Chris Brauer Media Project [BLOG]

Research into media literacy is the study of the human ability to "access, analyse, evaluate and communicate messages in a variety of forms". In an internetworked digitally intermediated world, how media literate do you have to be to translate human potential into actual results? Are these skills universal or dependent on cultural and/or social context? Can media literacy skills promote individual abilities to contribute to and draw out of a networked collective intelligence, defined by technologist and philosopher Pierre Levy as "a universally distributed intelligence that is enhanced, coordinated, and mobilized in real time"?

The central focus of these emerging areas of research is the impact of grid computing for the human brain (our know-how repositories) connecting with our inter-networked information collections (our know-about repositories) to open possibilities and improve our lives. The premise is that we require a new framework for understanding literacy in an increasingly digitally intermediated world and that establishing this framework will provide a foundation for individual abilities to access the wealth and depth of knowledge digitally stored (the collective intelligence) and accessible through human/computer interfaces. My draft PhD central research hypothesis is: "There is a teachable media literacy skill-set that promotes collective intelligence."

Any questions/thoughts?

This is the second post on the Chris Brauer Media Project for this topic. The first post can be found through this wormhole

Labels: collective_intelligence, sociology