I recently finished a book that I consider a great resource for people trying to figure out how to better use their time online. Howard Rheingold is the author of the book Net Smart: How to Thrive Online, (The MIT Press, 2012). Probably to the author’s dismay, I do consider Rheingold to be an Internet enthusiast/optimist. The author repeatedly shares with the reader how he is able to filter the tidal wave of information available on the Internet for good use in his occupation as a journalist. This alone makes the book worth reading – even if you only end up picking up only a few of the Rheingold’s techniques for filtering Internet content or just learn about Real Simple Syndication (RSS) for the first time.
I realize that asking folks to read a book in this day and age of short attention spans and multi-tasking is a lot to ask. If you are this kind of person, then at least read Chapter 6 in Rheingold’s book – titled ‘How (Using) the Web (Mindfully) Can Make You Smarter’. The first section of Chapter 6 is about your privacy online and data surveillance. The author coins the term ‘dataveillance’ and acknowledges some of the not so pretty things that can happen on the Internet. The author points out the things that you can do to control the information that others know about you as well as the fact that there are limits to your control over your personal information.
The Chapter 6 section that is particularly insightful is the ‘Five Literacies in a NutShell’:
- Attention – your attention can be trained, but you have to keep a strong hold on your intentions to be successful.
- Crap Detection – ability to filter the good content from the bad content, checking sources, and ‘acting like a detective’.
- Participation – lightweight activities are tagging, liking, bookmarking, and wiki editing; higher engagement is curation, commenting, blogging and community organizing.
- Collaboration – you need coordination to dance by yourself, cooperation to act in concert toward shared interests, and collaboration to achieve shared goals.
- Network Smarts – networks influence the way individuals and groups behave; networks that enable many-to-many communication grow in value more rapidly than broadcast networks.
It is very likely that the Chapter 6 sections mentioned above will motivate you to read more of Rheingold’s book – which would be time well spent!