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A
Proposal to Produce by
Ken Freed All
previous forms of literacy are vital, but are no
longer enough. In our new world of interactive
media networks, we are are not functionally
literate without a deep appreciation for the nature
and power of our global interactivity. Developing
deep literacy in our diverse cultures would help
humanity mature enough for democracy to
thrive. Literacy
grants power in any civilization. Where once the
knowledge to read and write was restricted to the
elite, and schooling the masses was a crime, modern
democratic governments support literacy drives.
Democracy is rooted in the principle of governance
by an educated populace. A literate populace is
crucial in any free society where the open
marketplace of ideas drives both the culture and
the economy. Humanity is evolving a
globalized economic system, but who rules the
system remains unclear, puppet masters or the
educated masses? Propelled by mounting population
pressures, stunned by the speedy pace of fresh
inventions shifting society too fast for us to
handle, we risk whole populations seeking escape by
abdicating their rights and responsibilities for
the security of despotism. To avoid the real work
of responsible self rule in an interactive world,
will we ask the media to become our Big Brother or
our seductive soma? Our choice. Modern civilization
increasingly is being shaped by the emergent global
network of interconnected networks. The world
Internet is transforming how we think and feel
about ourselves and each other. Interactive
broadband media -- in all of its many devices for
data, voice and video -- soon will surpass the
impact of one-way TV and movies as the
fountainheads of popular culture. Consider the use
of smart cellphones among teens in Europe for a
glimpse of the future. How we do business in daily
life is being forever changed. We need to
understand interactive media simply to function and
flourish in our interactive world. Anyone who's not
media literate may perish. And so the meaning of
media literacy must change to fit the
times. "Media Literacy" initially
meant basic computer operation skills, which has
come to mean working knowledge of network
navigation systems. Then the meaning was expanded
to include critical thinking skills, the ability to
objectively analyze media content, detecting subtle
propaganda ploys and rhetorical ruses persuading
audiences unfairly or deceitfully. Both
capabilities are important, yet neither will
suffice to survive and thrive in the new era of
immersive media networks. The standard for media
literacy must be enlarged yet again. In the coming
epoch of global digital networks, we cannot be
considered fully media literate without
understanding the nature and power of interactivity
itself. As broadband global interactive networks
deploy, being media literate mainly means
acknowledging the depths of our universal
interactivity. A global sensibility is the key to
what I call deep media literacy, an awareness that
life on earth is interactive. Fundamentally, deep media
literacy has three levels: Presented below is a plan
for media, educators and civic institutions to
jointly promote deep media literacy. All the
players would benefit from the PR boost from openly
contributing to helping interactive sensibilities
become core social values. Imagine what could
happen once these key cultural players form
strategic alliances to foster all three levels of
deep media literacy within children and adults
alike. Interactivity
Appreciation
Observing our
interactivity at work alters our conduct. Knowing
our actions affect the whole world tends to
influence our interactions. The thumb and fingers
of a healthy hand know not to attack one another.
Knowing that what we do to others, we do to
ourselves, in any terms, tends to steer us into
exercising restraint more naturally, Evolving a
global sense of our interactivity, as the alertness
is engrained into our engrams, may help humanity
mature into a conscious species able to live
responsibly free here on Network Earth. Responsible
self rule is our path into enjoying freedom, peace
and prosperity on a renewed planet that sustains
open democracies and free markets
worldwide. The language
and technology of global interactive media, I
suggest, could help us humans attain the same deep
realization of our sacred connectivity as sages
have known in all the ages since primates first
awakened into intelligence. And you do not have to
believe in a God to determine that everything in
the universe is interactive, to a degree. Ask
physicists. Particles of matter are condensed
energy, vibrations slowed, wave amplitudes
concentrated into form. Thus material life is
manifested, energy slowing into matter, light
congealing into the bits of stuff composing stars
and planets and bodies and souls. Even the
electrical surge of a neural impulse, a tiny
thought, changes the world. The most powerful icon of
the Communication Age is the 1972 color snapshot of
our earth taken on the journey home from the last
trip to the moon. The image astounds our
preconceptions, confounds our most ingrained
programming on race, religion, nationality,
politics, and economics. We no longer can pretend
we live separate lives that have no affect on
others. How can anyone see this primal icon and not
admit to themselves that we're all interlinked here
on this little mote of spacedust we call home?
Imagine the social effect
of people embracing the global networks as a symbol
for our interactive "web of life." Since broadband
networks will be part to the communication
processes we'll use in the future for realizing our
visions, and for resolving the conflicts inevitably
arising from our competing visions, since our
visions create our realities as our realities
create our visions, why not deliberately evoke a
public vision of interactive media as a tool for
our improvement? We can cling to our illusions,
rely on split perceptions to pretend we're all
separate. We can deny the truth of our deep
interactivity within one integrated system, but why
bother? The
communication
cycle explains the
relationship at the heart of the creative process
that generates our life experiences. Studying the
communication cycle reveals how senders and
receivers interact, how the give and take cycle
alter senders and receivers alike. Observe how
miscommunication by faulty or misleading encoding
and decoding is causing and perpetuating most
conflicts. Applied to interactive media,
paraphrasing McLuhan, the medium massages the
message while the message massages the medium. We
mold mass media as mass media mold us. Paying
attention to the implications while using
interactive media may help us see how we affect
others with every transaction, how we create our
private and public realities by our media choices,
how our interactions spin the web of culture, how
life is interactive. The world is brilliantly
responsive to our interactivity. What we think, say and do,
according to both hard and soft sciences, does
affect all society, regardless of amount. By design
or default, we are infinitely interactive, so why
not make the best of it? Knowledge is power in any
culture, but in the new knowledge-based economies,
ignorance is bondage. The reason we feel powerless
may be a denial of how powerful we truly are.
Perhaps we fear the responsibility that springs
from the fact that we change life for everyone
through every interaction. The truth is that our
interactive power scares us silly. Our fears are groundless.
Once we accept that everything interacts with
everything else, we can help ourselves and others
make sense of the "interactive media experience" in
terms that allow more of us to see how deeply we're
all interconnected within the process of living. We
may be feel willing to face the fears we feel
inside from all the changes in the world around us.
Our sense of overload may fade. The more we feel linked to
one another, if only through a PC or TV screen, the
more we'll tend to accept our responsibility for
the public effects of our personal media choices.
As more of us assert control over our media
choices, there may be less clamor for depots to
save us from ourselves. The more we interact
electronically, perhaps, the more we'll try to
control our lives as easily as we control our media
screens. Notice the danger here. As we become more
assertive from exercising power over media, so if
we don't feel connected to society, like high
school kids with guns, our urge for control may
turn ugly. That's why our individual
media choices have a great public impact. People
making media choices based upon an interactive
sensibility not only improve media content and
services, they actually improve their own homes,
schools, jobs, and communities. That's why the way
we spend our money acts as a political vote. The
impact of our media choices will increase
exponentially with the emergence of interactive TV
within an immersive Internet environment. The smart
people with an interactive sensibility will be the
best prepared to survive and thrive in the stormy
years ahead. Deep media literacy makes global
sense. Strategies
for Deep Media Literacy As the two-way broadband
media networks become commonplace, how will people
respond to what Alvin Toffler calls Future Shock?
Most of us today feel confused or scared by all the
hype about an "Information Superhighway." Will the
general public view the new digital media as a
friend or foe? Will folks accept or reject the new
fangled media technologies? Will we turn off rather
than tune in? Will we react like Luddites in the
Industrial Revolution and decry every advance in
communication technology? Rampant apathy and rabid
technophobia pose equal dangers. If we hope to
create and sustain a global economy, humanity needs
to be media literate. Traditional modes of media
literacy are not sufficient preparation to survive
and thrive in the interactive world of tomorrow.
Yet how can we foster media literacy if the public
is too skeptical of the motives of the media
companies, educators and public institutions to
heed their appeals for deeper literacy? Leading a
horse to water does make the creature thirsty.
Trying to force the horse risks drowning the mount
or provoking a backlash from the angry animal. In
the same way, we cannot force people into drinking
from the fountain of knowledge. A thirst for media
literacy cannot be coerced, but it may be inspired.
Therefore, leaders in
media, education and government are invited to
consider implementing a three-step proposal to
inspire deep media literacy. If adopted, the plan
will promote far deeper forms of media literacy
among the general public than simply knowing how to
make the gadgets work or how to think critically
about media content. The ideas below may stimulate
you into finding even better ways to help us begin
living responsibly free in a new age of global
interactivity. Step 1:
Develop a Shared Media Vision While
educators and civic officials do talk about media
literacy, discussions in the media industry itself
center around products, services,
cost-effectiveness, government regulations, and
market strategies. These are vital topics, since
there's no point in talking ideals without the
cashflow to implement them. Yet we can profit from
a more rigorous conversation about the cultural and
social effects of the interactive media networks
now being created. Allowing for
differences in our media visions, a robust exchange
of views may well be productive for everyone -- and
a lot of fun. As we interact, we'll paint a
consensus picture of the probable benefits for
individuals and society from such existing and
pending capabilities as digital broadcasting, web
commerce, interactive TV, online games, distance
learning, virtual reality, viewphones, and the list
goes on. We can't
foresee the unforeseeable, yet reasonable people
with open minds may reach a consensus on the most
likely consequences of known trends and patterns.
If a car is speeding toward a cliff when the brakes
fail, we don't need to be engineers to say what
will happen (miracles aside). If nearby is a
mountain climber with strong limbs and a good heart
who's approaching the summit, ascent is probable.
Many modern media trends, like TV violence without
consequences for the characters, do yield
predictable social consequences, such as people
tending to view violence as an acceptable or
preferable way of solving problems (proven by many
decades of research). If we are willing to think
about interactivity with deeper literacy, the
industry may develop a more sensible vision to
guide media development. Why not make
an effort to reach common agreements about the
highest and best uses of interactive media? Given
the social and cultural turmoil expected as the new
broadband networks come online, normal for such
innovations, what may happen if media, educators
and public officials exhibit enlightened
self-interest? By developing
an upbeat vision of how all modern technology could
actually improve our homes, schools, jobs,
communities, nations, and world, we can help to
make this dream come true. In any interactive
universe, what we see in our minds, we do create in
our lives. Step 2:
Talk About Our Media Choices Helping media
customers learn how to use all the new media
devices certainly helps prepare consumers to
consume, but what if we ask the public to think and
talk about the social effects of our own personal
media choices? Beyond asking people to view new
media content with the tools of critical thinking,
we can invite people to see how their media choices
affect themselves and everyone else. For instance,
what may result from forethought on the
consequences of buying this or that media product
or service? What difference does it make if we go
with a standard phoneline modem or a cable modem
instead? What happens to the community when TV
viewers go with a satellite service or depend on
free terrestrial broadcast reception? Our separate
choices added together will decide which media
players will dominate the marketplace, thereby
influencing millions of lives. Educators and
public officials feel far more comfortable talking
about media social effects than the media industry
itself, as I can attest from speaking at trade
shows. Open dialogue about consequences appears too
risky to media companies reliant on gratifying
consumers' baser drives, but most media ventures
can profit from the discussion. Talking
openly about the power of our media choices will
tend to help us become more careful with our
choices. Our sensitivity will yield much smoother
integration of the new digital networks into the
infrastructure of our civilization. So, deep media
literacy helps reduce personal, social and economic
upheaval -- stabilizing world markets. Step 3:
Talk about Interactivity Itself These first
two steps are crucial, but they leave a big gap in
public knowledge. Like knowing what happens when we
use a hammer, knowing what happens when we use the
media does not help us choose what kind of life to
build with that tool. So, step
three in the combined campaign for deep media
literacy is to help the public better appreciate
the dynamic character of interactivity itself. On
television and radio, the Ad Council or another
trade group could sponsor public service
announcements about our interactivity. And the
message of our global interactivity also can be
conveyed though diverse public events and town
meetings. Another
effective strategy is to embed overt and subtle
messages about our shared interactivity into any
content we produce for the Internet, television,
digital disk, or other media format. On the web,
for example, you can create banner ads about our
interactivity that socially conscious,
high-capacity websites could host with links to
media literacy websites. The writers of films and
TV comedies or dramas, for their part, could create
stories with a zany or perhaps heartrending chain
of consequences; picture the fun
plotpoints. By design or
default, interactive media already are influencing
our cultures, so the media can do the masses a
favor by helping to plant in our cultural
consciousness the notion that we had better behave
ourselves better since we're all interactive here
on Network Earth. Benefits
from Deep Media Literacy As more of us
appreciate our penetrating interactivity, and then
behave accordingly, the benefits for society may be
boundless. Freedom will be balanced by
responsibility. For instance, media censorship via
the U.S. Decency Act and the V-Chip would become
moot as our worst impulses are inhibited by an
interactive sensibility. The more we
feel deeply interconnected, the more we tend to
exercise our free will with self restraint, the
more we tend to accept the genuine accountability
that allows any democracy to blossom. The more we
see how we're all in one boat together, the more we
tend to balance our weight to keep our boat afloat.
As an interactive worldview pervades society in
future generations, I can envision humanity
eventually living in communities where personal
democracy prevails. I can imagine a world where
responsible self rule makes global
sense. Yet why would
any media company answerable to its investors dare
to hitch their wagon to the star of deep media
literacy? Where's the gain from media companies
forming alliances with our public institutions to
champion the three levels of media literacy
(technical skills, thinking skills, interactivity
appreciation). That's the job of the schools,
right? Where's the profit motive? First, there
would be tremendous public relations benefits from
the media industry openly cooperating with diverse
educators and public officials to promote deeper
media literacy. Beyond persuading people to become
able and eager media consumers, beyond educating
people about the power of their solo media choices,
the media actually can help the world to value
interactive media as a force for civility in our
"global village." Instead of allowing digital
technology to dwell in the public mind as a dread
symbol of some impersonal machine masking the
sinister specter of Big Brother, the new media
networks instead can emerge as a symbol of renewed
hope and prosperity for all. If media
companies interact openly with the public about
their media choices, the media trade itself would
be seen as the "good guys." By being responsive to
popular "votes" about varied technologies, media
companies would bring honor and respect to their
industry. Further, the effort would support
free-market democracy. More than savvy public
relations, open public discussion about media's
social effects and appropriate policies could
greatly enhance civil democracy. In terms of
bottom line accounting, engaging the public in an
open discourse about their media choices will help
industry spend its R&D money more effectively,
We've known since the Hawthorn Studies at a GE
plant in the Thirties that most people feel a sense
of responsible ownership for any product or service
or policy they have helped to develop. The
principle translates from corporate culture to
popular culture. Whatever the format of the
discussions, if public comments are accredited
within the media as a legitimate datasource for
taking decisions on media development or
deployment, media resources can flow toward
products and services that the public will
enthusiastically welcome. We're applying the
economic law of supply and demand to the
marketplace of ideas, allowing democratic processes
to function. Perhaps this
level of public interaction feels too risky to mass
media. Please consider the gamble already being
taken by media companies. Billions are being bet on
the results from technology tests, trials and
consumer focus groups. To cover their wagers, media
companies can invest a scant fraction of that
amount to conduct deep media literacy campaigns.
How about public service announcements in the print
and electronic media in each locale going
broadband? How about virtual or actual town
meetings? How about distributing versions of this
essay to comunity literacy programs? Educational
and governmental partners may be happy to help with
the campaign staffing if not the expense.
Media
industry support for deep media literacy will be a
win/win for everybody. Lasting public relations
benefits alone are well worth the effort,
especially nowadays when people fear Orwellian
intrusion into our personal lives in a world with
Internet everywhere. Why reinforce the disconnect
between the media and the people? Open adoption of
a global sensibility will serve to prevent media
abuses, and the benefits to civilization will
endure for future generations. Imagine the
grateful response of the public when the media
industry sees past the passions of market
competition to work with educators and governments
to inspire deep media literacy in our communities.
Cynics may scoff, but the majority of people will
voice thanks. Our children's children and our own
souls will praise us for our efforts. In
conclusion, this proposal for deep media literacy
encourages open cooperation among media ventures,
educators, governments, and the financial community
to promote a new vision of our interactivity that
will reduce or eliminate the feelings of isolation
and despair that has lately produced so much
violence in America, the Balkans, Indonesia, and
elsewhere. Perhaps this looks impossible to you,
but please recall the cooperation among Wall
Street, Madison Avenue and Hollywood in the Fifties
(after decades of depression and world war) to
promote a new societal vision called The American
Dream. The stakes today are as great now as then,
actually greater. Shall we
uphold Jefferson's faith in the ability of a free
and educated people to govern themselves? Why not
try? Please consider the true merits of such
practical idealism. By promoting deep media
literacy within ourselves and our world, we can
ensure that open markets and free democracies
prevail in the centuries ahead.
Click
here to see a Model of the Communication
Cycle .
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Media Visions Journal | Copyright 1997-2003 by Ken Freed - All Rights Reserved Last update: 7 APRIL 2003 |
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