Chapter 1 is about attention. Rheingold discusses the science of attention, how the internet erodes our ability to pay attention, and offers advise on how to be more mindful; how to pay attention to our intentions. He uses words like "compulsion" and "obsession" describing people's attachment to their online devices. He also mentions works I've already read by Turkle, Carr, and Shirkey. I am surprised, after reading all those authors, that Rheingold chose a more academic and less conversational tone. Chapter 1 reads like a literature review, except Rheingold offers his opinion on everyone's work, including his mostly negative opinion of Carr, who I liked.
Chapter 2 is about Crap Detection. It's Rheingold's take on how to determine the ethos of a website. I like the CRAAP test, which is a well-known standard he doesn't mention in the book, but does on his blog. He also describes the best ways to search on Google or similar search engines. The section in Chapter 2 called "Tuning Your Crap Detector" included notes that led to some cool websites. Here are some I appreciated, and some not so much:
Factcheck.org reports on political claims, and it's super.
Factchecked.org takes you directly to Annenberg Classroom for civics education. Not so useful.
The New York Times' Urban Legends site is informative.
The url for Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index crashed my computer and probably gave it a virus.
The US Department of State's Conspiracy Theories site doesn't exist at the url given. Conspiracy??
Foreign nations reporting world news from differing perspectives at Global Voices Online. Nice.
Snopes is a site I already use when I hear a rumor. Love it.
Aggregate.com takes you to a site of a construction company. Not useful.
Netvibes looks pretty neat, and if I ever decide I need an RSS feed, I would try it.
Truthy is sort of like snopes or factcheck, but on Twitter. I followed them. They have good tweets. Their handle is truthyatindiana.
Chapter 3 is about participation. He talks about how people participate and cooperate to create meaning and empowered groups on the web. Participatory culture is new, because before, not everyone had the tools and power to participate. Print, publishing, video, and connectivity were not available to the masses as they are now. Social media can be used not only for fostering friendships, but also learning, activism, and interests. He indentified 4 genres of blog rhetoric: filter, connector, critic, and advocate. His description of curation and social bookmarking were helpful, because I don't participate or pay attention to those genres on the web. Good to learn.
The section in which he describes "playbor" was particularly interesting, and something I've thought about recently. I used to use an online calculator almost daily that was created by a "geek" who might have been a grad student. I benefitted enormously (and for free!) from his work. My son has recently started using class notes posted online by a kid in another state (Nebraska?) who is taking the same AP History course as he is, but takes muuuuch better notes than he does. On the flip side, I am creating learning objects and online course material that takes me hours and hours and days and weeks of work. Who else gets to have that for free? I am not informed, and I'm not sure I consent.
I get the power of Twitter, and Rheingold's explanation was a good one. I'm using Twitter more. Still not a fan.
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