technology

Jon Huntsman, in campaigning for the Republican nomination for the presidency, is encountering a rough reality five months removed from the New Hampshire primary: voters don't know who he is. And if general voters don't know who he is, I'm guessing young voters aren't well aware of the former governor-turned presidential candidate either.

While Huntsman has some work to do with the general electorate, And maybe some his daughters are attempting to do their part in reaching out to young voters through Twitter.

On July 28, Huntsman's three oldest daughters started their own Twitter account. At the outset, the Twitter account was created based on the daughters' desire to share where they are and what they are doing with friends. But then they thought about other uses.

Abby Huntsman, 25, said she and her sisters came up with the idea on their own as a way to keep friends informed.

'All our friends are like, "Where are you? You’re always in different places and doing interesting things!"

'And we thought, "This is a great way to reach out to, not only our friends, but to the youth and to anybody interested in following the campaign",' she said.

[...]

Abby Huntsman said she’s not sure what role the @Jon2012girls account will play in the upcoming election, but she believes she and her sisters have a basic duty to their dad.

'I think our involvement is pretty simple. It’s just getting out there, getting people excited and getting them to know a little bit about my dad,' she said.

I'm not one to knock efforts to appeal to young voters or engage in social media, so kudos to the Huntsmans.

However, I think we need to remember that technology in 2008 campaigns and technology in 2012 campaigns are entirely different phenomena. So while simply "getting a Twitter or Facebook" might have been able to pass as some kind of appeal to youth in 2008 (even that is highly doubtful), doing that alone definitely won't work in 2012.

If the Huntsman daughters legitimately want to appeal to young voters, maybe they need to tell their dad to campaign and advocate for true pro-growth policies, strategies that create jobs and increase government revenues. That's what we want and need. That he definitely wouldn't get out of the GOP primary after spreading this message shows you just how far the Republican Party is from young voters' priorities.

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
-Bob Dylan

Some Cleveland-area businesses, officials, and citizens were frustrated in June when what was believed to be a flash mob disrupted an arts fair in Cleveland Heights. Take a peek:

Officials estimate that nearly 1,000 youth showed up spontaneously. Apparently there were random fights (though little information about these fights is provided in either the video or the Cleveland Plain Dealer's account).

This event, along with other alleged violent flash mobs, spurred Cleveland city council member Zach Reed (pictured, right) to introduce an ordinance criminalizing the use of social media - Facebook, Twitter, etc. - to organize crowds.

Under existing law, any member of a flash mob can be charged with disorderly conduct or other offenses carrying jail if there is a disturbance. Reed's legislation would have added a misdemeanor charge for summoning a crowd through social media. A first offense carried a $100 fine.

Reed said the new measure moved beyond "antiquated legislation" that never imagined social media.

To his credit, Cleveland mayor Frank Jackson vetoed that legislation this week, noting that while he is sympathetic to it's goal, the ordinance was not narrowly tailored enough to pass constitutional muster.

Reading about this on the heels of reading an articulate post by Sam DuPont at NDN - which calls for more examination of how social media can enhance civic engagement and social capital, I'm thinking about this flash mob issue in a few ways.

First, Reed's proposal to specifically criminalize social media-induced flash mobs is ridiculous. The last thing we need is another petty law on the books that we ask police officers to enforce, especially when we already have laws that address the issue. If a large group of people convenes and is hellbent on disrupting an otherwise peaceful event with violence, then the laws should be enforced. Some comments from festival attendees actually suggest that the Cleveland Heights PD efficiently defused the mob.

But instead, Reed - while admirably looking to solve the problem - throws the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. Reed's proposed ordinance is far from being narrowly tailored. An Ohio ACLU official points out that the law could penalize innocent citizens; should two or three friends agree to meet up somewhere to talk, dance, listen to music, or whatever, and several others show up and cause problems, the two or three friends would bear the responsibility under this ordinance. In fact, what Reed proposes would have criminalized the actions of those young people abroad who used social media to gather and rally against their oppressive governments and in support of democracy. Effective government can't simply pass a broad, sweeping law and - voila! - expect results.

I'm not arguing that there isn't a problem to be solved when people congregate with the intention of disrupting a community. However, the question Cleveland and its suburbs should be asking is not "How are these youth organizing," as this legislation does, but "Why?" I wonder if it has something to do with 25 percent of teenagers in this country being unemployed? Perhaps many youth have nowhere left to gather, other than 24 hour Wal-Marts?

What is this subculture resisting? Perhaps it's not the suburban couple or family, but a society and community that seems to have forgotten about them?

I hope Zach Reed reads Sam DuPont's blog post. DuPont doesn't view social media as a menacing threat to society. Instead, he suggests that our communities and young people could benefit from a leveraging of these technological tools to increase social capital.

[I]f this generation is to rebuild American social capital, it needs fora in which to connect, build bonds, and establish the mutual obligations of social relationships. While the primary causes Putnam points to are immense, historical shifts, the secondary causes can be largely boiled down to the resultant decline of membership in general community organizations: churches, Rotary clubs, PTAs, etc. It's hard to imagine most of these organizations making a powerful comeback among the Millennial generation, and we're left with the question of where, exactly, Millennials will come together to build social bonds.

Another cause Putnam identifies as contributing an additional 10% toward the decline in social capital is "suburbanization, commuting, and sprawl." This trend has reoriented American communities away from the neighborhoods, downtown areas, corner bars, and public squares where social capital was once forged, to a landscape dominated by highways and strip malls where the closest thing to a shared public space can be found in the Caverns of Walmart. And so, in addition to the evaporation of civic groups, our shared physical spaces are also disappearing, and the question of where social capital can be created in the 21st century becomes still more confounding.

As you've no doubt guessed by now (Sorry this took so long. Actually, I'm not sorry at all. Brevity is for cowards.), the point I'm driving toward is this: with the decline of community organizations and associations, and the disappearance of shared public spaces, I look to new network technologies to bridge some of those gaps, and help create the shared public spaces of the 21st century.

Perhaps instead of fearing and resisting social media and flash mobs, the local government in Cleveland and its suburbs could make an effort to learn about and embrace these phenomena, while also trying to understand how to improve youth quality of life in the area? Yes, cities like Cleveland and the suburbs have lots going on and many priorities in these tough times, but ignoring youth issues and rejecting their culture is not effective problem-solving, it's sinking like a stone.

Shameless self promotion - one of the candidates I'm working with spoke marvelously about the ability for government to contribute to young people.

Lt. Governor Jari Askins remarked at the Gov 2.0 Conference in Oklahoma City that its interesting that most schools tell students to turn off their cell phones and smart phones and that we still teach them with a text book. She says that with a 2.0 government we can go beyond the text book and show them what government is like using the websites they hang out on or by making government more accessible online.

You can see the rest of the speech here.

If you have followed Future Majority over the last couple years, you will recognize that Thomas Friedman's hit piece on Millennials, labeling them "Generation Q" for being too quiet, serves as the foundation for many a post. His Boomer paradigm interferes with his ability to understand how Millennial activism differs.

Friedman argues that Millennials may be "too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country's own good." The problem most of us had with Friedman's writing was that he was unable to see that one could be mad, could be online, and could be productive all at once. Another issue was the power Friedman ascribed to symbolic and yet meaningless acts. What good is chaining one's self to a bulldozer actually going to accomplish long-term? Very little.

With that in mind, we now have some more information regarding college students' heavy use of social media, and it is easy to see how our activism has changed course. The International Center for Media and the Public Agenda (ICMPA) at the University of Maryland released a study revealing the considerable depth of students' connections to social media.

200 University of Maryland (College Park) students, as part of a class assignment, were asked to abstain from all media for 24 hours straight. Following this time window, they were then asked to describe their experiences in private blogs. Perhaps the most interesting nugget of information this study yielded was just how interwoven social media has become in 18-21 year olds' lives.

"The students did complain about how boring it was go anywhere and do anything without being plugged into music on their MP3 players," said Moeller. "And many commented that it was almost impossible to avoid the TVs on in the background at all times in their friends' rooms. But what they spoke about in the strongest terms was how their lack of access to text messaging, phone calling, instant messaging, email and Facebook, meant that they couldn't connect with friends who lived close by, much less those far away."

"Texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort," wrote one student. "When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life. Although I go to a school with thousands of students, the fact that I was not able to communicate with anyone via technology was almost unbearable."

The student responses to the assignment showed not just that 18-21 year old college students are constantly texting and on Facebook -- with calling and email distant seconds as ways of staying in touch, especially with friends -- but that students' lives are wired together in such ways that opting out of that communication pattern would be tantamount to renouncing a social life.

Bringing this back to the Friedman contention that students should cut out the online crap and do something meaningful with their lives, this survey points to how misguided Friedman actually was in his writing. Social media is so pervasive and such a large part of our world that it is rewiring our brains. As the piece argues above, there is no exiting the social media world to "act" in the real world. To the wide majority of young people, social media is reality. If one had to renounce his or her social life in order to please Friedman, the activism would not mean anything.

Another enlightening conclusion was the impact the abstention from media had on these students' information-gathering capabilities. Participants in the study reported that they normally do not read the newspaper, watch mainstream television news, or listen to radio news, yet they were informed enough to discuss specific news stories. During the study, though, participants remarked on how uninformed they felt.

..."To be entirely honest I am glad I failed the assignment," wrote one student, "because if I hadn't opened my computer when I did I would not have known about the violent earthquake in Chile from an informal blog post on Tumblr."

"Students expressed tremendous anxiety about being cut-off from information," observed Ph.D. student Raymond McCaffrey, a former writer and editor at The Washington Post, and a current researcher on the study. "One student said he realized that he suddenly 'had less information than everyone else, whether it be news, class information, scores, or what happened on Family Guy."

"They care about what is going on among their friends and families and even in the world at large," said McCaffrey. " But most of all they care about being cut off from that instantaneous flow of information that comes from all sides and does not seemed tied to any single device or application or news outlet."

Students clearly rely on social media for information. Given our knowledge -- going clear back to Thomas Jefferson -- that information is vital in managing our country's affairs, dispensing with internet-based activism would be foolish and regressive, breeding even more disengagement and misinformation.

Friedman's Boomer lens assumes that we still have a critical mass of institutions that need tearing down, and that it needs to happen quickly. These Millennial college students, as Morley Winograd and Michael Hais point out, understand how decentralized our lives are, and, in role-modeling their "civic" archetype, they must rely on these anything-but-linear connections and the decentralized flow of information to reconstruct society.

Because idealist generations are unwilling to compromise on moral issues, they've always failed to solve the major social and economic problems of their eras. In the decades after the 1828 election, the country was pulled apart over slavery, ultimately leading to the Civil War. After the 1896 campaign, the United States couldn't find a way to help blue-collar workers and farmers to share fully in the wealth generated by the Industrial Revolution. It took the Great Depression to usher in the sense of urgency that led to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Today, issues such as affordable health care or quality education or climate change are endlessly debated but never resolved by two sides unwilling to set aside their ideological agendas for the common good.

But now, with another civic generation emerging, the times, as boomer troubadour Bob Dylan sang, they are a-changin'. Civic generations react against the idealist generations' efforts to use politics to advance their own moral causes and focus instead on reenergizing social, political and government institutions to solve pressing national issues. Previous civic realignments occurred in 1860, with the election of Abraham Lincoln, and in 1932, when the GI generation put Roosevelt in office. It's no coincidence that these "civic" presidents, along with George Washington, top all lists of our greatest presidents. All three led the country in resolving great crises by inspiring and guiding new generations and revitalizing and expanding the federal government.

In their book Millennial Makeover, Winograd and Hais describe technology as "[enabling] these changes by creating powerful new ways to reach new generations of voters with messages that relate directly to their concerns" (p. 24). Yes, face-to-face interaction continues to have its place in our society. However, if we were to scrap our reliance on social media, we would be willfully ignoring the new generations of voters Winograd and Hais mention. This study's results underscore how vital social media is to our generation's civic health. If we were to purge ourselves of our internet activism, only then could we legitimately be considered "quiet."

Ingrid Schlueter of the Cross Talk Blog wrote before Christmas that forms of "youth ministry" in evangelical churches are becoming a joke. She thinks the focus of religious institutions is placed more on the entertainment of youth rather than the religious teachings of the faith.

"The real issue is that evangelical parents are too busy servicing their debt providing iPhones and iPods and laptops for their offspring to worry about the biblical training of their children. Fathers are too involved watching the NFL on their large television screens to lead family worship. Mothers are too busy working out to achieve age-defying abs to teach children Scriptures when they rise up and when they lie down. That’s what youth group is for, they think. Except youth groups aren’t doing these things either. Youth pastors, even those well into middle-age, are bent on proving their coolness to the students in their care. They got krunk, see? They like dance-offs and air guitar competitions and having food items lobbed at their heads for entertainment purposes. Biblical training? Catechesis? Ha Ha Ha. Right."

But a piece in last month's New York Times paints a picture of a different form of young evangelical Christians. Jenna Liao begins by explaining the work she does coordinating volunteers for World Relif, an organization that works with refugees and displaced families of war torn areas.

Another, Matthew Soerens, wrote a book with friends on immigration reform from the evangelical perspective called Welcoming the Stranger.

"Without disowning longstanding causes for evangelical activists like opposition to abortion or support for school vouchers, these young evangelicals have taken up issues previously abdicated to secular and religious liberals: climate change, AIDS prevention and treatment, Third World poverty."

Soerens goes on to say that he doesn't believe his generation of Evangelical Christians are rejecting the issues their parents are concerned with, but rather widening the spectrum of issues.

In January of 2009 Matthew Anderson of Mere Orthodoxy wrote a series of pieces on the cultural and political evolution of the new generation of young evangelicals titled The New Evangelical Scandal. Among other things, Anderson discusses the break in voting support from the GOP last year, and the extent to which younger evangelicals were supportive if not enthusiastic about President Barack Obama whose message was about a broader humanitarian focus and call for the common good, rather than all about gay marriage and abortion. (emphasis is mine)

"Even if the outline of our theology is broadly the same as our parents, as it is for an increasing number of conservative evangelicals, our ethos is different. And the differences are not strictly political—the political trends among young evangelicals that have received so much attention are grounded in different concerns and emphases that undergird younger evangelicals’ approach to culture and spirituality as well. This new ethos is largely a reaction to the abuses, failures, and excesses of our parents’ generation and contains significant clues as to the future of evangelicalism in America."

A local Oklahoma City magazine had a piece about the ways in which metro area churches were turning to technology in efforts to better connect to their members and other potential flock. The piece defends the use of the so called "debt providing iPhones and iPods and laptops" to create consistent connections to this new generation that one pastor said communicates "in a way so that each person has an opportunity to know, act or respond, [all of which] which requires mul­tiple avenues of communication." And the Lord said, "Let there be Twitter," and it was good.

While some scoff at the use of new fangled gadgets to communicate in youth focused services, it seems the "true message" that the Cross Talk Blog seems to be so concerned about, might actually be getting through. What older more traditional Evangelicals seem to focus on is rather a more restricted, right-wing, political ideology backed by elders of their faith and preached from the pulpit. This might be the reason for the disconnect for younger generations of young evangelicals who seem to be more interested in acts of good works and the common good rather than shilling for Sarah Palin.

Happy Sunday!

An interesting possibility came out of the Great American Hackathon, a gathering of computer software developers "to develop open source applications for open government."

In order to vote in United States elections from their residence abroad, military members face a complex and frustrating process. In order to have their vote counted, they count on bureaucracy to properly deliver their ballot and do so promptly. Meanwhile, the soldier must stay informed of changes in local election law that could threaten their vote.

In a fabulous use of the Voting Information Project, developers are planning the release of a widget that would fuse date from the project with the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot, creating a customized ballot for the soldier's home location.

This would be a shot in the arm to youth organizing, given the youth's heavy presence in combat forces staged overseas. This is a great example of using technology to extend democracy. Kudos to these developers.

My High School has less than 400 students. We have a few dilapidated buildings and a less than stellar average when it comes to standardized testing. But one thing we've managed to excel in? Technology. Our school has done a lot to ensure teachers have the most advanced resources available to help them teach.

Every classroom has a computer and a smartboard. These are frequently used in many of my classes for everything from advanced programming demonstrations to simple educational videos in a History class.

Our computer lab has recently been updated with around 30 desktop computers and around the same number of laptops. Our elementary students are lucky enough to be part of a pilot program, in which there is roughly one laptop per child in several classes. These computers, and the internet, are incorporated into classes everyday.

In rural areas like mine, the internet can absolutely be the difference between knowledge and ignorance. It is the only opportunity for many to explore the world outside their hometown while in High School.

I also read an article about schools in Lawrence, Kansas being changed by technology. Teachers there are using other technologies, such as a 'clicker' for each student in a class to respond to an oral multiple choice question immediately.

Teachers in Lawrence were quick to remind everyone of their own importance, something I understand completely...“You get knowledge, you get facts, but you don’t get the underlying realistic elements in life.” one said.

He's right...there is nothing better than a History teacher who can tell you a war story, or a science teacher who can take you out in the courtyard and blow something up...but these new technologies are making their jobs a bit easier, and hopefully making school more engaging for students.

The President has called, during his Cairo speech, for a way for a "teenager in Kansas" to "communicate instantly with a teenager in Cairo" Education Secretary Arne Duncan, along with the Jordanian Minister for Education, recently demonstrated video technology which can allow a student to immerse themselves in another culture...all from the comfort of a classroom.

Thankfully, the ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) and the White House are investing money where it's needed in our educational system. Technology is an integral part of that system and will continue to become more and more important in the future.

I am super-excited about the White House finally doing some major promotion for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education programs. They just launched a campaign called “Educate to Innovate”. It’s goal is to increase participation in these programs, through the work of the federal government, major corporations, non-profits, and other organizations.

Although there weren’t a lot of specifics about the campaign, it was announced that the White House will be partnering with Time-Warner, Discovery Channel, Sesame Street, Sally Ride, and other organizations and science-engineering big shots to make sure that American students are excited about science and math.

The President says that it is the goal of his administration to ‘move to the top in science and math education’ and that this campaign will be part of working towards this goal. During his speech, he mentioned that private companies have already committed more than $260 million.

One exciting element of the campaign was an after school program with FIRST Robotics, which I’ve had some experience with. I know it to be a great opportunity for students to learn in a hands-on way…and it gives them somewhere to go, and something safe to do, during the after-school hours.

Another program being launched - an annual White House Science Fair for students. The President spoke about how NCAA athletes visit the White House, and so should young scientists and engineers who are finding success in their fields.

The President spoke about the importance of hard work for students, support from parents, and a strong basic education system to work along with these specialized STEM programs. He told a brief story about meeting with the Mayor of Shanghai, where he learned of how teachers in his city were treated – with reverence and respect. There is no problem recruiting them because they are payed nearly as much as an average doctor or lawyer, which of course makes perfect sense.

Students from a local high school demonstrated a robot they built as part of a STEM program…and the President was genuinely interested. I feel like this program will be a great step forward in the Obama Administration’s Education Policy and I hope it succeeds in getting students excited about STEM and providing them with the knowledge to innovate for the future.

The White House Blog did a post about the program and Education Secretary Arne Duncan took questions from the online community. Here is the full text of the President’s remarks.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that while an older audience is moving to Facebook, Twitter is becoming younger.

Martha Irvine, an AP youth beat writer, wrote a story on this development a couple days ago, finding that while a significant number of youth are moving to Twitter, many of them are doing so grudgingly believing that Twitter updates contain too much minutiae for their tastes.

"Quite frankly, I don't need to hear if someone stepped in dog poo on the way to class or how annoyed they are that they lost their favorite pen," says Carolyn Wald, a University of Chicago junior who has not joined Twitter and rarely posts status updates on Facebook because "I don't want to assume that people want to hear those things about me, either."

One explanation for this surge is the increased availability of wireless devices for youth today. The study reports that the more wireless outlets youth have, the more probable it is that they will tweet.

One of our biggest battles in reporting on youth progressive politics is pushing back against the faulty view that the use of technology/social networking among youth keeps them from practicing successful activism. Thankfully, we have yet another package of data noting the opposite -- those youth who participate in online social networking opportunities tend to be more engaged and involved in their communities offline.

From the National Conference on Citizenship's 2009 Civic Health Index report:

This year’s survey allowed us to explore the relationships between online forms of engagement and community-based civic activities. We selected a group of Millennials who use social networking sites to promote civic causes, express their opinions on issues, and gather information related to civics, and compared their levels of engagement to that of their peers. We found that Millennials who use social networking sites for civic purposes are far more likely to actively engage in their own communities in each of the activities we measured.

Although we cannot conclude that belonging to social networking sites promotes civic engagement in their community, it is encouraging that civic use of social networking sites cut across income and educational gaps, meaning that low-income youth and youth without college experience were nearly as likely to use social networking sites for civic purposes as youth who had higher income or college experience. As we found in 2008, the civic engagement gap appears to be smaller among young people who engage online, and this year, we found that young Americans who are highly engaged online come from diverse economic and educational background, and are also highly engaged off-line.

Emphasis is mine.

It's understandably very tempting for elder generations to dismiss peer-to-peer internet-based activism. Even though Boomer and Xer parents continue to join Facebook, they do so for novelty's sake. The link between technology and youth activism can't be seen every day, and so, for many, it doesn't exist.

This report is one more reminder that the connection is there -- youth who use social networking sites online are doing more than changing their avatars. They do get involved/engaged in their local communities and make a difference.