Or, in this room, is the demographic of the adult audience limited? Is it a niche in the totality of adult digital users? A mix of industry guests and academic scholars and researchers, is the demographic more educated than the average digital adult?

Then I must ask: Should we be defining the future of the Internet by these adults’ terms?

If you look at my spotlight on Michael Wesch, re/view the three videos. He argues that humanity has defined computing and the Internet in archaic terms, but also by archaic methods. I’m not saying that adults aren’t everpresent online, but they certainly are not omnipresent. Neither are youth. I don’t want to approach the digital divide in this article, though. I do, however, want to say this:

I wish that more youth had registered for Berkman@10. There certainly exists a dichotomy between the adult and adolescent perspectives toward the Internet and contemporary technology. My generation possesses different values and approach digital ethics differently. I do not want to suggest that we are more right than adults. But if we, Berkman@10, are going to argue about the future of the Internet, then we need to hear more from the “younger” generation present in the audience.

There is a strong polarity between Berkman@10 and ROFLCon, and not simply a polarity of content. I admire ROFLCon because it encouraged an amalgamation of digital inhabitants (contributors and critics) and digital creators (the “industry”). The demographic of the “inhabitants” consisted mainly of adolescents. I believe that, because so many youth attended ROFLCon, the audience was much more involved and familiar with the practicality of the technology, rather than the theories and assumptions present in an approach to the technology. A good example is the Question Tool used by both conferences (the ROFLCon tool is down at the publication of this article), where the audience members can submit questions and then vote up or down “good” questions, later to be viewed and answered by the speaker(s). The implementation at ROFLCon simply worked, while at Berkman@10 the tool hasn’t reached its full potential, nor do I think it will. My guess is that the membership of ROFLCon simply was more interested in what everyone had to say, while here we just want to hear from the infamous panelists. The presence of technology at Berkman@10 trounces that at ROFLCon, however, and I find that a bit strange. More laptops… but that may be because of the more academic nature of this conference, and it’s definitely easier to transcribe notes on a keyboard.

Either way, I am almost twenty one years old. I am very involved in technology. I grew up on a Macintosh. There is a septuagenarian sitting across the aisle. Is he that much more involved? Will I be less involved digitally in 2025 than the contemporary youth at that period? Or will Web 3.0, or whatever we’re in for, enable a highly digital future? And will I be heralding in that age, or will it still be the adults of today?

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g&hl=en]
The Machine is Us/ing Us

I’m especially drawn to the method he employs (not the medium of YouTube, but the constant motion of editing) because it involves a lot of my recent thoughts on text (both as a form and as a medium) that have personally materialized in my Literary Criticism class at the end of the spring semester. I particularly like his explanation of XML and how the language initially emphasizes content over form, but then, in its implementation, the content becomes the form to produce the content.

In a second video, he discusses how the way we have organized information digitally — on computers and through the Internet — may need to be changed if we want to keep improving the technology and evolving through it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4CV05HyAbM&hl=en]
Information R/evolution

One more video of note:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o&hl=en]
A Vision of Students Today

This is especially important to watch if you’re a student at any university or college in the United States, or will soon enter one. Just as with digital information, Wesch argues that the system and techniques of the contemporary university need reorganization. The video pinpoints a good number of problems that students face everyday in the classroom and suggest how these problems suppress a positive evolution in higher education (ie. one of the last examples is simply the chalkboard). I also admire how the video identifies prominent aspects of the emerging generation (called digital natives, Generation Y, and the Millennials) and how they interact with the current collegiate structure.

Also, check out Michael Wesch’s blog on digital ethnography. I really wish I could study under him for a bit, since I feel it necessary to draw from cultural anthropology when examining the Internet, fan cultures, etc., but it’s Kentuuucky. And I like the East Coast.