Digital Wisdom

MDSB61 – Blog Assignment #2

Prensky defines digital wisdom as a twofold concept:
- Wisdom arising from the use of digital technology to access cognitive power beyond our innate capacity and
- Wisdom in the prudent use of technology to enhance our capabilities

Aside from technology and the internet, I am a person who truly values education. Not necessarily formal education, but learning is important to me and I frequently engage in self-learning. Digital media has given me the abilities to learn in an informative and convenient way. I am currently pursuing a career in Marketing. After working at Rogers Communications in their marketing department and taking many courses in marketing, I escaped to the internet to discover more. There are many news sites and blogs that I read on a daily basis to stay updated and knowledgeable about the industry. This is the second form of digital wisdom Prensky was referring to. I am using technology to search the web and view webpages which will enhance my capabilities in marketing. Another example would be when I stream a documentary from a website, I am enhancing my knowledge in that area and using technology to help me accomplish that.

Prensky spoke of digital enhancement, which I think is much like his first concept of digital wisdom. In digital enhancement, we extend ourselves cognitively with digital tools. For example, I keep an updated calendar on my Microsoft Outlook. The calendar is filled with many dates, times, meetings, and reminders. I wouldn’t be able to remember every single piece of detail if I had to rely only on my memory. However, with my laptop’s harddrive, it stores all my calendar info for easy retrieval. Therefore, I am using digital tools to extend my memory of important dates. With regards to the digital wisdom definition, I am using digital technology to access cognitive power beyond my innate capacity. This is true, because remembering so many dates might be humanly impossible (provided I had enough).

Unfortunately, as much as I’d love to say I’m not developing skills for digital distraction, I am to a certain degree. However, it is in conjunction with skills for digital wisdom. Some of the skills developed for distraction are my ability to multitask. However, I should note that we now know that with multitasking, it’s hard to do complete an academic task with high quality. Another skill may be the idea the list of websites I’ve found on which I can waste time. For example, textsfromlastnight.com, failblog.com, etc. Of course there’s also Youtube. I am a very inquisitive person and this serves as a characteristic which plays both ways. For example, while studying for an exam, I might randomly wonder how engines work and search it up. This is unproductive. However, if I do this when I have free time, then it is productive and contributing to digital wisdom.

I try my hardest to control the interface, but the very idea of an interface means power and control. An interface is a structure and the only way I will have full control is if I create that structure. The touchscreen on my iPhone is an interface with huge means of control. I have to conform to the gestures stipulated by Apple. I once downloaded a Firefox application that allowed me to create my own mouse gestures which would conduct whichever actions I deem fit. I created a ‘L’ shape to go forward a page and a backwards ‘L’ shape to go back a page. This is me having control over the interface but to believe that, you must oversee the fact that the mouse itself is an interface which controls me. So far, I’ve been talking about interface on the hardware level. However, interface can be on a software level as well. My Apple iPhone is an interface that controls me too much. I sometimes want to drag and drop files from my computer to my iPhone when connected. However, Apple has no interface for this. So if this regards, the interface changes my behaviour, and instead I am forced to download a 3rd party application (Dropbox if you’re wondering) to sync files with my iPhone and computer.