Northern Voice 2009 – Nora Young on Buried Hatchets and Better Tomorrows (Liveblog)

Nora Young (Wikipedia entry – CBC site bio), a Canadian broadcaster, writer, blogger and all around awesome and wonderful woman delivered a powerful keynote lecture for all attendees at Northern Voice 2009. I had the pleasure of meeting up with Nora and I also liveblogged her session.

Nora spoke for quite sometime to the notion of a “new ecology of information”. Given my interest in sociology and social media, I poked around a few sites to try and find more information about it. From a sociological and anthropological perspective, Nora’s point of “it’s not what you know but WHO you know” is more and more relevant in our era of networked spaces, where technology becomes an enabler of interaction and relationship creation. As I have mentioned in previous posts, my use of Twitter is primarily to stay in touch with my friends and create new friendships.

I would have never dreamed of staying in touch with, say, Nora (who lives in Toronto) or Nancy White and Chris Heuer (both of whom live in the US) if it weren’t for Twitter. I have a lot of wonderful individuals (including these three social media awesome folks) with whom I would NOT be able to keep in touch if it weren’t for Twitter, or more broadly, for social networking tools.

While doing some research on the concept of a new ecology of information (and given that my background is in environmental studies) I looked for works that examined the production of what I call the networked production of social relationships – using social networking sites as mediating spaces that build bridges amongst individuals at the nodes of the network.

In my search I came across the Creative-Commons licensed book by Professor Yochai Benkler at the Harvard Berkman Centre for Internet and Society (I tell you, I am going to end up doing a post-doc there or something – I keep feeling drawn to it!), The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Of particular relevance to the concept of a new ecology of information I think is Chapter 10 (PDF link) Social Ties: Networking Together.

The fact that we can now share in the production of information (as very aptly indicated by the participants in the social media and citizen journalism panel) means that the way in which our online behavior shapes the content we produce/remix/cut-and-paste is also mediated by our online and off-line interactions. Bernardo Huberman‘s book (The Laws of the Web) also speaks to the concept of ecology of information.

Attending Nora’s keynote made me me feel again as though I might have a chance to undertake some research in internet and society. I have the training to try and examine social media from an academic analytical lens (I’ve got training in sociology and anthropology so that helps, and I’m a blogger too). Thank you Nora for stirring my thoughts and making me sit and reflect on the idea that yes, social media is there to help solve problems and make the world a better place.

Northern Voice 2009 – Nora Young on Buried Hatchets and Better Tomorrows

(02/21/2009)

9:11	Raul: Lauren Wood and Kris Krug are providing the introductions.

9:16	Raul: Kris is now giving the thanks to the amazing organizers – thanks to you all.

9:18	Raul: Julie Szabo is up to thank the sponsors. Thanks to all of them, you are all amazing.

9:19	Raul: They are having giveaway prizes, including a pass to #sxsw09! A three month membership to WorkSpace, artwork, etc.

9:20	Miss604: New blog entry ‘Northern Voice 2009 Keynote Nora Young’ – http://tinyurl.com/cqnyr3

9:20	Raul: Nora Young is now taking the floor. Thanking everyone for the invitation and excited about the energy.

9:20	trishussey: RT @Miss604: New blog entry ‘Northern Voice 2009 Keynote Nora Young’ – http://tinyurl.com/cqnyr3 #northernvoice09

9:21	LeftCoastMama: Nora Young’s key note is starting. #northernvoice

9:21

Raul: Nora will talk a little bit about the experience with her show, Spark. It’s sort of a case study of what’s going on more broadly on what’s going – a new ecology of information that affects any content creator (blogger, journalist, or anyone who wants to engage in the conversation). We all need to do a bit of a rethink of what our vision and our passion is.

9:22	Raul: Nora will play archival audio. I can’t record it on the liveblog.

9:22	moneycoach: Is Northern Voice (keynotes?) being livecast? ustream etc? Would love to watch from yellowknife #northernvoice09

9:22	[Comment From Michael Allison] Nora is playing archival audio of how to use a telephone.

9:23	Raul: Hard to imagine a time when the telephone wasn’t an obvious technology. When a new communications technology arises, it often changes the culture. With the phone, people talked about what you should say “ahoy” or “what is wanted” before they finally settled on “hello”

9:23	rsodhi: At Northern Voice conference at UBC campus. First keynote with Nora Young has just started #northernvoice09

9:23	yurechko: Anyone have a live (audio/video) stream coming out of Northern Voice? #northernvoice09

9:24	andymiah: at Northern Voice in Vancouver.

9:24	scales: Listening to #northernvoice keynote by nora young … It’s a fine sunny day in YVR

9:24

Raul: By way of practical example, Nora talks about how the “hello”‘s work at Spark (a show about technology and culture). Nora and her co-host are both bloggers and podcasters. A while back they came back to get into the dialogue about mainstream media and social media (transparency). They learned to open up the process and looked for ways to mirror them more open leaves, characters of blogs. What would a blog sound like on the radio.

9:25	Raul: People can follow the conversation back through history. They worked to develop an aesthetic of transparency. Not live, and not perfect. What they do is they let some things that normally don’t appear on a broadcast.

9:26	wmrandth: @lblanken I have a pic of teaching dial phone from 1920s – first slide in this preso – http://tinyurl.com/6ov4fn #nv09

9:29	wmrandth: #nv09 nora young on – challenge of translating non-linear conversational reality into the linear format of radio (->with McLuhan “hot”ness?)

9:29

Raul: Challenges to mainstream media. It’s reflecting changes and how people consume information and Nora thinks about this as a new ecology of information. This is where together indie media and how do we think about truth and the responsibilities does this shift place.

1. It’s not what you know but who you know. We live in an era of socialized information, where information is strongly intertwined with our social relationships.

9:31

Raul: On Spark, they often use Twitter to create information medium. It’s mediated through the community. At the same time that they request for information, the socialization of information is being picked up all over social media. The kinds of personal contacts you have in the world has a strong influence on media literacy.

2. Collaborative truth – whether we are talking formally or informally (wiki or social media sites) it’s important but not as important as the collective truth (the aggregation, a sum total of what they choose to say about themselves and what others say about them). When you think about it, it’s a really big change. Some scholars have kind of put this like a McLuhan – the network culture of the web.

9:31

Raul: We are moving from individual perspectives to establishing meaning and collaboration – it’s a shift from oral culture to book culture to web/networked culture. This impacts how we educate each other and impact each other. this new McLuhan ecology of information, highly fluid, affects how we teach our kids about information and so on.

9:32	wmrandth: #nv09 it is a big change, but only compared to recent typographic book world, not a pre-modern village culture -> McL’s global village

9:32	Raul: Where is this information ecology going? Towards the end of information scarcity. “Mobi-quity” – being continually connected in the mobile web. 3 billion cell phones. A lot of people access the web ONLY on their phones.

9:33	Raul: What does that mean for innovations and what blogs look like? It’s a pretty familiar concept. It connects you to a broader technological shift.

9:33	bgilgoff: @gtoews Me too. Had the greatest conference experience at Northern Voice yesterday with twitter open all day.

9:33	Raul: We are starting to see our ability to layer the world around us with the information (mixing online with offline) – building up this kind of internet and things. Digital information is applied to the physical world.

9:34	Raul: So, what happens when you have actual internet connectivity (GPS enabled devices) this means information is everywhere and the web doesn’t need to be global/detached from geography, can be about the local, the hyperlocal.

9:34	hummingbird604: I’m including ALL tags for #northernvoice09 including #northernvoice and #nv09

9:35

Raul: The power of number-crunching in the context of local (crime mapping analysis) [there are a number of localized geo-tagged information analyses] – information about their neighbourhood and what’s going around

Gina Trapani – Flickr bike. GPS-cellphone – every minute takes pictures – this reminds me of @rtanglao and his mobile biking.

9:36	[Comment From Michael Allison] Hyperlocal content online takes the happenstance out of living in the city.

9:37

Raul: How do we organize socially? For instance, Toronto has a series of farmer markets on different days of the week. In the summer, Nora’s farmer market was there. There’s tonnes of information about hyperlocal elements. At a deeper level, it’s not just about the technology. All the layers of social organization.

9:37	Raul: Another shift Nora sees: 3.- Sustainability – it is not the end of information scarcity itself. Nora takes the example of “the ability to access all this information to change the way we consume from buying objects to sharing services”

9:38	Do you believe the future is in mobile web? Is Mobile Web 3.0? Yes, I only read on my iPhone/BlackBerry/Android ( 20% ) Not sure ( 20% ) No, I love my desktop/laptop ( 60% )

9:39

Raul: You don’t have to be at home on your home computer .That changes the consumption patterns for how we buy things. Jennifer Vandermeer (green activist and innovation strategist). There’s this gap between how people behave. More than 50% people say they want to buy green, but only 10% actually do buy the greener products. You can bridge the gap if you bring the consumers closer to the product.

9:40	Raul: Our sense of more participatory culture – the fact that people volunteer to do things like blogs, express their interest in green products .Clay Shirky argues that the way participatory culture contributes and how it’s changing the economy is the example of the stock photo industry.

9:40	Raul: Corporations had to pay. Once you have a phenomenon like Flickr (digital photos whose costs are low) the cost for stock photos does no longer exist

9:41	northernvoice: @mirandal I think you mean: Ahoy, Northern Voice!

9:41	Raul: So, this flight of information implies – who the hell has the energy and time to do all of this. People will spend a lot of their own volunteer energy. Simple tools are going to be more important than ever. Elegant mapping and display tools – show information that is easy to navigate.

9:42	hummingbird604: NEW BLOG POST Northern Voice 2009 – Nora Young on Buried Hatchets and Better Tomorrows (Liveblog) http://tinyurl.com/cp7yfw

9:42	Raul: What are some of the conclusions? Caveat – a lot of people don’t have access to basic information and internet. We could still say that… 1.- This new ecology of information is social, fluid, implies that we are just starting to see a big shift in the economy and the culture.

9:42	Raul: Instead of bringing all the students together for a lecture, they decided to flick the classroom. In the class, the students did the homework with the teacher and worked in a more collaborative fashion.

9:43

Raul: Why does it seem natural to have a lecture in the classroom? You had to be in the same room as the teacher. A lot of models are based on scarcity of informations. What are the unquestioned assumptions about how we live with each other. In the Colorado case, the way the teachers made it a conceptual change (an “Ahoy” moment”)

9:44	Raul: What are our own “Ahoy” or “Hello” moments. Raises the distinct possibility of different information worlds. The people who read different sources of information – who do you know. You are going to get information from people who already think a lot about you.

9:45	Raul: When the world around us is annotated with digital information you can pick and choose. It also makes us ask questions about how do we create deep meaning, rather than just links, comments, etc.

9:46

Raul: Canadians need a responsible, democratic platform to connect ideas and create a platform to connect with each other (a public broadcaster on social media ground). Whether we are coming from a variety – we all have to wrestle with how do we keep the dialogue alive. A deeper truth – the cultural context isn’t obvious, it’s a site of debate, and it is an important debate to be a part of.

9:46	Raul: There can be no excuse. Balancing collaboration with sustained arguments. It means a commitment to remembering what this fabulous conversation is for, problem solving and making the world a better place.