Innovation for Education

Images and video on social media can be used to persuade - big time. If you don't believe me, consider the Tilapia scare memes circulating on Facebook. This is just the sort of image that I usually scroll right past on my way to other more "important" braingum - recent travel posts from friends, pictures of college friends' babies who aren't very cute, posts about players who were traded from my favorite sports team. I stopped and read this meme, though, because a family member posted it, and commenters were running amok. When I saw a family member post this, I felt compelled to read the comments. People were reading and reacting to the meme and treating it as fact. This surprised me, because I considered it a pretty poor photoshop job that seemed to contain some pretty dubious, unsupported claims. I felt an itch I just had to scratch. My critical evaluative reflex kicked in, and I decided to enter the conversation. I advised the original poster ...

Children train, feed and play with virtual pets. They enjoy bedtime stories read to them by robotic teddy bears. They feel guilt when they neglect to take care of their machine friends, when one of them dies. These fanciful snapshots are not from some science fiction movie, they’re typical scenes from the late 1980s and early 90s. Anyone who ever played with a Furby, nursed a Tamagotchi or owned a Speak and Spell or a Teddy Ruxpin will recognize these scenarios. These unsophisticated forms of artificial intelligence were welcomed into the homes of countless families over twenty years ago. In the tech world, of course, the 1980s and 90s are ages ago, and artificial intelligence has come a long way. A future with indistinguishably lifelike robots, like the replicants of Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner is closer than one might think. Robots that were once bedtime buddies are now so much more - they’re caretakers, household servants, companions, therapists and even sex partners....

As I wrote in my review of Sherry Turkle’s book Alone Together , the author’s primary concern is what technology is doing to us. The tone of her book is ultimately one of concern. She feels that these days, although we do decide how and what role technology will play in our lives, more often we allow it to influence our routines, impulses and emotions, often more than we realize. As Turkle notes, “We don’t need to keep computers busy; they keep us busy” (279). She describes the gamers who are so addicted to play that they stay home from work to play a newly released title. She talks to folks who acknowledge the Pavlovian effect that an email notification has on them, but are powerless or unwilling to change it. The video and photo tools available through social media allow us to share and connect with people worlds away. They enable us to know what friends are doing miles away - down to the most minute details. Every day we’re fed scrolling updates of what friends ate for brunch,...