RESHAPING THE MAINSTREAM

Reshaping the Mainstream- Online Social Networking and Aboriginal Traditions of Knowledge
By Mark Greenspan, Outline of Adult Education, AEC 1100, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

This paper was inspired by an article published by Marlene Brant Castellano (2000) called “Updating Aboriginal Traditions of Knowledge” In this article Castellano deconstructs the main characteristics of aboriginal knowledge and calls for an updating of traditional forms of knowledge in order to integrate into the practices of contemporary society more readily. I heard this call by first becoming intrigued between the similarities of the characteristics of aboriginal knowledge and the characteristics of how knowledge is formed online. I then began to question how marginalized forms of knowledge production are related to online social networking tools such as My Space (http://myspace.com/) and Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/). This paper will demonstrate how online knowledge production is related to indigenous forms of knowledge creation. This relationship provides an opportunity for marginalized cultures to meaningfully engage in mainstream culture. Where the role of adult education comes into play is ensuring the level of quality of this engagement. This paper hears Castellano’s call to update traditional forms of knowledge to integrate into the practices of contemporary society and calls on adult educators to help facilitate this.

As I entered the library to write this paper, I passed a graduation ceremony here on the campus of the University of Toronto. Adorned with caps and gowns, professors and newly graduated students mingled with colleagues and family members. The various degrees acquired though the university system are a valuable currency within our society. The rules on how these degrees are obtained, which subjects are taught, how they are taught and who teaches them are set by rigid guidelines. This is an excellent example of a controlled and hierarchal system of knowledge. In the first page of ‘Indigenous Knowledge in Global Contexts’ Dr. Vandana Shiva (2000) writes:
The priorities of scientific development and R&D efforts, guided by a Western bias, transformed the plurality of knowledge systems into a hierarchy of knowledge systems. When knowledge plurality mutated into knowledge hierarchy, the horizontal ordering of diverse but equally valid systems was converted into a vertical ordering of unequal systems, and the epistemological foundations of Western knowledge were imposed on non-Western knowledge systems with the result that the latter were invalidated. (Shiva, 2000, Foreward)

Not surprisingly this knowledge hierarchy that Dr. Vandana Shiva refers to can also be found online. Google is the world’s most popular search engine and thus, for the majority of the online population, a first stop in acquiring information. At first glance, it would appear that Google preserves the notion of knowledge plurality by providing an endless amount of searchable and contextualized information. However, due to the vast amount of information, it becomes difficult and time consuming to search through all the results generated and typically the first few results that appear in a search are the ones that are viewed the most. To be ranked high in Google means that your piece of information will come up first in a search and be detectable by the most amount of readers. The biggest contributing factor to ranking high in Google is to have the largest number of different sites linked to yours. Most recently, information ranking in Google is also predicated on the social political context of the area in which you are accessing your information. Google has been supporting the Chinese government in blocking information pertaining particularly to the Tibetan indigenous culture. Although Google supports multiple sources of knowledge it inherently ranks this knowledge reflecting the hierarchal systems of knowledge familiar to contemporary society.

What is interesting is that while online production of knowledge can be hierarchal, it can also be collaboratively generated through consensus building. For an example of a more collaborative form of online knowledge production let us turn to wikis. A wiki is a type of website that allows users to easily add, remove or otherwise edit all content,
quickly and easily. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative writing and knowledge creation (Wikipedia search on Wikipedia, 2006). Wikis are more and more readily on the Internet the first one was developed in 1995. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org) is the biggest multilingual open access encyclopedia on the internet. It contains over 500,000 articles and is constantly in a state of change and growth making it a very open system of knowledge (Wikipedia search on Wikipedia, 2006). This form of knowledge production is more closely related to what
Sefa, Hall and Rosenberg (2000) claim in the introduction to ‘Indigenous Knowledges in Global contexts’.

Knowledge is produced and acquired through collaborative processes. No individual group. Community, or nation can justifiably claim ownership of all knowledge. What constitutes valid knowledge, and how such knowledge should be produced and shared internally and globally, is still a subject of intense debate. It is important that there be no academic closure on this subject. Unfortunately, far too many educators privilege certain ways of knowing and interpreting the world over other ways. (Sefa, Hall, Rosenberg, 2000, pg. 1)

The intention of this paper is not to advocate for one sole method of knowledge production and sharing. The intention of this paper is to add to the debate on the subject matter by drawing attention to the relationships between indigenous forms of knowledge production and online forms of knowledge production such as the wiki tool mentioned above. Apparently, not coincidentally, the term wiki is a shortened form of wiki wiki (weekie, weekie) which is from the native language of Hawaii (Hawaiian), where it is commonly used as an adjective to denote something "quick" or "fast" (Hawaiian dictionary). Wiki is sometimes interpreted as the backronym for "What I know is", which describes the knowledge contribution, storage and exchange function. (Wikipedia Search on Wikipedia, 2006).
In her article, Castellano (2000) writes that ‘Aboriginal knowledge is rooted in personal experience and lays no claim to universality' (pg. 26). She goes on to state that ‘Aboriginal societies make a distinction between perceptions, which are personal, and wisdom, which has social validity and can serve as a basis for common action. Knowledge is validated through collective analysis and consensus building' (pg. 26). Through this lense, the act of Blogging is very much related to the aboriginal recognition of personal perception. Blogging refers to the updating of a website or a web-log, typically with subjective information and links to other blogs. Blogging is both a technology and a trend that has risen to dramatic importance over the past four years, reflective and affecting social and political change. Technorati, (http://www.technorati.com/) a search engine which tracks web logs, now lists over 37.3 Million blogs which has been doubling every 6 months. On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day. The blogosphere is multilingual, and deeply international. Japanese, Chinese, English, Spanish, Italian, Russian, French, Portuguese, Dutch, and German are the languages with the greatest number of posts (Sifry, 2006)

Through an aboriginal lense I would consider blogging to be a form of personal knowledge sharing conveyed in a narrative and metaphorical language. I would also consider the rise of online social networking another closely related and similar form. Online social networking refers to a category of Internet applications created to connect individuals together (Social Networking Search, Wikipedia, 2006). These connections are made via a set of tools that allow for individuals to express themselves through the written word, spoken word, visually and audio-visually. Currently, online social networking sites like Youtube and MySpace have become incredible hubs of activity amongst its users who are primarily contemporary youth. YouTube claims 40 million short-form pieces of audio-visual content are played from it’s site a day and My Space reports it has 32 million monthly users with an average user spending 78 minutes per visit (Boutin, 2006).
In her article ‘Updating traditional forms of Aboriginal Traditions’ Castellano (2000) defines the five characteristics of aboriginal knowledge as personal, oral, experiential, holistic and conveyed in narrative or metaphorical language. Online knowledge production is personal, conveyed in a narrative or metaphorical language, contextual and to a certain degree holistic.

In 1982 Walter J. Ong in ‘Orality and Literacy’ spoke of the emergence, through electronic media such as telephone, radio and television, of what he calls the secondary orality. Much like primary orality, secondary orality fosters a strong sense of membership in a group (Bingham, chp 5, para 2). Unlike primary orality, however, secondary orality is ‘essentially a more deliberate and self-conscious orality, based permanently on the use of writing and print" and the groups produced by secondary orality are much larger than any produced by primary orality (Ong, 1982, pg. 136).

Ong’s idea of secondary orality strongly linked indigenous oral traditions to emerging electronic media long before social networking tools were introduced to the mainstream. However, Mark Federman(2006), former Chief Strategist and head of McLuhan Management Studies at the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto, makes an insightful point when he comments:

Primary Orality had as its dominant characteristic preservation and
conservation of knowledge. Literacy's dominant characteristic was linear extension of knowledge. Both could allow for only one way of knowing (that is, one way of constructing what was valued as knowledge), and one source of authority of knowledge within a given culture. In the contemporary conditions of UCAPP (ubiquitous connectivity and pervasive proximity), we are seeing an emergent collaborative production of knowledge with a distributed construction of knowledge authority, and a complex construction of "meaning" that is at once paradoxical and mutually consistent. It is not post-modern in the sense of abolishing the contextual ground and dealing only with the "text." In fact it is quite the opposite - context is crucial. But it is
multiple simultaneous contexts that creates complex emergent meaning. The term "secondary orality" cannot begin to cope with this. (Mark Federman, personal communication, May 5, 2006)

Federman describes a condition by which a plurality of meanings can be held together. I’ve illustrated a number of different technical tools that provide for this condition. If the conditions currently exist for non-hierarchal forms of knowledge production between individuals across the globe, then should this not be reflected in the manner in which these tools are used? To answer this question, let us now turn to a brief analysis of how users are utilizing the tools outlined above. As previously mentioned blogging presents an opportunity to connect with millions of others through the personalization of contextualized information. The amount of political and social agency bloggers have commanded has never been higher. Political organizations from the entire spectrum, along with the mainstream media, have legitimized the form of knowledge production. As an example of the influence bloggers can have over mainstream media, let us look to the "Rathergate" scandal (Blogging Search, Wikipedia, 2006).

Television presenter Dan Rather presented documents (on the CBS show 60 Minutes) that conflicted with accepted accounts of President Bush's military service record. Conservative bloggers declared the documents to be forgeries and presented arguments in support of that view, and CBS apologized for what it said were inadequate reporting techniques. Many bloggers view this scandal as the advent of blogs' acceptance by the mass media, both as a source of news and opinion and as means of applying political pressure. (Blogging Search, Wikipedia, 2006).

With that said, at the time of writing this paper the top searches on technocrati, which documents over 39 million blogs, were two television shows: American Idol and Lost, the My Space social networking site and three political topics; Immigration, Bush and James Gomez. (Boutin, 2006). Conversely, Google Canada recorded the following most popular searches in February 2006 in order of popularity; Nexopia (social software site), Air Canada, CBC (media outlet), Lavalife (social software site), Family Guy (television show), Love, Britney Spears (entertainment personality), 50 Cent (entertainment personality), Naruto (entertainment property), Westjet (commercial property), Angelina Jolie (entertainment personality), Carmen Electra (entertainment personality), Inuyasha (entertainment personality), Sudoku (game) and Canadian Tire (retail outlet) (Google Zeitgesit, 2006).

It’s unnerving to report that the opportunity presented by online technologies for alternative forms of knowledge creation is being filled with North American and Western European consumer culture production and re-production. If we look at this fact in relationship to the composition of the online population, it becomes more apparent why this is the case. As of March 31, 2006, 15% of the world has access to the Internet. 68.6% of North America’s audience had access to the Internet, 36% of Europeans, 2.6% of Africa’s population had access and 9.9% of Asia population (Internet World Stats Website, 2006). This figure also does not take into consideration the urban rural split as urban centers are far more likely to have higher levels of Internet penetration then rural areas.
Apart from advocating that a higher percentage of our global population should have access to new forms of communication and knowledge production, this paper advocates for the constructive use of the opportunity which available. It would seem that although the tools and context exist to update and integrate aboriginal ways of knowing, in contemporary mainstream online culture the online population is busy engaging with contemporary North American popular culture reproducing the cultural norms on the offline world around them. I see this trend play itself out in the majority of youth and young adult new media instruction programmes that I am involved in. As a recent volunteer instructor at Regent Park Focus, a media centre set up in Regent’s Park - Canada’s largest social housing project, I worked with a group of dynamic, engaged and creative youth around capacity building for new forms of online communication and knowledge production tools such as the ones described above. What I found was that the youth I was working with were more interested in reproducing popular culture rather then challenging it in order to have an original voice heard. It is apparent to me that just learning the mechanics and skill set needed to capitalize on online technologies is hardly sufficient when it comes to integrating aboriginal forms of knowledge within contemporary online culture. A paradigm shift must occur amongst users to approach these tools in a skillful manner. This, I believe, is where the role of adult education most strongly intersects with what we’ve been discussing to date. In her article, ‘A Four Worlds Approach to Transformative Learning.’ Anne Goodman (2005) states ‘We educate about transformation by talking about paradigms, worldviews and self-locations; we educate for transformation by developing the necessary capacities and attitudes and by being involved in transformative practices and movements; and that we educate through transformation by all the ways we learn and teach; act and live; relate and interact together (Goodman, pg 2).
As adult educators there is a need to challenge ourselves to not only skillfully approach, but also leverage online communication technologies. As part of my research for this paper, I did a postal code search on My Space to see how many people within 250 miles of Iqaluit, Nunavut were registered on the social networking tool. The search returned with 132 seemingly actively engaged individuals. What was also interesting to note was that I could easily trace the networking that had been done between the members and the community ties were apparent right away. They had been adding each other as friends, making comments back and forth to each other that referenced real time events that had transpired. I was intrigued at how accessible this online community was and also at the same time how it provided minimal reflection of the depth of cultural traditions that it encompassed. If such a globally accessible, dynamic, communicatory means of community representation exists, should we not challenge ourselves to find ways on capitalizing on this access? Especially considering some of the basic characteristics of the tools used for this access are related to traditional indigenous ways of knowing. I, for one, would like to see online representation of aboriginal elders from around the world, have instantaneous access to their perceptions and experiences and contribute to a manner of metaphorical representation which does justice to traditional ways of knowing and telling but also provides enough accessibility for a contemporary audience. This is only one suggestion and is very much limited to my experience and perception of aboriginal forms of knowledge. I believe stronger ties amongst aboriginal communities and technical communities are needed to facilitate engaging ways to use co-opt online tools for the furthering of alternative forms of knowing, interacting and challenging the world around us. I believe that adult education is the glue which binds these ties together and there is a strong role for programme design and implementation that draws from the paradigms of adult education while still catering to basic skill development and self-expression.

This paper does not provide any answers, but outlines the opportunity available to those interested attempting to reframe the main narratives currently adopted by mainstream society. With any transformational phase there comes with it opportunity for change. From the advent of language, from the telegraph to the online world, the rapid development of communication technologies has greatly affected how we relate to one another as humans and how we construct knowledge and meaning. We live in a time of great change and upheaval and as adult educators it’s imperative that we harness all the tools and opportunities that are at our disposal to shape the change that will allow for a plurality of opinions and the de-marginalization of the oppressed population in our world. I believe online communication and social networking tools has a large role to play in this as it offers a viable platform in which to integrate marginalized ways of knowing into the mainstream.

REFERENCES

Bingham, Art. Review of Walter J. Ong’s Orality and Literacy. Retrieved Thursday, May 11th 2006 from http://www.engl.niu.edu/wac/ong_rvw.html

Boutin, Paul. (2006, April 28). A Grand Unified Theory of YouTube and MySpace Point-and-click sites that don't tell you what to do. Slate. Retrieved Wednesday, May 3th, 2006 from http://www.slate.com/id/2140635/

Castellano, Marlene Brant (2000) “Updating Aboriginal Traditions of Knowledge” in George Dei et al (eds). Indigenous Knowledges in Global Contexts: Multiple Readings of Our World. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000

Goodman, Anne (2005) “A Four Worlds Approach to Transformative Learning” in Anne Goodman. Outline of Adult Education AEC 1100 course handbook, Winter, 2006. Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto.

Google Zeitgesit. Retrieved Thursday, May 11th, 2006 from
http://www.google.co.uk/press/zeitgeist.html

Dei, George J. Sefa, Hall, Budd L. Rosenberg, Dorothy Goldin (2000) Indigenous Knowledges in Global Contexts: Multiple Readings of our World. Toronto : OISE/UT book published in association with University of Toronto Press

Internet World Stats Website. Retrieved Thursday, May 11th, 2006 from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Ong,Walter J. (1982) Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London and New York: Meuthen & Co. Ltd

Sifry, Dave (2006, May 1). State of the Blogoshphere, April 2006 Part 2: On Language and Tagging. Sifry’s Alerts David Sifry’s musings. Search Retrieved Thursday, May 11th, 2006 from http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000433.html

Search results from Wikipedia website. Retrieved Thursday, May 11th, 2006 from
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Search results from Wikipedia website. Retrieved Thursday, May 11th, 2006 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking

Search results from Wikipedia website. Retrieved Thursday, May 11th, 2006 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogging

Technocrati website. Retrieved Thursday, May 11th, 2006 from http://www.technocratic.org