Interviews

We regularly feature interviews with leading online social justice scholars.  Our upcoming schedule of confirmed interviewees is as follows.  If you have an idea for a person to interview please don't hesitate to contact the acting website editor dtoews@uwindsor.ca.

Coming Interviews

September 2009 - Henry Jenkins

Current Interviews:

NEW! Howard Rheingold

The following is an exclusive Onlinesocialjustice.com interview with Howard Rheingold which took place in August of 2009...

Onlinesocialjustice.com:  Howard, it is good of you to fit this interview into your schedule, we appreciate it greatly!  Onlinesocialjustice.com is dedicated to understanding how online practices are making, and might further make, a unique contribution to the theme of social justice.  I think, for better or worse, you have yourself become a kind of elder for the internet age.  I was wondering if you see this as an accurate portrayal of your engagement with online activities?  If so, what are your reflections on the meaning of this kind of role of elder for contemporary society?  Is being an elder just a question of people turning to you more and more for guidance, or do they also come to rely on you to remember rules and procedures etc.  How does one gradually become an elder?
Howard Rheingold: Nobody sets out to be an elder. It's a side-effect of not dying. ;-)  One of the roles of elder is the keeper of history and the revealer of the big picture. That's something I started doing with Tools for Thought in 1985. I was 38 at that time, so not exactly an elder yet. So I think the role fits me well, now that I have white hair in my moustache and little hair on my head. I like to think that people turn to me for guidance because what I wrote about the future ten and twenty years ago and more has come to pass, so my insights have gained some credibility.
Onlinesocialjustice.com:  One key concept running through all the philosophical literature on social justice relates to the problematic status of human needs.  I know you've engaged critically with Habermas's thought for some time now. The Frankfurt school has an interesting perspective on human needs.  Adorno talked about the social constructedness, and indeed often the outright falseness of many 'needs' in our capitalist societies.  He casts doubt on whether we can ever truly identify our needs from among our desires as long as we live in a capitalist society.  On the other hand, Martha Nussbaum talks about how historically we have added new basic human capabilities to the list of practices we need to be able to engage with as humans - I think in some ways online practices are indeed becoming a candidate for a new human capability for her list.  Do you think we should we be trying to separate out what is essential to us as humans?  Is it helpful or instructive to think of internet practices in terms of meeting human needs?
Howard Rheingold: Yes, trying to separate out what is essential to us as humans is the bedrock of philosophy, isn't it? And if we are to make decisions based on our values, I am of the school of belief that values gained through introspection, dialogue, learning, and debate are more authentic than values believed at face value because they were handed to us by our parents, our religion, our school, or advertising agencies.
Onlinesocialjustice.com:  Gaming online is huge these days, and a big growth area is the interface between the internet and console games.  One much talked about example of social justice themes affecting games involves the representation of women as inferior -- in one game as prostitutes meant to be abused as part of the game.  Obviously, as a general rule, it makes sense to censure gaming practitioners for violating accepted ethics just as much in any other form of media.  But I'm wondering, do you think there are limitations to applying social justice principles in gaming contexts?  There is an element of fantasy in many games.  Many games involve warfare, for example.  War is presumably a social injustice.  But something nevertheless tells me that it would be counter-productive to tar all ostensibly war-like games with the same brush.   Do you have any thoughts on how we can reconcile the theme of social justice with the freedom of imagination that gaming represents?
Howard Rheingold:  As I understand it, no research has yet proved a real causative relationship between violent media and violent practices. Rather, I suspect that kids who spend too much time with violent games and violent media are the victims of a greater and perhaps more strongly causative practice -- lack of parenting.
Onlinesocialjustice.com:  The meteoric growth of Twitter is the latest water-cooler topic of conversation.  You've blogged recently about your Twitter best practices, describing how you tune and feed your followers [link].  What do you think of Twitter's concept of 'following'?  There has been some light debate among my HASTAC colleagues about whether it is a helpful notion that suggests a quality of humility of the Twitter user or whether it is on the contrary a degrading term that promotes unhelpful images of the invasion of privacy by stalkers and lurkers.  What strikes me the most is the active sense that is lent to the notion of following, which before Twitter people have often seen as passive.  On Twitter, to act is, first of all, to follow.  What is your take on the culture of Twitter?  Is there a sense of the active agency of media audiences that is coming to the surface with this particular social media platform?
Howard Rheingold:  As I wrote in my Twitter Literacy piece, I think the practice of "following" is most closely attuned to self-control of attention: Each person on Twitter has the choice of who to pay attention to. Certainly, one of the annoying effects of the mass-media age is the lack of choice regarding the commercial and other messages broadcast into one's attention.  The active agency is all over the place, from raising enough money via Twestival to furnish clean water to thousands of people to the millions of interpersonal exchanges of social and practical information. Twitter, like the Internet, is what you make of it. It can be a narcissistic megaphone and huge time waster, and it can be a real tool for activism and sociality.  Again, I think literacy -- what people know about how to use the medium -- is a critical uncertainty.

Onlinesocialjustice.com:  Finally, I know your interests have for a long time revolved around your pedagogy, and the socio-political issues surrounding pedagogy.  You've consistently made the argument that the key to the success or failure of the internet as a socially-just institution is the level of education in the public about how to use the net intelligently.  Not only have you made the argument but you have consistently practiced what you preach.  I wonder, though, how you see the question of the digital divide in the context of pedagogy.  In this world of course there are computer haves and computer have nots.  There are also different levels of skill which often correspond with the different social locations of users - something I've noticed anecdotally among my students at my University.  How do you see the intersection of education and social location, eg. class, race, age, gender, etc.?  In practice, has that diversity shown up as an obstacle in your teaching?  Are there ways that a teacher can actually turn that diversity of social location to one's pedagogical advantage?  Or is it better to take the approach of laying out universal principles of internet use that all users should come up to as a standard?
Howard Rheingold:  The divide is real, and a matter of real concern. There are multiple divides. The market and Moore's law is driving the cost of ownership down to the point where 4 billion people have mobile phones and a billion people have Internet access. That's significant. Neither is that everybody.  And as Ito, et. al. demonstrated in their Macarthur study, many class and cultural factors -- do parents and peers encourage or discourage non-trivial uses of media? -- come into play. Frankly, I don't know the answers. It's a problem that concerns me, but not one that my particular expertise equips me to pontificate about. I'm concentrating on those literacies that are becoming essential to the people who DO have access.