didn't. I don't believe people in authority should be allowed to treat students this way. They should have to treat people the way they want to be treated, just the same as the students. Staff should follow a professional code of conduct. The school should hold them accountable. They shut their ears to bullying when teachers bully kids. They should be role models and show respect, care and love. They tell us not to bully but they do it themselves. We are helpless in schools. Teachers and school staff can run and hide, students can't. It also hurts when you tell someone you were bullied and people don't believe you, or when the person who bullied you lies about it to protect themselves from getting in trouble, or when other people lie for the bully. This isn't fair. I had teachers say I'm lying when I've said I've been hurt. Teachers shouldn't lie and say they didn't see anything wrong happen when they did. My brother got bullied when he was in school and the parents and school didn't do anything about it. Bullying happens to other people, too, not just my brother. I got a death threat from someone online and they said they want to hit me with a baseball bat. This is cyber bullying. I deleted my account. Bullying isn't healthy for the bully or for the victim. Bullies want power over their victims. We need to put an end to bullying, it makes everyone sad. It hurts badly. I believe we have the right to go to a secure and safe school. People should at least say "sorry."

I use to volunteer for wired safety but they don't understand people with special needs. so I asked people in motion if I could start up a program there and stand out then other internet safety non profits, because we have the expertise about special needs people. and I did a few internet safety presentations already and it went over and now people in motion is looking into funding, so yeah I am making the internet better for people with special needs. I am special needs too. so I teach people about internet safety for special needs people. and I study internet safety everyday to learn more. and I love the internet. the internet is lots of fun, but you need to be aware of the risks.

The Internet is very addicting and fun and wonderful and great for volunteer work or paid work. I go on ability online.org and it is a fun site and you should never give out your personal information in public on that site and if you do, they remove it quickly and also when you sign up they want your personal info to track down bad people or predators if there are anyone bad on the site, and also the site has hosts to make sure people are being friendly and nice to each other. and ability online is fun and exciting and fantastic. that's what makes ability online safe. and they also have police and lawyers on the board of directors. and yeah I would be lost without the internet. ability online also makes people use their real name because they find people are more honest and better behave using a real name, then hiding behind a nickname. I learned on the internet is don't post links in chatrooms because their could be a virus even on safe sites, I didn't know that before. I also learned people are very picky about their computers and if they tell you don't send it don't. and I learned alot of things on the internet. I am a young adult and I teach special needs people about internet safety. I learned to not copy and paste because it can get you into trouble by the law, and also ask for permission before you copy and past something, always talk to the copy right holder and give credit for their work. I find the internet is very useful. Stop,Block, Tell and do something for 5 minutes when something upsets you online. special needs people are very venerable then most on the internet. Its the cyberbullies fault, not yours. cyberbullying hurts and can kill for some people, lets curb bullying online and off. Treat people how you would like to be treated with respect. teachers bullied me and body checked me and a school bus driver hit my face when I was little, nothing happened. Teachers and school staff lies to get out of trouble, any kind of bullying hurts even on or off. Hang in there and be strong. people like you in this world, so please don't commit suicide. everyone cares about you in this world. Your family and friends will miss you if you passed away. Parents don't take the internet away if someone bullies your kids online. Please kids tell your parents what is happening and they will help you. we are in this together. Be safe!!!

While I'm not much inclined to blog, I've been encouraged to contribute to the Digital Nation blog in addition to the more usual suspects. So I'll be publishing a tech-related cartoon every week or so. Suggestions for topics to poke a little fun at are very much welcome!

-Fedde

Before being vocalized, speech exists as word-specific neural signals in the mind. Darpa wants to develop technology that would detect these signals of "pre-speech," analyze them, and then transmit the statement to an intended interlocutor. Darpa plans to use EEG to read the brain waves. It's a technique they're also testing in a project to devise mind-reading binoculars that alert soldiers to threats faster the conscious mind can process them.

The project has three major goals, according to Darpa. First, try to map a person's EEG patterns to his or her individual words. Then, see if those patterns are generalizable -- if everyone has similar patterns. Last, "construct a fieldable pre-prototype that would decode the signal and transmit over a limited range."

This program comes on the heels of the Army granting a team of University of California $4 million to explore "synthetic telepathy."

Vaughan, from the Mind Hacks blog, is skeptical:

I get the feeling that DARPA, the American military research agency, only ever select their research projects from sci-fi comics. ... It's all getting a bit Rogue Trooper isn't it?

But, as ReadWriteWeb reports, Twitter may have already beaten the military to the punch:

University of Wisconsin-Madison biomedical engineering doctoral student Adam Wilson has successfully tested a "brain wave monitor" to Twitter publishing interface, allowing him to compose a message merely by thinking and publish it to the arguably too-popular microblogging service.

Either the gates of Hell have begun to open or this is a grad student who really knows how to publicize his work by riding the bandwagon of popular culture. Both are probably true.

The idea of brain implants and converting brain waves into readable computer data raises some interesting ethical questions. If you're interested in these issues, ReadWriteWeb put together a nice critique of the brain implant idea back in 2007. Two key points:

We don't even have control over our own data online yet

People complain about information overload already

For my part, I can't imagine when the American public will have the time to even consider these issues with all the other moral/social/ethical questions on its plate already.

-Jeff

The initiative carries serious risks for Pakistan, which is struggling to balance a desire for more control over the drones with a deep reluctance to become complicit in U.S.-operated Predator strikes on its own people.

Previously, the U.S. military only operated drone missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Missions in Pakistan were carried out secretly by the CIA because of the sensitivity of operating in sovereign territory. According to the LA Times, Pakistani officials did not deny the existence of the new program. But in a story in the New York Times yesterday, U.S. military officials disputed the report and suggested no such program exists. The U.S. officials acknowledged that efforts have been made to share drone intelligence with the Pakistani military, but the New York Times says the cooperation has recently dried up. The NY Times report cites possible divisions within the Pakistani military and lingering distrust among some U.S. military officials of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as reasons for the apparent stall in intelligence sharing. Today, the LA Times ran a brief story saying an unnamed official from Central Command confirmed the existence of a new joint program between the two militaries, but the effort does not include armed strikes, only intelligence gathering. The LA Times says Pakistan has not requested a Predator mission since mid-April.

Meanwhile, Jane's Defence Weekly has revealed that Pakistan has acquired their own fleet of non-weaponized "Falco" drones used as reconnaissance vehicles and for combat surveillance. Apparently the Pakistani military currently has at least 8 of these drones in use and have ordered another 5 from defense contractor Selex-Galileo. While these drones still involve sophisticated and expensive technology, a reader of this blog points out that drones in general are becoming more and more readily available:

Have you looked into how National Enquirer, etc., use drones to photo celeb weddings? Private eyes use them? etc. One can use very cheap tech quite easily.

In researching this story, we have seen examples of civilians and private companies using drones for various reasons. The reader continues:

What you don't mention is the notion of the remote sensing and recognition capabilities inherent in such a vehicle and the extensions of those abilities in circumscribing civil liberties -- whether terrain scan programming, identification of living beings, heat resonance imaging of different plant types or facial recognition. Taken at a different level Google Earth is a crude facsimile of military/intelligence capability in terms of earth recon/face recon which is now used by casinos, the NFL and police.

What used to be the stuff of sci-fi movies appears to have arrived. The fact remains, even with these technological advances and increased cooperation between the U.S. military, CIA, and Pakistani intelligence on the ground, not every missile hits its target. Issues of Pakistani sovereignty continue to swirl, resentment on the ground grows, and confusion over U.S. policy in Pakistan mounts, as more and more drones fill the skies.

-- Sam

What must it be like, for your job, to watch and potentially kill people via video screen for hours on end? To enact choices that will affect lives 7,000 miles away from you while you sit in a trailer in the desert? And then, at the end of the day, to return to the normal rhythms of family and home life?

This past weekend, 60 Minutes did a story on the U.S. Air Force's unmanned aerial vehicles and the pilots who fly them. The UAVs provide "eyes in the sky" and occasional firepower for troops on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they are controlled by pilot and camera teams at Creech Air Force base in the desert just north of Las Vegas. One of the most poignant parts of the story for me was the description by a Lt. Col. of the disconnect between his days as a UAV pilot and his life at home. He told 60 Minutes:

"To go and work and do bad things to bad people ... and then when I go home and I go to church and try to be a productive member of society, those don't necessarily mesh well."

In this new kind of warfare, it seems that the idea of a "band of brothers" is completely redefined. Although drone pilots at Creech suit up in flight gear and are part of a traditional Air Force squadron, their experience of war must differ enormously from troops on the ground. Without physical immersion in the intimacy and camaraderie of the battlefield, these pilots gain the clarity of distance and stay out of harm's way, but can they also be insulated from the risk of mental injury?

I dug around to find out more, and it appears that remote war may indeed be taking its own psychological toll. Last fall, reports hit the news of possible PTSD cases among drone pilots. There have been no definitive studies to date, but as our use of drones in both Afghanistan and Pakistan continues, I wonder if incidence of post traumatic stress will increase apace.

The spiritual and emotional costs of war remain hard to ignore. The 60 Minutes story reminds us that, no matter the improvements in our technology, the reverberations from the battlefield still echo 7,000 miles away.

-- Caitlin

Photo credit: CC Lafrancevi/Flickr

Gov. Chris Gregoire has approved a tax break for the state's troubled newspaper industry. The new law gives newspaper printers and publishers a 40 percent cut in the state's main business tax. The discounted rate mirrors breaks given in years past to the Boeing Co. and the timber industry.

Last month, I asked readers here if the Internet hurts journalism. Here are some of their responses:

• My sense is that the Internet has advanced awareness and the ability of the populace to become aware of events around them. It facilitates conversation and idea sharing. It makes users far more conversant with all that is new in the world. It changes the media most visited, and the venues most easily supported, but it gets more people involved.
  
  That is not to say that it makes people more knowledgeable. Becoming more knowledgeable takes work on the part of the consumer. It takes time to decide what assertions are more likely to be relevant and true, and what sources are generally more reliable than others.
  
  That is where the question of journalism and journalists comes in. The internet makes it possible for journalists to acquire information and pictures almost in real time. They learn of a story as it is happening just as news consumers do. Their charge is to know enough to be able to pursue and filter the information correctly. The Sanjay Guptas, Cristiane Amanpours, Brian Williams, Anderson Coopers, David Gregoreys, Gwen Ifells, Ann Curreys, Barbara Starrs, Peter Bergens, Fareed Zakarias, etc are standouts in the field of journalism in my opinion. They are worthy successors to the greats (Woodwards, Murrows, Cronkites, Thomases, etc) of the last century and they are far more numerous.
  
  In my opinion, on balance, the profession of information creation (from incoming data) and distribution is well served by the internet even with the misinformation that is created and propogated by malcontents, pundits, and uncritical individuals. If journalists needs more or different support to foster and assist them in their roles as professional news specialists, lets find and/or create sources and methods to provide it. Quality is more dependent on intelligence and professionalism than it is on the medium of distribution. The Internet might even be useful in that undertaking too.


• It's money: if journalism is suffering, it's because the great newspapers can't afford to continue sending correspondents out to get the material that it needed if there is even going to be any news. So, either the newspapers need to be subsidized by the public(as npr and pbs), or they must charge everyone who wants to get news online. The best option as far as I can tell, is for the inline newspapers to require a paid subscription in order to survive.


• Though politically and socially a "liberal," I tend to view technological chand with a touch of jaundice. That tendency, plus remembering the strong influence early print, television and radio news had upon the US--and the world--might leave me with a subtle bias. Even in light of that, I can't help but think that the Internet has done more to hurt our ability as a people to learn about events and ourselves than to help us do so.


• Finally we can see/learn of the other side of stories.


• I agree that the Internet has hurt print journalism financially- without a doubt. I don't think there's anyone who can deny that. As someone going into the print(?) market very soon, I see firsthand the problems both the economy and the Internet have caused print media. But, I agree with the article and this post that the Internet has helped journalism as a whole- maybe not print, but the industry of journalism. Why? Well I guess as a journalist myself, I'd be stating the obvious (at least obvious to other journalists), that the Internet makes news even more widely accessible to people, especially the younger generations. Whether they take advantage of that is another discussion. However, I'm writing a paper about the Internet (blogs specifically), and I've been interviewing print professionals, who say that blogs and other "citizen" online journalism outlets threaten the credibility of professional news outlets. I could go on and on about this, but in a nutshell, the Internet poses problems of credibility to journalism if any Joe Schmo can write "news" or "analyze" news. So the Internet is a blessing and a curse in my mind- and it's something I'm going to have to learn to deal with... now.

-Jeff]]> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/blog/2009/05/newspaper-bailout.html /wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/blog/2009/05/newspaper-bailout.html Living with Technology Wed, 13 May 2009 12:00:52 -0500 We've written in the past about Google's decision to bypass the Republic of Korea's online real name registration system. The regulation requires Web sites with over 100,000 visitors to verify users' identities through a national ID card number when they upload content. Google circumvented the system by allowing Koreans to designate their country location as outside Korea. According to the Hankyoreh, Google is not backing down:

With the Korean government left having no particular cards to play, Google shows signs it will continue to deal with the Korean YouTube issue at the level of human rights. Nicole Wong, a Google legal advisor who handles questions concerning freedom of expression at the company, discussed the problems facing YouTube in South Korea at a conference hosted by the Human Rights Center of the University of California, Berkeley on Monday. She said because Google views YouTube as a socially and politically important platform, it considered facilitating Internet anonymity as fundamental in the exercise of freedom of expression. She said the company has conveyed to the South Korean government its opposition to the real-name verification system. In response to a question of whether the South Korean government could demand that Google do to YouTube's main site what it did to YouTube Korea's site or be blocked, she hinted that Google had in mind the possibility of pulling out of South Korea on its own accord.

As a result of the real-name regulation, disenchanted Korean Internet users are increasingly turning to foreign sites for their online needs. The Korean government says the registration system is necessary to combat "cyber-bullying."

In a recent letter to President Lee Myung-bak, the Committee to Protect Journalists cited the real-name system in a list of concerns about increasing government pressure on the Korea's media.

-Jeff

When you ask "how the fast pace of technological change is affecting us," I wonder what you think is driving this thing. I tend to see technology as a set of solutions that people choose to apply to their individual problems. Some may feel peer pressure or be required, as a condition of employment, to use a certain technology. That should hardly be universal for any given technology. I say that as both a geek and a curmudgeon! Of course, when we utilize a technology we also adapt to its constraints, and that's worth discussing.

I don't twitter because I don't personally have a use for it, and the few uses I considered weren't well served by Twitter when I checked it out. I don't fault anyone for finding Twitter useful and even life-enhancing in their particular circumstances. So I wonder if you're too protocol-specific by asking if Twittering is an important skill, since people (myself included) still send short messages by IM, email, and chat in the absence of strict character limits. Conciseness is a useful skill.

Moreover, Twitter's 140-char limit is entirely linked to SMS. SMS, in turn, is limited because it's a technology designed for cellphone networks optimized for voice telephony. I can't find any numbers on how many tweets are distributed as SMS, but as cell networks get upgraded to IP-based broadband technology, the SMS limit would seem headed towards obsolescence. You'll have to ask a network engineer if it's feasible to run all our personal communications over such networks and how long SMS is likely to stick around. There's also the issue of Twitter's long-term profitability. Perhaps, thinking long-term, you should speak of microblogging, not twittering.

I agree that I have over-emphasized Twitter in this discussion, which is relevant to all microblogging, status-updating and digital shorthand. In my previous post, I pointed out that many of the top 15 web companies from 1999 no longer exist. But I should have stressed that the trends and services these companies were pushing generally outlasted the companies themselves. For example, while Yahoo recently nixed GeoCities, the personal Web pages GeoCities established can be seen as a precursor to the Facebook pages of today. It's the same trend of creating personal space on the Web, but evolved significantly to enhance connectivity and usability.

Twitter may ultimately go the way of GeoCities, but the trend of microblogging is likely here to stay. Of course, brief written messages are nothing new. As the reader mentions, many other digital services encouraged them before Twitter came along, and they have been present throughout the long history of pre-digital writing, as well. Writing concisely is a useful skill. What I wonder is: at what point does the embrace of succinctness come at the expense of longer, more contemplative writing? That is the question I think we should be asking before jumping full-on into the microblogging world, of which Twitter is a salient example.

What do I think is pushing us to take that plunge? I, too, see technology as a set of solutions that people choose to apply to their individual problems. But this does not happen in isolation. Technology develops to serve group needs. Without a large market, the technology would have trouble taking off. This market can be seen as the sum of individual needs, but it affects the culture as a whole. Thus, the hype surrounding Twitter makes informal brevity more acceptable in other channels of communication. Its use affects how other media are used. (Just look at CNN.) Communications technologies, I think, have a two-fold influence on culture because they involve both a sender and a receiver.

My point is new technology influences us all, whether or not we choose to adopt it, because it affects our culture. When people choose to use a technology to solve a personal problem, they join the group driving the fast pace of change I have been referring to. I don't think there is anything wrong with this, but it is worth remembering that the consequences are far-reaching.

-Jeff

They are, say the US forces, ideal for the age of "network centric warfare", relatively easy to use, safe with secure software, and far cheaper than manufacturing a military version.

The sheer versatility of the kit - with the capability of over 30,000 programmes - allows a huge variety of functions needed for operations ranging from providing language translations to the transmitting of sensitive information and working out trajectories for snipers. Projects are on the way to use them as guidance systems for bomb disposal robots and receivers of aerial footage from unmanned drone aircraft.

The US Marine Corps is funding an application that would allow soldiers to upload photographs of detained suspects, along with written reports, into a biometric database. The software would match faces, in theory making it easier to track suspects after they're released.

Of course, the cheaper and simpler to use the technology is, the easier it is for terrorists to turn it against us. We already posted here that the Army has studied potential terrorist uses of Twitter. This threat, however, is more sensational than anything else. New technology can always be used for good or for evil. As one reader dryly put it:

Too bad the Government didn't think about possible terrorists use of the telephone when it was invented. Man, we would be so safe by now.

You can find more reporting on this subject below the video player in our military feature, under the tab "Terrorist Technology."

-Jeff

At Digital Nation, we are examining life in the digital age, but we're hoping to specifically get at how the fast pace of technological change is affecting us as humans. Once this comes into focus, we'd like to pause and reflect on the implications: how will this change our values and should we be working to preserve the ones we hold dear?

Twitter, as a the fastest growing online community, is part of this conversation. Simply by virtue of its prominence in the media, the service has changed the way we think and caused us to reconsider what we value. Is it an important skill to condense thoughts into 140 characters? Will this be vital in the future? Some people certainly think so. But new data released by Nielsen finds that "about 60 percent of people on Twitter end up abandoning the service after a month." As Nick Carr puts it:

The biggest crowd on the Web today is the one streaming through Twitter's entryway. The second biggest crowd on the Web today is the one streaming through Twitter's exit.

In light of this, I wanted to reconsider the potential of Twitter to change how we live. In the tech world, rising stars can quickly fall and the latest trends are often short-lived. Yahoo reminded us of this a few weeks ago when it decided to quietly pull the plug on '90s Web icon GeoCities. This caused Harry McCracken to contemplate what happened to the other top Web priorities from 1999. As it turns out, many of the top 15, such as Xoom.com and Snap, have simply disappeared. I'm not saying this will happen to Twitter, but it's worth considering. Carr again: "If Nielsen's numbers are accurate, and if they don't improve, Twitter may turn out to be the CB radio of Web 2.0."

An important lesson to take from our Twitter discussion is that any online service is not going to be for everyone. Twitter happens to be particularly polarizing, as our readers made clear. But, as we at Digital Nation consider how technology affects life in the digital age, we should be careful to remember how diverse that life is and that no single service will affect everyone in the same way.

As I made clear in my first post, I don't use Twitter particularly well. I have used it as more of an RSS feed than its intended purpose of broadcasting a stream of thoughts and updates on what I'm doing. A reader writes:

I really want to mention the distinction I see between twitter and rss: Twitter content is written intentionally from the getgo to fit in 140 characters. The content *usually* stands on its own. RSS feeds are just summaries of larger bodies of content which may or may not accurately reflect the actual intent. Every "Im just sending my blog RSS to twitter" feed I subscribe to, I rapidly turn around and unsub from. It ends up being more noise than use. If that's the kind of feed you subscribe to or offer over twitter, you're not going to get a very high satisfaction rate on either side.

I realize the differentiation. I'm the first person to say I don't use Twitter effectively -- or at the very least to its potential. The thing is, I've found that many of the Twitter feeds I subscribe to use the service in much the same way I do. Many of those that don't do this -- and post mainly about their personal life -- overload me with too many updates. I'll check Twitter and find it entirely filled by one person's mundane personal details. These people I quickly stop following.

I know that many people have found a nice middle ground between these extremes. That's why I made my original post asking about the utility of Twitter. I'm curious to hear from people like this reader, who utilize it effectively. Too often, in the media-hype whirlwind surrounding Twitter, I don't see these stories. I hope that by broadcasting them -- along with people who don't find Twitter particularly useful -- I can get at what Twitter will be used for in the long-term. And this will tell us more about how the service fits into the premise of Digital Nation -- how is it affecting us?

The reader counters:

I think what you're seeing is an evolution of dialect and communication patterns...you literally can't frame thoughts and conversations the same ways you can verbally, in blogs, or in other formats.

What makes twitter interesting (and what I think it's long term value stems from) isn't its role in providing yet-another-new-communication-stream, but rather the constraints it forces on users. As with other things (like Second Life) those constraints let interesting patterns of communication develop.

In this case, the 140 character limit and undirected communication focuses of twitter has certain useful repercussions: People who stick with twitter are beginning to develop a distinct dialect. This dialect tends to be concise with a high information density.

In a world where we are being inundated with so much information that we're literally choking on it, we need these types of dialects to effectively communicate. I really don't have enough time to read every blog I'm interested in and I certainly don't have the time to sift through -video-...especially when they're sources new to me. Twitter's high density dialect with its easy, fast, open publish/subscribe network model solves both of those problems: I can get information quickly, some knowledge of the validity of the source by who else is following/talking, and click through to people's longer blogs on their profile (or URL's in the tweet if provided) if I want more information. Or I can just ask :)

All this also has a secondary effect of flattening social networks - I have access to more "high profile social network hubs" via twitter than anything but IRC (and everyone has mostly left IRC). Even blogs don't flatten things as much - it takes more time and effort to read/respond to user blog comments than it does to read/respond to followers' tweets. Neil Gaiman (Coraline), Amanda Palmer (of Dresden Dolls), and Brian Bolter (Fox 5, DC) are all fantastic examples of how this works.

I think you're definitely seeing some growing pains as people adapt to the associated communication constraints of twitter, but whether or not the service/company ultimately succeeds, I think you'll find this type of dialect living on and growing.

If this turns out to be the case, it certain deserves consideration by our project. Should we be pausing to consider whether we'd like to hang on to elements of our current dialect before this new one grows too large?

-Jeff

An interesting pattern has emerged behind the scenes of Stories from Your Digital Nation. People will submit their stories, one email leads to another, conversations start forming, and soon there are threads of a dozen email messages back and forth. Sometimes an experience is so fascinating that I can't help but ask questions, other times I'll help a contributor figure out how to best share their story, or what tools to use. Whatever the case may be, we start talking, and I'm getting to know you based not only on the stories you choose to share, but also through these emerging correspondences.

Here's an example from a recent submission: Charlotte, or Chip, first contacted us three weeks ago; She was so excited to contribute to Stories from Your Digital Nation that she sent in a Submission, a Comment, and she even wrote to Frontline's general mailbox! Charlotte, who is 73, wanted to share a song she had written called Blue Tomatoes, about life in the 50's and growing up with just the radio.

"I was born in Atlanta, GA, in 1936, only child, mostly poor, majored in Drama, married with children, divorced in 1975. Those were the gloved and girdled Betty Crocker days. At 41, I taught myself to play jazz piano, and found a job that led to being a Corporate Communications Editor. I wasn't really that corporate, so I walked out the door at 53, leaving a good salary and health benefits. Now, my real life began. My dreamy show-biz life!"

It was these dreams of show-biz, stars and glitz that pushed Charlotte to learn how to use new digital tools and technology: With help, she learned how to build a MySpace account to share her music. This was the story I thought she should share, and I suggested that she create a submission talking about her journey into the technological frontier.

Well, this produced an entirely new learning curve - she had recently purchased a camcorder and would learn how to use it to make this submission. When she was done, she was ready to send the DVD in the mail... And I suggested she try YouTube instead. Once she had an account on YouTube the next challenge was exploring privacy settings, and in a fluster of emails back and forth, Chip even used Gmail chat for the first time.

In her submission, you'll hear how she used digital tools to make her life long dreams come true. But in the process of sharing that with us, a whole other story about digital life emerged. Not only did Charlotte learn how to use a camcorder, YouTube, and instant messenger, but also she and I, who would probably never have met in real life, have now exchanged over 20 emails... Chip, I feel like I know you now!

-Ramona

Today we drove up to Hastings, New York, and spent a few hours with our correspondent, Doug Rushkoff, talking about different ways to focus the documentary. It's not going to be easy. This subject has no clear narrative, no inherent tension and no obvious characters: three pretty essential ingredients of most strong documentaries. Over the past six months, we've been swimming in a pretty vast sea: from an internet addiction treatment center in South Korea to a military training base in San Diego, from the headquarters of the virtual world Second Life to an inner city school in the Bronx with a one-to-one laptop program. How do we weave all that together into a coherent whole?

We didn't solve it today, but we had some little epiphanies. As we ate organic chicken burritos at Doug's favorite restaurant, he started talking about how ten years back, when the digital revolution was just getting going, he used to always be asked to talk about what the future was going to look like. Today, as a member of the last generation that remembers what the world was like before laptops and smartphones, he's often asked to do the opposite: to conjure the past, and to articulate its salience to the present. Doug said that one of the questions he wrestles with most is this: what essential values should we be fighting to preserve as we make the transition from one kind of world into another?

That seems like an interesting query around which to hang our documentary. The world is changing so quickly and in such huge ways that it's easy to feel helpless in the face of all of it. Our kids are on five screens at once; our email boxes are overloaded; our interactions are increasingly virtual. But we need to take the time to pause: to consciously try and figure out what is meaningful to us as human beings and carry that with us as we, like it or not, migrate into a highly digital world.

For tonight, I'm chewing on that.

Rachel

Photo credit: CC Ip.sebastian/Flickr

Several of the findings jump out:

The nation's school district administrators are overwhelmingly positive about the impact of Web 2.0 on students' lives and on their education.

More than half of the administrators said Web 2.0 positively affected every aspect of student life and education listed in the survey, except behavior in school and exercise/conditioning. It should be noted that despite administrators' doubt about Web 2.0's benefit for behavior, only 19 percent believed it would have a negative effect.

However, despite the enthusiasm of the administrators responsible for curriculum changes, Web 2.0 remains largely absent from the nation's classrooms. The survey found:

While there was broad agreement that Web 2.0 applications hold educational value, the use of these tools in American classrooms remains the province of individual pioneering classrooms. The majority of administrators reported that Web 2.0 tools have not been integrated into their district's curriculum. Over half of superintendents and curriculum directors also reported that these applications were not being used to support teaching and learning in their districts.

In fact, 56 percent of administrators reported that Web 2.0 applications have not yet been integrated into their district's curriculum. Some teachers have adopted Web 2.0 applications independently of the school curriculum, but these appear to be fairly limited:

There are a number of reasons why schools have been sluggish to incorporate Web 2.0 technology. The most obvious reason is that change takes time, and Web 2.0 is new -- at least by the standards of educators. Fifty-four percent of administrators said Web 2.0 is so new that their districts had not yet had time to consider how it might be used. On the other hand, the survey reflects a general uneasiness about the technology itself. Fifty-three percent of the administrators surveyed said allowing students to access it made policymakers nervous, and 79 percent said it had sparked discussions about its possible use and misuse.

This discomfort becomes more apparent in some of the administrators' comments:

"Teachers and administrators don't know enough to support the students' world...Teachers teach like they were taught; administrators administrator like evaluators of the past...we are a different world. When will our educational system be supported by all federal and state agencies to become the learning environment we must become...It's all so complicated when all we need to do is learn how to learn." -- a Technology Director in Michigan

"I am always concerned about student safety on the Internet. With the advent of Web 2.0, there are so many more areas of the web that students want to use. I value the information found on the web, but I worry about the possibilities of students being exploited by adults, especially on social sites." -- a Technology Director in Tennessee

"I am not sure we all know what is out there to be used -- no less how to effectively use it!" -- a Superintendent

It turns out many administrators do not actively use Web 2.0 in their personal lives:

District administrators, the persons responsible for decision making on Web 2.0 in schools, are more passive than active users in the Web 2.0 space. Most of the current use of Web 2.0 applications by district administrators (superintendents, technology directors, and curriculum directors) is restricted to accessing and viewing of content using a few of the more common applications such as Wiki's and blogs.

The survey hints that this may be the heart of the problem, and I don't doubt it. Of course, a certain amount of resistance to change can always be attributed to bureaucracy, and there's always the issue of money, but it's not surprising that fear of an unfamiliar technology would give pause to curriculum makers. Web 2.0 holds tremendous potential, and they see that, but the Web is also a big and scary place.

I don't blame the administrators for their hesitance. I'm skeptical that even those policymakers who are familiar with Web 2.0 have confidence they know the most effective way to implement it. Many teachers have experimented on their own and found numerous successful applications. But system-wide implementation is more challenging, and will naturally be slower.

Then again, the longer we wait, the farther we fall behind. The question is, Can the U.S. school system afford to delay when it already trails other countries in technology utilization? We may not know exactly how it will affect learning, development and ultimately grown-ups in the workforce over the long term, and this is worrying. But it is clear that students need to learn how to use these technologies effectively before they enter the workforce, and there is evidence Web 2.0 can be beneficial in traditional learning, as well. So, how to implement it? Can there be innovation without experimentation?

These questions are difficult but also urgent. Our next chapter at Digital Nation will cover education, so we'll be exploring them in greater detail in days and weeks to come.

-Jeff

Scenario 1: Terrorist operative "A" uses Twitter with (or without) using a cell phone camera/video function to send back messages, and to receive messages, from the rest of his cell. Operative "A" also has a Google Maps Twitter Mash Up of where he is under a code word for other members of his cell (if they need more in-depth directions) posted on the WWW that can be viewed from their mobiles. Other members of his cell receive near real time updates (similar to the movement updates that were sent by activists at the RNC) on how, where, and the number of troops that are moving in order to conduct an ambush.

Scenario 2: Terrorist operative "A" has a mobile phone for Tweet messaging and for taking images. Operative "A" also has a separate mobile phone that is actually an explosive device and/or a suicide vest for remote detonation. Terrorist operative "8" has the detonator and a mobile to view "A's" Tweets and images. This may allow "B" to select the precise moment of remote detonation based on near real time movement and imagery that is being sent by "A."

Scenario 3: Cyber Terrorist operative "A" finds U.S. Army Smith's Twitter account. Operative "A" joins Smith's Tweets and begins to elicit information from Smith. This information is then used for a targeting package (targeting in this sense could be for identity theft, hacking, and/or physical.) This scenario is not new and has already been discussed for other social networking sites, such as My Space and/or Face Book.

These scenarios are simply hypothetical, however. So far, the report says, Twitter has only been used for propaganda: "Twitter is already used by some members to post and/or support extremist ideologies and perspectives. For example, there are multiple pro and anti Hezbollah Tweets." As Noah Shachtman reported on Wired's Danger Room, there's probably not much to worry about:

Steven Aftergood, a veteran intelligence analyst at the Federation of the American Scientists, doesn't dismiss the Army presentation out of hand. But nor does he think it's tackling a terribly seriously threat. "Red-teaming exercises to anticipate adversary operations are fundamental. But they need to be informed by a sense of what's realistic and important and what's not," he tells Danger Room. "If we have time to worry about 'Twitter threats' then we're in good shape. I mean, it's important to keep some sense of proportion."

We examine the issue of terrorists using technology in greater detail in our "Digital Warriors" military feature. You can find this reporting in the selection of text tabs below the video player. This is a section of the site that's easy to miss, but I encourage you to check it out. We expand on the the reporting presented in the videos and provide background to the issues at hand. We've just added some additional tabs, including sections on drones, virtual simulations used to train the troops and military video games.

Hat tip: Wired

-Jeff ]]> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/blog/2009/05/terrorists-and-twitter.html /wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/blog/2009/05/terrorists-and-twitter.html Behind the Scenes Military Wed, 06 May 2009 08:00:19 -0500 I asked for positive uses for Twitter, and I have received. Here are some reader responses:

I am so tired of journalists trying to analyze Twitter without really experiencing it first. It is NOT just a place for promoting blog posts - you need to immerse yourself in it well beyond that to "get" its value.

I've been an active user for over a year and it is woven into the fabric of my daily life. I feel like it's a read-out of what's happening in the minds and moments of a group of interesting people who are trying, like me, to have a good day, and a good life.

It's a tool for personal documentary, and it's a way to get outside yourself and be reminded of a broader community with common interests and feelings. It's also a shortcut to ideas and information - it helps me uncover art projects, articles, bars, travel plans and more.

---

Twitter is the best Professional Development I've ever had as a classroom teacher. And I've even started giving tests via Twitter. Twitter, like most of the best things, is what you make of it.

---

I believe it was William Gibson who wrote that "The street finds its own uses for technology." Your examples of negativity above showed me positive uses for Twitter. I'm using it to network, and to write fiction, and to get the news, and to follow a few celebrities. The brevity is what makes it work for me.

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I've been able to get real time updates from friends about arising computer security threats. I've been able to reestablish contact with old friends and mentors. When a recent Earthquake hit in Mexico, I knew it for 10 minutes or so before it was reported. Likewise, when a tornado touched down in my area, I knew where it was before the tv or public service announced it. I was shopping in Wal-Mart, when someone ELSE got a twitter, and told everyone.

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I googled my new ex-boyfriend looking to see his new updated website. Instead his new twitter feed came up that offered an easy-to-read, play-by-play format of all his latest skintastic adventures. So I guess I wish people would use the privacy settings if they're putting up anything personal.

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I've found twitter to be incredibly useful both personally and professionally. For example:

1. After reading one of my tweets about an art sale, a follower of mine invited me to visit the large company he works for to participate in a related research/art project. This wouldn't have happened without twitter.

2. My wife and I attended a secret show for a worldwide-known musician announced over twitter. We got to see someone who normally plays largeish venues for free with only 30-50 other fans and got to sit down with her over "lunch".

3. When attending large conventions, we have coordinated locations, meetups, and plans between ourselves and our large groups of friends using twitter.

4. I regularly meet, network, and debate with other professionals and executives in my industry via twitter whom I would not have met unless I'd seen another friend talking to them on twitter.

5. When people like what I have to say and retweet my comments, I usually end up meeting new, interesting people who I wouldn't have otherwise. For example, after sending a tweet to a famous author/writer, he retweeted my message to his (at the time) 30,000+ follower base - many of whom began following me as a result.

6. Finally, our local news channel uses twitter extensively and one of my conversations with the local anchor has ended up partially quoted on the evening news. I could go on, but these are fairly representative of how I use Twitter and how it's benefited me so far.

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Here's how I've found Twitter invaluable: it puts me in direct contact, and dialog, with journalists. I can learn of news well before it breaks, follow journalists' research, and ask questions. I'm a link aggregator, and follow several others who do the same in fields I'm interested in. While there are other tools for aggregating and sharing links, none has the simplicity and immediacy of Twitter. Twitter exposes me to news, commentary and personalities I would never find on my own. Twitter has also brought me into professional and hobby communities, for networking, friendship and learning.

Keep them coming, and I will continue to post them.

-Jeff ]]> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/blog/2009/05/why-twitter-is-useful.html /wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/blog/2009/05/why-twitter-is-useful.html Behind the Scenes Tue, 05 May 2009 12:18:41 -0500 "Wear clothes that can get dusty... MREs for you to eat, water and Gatorade, that's it... Cameraman will be 'embedded' with the unit...You're going to get dressed up as an Iraqi woman and go through it first... "

These are some of my notes from my first conversation with the director of the Marines' Infantry Immersion Trainer at Camp Pendleton in California. After reading several stories about this multi-million dollar "mixed reality" training environment, we were curious. After my conversation with Tom, the trainer's director, we were really curious. Tom explained that to capture this new form of close-combat training, we'd have to become a part of the simulation ourselves. This way, not only would we avoid distracting the marines from their exercises, but we'd fully immerse in the experience and therefore better understand what the training is aiming to accomplish. None of us had worked on a shoot before that demanded getting in costume and becoming a part of the scene, so this definitely prompted a lot of excited speculation on our part in the weeks leading up to our Pendleton trip.

In early February, we donned sunscreen and sturdy boots and headed out to Pendleton to spend a day at the trainer. The marines we met were eager, cheerful and more than happy to share their thoughts on this new form of training. The unit is headed to Iraq or Afghanistan sometime this year - we don't yet know which - and they all seemed grateful to have immersion training under their belts, as this will be the first tour to a combat zone for many of them. We're planning on keeping in touch with some of the marines we met once they deploy, and we'll update the site with news from them as it comes in.

We cut the footage we shot with the marines, and it's up now as one of our feature stories. Behind the scenes, we did indeed get suited up in costume that day. Here's a video we put together to give you a taste of what the shoot was like for us.

-- Caitlin