FACEBOOK鈥橲 Mark Zuckerberg is king of all he surveys in social media. His next horizon is near-mythical: techno-telepathy. Direct mind-to-mind contact is 鈥渢he ultimate communications technology鈥�, .
鈥淵ou鈥檒l think a text or update and send it,鈥� affirmed his experimental tech director, Regina Dugan. The old Arthur C. Clarke line that 鈥渁ny sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic鈥� seems evergreen in 2017.
Look around your streets 鈥� or better, a mall, lobby or campus 鈥� and you鈥檒l see a generation of humans already deeply entangled in, and entranced by, their communication devices. As the next incessant blink, buzz or chirp pulls you towards the touchscreen yet again, haven鈥檛 you ever felt the urge 鈥� accompanied by a twinge of your carpal tunnel 鈥� to just respond, or receive, in a purely mental way?
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Zuckerberg鈥檚 aspiration to go from iPhone to psy-phone seems more like a shift in degree than kind. Yet what Ray Kurzweil once called 鈥渢he age of spiritual machines鈥� sometimes has to deal with the sweaty, fleshy, emotional reality of human beings as they are, particularly younger ones budding through those (so far) unavoidable heaves and surges we know as adolescence and early adulthood.
Going by these two fascinating ethnographies, even the digitally naturalised Generation Z (the kids of Gen X) are hardly ready for the direct and pure mingling of minds. Not while there鈥檚 selfie-taking, sexting, cyberbullying or 鈥淵ik Yakking鈥� to be done, day after day.
Yik Yak 鈥� a controversial Twitter-style app which shut down in April this year 鈥� provides Donna Freitas鈥檚 The Happiness Effect with its malevolent subtitle. Through hundreds of interviews with undergrads and graduates in 13 US colleges, Freitas lays out the regime of nervy identity construction through social media that occupies much of their emotional lives.
鈥淣ervy identity construction via social media occupies much of students鈥� emotional lives鈥�
Whether it鈥檚 due to their awareness that their timeline is a potential CV, or that their 鈥渓ikes鈥� are an indicator of social status on campus, they are under pressure to display their best and most positive selves at all times. 鈥淣ow you don鈥檛 have to wait for your 10-year high school reunion to show off how great your life is,鈥� says junior student Brandy. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like that every day.鈥�
The anonymised Yik Yak app released a torrent of mutual abuse through some of Freitas鈥檚 campuses. Out from under the compulsion to display public happiness, the Repressed returned with a vengeance. 鈥淵ik Yak was like a bad soap opera,鈥� said one. Another abandoned the service 鈥渂ecause I was overwhelmed by the racism and homophobia that exists on my campus鈥�.
So many of the tales here are about trying to establish some kind of autonomy over, or even just etiquette around, the endless connective demands of social media and smartphones. Ethics and mores are being established on the fly. Among Freitas鈥檚 students, the general attitude towards visually led dating apps 鈥� where you display your wares to engage in 鈥渉ook-ups鈥� 鈥� was an extended 鈥渆ewwww鈥�. For these febrile, nervy souls, steamy liaisons still need sociable encounters first.
Consistent with this reserve, the new ritual for courtly romance would seem to be the declaration that one鈥檚 new boy/girlfriend is now 鈥淔acebook official鈥�. When a couple agree to change their relationship status on the platform, they are (in one male student鈥檚 words) 鈥渟tanding on top of a mountain and shouting it out to the world鈥�.
So far, so sweet, so familiar. The ecstasies of online communication are tempered by recognisable real-world (and real-body) anxieties and modesties.
Freitas is obviously a good pastor and counsellor to these fluttery kids, even as she mines them for research. But her matronising tone does remind you that Facebook鈥檚 founding circumstance was as a campus social network, profiting from playing around with the status anxieties of Harvard University students.
The idea that the stifling managerialism behind Zuckerberg鈥檚 network is seeking to enter your intimate mental life, at some stage in the neurotech future, feels like something that would invite neo-Luddism, if not outright rebellion.
One might have a romantic notion 鈥� the agenda-setting SF novels of Cory Doctorow come to mind 鈥� that the kids from the wrong side of the tracks would be the ones who demanded something different, less managed, more edgy, from their communication platforms. (Freitas鈥檚 students are clearly attending prestigious universities, where pressures to succeed keeps things normative.)
Jacqueline Ryan Vickery鈥檚 book Worried About the Wrong Things has a cast of quirky, eccentric and talented young digital users, circulating in and around a working-class school near the Mexican border, with the pseudonym 鈥淔reeway High鈥�. But the tale it tells is how, amid circumstances of socio-economic distress, education fails to be the haven that can generate possibilities and progress. And one predictor of school failure is whether it uses digital technology from a 鈥渉arm-driven鈥� rather than an 鈥渙pportunity-driven鈥� perspective.
The book has an intriguing tension. The author鈥檚 teacherly interests are evident 鈥� she promotes a 鈥渃onnected learning model鈥� that imagines it can bring all the 鈥渓earning moments鈥� of a pupil, wherever and whenever they happen, into one educational framework.
鈥淧etty and futile constraints on classroom tech use sets a tone of defeatism and alienation鈥�
Yet the stories that unfold when she talks to the Freeway High students are pretty difficult to assimilate into any inclusive teaching system. In complete contrast to the compulsive communicators of Freitas鈥檚 book, two sensitive young Latino high-school film-makers (Sergio and Javier) often chose not to post their material on YouTube because they are insecure about its quality, and worried it might harm their career prospects, precarious and tentative as they are.
Freeway High has a classic teacher-liberator of the Dead Poets Society type 鈥� a Mr Lopez who runs evening Cinematic Art Projects and Digital Media Clubs for the pupils. But, as Vickery charts in great and persuasive detail, the school鈥檚 prevailing 鈥渉arm-driven鈥� view of social media muffles and excludes the digital creativity that already thrums through these kids鈥� lives. Petty and futile constraints on classroom tech use, and on the kind of digital material that children can bring in from their own enthusiasms, sets a tone of defeatism and alienation among some of the Freeway High kids.
The author has an obvious favourite pupil, a disruptive, deprived but poetic girl called Selena, with whom she spends considerable time. But she hears later that Selena has dropped out of school in the midst of her college preparations, and now has no connection with her. The book is strewn with tales of exclusion and struggle, in which parental backgrounds are chaotic and the demands of care, commuting and finding a place to live bear down too heavily on digitally ambitious youth.
Across both studies, and no matter the social positioning of each set of users, these young people evidently know they have a new kind of tangible social machinery in their hands (and minds): a machinery made of devices, networks and digital information, with which they can make a mark, pooling their knowledge and consciousness.
As responsible pedagogues, Vickery and Freitas are institutionalised (and institutionalising). And with Mark Zuckerberg 鈥� as with any Silicon Valley visionary mogul 鈥� you have to follow the profit-driven interest, not just gawp at the transhuman ambition.
Somewhere between the caring educators and the corporate disruptor, Generation Z is forging its own new society out of a digital revolution still in its early days. The streets will have their uses. And young, yearning bodies won鈥檛 be ignored, either.
Donna Freitas
Oxford University Press
Jacqueline Ryan Vickery
MIT Press
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淏est behaviour?鈥�
