Most of the people who’ll ever click on this post will come to it through the variety of still-quite-participatory communities that form my network, and our collective constellation of “digital” remains very much not-entirely-subsumed by capitalism and spectacle. Technologies or platforms are not determinist. Of course, if you’re reading this, chances are good you don’t live in that web, that digital space. They foster spectacle and scale and virality and dogpiles and dragging and while there are moments of justice and glory in it all, at its logical endpoint it’s a Hunger Games. Spoiler: that tends to be “individualism, neoliberalism, libertarianism, imperialism, the exclusion of people of color and white women.” They increasingly shape the logic of our learning spaces to Silicon Valley’s concept of what that should be. Or even just being alone with one’s thoughts. They do not lend themselves to good digital citizenship because they shape and direct human behaviour in ways that privilege capital and circulation and extremes, rather than, say, collaboration or empathy. Which brings me back to the actual lightbulb moment that I’d had in the middle of that talk I tried to write up.ĭigital platforms and digital affordances – underpinned by the capitalist enclosure of participatory digital spaces over the last decade or so, with its surveillance and metrics and constant advertising of reductive versions of our identity back to us – do NOT lend themselves to good digital citizenship, in the sense that they do not foster a space I would actually want to be a citizen of, to whatever (limited) extent the citizenship model holds when conceptualized in the border-free digital realm. Only my discomfort with totally half-baked posts – or the rarity of lightbulb moments in my life – will save y’all from wanton comment-chasing, folks. Or the games we play around palatable identities in an attention economy.) But we do not acknowledge that publicly, do we? Because decorum. (Disclosure: I am actually that person who likes the hit of attention/engagement/validation that comments apparently still provide, just if there were any questions. Or rather: publish half-baked lightbulb moments more often, *if* you like the hit of attention/engagement/validation that comments apparently still provide, even years after blogs were supposed to be dead. Note to self: PUBLISH HALF-BAKED LIGHTBULB MOMENTS MORE OFTEN. A little over a month ago, I wrote up a talk on citizenship and identity that I didn’t manage to explain very articulately…and got comments like it was 2008 up in here. People suck.Ĭ) It is irritating to even have this conversation. Kumbay-effing-yah.ī) Digital citizenship sucks because people. Grumpy Cat, ultimate Digital Citizen, makes the perfect Rorschach Test for your own interpretations of digital citizenship! Is he saying:Ī) Even online, we are all people. :) (I’m a bit of a shit about the word “citizenship”…) In any case, the month of June will be a #digciz-fest of epic proportions * if* y’all come out and play, and Mia and I have the privilege of leading us all out of the gate with a few provocations and a #4wordstory conversation about what good citizenship means in participatory spaces. Please note I actually have no big cash money.) Maybe you see it differently? I would pay big cash money to see it differently so I am open to being invited over. This week, Mia Zamora and I are kicking off #digciz 2017 with a conversation about digital citizenship, and what it means in a world wherein “the digital” is increasingly a delivery system for surveillance and spectacle and amplified uncertainty.
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