Digital rights (and responsibilities?)

Independence Hall in Philadelphia; they talked of rights here

Tettner (2011) has used crowdsourcing to collate a list of proposed digital rights. This is a fascinating and thought-provoking list although I would argue with several contributions.


I am sceptical of the modern mushrooming of rights. I agree with Chafee (1919) that "Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man's nose begins". Humans have evolved in tribal groupings with competing characteristic behaviours. For example, fierce loyalty to the tribe is generally seen as a good thing ('team spirit') but loving your neighbour can easily mean hating your enemy and lead to conflict with other teams, tribes, groups, ethnicities, religions, nations. Groups are defined by excluding.

The island at Runnymede where the Magna Carta was signed

Another example. "An unfair society is a society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit." (Murakami, 1987, 2000, 2003; p266). It is paradoxical that the British Conservative party seeks to be the party of law and order whilst at the same time being the part promoting free enterprise since crime is as free an enterprise as you can get. Societies have evolved laws as a way of coping with the tensions and conflicts that inevitably arise through such conundrums. The law essentially places a marker on the spectrum between, in this case, a totally fair society (no enterprise allowed) and a totally unfair society (no restrictions; 'might is right'). This marker moves up and down the spectrum in different cultures, in different societies and in the same society at different times. When Samuel Pepys was young in 1660 there were no moral qualms about trading in or owning slaves. His wife was 14 when they married.

The fact that we have to move the marker as times change is for me an argument against having a fixed moral code enshrined and fossilised in a 'holy book'. This makes me impatient with those whose moral authority relies on quoting ancient scripture. I feel it is morally lazy not to revisit the fundamental arguments each time.

I apply this 'spectrum' approach to morality to the issue of rights. Rights necessitate responsibilities and duties. If you have the right to swing your arm you incur the responsibility not to hit my nose. If you have the right to freedom of information I have the duty to provide you with that information should you ask.

So I am miserly about rights. The only fundamental right I would grant is the right not to be discriminated against when the basis for the discrimination is something over which you have no control, such as your gender or the colour of your skin. (It always perplexes me that the right to practise a religion, over which you have some control, is usually seen as more fundamental than the right not to be discriminated against because you are a woman.) All other rights need negotiation. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr said: "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic."


So let us examine Tettner's crowdsourced rights. I have simplified the ideas considerably and this may have distorted the original intentions; please see the original blog posts.

• The right to access the internet;
• The right to access information; presumably a balance needs to be negotiated between this and the right to privacy
• The right to be digitally literate; whatever this means
• The right to share information;
• The right to modify the information;
• The right to free music; this and the previous two rights start to nibble away at the concept of intellectual property
• The right to unplug;
• The right to not know;
• The right to have multiple identities;
• The right to change one's mind;
• The right to lurk.

Some of these seem somewhat trivial compared to the grand rights of freedom of speech or the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.



The most interesting concepts are the right to unplug and the right to not know. 


One of the pressures imposed by the internet is the expectation of immediacy. If you send an email or a text you expect an immediate response. I have been required to assist a colleague when they are in work and I am on holiday on a beach staring at a beautiful sunset and talking on the phone. I have been asked by my boss at 8AM in the morning whether I have read the email he sent at midnight. I have been woken at 3AM by a text from my stepson telling me to switch off his alarm clock set for 6AM because he isn't coming home. I have even been told (by someone I will not name) that it is assumed I agree to the proposals sent in an email because I have not answered. I believe I have the right to silence. To put it another way, your right to send me a message does not mean I am obliged to read it.


And the right to not know? It has always seemed to me selfish for those having an affair to confess it to their spouses. It might help you with your guilt but it sows the seeds of doubt in your partner's mind such that nothing will ever be the same again. I think I would rather not know. I am not sure whether I would want to know if I had some terminal disease involving rapid degeneration and imminent death but I am sure that I would like the right to choose whether I know or not.

References


Chafee, Z. (1919) Freedom of Speech in Wartime, Harvard Law Review 32: 932, 957


Murakami, H. (1987, 2000, 2003) Norwegian Wood translated by Rubin, J (2000) Vintage, London edition (2003) ISBN 9780099448822


Tettner, S. (2011) I believe that .... should be a right in the digital age11) blog posting dated 28th March 2011in The Centre for Internet and Society blog available at http://www.cis-india.org/research/dn/i-believe-that-______-should-be-a-right-in-the-digital-age accessed 24th April 2011


Wendell Holmes, O. (1919) Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47, 52 (3 March 1919).

The Cha Cha Challenge

Photo by 'catface3' 

The Cha Cha Challenge

Reflections upon Learning

Dave Appleby

Matt is a ballroom dancing champion having been learning for only three years. He is also one of my sixth form students. The cross symmetry of expert and novice in dancing meet novice and expert in teaching seemed too good to waste.


The cha cha was his choice.


Unlike the vast majority of learners, I planned my learning. My time with Matt was limited so I intended to supplement the face to face learning with YouTube and lots of practice. Moreover, unlike most learners I am confident about learning so I was able to take charge at certain points during the lesson. When I got lost or confused I could stop Matt and ask for specific guidance; after he had shown me the first three steps and started showing me the fourth I was able to insist that three was enough for now; when I reached the point where my head was bursting I could stop the lesson. These are privileges that students rarely possess. In essence, I was being proactive in my learning and most students are, of necessity, reactive.


Some of the barriers to my learning were intrinsic to the task. I had to move, fluently, in sequence, quickly and in time to the music. Watching the videos I felt like someone confronted with a new language: it was a babble of movement; I could not even pick out the ‘words’ of the dance. Norman (1993; p28) suggests that “when there isn’t a good conceptual background, then accretion is slow and arduous”; it was to prove so in my case.
I believe I am primarily a visual learner and that auditory and kinaesthetic learning (key components of dance!) are not really my forte. This has been reinforced by the "humorous" comments of both dancing partners and spectators. So I needed to change my self-perception. When I failed my first driving test I told myself that if lorry drivers could drive lorries, I could drive a car. I now told myself that dancing was no more difficult than walking for a baby. I suppose I was repairing my damaged identity, as described by Gee (2003; p61).


I lost track of time at the start of my first lesson; I was concentrating furiously (clearly this is not the experience of “flow” as described by Csíkszentmihályi[1]; I may have been in a state of high challenge but I was not highly skilled). Matt showed me the first two steps and then I tried to copy him; as I did he suggested small corrections and talked about controlling my balance. We practiced and I became marginally faster and more fluent. Then he added the music. For a moment I was dancing in time. I knew that I looked nothing like the swaying elegance of my teacher; nevertheless I was a dancer! I was excited. I had upgraded my A-identity (Gee, 2001).


The first lesson should have ended at this point but the time was not yet over. As an experienced teacher there are times when I know that my students have learned as much as they can take; I try to end the lesson there. Matt is less experienced; he added the third step.

The “New Yorker” adds a twist and an arm movement. Things began to go wrong. When we added it to the other two steps, I began to muddle them all up. My feet were in the wrong place. I improvised a shuffle. I got tangled. I fell over.

I have experienced this same type of confusion when learning languages (something else I have always found difficult). I particularly muddle Italian and Spanish (eg gracias and grazie). Presumably the more similar things are the greater the likelihood of confusion (is this a version of Paivio’s Dual Coding theory?[2]). I think I should have learned one step to a much greater degree of mastery before attempting to learn another. When Matt tried to add a fourth step I insisted we stop.

After my first lesson I quickly forgot even the basics. Within two days I had forgotten how to count! My problem was the "4 and 1, 2, 3” system; being a logical person I needed to start on 1. I had encountered the same difficulty years ago in my one and only samba lesson: asked to count "1, 2, 3, rest, 5, 6, 7, rest", I could not resist adding a four which destroyed the rhythm. This difficulty was solved when I watched a YouTube video[3] in which the instructor counted "cha cha cha, 2, 3"; suddenly I remembered how to do the step!
In some ways this is the same problem as with the confusion described above. This time, however, the confusion involves unlearning something I have learned thoroughly (how to count); in that way it is the opposite of the previous problem. It is difficult to know which is harder.

A third sort of confusion arose with YouTube: there are many alternative versions of the cha cha and even more ways to teach them. I sought a video that taught me in the same way as Matt did. This must be like a child who asks their dad for help with homework and is shown a different way of solving the problem. This might be a good idea because it equips the learner with multiple alternative strategies; on the other hand it might confuse the learner. When a learner has failed to understand one explanation should a teacher try an alternative one or just reiterate the first? Reiteration seems like speaking English abroad loudly and slowly.
I scrutinized every step on YouTube but I couldn't ask questions. I knew I was doing it wrong but I didn't know why; even if I did, I didn't know how to do it right.

Despite assiduous practice I am stuck with the performing the first three steps. I have travelled from Unconscious Incompetence to Conscious Incompetence[4]. According to the literature I can expect to “exist in this state for a long time”; I will need “determination” and “persistence”[5] to reach the stage of Conscious Competence.

The identity changes described by Gee (2003) and Wenger (1988) seem relatively pain free. The situation I am in is more like that described by Meyer and Land (2005; p376):  "This transition [to a new identity] …  is often problematic, troubling and frequently involves the humbling of the participant .... the transformation can be protracted, over considerable periods of time, and involve oscillation between states, often with temporary regression to earlier status."

In conclusion the barriers to my learning have been the lack of a conceptual background, my belief that I couldn’t dance and the confusions I encountered (trying to learn two similar things before achieving mastery in one, trying to relearn how to count, and the different approaches adopted by different teachers).
The key thing I learned was how easily confusion can damage learning and, therefore, how important it is to be sure that a student has mastered one stage before proceeding to the next.

Bibliography
Gee J, 2001 Identity as an analytic lens for research in Education Review of Research in Education 25: 99-125


Gee J P, 2003 Learning and identity: What does it mean to be a half elf? Pp 51-71 in Gee J P, 2003 What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy Palgrave Macmillan Basingstoke 978-1403961693


Meyer and Land (2005) Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): Epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning in Higher Education 49: 373-388


Norman D, 1993 Experiencing the world pp19-41 in Norman D, 1993 Things that make us smart; Addison Wesley

Wenger E, 1988 A social theory of learning pp 3-17 in Wenger E 1988 Communities of practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)#cite_note-CM1990-5 Accessed 16^th November 2009

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-coding_theory Accessed 18th November 2009

[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOroZ47kj7U&feature=related accessed 15^th November 2009

[4] http://www.businessballs.com/consciouscompetencelearningmodel.htm accessed 15th November 2009

[5] http://changingminds.org/explanations/learning/consciousness_competence.htm Accessed 15th November 2009