Twitchy Fingers

I’ve noticed that many of my students are developing a disorder involving twitchy fingers and thumbs. They are so used to constant cell phone usage that they either can’t put their cell phones down during class or they go into nervous withdrawal if forced to put away the devices for more than 10 minutes.

I know some professors who have gone to extremes by collecting cell phones in a small tub at the start of each class. One popular YouTube clip even shows an angry professor theatrically slamming a student’s cell phone to the floor.

As a mass media instructor, I’m both frustrated and fascinated by the twitching. As I’m teaching, I’ll occasionally notice a student studying my patterns of eye contact to find just the right moment to punch a few cell-phone buttons without my noticing.

I have to be careful before I launch into a tirade when I see a student punching buttons on a cell phone in class. On at least two occasions involving group work, I’ve confronted a perceived offender only to discover that the student really was using an Internet connection via cell phone to do research for the group.

Sure, I could rant about the death of attention spans, but instead I want to imagine a future that even goes beyond wearable finger-based cell phones. What if the cell phone were merely an extension of our hands? And rather than using our fingers to input, our fingers would be the actual input device. One of my students, Cate Richards, shares a similar vision in the artwork to the right.

What if students came equipped with independent touch typing technology that allowed them to enter answers from their seats with no wires and no cell phone?

In short, should we combat the twitchy finger disorder with more instead of less technology?

THE VERDICT: UNPLUG — Ultimately, I think the twitchy fingers and thumbs are merely an indicator of an out-of-shape attention span that needs more self-discipline and mental exercise.

Video chat now easy for everyone

While Internet video continues to threaten cable and satellite television, a new intruder besides Skype now threatens to alter the person-to-person communication landscape. Google has added video chat for Gmail users.

Gmail video chat is easy and fun. It took five minutes to download the plug-ins and set up my two Macs. In the spirit of the millennial iGeneration to which my older daughter belongs, she and I immediately felt compelled to conduct a Gmail video chat test from separate rooms in our house.

With its full-screen option, the interface feels a bit like YouTube, plus it includes picture within a picture so you can see both yourself and your audience. The interface doesn’t include too many options to click, so it doesn’t seem overly technical. If anyone on your contact list is currently logged in to Gmail and has installed the video chat plug-ins, you are ready to communicate visually and verbally.

Of course, if you don’t leave your computer on all day with your Web browser open to Gmail, you won’t know that someone wants to call you. So while video chat seems easy and fun, it’s not practical for everyone. Also, it may not work on some older computers.

THE VERDICT: PLUG IN if you have friends who already use Gmail. Even video chat novices like me can sense its potential.

A bailout plan for the digitally desperate

Bankruptcy results from not enough available money. E-mail bankruptcy, on the other hand, results from too much e-mail.

E-mail bankruptcy usually involves deleting all e-mail and restarting with an empty inbox. Some of the more courteous bankruptcy declarers send out a message (via e-mail, of course) announcing their digital communications reboot. I suppose you have to be heavily invested in the e-mail market before your e-mail bankruptcy really affects many people.

I know some e-mail users who have already adopted a strategy of deleting any incoming messages that would require extra personal thought or effort. These are the same people who rarely answer the phone or return phone messages. If you are one of these out-of-sight, out-of-mind types, you can’t declare e-mail bankruptcy because you don’t have enough e-mail assets.

I invest a lot of time into reading, sorting and responding to e-mail. Sometimes it seems like this is the most time-consuming (but necessary) part of my job. Is this compulsive behavior or the evolving culture of 21st-century white-collar labor?

Many years ago, my original fascination with e-mail was its immediacy, especially compared to snail mail. Ironically, in today’s world of instant gratification through media, e-mail isn’t instant enough compared to IM and Twitter. With IM and Twitter, though, one can simply log out permanently instead of declaring some sort of bankruptcy.

Financier Fred Wilson tops a list of high-profile figures to declare e-mail bankruptcy. Wired magazine began reporting on e-mail bankruptcy back in 2004.

For most of us common folk, declaring e-mail bankruptcy would send a message to others that we have poor organizational skills, much like a financial bankruptcy suggests poor money management. We may sometimes feel swamped by the volume of e-mail we receive, but many of us still prefer e-mail because it lets us respond on our own schedule.

THE VERDICT: STAY PLUGGED IN — Seek computer counseling if necessary, but don’t go to the extreme by getting a divorce from your e-mail account.

In defense of Wikipedia

For computer-related companies and developers, Google, Microsoft and Wikipedia replace Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the axis of evil. In my line of work, though, Wikipedia’s sins are the most egregious.

Faculty members at colleges that emphasize in-depth research rightfully label Wikipedia as an evil empire. And for college instructors with lofty research standards, nothing is more painful than reading a student paper that treats Wikipedia like it’s a primary source to be used frequently or even exclusively.

I must admit, though, that part of me marvels at the breadth and flexibility of Wikipedia. I occasionally wonder if 100 years from now historians will look at Wikipedia as one of the landmark accomplishments of our time. Certainly that’s what founder Jimmy Wales had in mind when he asked us to imagine “a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.”

I used to think that the logical end of Wikipedia’s growth was for it to become the Wal-Mart of information, and that it could conceivably grow until each person on the planet became the subject for a Wikipedia entry. Then I did some quick research (on Wikipedia, of course) and discovered some scholarly models show that Wikipedia may not continue its exponential growth, at least in the number of articles.

Some bloggers and researchers argue that “Facebook and Wikipedia are better at getting crucial information out during emergencies than either government agencies, emergency services — or the traditional media.” I’m skeptical of that assertion, but I do think that a marriage of Wikipedia and Facebook could be even more fascinating than Brangelina (plus, even though such a marriage is unlikely, Facipedia in five syllables has a distinctive ring to it).

So now I have to follow my blog format and conclude with the final verdict. I’m not going to rely on the cliche response that Wikipedia is good for background research but not for scholarly citations. In fact, one could argue that many scholarly debates rage within Wikipedia. When we judge Wikipedia harshly, we often have an idealistic notion of the infallible printed encyclopedia. Most of us agree that animals and languages evolve over time. Wikipedia seems to document a similar evolution in knowledge.

THE VERDICT: PLUG IN to the evolution (except for research papers).