From knowledgeable to knowledge-able |Michael Wesch |TEDxKC

Today a new medium of communication emerges every time somebody creates a new web application. Yet these developments are not without disruption and peril. Familiar long-standing institutions, organizations and traditions disappear or transform beyond recognition. And while new media bring with them new possibilities for openness, transparency, engagement and participation, they also bring new possibilities for surveillance, manipulation, distraction and control. Critical thinking, the old mainstay of higher education, is no longer enough to prepare our youth for this world. We must create learning environments that inspire a way of being in the world in which they can harness and leverage this new media environment as well as recognize and actively examine, question and even re-create the increasingly digital structures that shape our world.

Dr. Michael Wesch is an associate professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. Michael is a cultural anthropologist exploring the effects of new media on society and culture. His YouTube videos have been viewed by millions. Michael has won several major awards for his work, including a Wired Magazine Rave Award, the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology, and he was named an Emerging Explorer by National Geographic. He has also won several teaching awards, including the 2008 CASE/Carnegie U.S. Professor of the Year for Doctoral and Research Universities.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

It's with great pleasure, actually,

that I invite Doctor Michael Wesch
to the TEDxKC stage.

(Applause)

All right.

So as I was preparing this talk
for what the world needs now,

I was reminded of this old Aztec story.

The story starts off
with the world on fire,

and it seems like
such an apt metaphor for our times.

As the world's on fire
and all the animals are running away,

all hope is lost.

We have this similar situation now.

We have a hunger crisis,
an economic crisis, an energy crisis.

We have half the world
living on less than $2 a day.

We have islands of trash
growing in our oceans.

And this has to be a message
to our youth and to all of us

that we cannot live the next 100 years

the way that we've lived
the past 100 years.

And so, if you think about
this world-on-fire metaphor,

and you think, okay, we really need
to get our youth ready for this,

how do you think we're doing this?

I'll just give you a picture here.

This is my class
at Kansas State University.

This is where most of the preparation
of our youth is happening.

Certainly, the most serious types
of preparation that are happening.

They're not really engaged.

It was actually like a real test
you can do for this

to find out just how engaged they are

and how much they are engaging
in these really important questions.

And that is just to pay attention
to the questions they are asking.

A good question is something
that leads people on a quest.

If you pay attention to the questions
students are asking in this environment,

they turn out to be questions like these:

How many points is this worth?

(Laughter)

How long does this paper need to be?

What do we need to know for this test?

I mean, these are like
the worst types of questions around.

And it's not that this group
is lazy and disengaged.

I mean, this is the same group here.

I don't know if you see the difference.

(Laughter)

So something's gone wrong here.

I've actually done surveys
with the students.

One day we just set up a camera
and just panned it around,

and students can give confessions
and that kind of thing.

We got things like this:

I buy $100 textbooks that I never open.

My neighbor paid for class
but never comes.

We did a survey and found
that across the university,

they are completing 49% of the readings
that were assigned to them.

But even worse, they are finding
only 26% relevant to their life,

which is like a 74%
failure rate on our part.

It goes on - I bring my laptop to class,
but I'm not working on class stuff.

This was nicely illustrated

in the fact that, like,
her IM actually popped up

just as she was presenting this.

I Facebook through most of my classes.

And these last two
present something else to us,

a new sort of disruption in the classroom,

and that is that
there's something in the air -

literally, something in the air -
it's in the air all around us.

And most of us can access it

from at least one device on us now,
if not multiple devices.

Our students are the same way,

and what's in the air is nearly
the entire body of human knowledge.

It's the digital artifacts
of about 2 billion people on the planet,

connecting and sharing,
and collaborating.

And iIf you could picture it,
it might look something like this.

It's like the new media landscape.

But this is just the beginning

because we're headed towards
ubiquitous computing,

ubiquitous communication,
ubiquitous information

at unlimited speed about everything,
everywhere, from anywhere

on all kinds of devices,

and this makes it ridiculously easy

to connect, organize, share,
collect, collaborate, and publish,

and it makes exams like this
seem really silly and out of place.

This is a multiple choice Scantron exam,

for those of you who've never seen one.

(Laughter)

So this is way out of place here.

I'm going to make the argument
that we need to move our students

from simply being knowledgeable,
knowing a bunch of stuff,

which is what we are trying to do

when we line them up
in these big lecture halls

and dump information on them.

We need to move them
to being knowledge-able,

that is able to find, sort, analyze,

ultimately criticize, and even create
new information and knowledge.

We have to recognize
that knowledge ability changes over time

based on the communication
environment they are in.

That's because media are not just tools,

media are not even
just means of communication.

Media shape what can be said,

who can say it,

who can hear it, how it can be said.

And in that way, they also, in a sense,
mediate relationships.

Ultimately, media are what allow us
to connect with one another,

and to connect with each other
in different ways

depending on the medium.

So in media change,
our relationships change.

There's a great analyses of this
from the television era,

from Neil Postman.

Just think about what television did

when it came in and became
the dominant medium of our culture.

It totally rearranged
our living rooms, first off.

We had to rearrange the furniture
around the television,

and let's face it,
that's the dining room too, often.

So this is a massive shift
in our relationships at home.

The conversations of our culture
start to happen here.

The conversations are controlled
by the few and designed for the masses.

They are always entertaining -

that's how you keep the audience engaged,
even the serious ones.

So our political debates
go from long reasoned analyses

to 30-second sound bites.

The conversations are punctuated
by 30-second commercials,

and the conversations

create our culture of irrelevance,
incoherence, and impotence.

Those are Neil Postman's words.

And Neil Postman,
in 1985 when he was writing this,

he asked you to imagine you're watching
a very, very important news program,

the most important news program
you can imagine.

You're sitting there,
and he asks this series of questions:

So what steps do you plan
to reduce the conflict in the Middle East?

Or the rates of inflation, crime,
or unemployment?

What do you plan to do
about NATO, OPEC, the CIA, etc.?

Then he follows this by saying,

"I shall take the liberty
of answering for you:

you plan to do nothing."

In 1985, that's basically
what you could do

because in that time with television,

it's a one-way conversation.

You have to be on TV to have a voice.

You have to be on TV to be significant.

So it's really no wonder,

in a world dominated by television media,

that we'd have all these young people
clamoring to be on stage,

to be significant.

I mean, essentially, when you look
at this group of young people,

regardless of how we imagine
the project of education,

their primary goal
when they're sitting in this room

is they're basically trying to figure out

who they are, what their place
in this world is.

They're seeking a meaning in life,

they're seeking meaning and recognition
in a world and society

in which identity and recognition
are not automatically given,

so they have to find it.

At that critical moment
that they're trying to find it,

they're bombarded with media.

Dove made this great commercial
that I want to show you here

that sort of illustrates this
and the effect that this can have,

sometimes a negative effect.

Some of you may have seen this before.

(Music: La Breeze by Simian)
Ah, here it comes.

Here it comes.

La breeze will blow away

all your reason and your sane,

sane mind.

[Transform.]

[Your skin]

So do your best to run away.

You'll look younger, smaller, blonder,
firmer, tighter, thinner, softer.

(Music)

[Talk to your daughter
before the beauty industry does.]

(On stage) Michael Wesch:
Obviously, this demonstrates

the power of media very well,

and obviously this media
can be very damaging

at the critical moment when people
are trying to find their identity.

This, of course, is one of the reasons

why in our schools, we've always
talked about critical thinking.

Critical thinking is like setting up
that filter, that barrier,

to all this media blast
that's hitting them.

So critical thinking is very important,
especially in the television era.

But it's not enough for this era.

In an era of new media,
we need to go beyond critical thinking,

and that's going to be my argument
from here on out.

What I want to do is I want to jump
into an old classic on YouTube -

this appeared in 2006 -

just to sort of set the stage
for what this new media world looks like.

Here's "a hero for our mediated culture"
that emerged in 2006.

He goes by the name of One Man.

He comes home to Sydney from England,

and there's nobody
at the airport to hug him,

so he goes down to the mall,
and he holds up this Free Hugs sign,

and he just carries it around here,
looking for somebody to give him a hug.

And you'll see here,

finally somebody gives him one.

(Music)

And so now it gets interesting:

it starts to spread.

Other people start taking up the sign,
other people start getting hugs.

(Music)

But this is where it takes a turn;
it gets really interesting,

(Laughter)

It gets posted to YouTube,
gets over 40 million views,

and then it goes global.

So there's these events
still happening four years later,

thousands of these events,
all over the world.

And it demonstrates something
really quite fundamental about this media,

that it's a global conversation,

that it shows how ridiculously easy
it is to connect and share

and ultimately organize
these global social movements.

But we also have to recognize

that in this media environment,
there's always the spoofster,

there's always
the commentary coming back.

So here's the spoofster now:

[Deluxe Hugs $2.00]

"These are really, really good,

and they're not as smelly
as the hippie hugs."

(Laughter)

Some of these get really serious,
like these spoofs you see.

This is what's so interesting
about new media -

some of these get really serious.

So, remember that Dove commercial?

You might have thought,

Isn't it ironic that this beauty company
is making this kind of commercial here?

Well somebody has spoofed it
quite effectively, and here is that.

(Music: spoof of La Breeze)
There they go.

There they go.

There they go.

[98% of Indonesia's lowland forest
will be gone by the time Azizah is 25]

[Most is destroyed to make palm oil,
which is used in Dove products.]

(On stage) So two weeks
after this was produced

and about a million YouTube views later,

the Greenpeace activists
who created this video

were at the table with Unilever,
Dove's parent company,

and Unilever signed a moratorium
on rain forest deforestation for palm oil.

So this stuff is quite effective.

(Applause)

And, of course, the point
of saying that and showing that

is to point out that this is not
a one-way conversation anymore,

and it's not even just a conversation.

I'm not sure exactly how to,
like, picture this for you,

but there's like layers and layers
of creativity happening

all over the world right now

that's coming into this network.

The only way I can really describe it

is through music

because music has these layers as well.

So I want to show you
the story of Eric Whitacre.

Eric Whitacre is a composer;

he's been presenting music
for quite some time.

At one point last year,

somebody sang a song
on YouTube, his own song, to Eric.

And Eric was so inspired by this,

he thought,

"I could create a whole virtual choir."

So what he did is he actually
recorded himself conducting the song.

He put the sheet music up online,

and then anybody in the world
could actually join this choir here.

And metaphorically,
it's kind of interesting, right?

Because it shows how different
contributions from all over the world

can add up into something quite beautiful.

I see this metaphor playing out
in all kinds of different places,

even really serious cases.

This is the 2007 Kenyan election crisis.

In the aftermath,
four Kenyans get together,

and they put together
this website called Ushahidi,

which means "witness" in Swahili.

It allows people with cellphones
to report something on their cellphone.

It gets mapped on the map,
and then can get sent out.

These alerts could get sent out,
based on where you are, to your cellphone

so you get the critical information
you need at that particular moment.

It created 45,000 citizen reporters

giving life and death information
when they needed it most.

So then, three years later in Haiti -

the Kenyans actually
gave away the software -

anybody can use it.

So some students at Tufts University
implemented it for Ushahidi Haiti.

They get, you can see here, hundreds
of thousands of messages from Haiti.

Some of these messages
say things like this:

"We are looking for Gaby Joseph,

who got buried
under Royal University,"

and they're able to get these on the map,

and then people on the ground
are actually able to get these as well.

They're not using Google Maps.

They're using OpenStreetMap,

which is collaboratively produced
by volunteers all over the world.

That's the map that ends up on the ground,

and these people are getting these alerts
through the Ushahidi system.

Here's a US Marine Corps comment on this:

"It is saving lives every day.

I wish I had time to document
every example, but there are too many.

I say with confidence there are
hundreds of these success stories.

The Marine Corps is using your project
every second of the day

to get aid and assistance
to the people that need it most."

(Choir music)

So that's what's possible.

And then you walk into the classroom.

(Sound of opening door)

All right, so this
is what my classroom looks like.

I want you to think about
what's the message of the walls.

So it's not about
what I'm saying up front.

The walls are saying something too.

So what are these walls saying?

If you think about this old Dewey point,

John Dewey used to say
that students learn what they do.

So if students learn what they do,

What are they learning sitting here?

It's not just what I say, it's also
the message of just sitting there.

The message is the information
is up at the front of the room

with the authority,

that they should follow along.

The message of this room is pretty clear:

that you should bow to the authority
and follow, follow, follow.

So, of course, walls or desks
cannot talk; students can.

What we did was we just created
a Google document.

We called it A Vision of Students Today.

I just started the first line,

"What is it like being a student today?"

I invited all my students to join in,
so we had 200 collaborators on this.

We started writing about
what it's like being a student today -

basically a critique of higher education
generated by all these 200 students.

We did some surveys as well
that we developed along with this.

The video looks something like this.

You've already seen some of these images
at the beginning of this talk.

[18% of my teachers know my name]

So you've seen a lot of this already,
so I'm going to skip the rest of that.

Here's another interesting
little side story.

A month after we produced this,
it had raced to almost 3 million views.

It had been translated into Spanish,
Italian, Greek, French, and Arabic.

It was on ABC News.

I mean, it was like this weird example
of just how ridiculously easy it is

to connect, organize, share,
collect, collaborate, and publish.

Yet at the same time,
I think this is a little misleading,

because it's technologically
ridiculously easy to do these things,

but it's actually really hard
to do these things,

to really connect with people,
to really collaborate,

to really publish something of worth.

Those are actually
really hard things to do,

and they're not learning
to do those things in this environment.

So to move our students
from being knowledgeable

to being knowledge-able,

we're going to have to recognize

that knowledge-ability is a practice;

it's not a list of things
that you can just tell somebody,

"This is what you do
to be knowledge-able."

It is a hard thing to do;
it takes practice.

The three things that I try to do
in my classroom to make this happen:

Number 1 is you try
to embrace real problems,

problems that I don't know the answer to.

I don't stand up and pretend
I know the answers

to the "world on fire" questions

that we have.

We do it with students, so we bring
all of them together to collaborate,

to solve these real world problems,

and we do it harnessing and leveraging
the relevant tools whenever we can.

In this way, we connect, organize,
share, collect, collaborate, and publish

together,

and ultimately if we are going
to solve this crisis,

we have to recognize
that we have to convince our students

to move beyond just seeking meaning

and help them realize that meaning
is not something you find,

but it's ultimately something you create:

you create yourself,
you create the world.

Ultimately, we need to move them
beyond the question of

What do we need to know for this test?

And move them to this question:

What do we need to know for this test,
the test of our lives?

If I can return back
to that old Aztec story to finish off.

So the Aztecs had this idea
that the world is on fire,

all hope is lost, and so on.

Well, it turns out all hope isn't lost.

As all these animals are fleeing this fire
that threatens to engulf the entire world,

all the animals are fleeing,

and the birds are up overhead fleeing,

and an eagle looks back,

and he can see this tiny little bird
back by this little stream near the fire.

The bird is just hopping up to the stream,
filling its beak with water

and then fluttering over the fire

and dropping a single drop
of water over the fire.

The eagle comes racing back and says,

"You're crazy. You're going to die.

What are you doing?"

and the little bird says,
"The best I can."

The eagle gets really inspired by this

and starts swooping down
and picking up water in its beak

and flying back over,

and some other birds see this
and the animals see this,

and pretty soon the earth starts to shake
as the animals flow back to the fire.

And they start digging a fire line,

and the sky becomes so thick with birds

that you can't see the sun,

and the water falls like rain
from their beaks,

and this is why
we can sit here today

and still talk about the little bird
that saved the world.

Thanks.

(Applause)