The Technologies of Self Esteem in the Process of Collaborative Content Creation
Technologies of Self Esteem
I want to start this section with what might seem like an odd disclaimer. I do not believe that education alone, even with the best technologies, can solve the problems of social exclusion as they cascade through succeeding generations of the same families. We all know that the problems are much more intractable than providing the best education and equipment, though that would be a good start. What almost all of us need are love, money and education; and these are needed by the unloved, the poor and the uneducated more than they are by the well loved, the rich and the educated. This is obvious stuff but horribly overlooked by policy makers.
Now, as to the first, you can't legislate for love but you can largely regulate and promote a society where people can develop their self esteem. Without self esteem there is no trust, no mutuality.
If you or I have a problem what do we do? We immediately tell a couple of dozen people what the problem is and ask for their help. We admit our inadequacy, accept guidance and often imitate with fulsome attribution. But the poor are poor because they are poor askers. For many of them self esteem depends upon an aura of autonomous competence which is, of course, self deluding. I will risk saying here that this is much more a male than a female characteristic but this does not validate the general point; the ability to ask questions, to ask for help, to ask for something knowing you can repay in some broad kind of social accountancy, are all at the root of success in a society based on mutuality.
If I am even partly right in what I say, then one important way of analysing major technologies ought to be the effect they have on self esteem.
So, let us take three technologies: the television, the telephone and the PC-based, telephone mediated information system.
I think there is no doubt that the medium and technology of television improve self esteem. It is difficult to see this clearly now unless you have lived in a society without television as I did for a number of years. The poverty of circular conversations with minor variations is almost indescribable now compared with the richness of media-fuelled discourse. Even the television most of us presume or pretend to despise offers material far above the two dimensional intellectual life for most people in the 19th Century. Even those who confine their viewing to soap operas and soccer bring themselves to discuss ethics in an approximate way; and there is a peculiar satisfaction in being an expert on the off-side rule.
As for the technology of television, the main set is eminently accessible and capable of autonomous control by almost everyone; even the contemporary electronic programme guide to multi channel television has an iron logic which breeds confidence. The VCR might have been a problem but the incentive of the content overcame even that obstacle. Of course it is not interactive in the true sense but neither is the much praised book.
What about the telephone. I think this scores highly, too and it has the benefit of being interactive. First the land line and now the mobile have created countless opportunities for increased control over events and discussion of them. We can share grief or joy; and we can tell an anxious date that he has not been stood up but that we are stuck in a train.
These first two technologies increase choice and control which is why I mentioned them at the beginning of this presentation in the context of the role of broadcasting in learning and the potential of broad band communication. Then what about our new ICT systems? I am afraid that the verdict is mixed.
Looked at from the vantage point of a non computer user, the effort is great for no measurable return. If you can define a search narrowly then the result is better than surfing the currently available 400 television channels but if you can't define the search you might was well choose something from the EPG menu. In the former situation you are at the mercy of some search engine report, in the case of the latter you are still in control. Focusing in on the kind of PC skills which involve applications software, it is difficult to see how these can boost the self esteem of those who are lacking in self confidence. In most cases you can't guess or problem solve to arrive at the conclusion that you press the "Start" button to close down the machine; the use of the forward and backward slashes is puzzling, the accusation of illegal operations and fatal errors is demoralising. Imagine you are used to a reliable television and you are just learning how to word process; you leave the machine to put on the kettle and come back to be told you have done something illegal, though you are not told what. Our problem is that we are so used to this nonsense that, from the basis of our own self assurance, we can handle it; we carry massive pieces of intellectual baggage which tell us what the machine really means. We know beyond question that the manuals are useless, the help facilities are patchy and the requirements are arbitrary; but we compare the outcomes with our previous experience of penned drafts and carbon paper final copies. For the PC novice from that background which says you must always lead, never question in public, never ask for help, this world of the arcane, the perverse, the supernumerary, is just too much. A system which calls itself an Information and Communications Technology actually looks just the opposite; it lacks intrinsic information to help you operate it and it frustrates communication.
That is why at one level I am so supportive of broadcasting. It may be argued that computing will become more streamlined and intuitive while television fragments; and it may be that convergence will render PCs and televisions near identical; but the former comes out of an environment of trust and the latter out of an environment of mistrust, so even if the technologies converge, we might well be better off putting a printer onto the television than trying to force unwilling people to use the PC. More fundamentally, as long as we insist on a totally chaotic regime in web design, many people will be better off with their EPG than trying to pick information out of a global pot. So if the public sector wants people to learn about child care, the advantages of Entitlement Cards, the dangers to our environment, then it might be better off making television programmes and broadcasting them on a loop than hoping that the half who are not currently on line will change their minds. Recently the British Library put the Book of Kells on its web site; it should simultaneously have put it on a television channel. We need to make a proper distinction between the need of citizens for information and the need for citizens to express themselves. You don't need a computer to know but you may need one to say. If anybody has anything big to say, broadcast. It is only where people have a need for self expression that we need to think seriously about computing; and, even then, with a return path on digital television the need for that will be minimal. It ought to be possible to transfer all form filling to digital television, though this will mean simplifying forms.