Dubbed "the explainer" by Wired magazine, Michael Wesch is a cultural
anthropologist exploring the impact of new media on society and culture.
After two years studying the impact of writing on a remote indigenous
culture in the rain forest of Papua New Guinea, he has turned his
attention to the effects of social media and digital technology on
global society. His videos on technology, education, and information
have been viewed by millions, translated in over ten languages, and are
frequently featured at international film festivals and major academic
conferences worldwide. Wesch has won several major awards for his work,
including a Wired Magazine Rave Award, the John Culkin Award for
Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology, and was recently named an Emerging
Explorer by National Geographic. He has also won several teaching
awards, including the 2008 CASE/Carnegie U.S. Professor of the Year for
Doctoral and Research Universities.
Blog by Micheal Weasch
Digital Ethnography
In
one of his most influential speeches in TED talks, known as ' From
Knowledgeable to Knowledge-Able' he discusses that a new medium of
communication emerges every time somebody creates
a new web application. Yet these developments are not without
disruption and peril. Familiar long-standing institutions, organisations
and traditions disappear or transform beyond recognition. And while new
media bring with them new possibilities for openness, transparency,
engagement and participation, they also bring new possibilities for
surveillance, manipulation, distraction and control. Critical thinking,
the old mainstay of higher education, is no longer enough to prepare our
youth for this world. We must create learning environments that inspire
a way of being-in-the-world in which they can harness and leverage this
new media environment as well as recognise and actively examine,
question and even re-create the (increasingly digital) structures that
shape our world.
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