Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingoldis a critic, writer, and teacher; his specialties are on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCritic
Date of Birth7 July 1947
CountryUnited States of America
digital editor journalism learn mainstream media needs values
There needs to be more involvement between mainstream media and the digital world. If you don't learn from an editor or a newsroom, where do those values of journalism come from?
smart communication media
Communication media enabled collective action on new scales, at new rates, among new groups of people, multiplied the power available to civilizations and enabled new forms of social interaction. The alphabet enabled empire and monotheism, the printing press enabled science and revolution, the telephone enabled bureaucracy and globalization, the internet enabled virtual communities and electronic markets, the mobile telephone enabled smart mobs and tribes of info-nomads.
media people faces
People's social networks do not consist only of people they see face to face. In fact, social networks have been extending because of artificial media since the printing press and the telephone.
media people swim
If, like many others, you are concerned social media is making people and cultures shallow, I propose we teach more people how to swim and together explore the deeper end of the pool.
admit children courage kids listen parents position power takes teach
When it comes to technology, you're in a position of your children having to teach you. How often do kids have any power or authority? How often do parents come to them and listen to them? But it takes a parent with some courage to admit they don't know and want to learn.
attention control helping information instrument learn learning manage neither nor people schools spend time ways
Attention is the fundamental instrument we use for learning, thinking, communicating, deciding, yet neither parents nor schools spend any time helping young people learn how to manage information streams and control the ways they deploy their attention.
add affords found hours rather subtract
As for Twitter, I've found that you have to learn how to make it add value rather than subtract hours from one's day. Certainly, it affords narcissism and distraction.
cultivate information legitimacy material people
The more material there is, the more need there is for filters. You don't need a printing press anymore, but you do need people who know how to cultivate sources, double-check information and put the brand of legitimacy on it.
good marriages spouse worse
The idea that your spouse or your parents don't know where you are at all times may be part of the past. Is that good or bad? Will that make for better marriages or worse marriages? I don't know.
careful generalize
I want to be very careful about judging and how much to generalize about the use of media being pathological. For some people, it's a temptation and a pathology; for others, it's a lifeline.
although broadcast cards clouds credit devices invisible leave lives mobile personal traces web
Although we leave traces of our personal lives with our credit cards and Web browsers today, tomorrow's mobile devices will broadcast clouds of personal data to invisible monitors all around us.
flock people since substitute whenever
There is never going to be a substitute for face-to-face communication, but we have seen since the alphabet, to the telephone and now the Internet, that whenever people find a new way to communicate, they will flock to it.
accurate available design inaccurate information online people surely task taught teach tools ways
Schoolchildren are not taught how to distinguish accurate information from inaccurate information online - surely there are ways to design web-browsers to help with this task and ways to teach young people how to use the powerful online tools available to them.
change few message people phone technology text type
People's behavior will change with technology. I know very few young people who can't type out a text message on their phone with one thumb, for instance.