Understanding Technology: Where does it come from, where does it go?
As we evolve in our digital age, more often than not, we start to question: is it all worth it? Our dependency on technology becomes more evident throughout the generations. As more children start to understand how to work technology at just the age of three, it can be terrifying to imagine what our future may hold. However, understanding where all this data collected from our technological devices is just as important as understanding how it works and functions.
“No single term-such as “literacy” -can support the weight of the shifting, contingent activities we have been describing. ” Anne Frances Wysocki and Johndan Johnson-Eilola in their article mentions how digital literacy is a broad spectrum. In fact, they go into how literacy is just a big umbrella term, we see literacy attached behind every term we know whether it is digital, technological, or computer literacy. Though literacy is often associated with books instead and we often times don’t link the two together as one component. They bring up the point that now we are changing to having to understand not just physical books, but literacy can be seen in other ways and forms as well.
Questioning what is defined as literacy, while it’s easy for us to realize that this is happening we also need to question the reality of it. Ideas such as how should literacy in the technological world should be built? If it should be based on “decision-making powers” because it is up to us on how we use our information. Whether or not everyone should understand technology in it’s entirety or just know technology in it’s base-level surface. We as the consumers must first understand what our own relationship with technology should be. Meanwhile, There is an effort to link technology and literacy together. But, is it the right approach to doing so, always seems to be the debate across all platforms. Each time digital literacy is mentioned there’s also the question of whether or not the idea of linking the understanding of technology is safe for consumers.
Many of these assumptions and fears of technology can be linked towards Metadata, “Metadata is the central to how [maps, signs, dashboards, web searches, etc.] operate… for most of us, it would be undesirable to have access to the full complexity of a banking system or telephone network”. From this quote, we understand that there is a middle ground between the information of Metadata and how it’s presented to the user. As users we don’t need to have access to the entire library of metadata, rather we need to understand what is used with a simple UI (User Interface). While most users wouldn’t understand the behind the scenes of all the information we witness and use. “…we barely understand anything about [a series of complex technological systems]… neither how they work, nor where they come from, nor why they take the forms the do.”(Radical Technology) Like before in the quotation for Metadata it’s easy to see how most users don’t really have access to the understanding of how most technology or networking systems. It seems that we as users are often just taking technology for granted and just understanding how to operate them on the front end level. Unless people really understand the other ways of technology we just function without questioning how everything works. While some people may take interest to working with metadata, such as coders and other people alike. We really need to understand how our information is being used or we’ll never really know.
As a user of technology myself, I didn’t even think to question the middle ground of literacy. And even in our generation I think it’s important to question how everything works and functions. Especially where our data is going and when it’s being used. All readings lead to the question to: “Would we see more understanding in the complex middle ground of digital literacy more in the future to protect ourselves?”. Surely understanding the transportation in between would create more of an awareness to what goes on in between not just understanding the beginnings and where our information ends up. The common theme between all the readings is that we just don’t have enough information to know as the general public unless we know how everything truly works on it. We are just oblivious unless we put more research into it, whether this is through learning at school or just from self-taught research.
Proficiency in understanding metadata is important and to know what companies do to our privacy online is just as important as anything else. The best examples of these are social media and the world wide web itself. Many may not know but our data is best collected when it comes to social media. The most famous company that partakes in this would easily be Facebook and Instagram since now they are joint companies. Facebook had plenty of allegations of misuse in users information, in fact, now users are able to download their own Facebook information. This download includes what companies are interested in you and what your interest spark in similar companies or music bands. The misuse of our own personal data to also skew our political views making politics more messy than it already is.
To connect these ideas to the past of how I learned digital technology would be coding. Coding is a great example of digital literacy, because it is no longer surprising for girls to understand coding. Before when my parents were growing up, it wasn’t often that women would be working in the computer industry. Much of coding also works with plenty of metadata, and with the internet at our hands, there are plenty of it. With our generation growing up simple coding is already available for us to use and understand. There are a vast amount of tutorials on the internet as well as video tutorials through Youtube. STEAM majors are starting to become more common among, not just young boys but also girls. We see an extension of summer camps that teach you basic coding needs, whether it’s coding a simple game, or robotics. When I started learning how to code it was around when I was 12, I started off editing HTML/CSS, when Tumblr was popular and editing my own blog page. From there in high school I learned the different types of languages, starting off with Javascript. My knowledge towards coding slowly expanded over the years and now I am proficient in HTML, Javascript, C and C++. As it continues to grow, I can also watch my brother who is 7 years younger than me grow in coding as well. When he was 6 he already knew how to program basic robotics making a robot go up or down.
So in theory, understanding digital literacy, our own metadata and how technology works is definitely needed. We find problems with targeted ads towards people because of how our data is leaked to companies. The more people are aware of these, the more companies would need to cater to all the need of a consumer. There needs to be a balance in understanding the back-end of everything as well as the front-end.