# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Is Twitter the Newest Form of Literature? | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Everyone is familiar with Twitter, the uber-popular micro-blogging site, which limits the user to 140 characters. The tweet is perfect for sharing your favorite links and updating the world about your life, but it might also be the newest literary form! While many think that art requires unbridled freedom, constraints often inspire the greatest creativity.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Black Mirror | Nosedive Featurette [HD] | Netflix

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Has Twitter given birth to a new literary genre?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Fiction takes flight on Twitter when stories take the social network's connectivity seriously

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
القمة_الحكومية

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Highlights: How is Social Media Transforming the Future of Education?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As technology advances, traditional methods of learning and instruction are being challenged. Can we learn a complex subject such as science by watching a video on social media? Can social media become the future medium of learning? In this session, we explore the answers to these questions with Derek Muller, the founder of Vertiasium YouTube channel which has captured over three million subscribers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Impact of Social Media Use on Social Skills | New York Behavioral Health

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Effects of Social Media Use on Social Skills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This story is from the Smithsonian's new podcast, Sidedoor. Listen to the episode "Tech Yourself" below and subscribe here for future episodes.

Nearly 10 years ago, the first ever iPhone was released, thus changing the course of human interaction. What was once an organic process that occurred in a more personal manner, the imposition of a new form of communication has redefined the way in which humans build relationships and determine social rank. An incorrectly used exclamation point could end a friendship or a picture taken with the wrong individual could cause a plummet in social standing if uploaded to Instagram.

Sure -- it may sound ridiculous that Snapchat, an application through which friends send pictures that can only be viewed for a few seconds before deletion, has the ability to destroy relationships, but cell phones have started a new type of conversation, one that has catalyzed the restructuring of our social environment.

Every picture, every snapchat, every punctuation mark is part of a new form of language brought about by a new tool of communication.

Anthropologists Alex Dent, Joel Kuipers and Josh Bell are in the first year of a three-year study that looks at cell phones trouble among teens. Josh, a curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History is investigating why apps like Instagram and Snapchat have the ability to uproot a social environment.

"It's giving kind of a visual, tangible, index of your friendship, right? Which is interesting and there are all these different emoticons that indicate if I'm a friend with you and you're not a friend with me," says Bell.

The lack of face-to-face interaction is depersonalizing the way in which we communicate and, according to Bell, may depersonalize humans altogether. There is an absence of vulnerability in conversation smart phone and this deficiency may translate into substantial changes in human sociology. As for now Bell's findings remain 'unposted' like a photo just taken by a teen.

With two years left on the study, however, it will likely take a comparable amount of time to edit, filter, and complete for publishing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How the Cell Phone Is Forever Changing Human Communication

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This story is from the Smithsonian's new podcast, Sidedoor. Listen to the episode "Tech Yourself" below and subscribe here for future episodes. Nearly 10 years ago, the first ever iPhone was released, thus changing the course of human interaction.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This story is from the Smithsonian's new podcast, Sidedoor. Listen to the episode "Tech Yourself" below and subscribe here for future episodes.

Nearly 10 years ago, the first ever iPhone was released, thus changing the course of human interaction. What was once an organic process that occurred in a more personal manner, the imposition of a new form of communication has redefined the way in which humans build relationships and determine social rank. An incorrectly used exclamation point could end a friendship or a picture taken with the wrong individual could cause a plummet in social standing if uploaded to Instagram.

Sure -- it may sound ridiculous that Snapchat, an application through which friends send pictures that can only be viewed for a few seconds before deletion, has the ability to destroy relationships, but cell phones have started a new type of conversation, one that has catalyzed the restructuring of our social environment.

Every picture, every snapchat, every punctuation mark is part of a new form of language brought about by a new tool of communication.

Anthropologists Alex Dent, Joel Kuipers and Josh Bell are in the first year of a three-year study that looks at cell phones trouble among teens. Josh, a curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History is investigating why apps like Instagram and Snapchat have the ability to uproot a social environment.

"It's giving kind of a visual, tangible, index of your friendship, right? Which is interesting and there are all these different emoticons that indicate if I'm a friend with you and you're not a friend with me," says Bell.

The lack of face-to-face interaction is depersonalizing the way in which we communicate and, according to Bell, may depersonalize humans altogether. There is an absence of vulnerability in conversation smart phone and this deficiency may translate into substantial changes in human sociology. As for now Bell's findings remain 'unposted' like a photo just taken by a teen.

With two years left on the study, however, it will likely take a comparable amount of time to edit, filter, and complete for publishing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How the Cell Phone Is Forever Changing Human Communication

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This story is from the Smithsonian's new podcast, Sidedoor. Listen to the episode "Tech Yourself" below and subscribe here for future episodes. Nearly 10 years ago, the first ever iPhone was released, thus changing the course of human interaction.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As ridiculous as it sounds, Monday is celebrated as World Emoji Day.

That's because July 17 is the day that appears on the iPhone emoji for "calendar." The day was picked because it's the birthday of Apple's iCal product.

Emojis, those digital images people send each other by text and social media, reflect the changing nature of communication, both for individuals and for businesses. Think about it: We went from the phone to email. Then from email to text messages. Now, we're going from actual language just to pictures.

Consider that the majority of Instagram users employ emojis in their posts, according to social media analytics blog quintly. About 76 percent of Americans said they used emoji in business communications, according to a survey cited by The Atlantic.

There are 2,666 official emojis in the Unicode Standard, as of May, that always work. Plus there are countless unofficial emojis introduced by companies, brands and even individual celebrities. Apple marked World Emoji Day by releasing final versions of a few new emojis that will be part of iOS 11, which comes out this fall. There's a new "bearded person," "breastfeeding" and a mushroom-cloud-exploding head, plus a zombie and some others.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Emojis changing the way people and businesses communicate

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As ridiculous as it sounds, Monday is celebrated as World Emoji Day. That's because July 17 is the day that appears on the iPhone emoji for "calendar." The day was picked because it's the birthday of Apple's iCal product.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How the internet changed the way we write - and what to do about it

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The usual evolution of English has been accelerated online, leading to a less formal - but arguably more expressive - language than the one we use IRL. So use those emojis wisely ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
At any given moment, I have, on average, five unread text messages, a couple unread Instagram messages, dozens of unseen Twitter DMs, and close to 1,000 unread emails along with a smattering of other messages on services like Facebook, Snapchat, and Slack.

It's too much, and it's becoming too hard to keep up with all of it.

All of these inboxes to check and ways to talk to one another, in theory, make communication easier, more natural, and fluid. But in practice? This disjointed way of communicating in the modern world just makes everything more exhausting.

Instead of having one place to check, we have a dozen, and it makes the likelihood that something will fall through the cracks even greater than it was when we relied solely on email and one or two social networks.

We have so many ways to communicate with one another that it makes me feel as if I'm no longer connecting, just reacting.

Most of the time, when I'm getting in touch with someone via DM on Instagram or Twitter, it's in response to something posted publicly.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that, and in many ways it leads to more open communication with people I'm not usually speaking to, but that's as far as it goes.

While in earlier years I would have sent a long text or email to a good friend to get in touch, these days, I just write a quick reply to an Instagram Story and call it a day.

Our huge number of options spread across multiple platforms leads to shallow communication.

Sure, part of this is definitely about me personally and my inability to stay current with all of the ways we interact in this modern world, but there's still something more to be said about how this fragmented form of communication can be overwhelming.

And it's only getting worse, as each app and platform seeks to keep users for longer periods of time, including by adding in messaging functionality.

All of these apps and platforms compete for our time and attention. As a result, we know more about the day-to-day motions of our friends lives than we ever did before, but is any of that really producing long-lived, deep, and meaningful connections, or is it just creating a world where all of us are really good at small talk through quick DMs?

I'd venture to say it's the latter. Call it the great shallowing and scattering of interpersonal communication.

The unfortunate thing about this is that there's no immediate solution that I can see. There's no returning to a Hotmail versus Gmail world, nor would I want to go back to that, necessarily.

Instead our communication is getting more and more scattered. Maybe an app will come along to vacuum up all our DMs in one place, but will it change anything about the shallow content of our communications?

Probably not, but maybe realizing the problem is half the battle.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
There are too many ways to DM, and it's stifling the way we communicate

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
At any given moment, I have, on average, five unread text messages, a couple unread Instagram messages, dozens of unseen Twitter DMs, and close to 1,000 unread emails along with a smattering of other messages on services like Facebook, Snapchat, and Slack. It's too much, and it's becoming too hard to keep up with all of it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Our culture loves to produce labels for everything. So it may not surprise you that there is a term for people who were born before the digital age but now live in the digital age. Rightly so, they are referred to as "digital immigrants". We may know them more commonly as seniors, grandparents, senior management, seasoned teachers and anyone else of that generation.

The label attached to those born during or after the digital age are the digital natives. They have always lived in a world of digital technologies. We think of them as the whiz kids with programming, the ones always attached to a cellphone or other device, and the ones who are younger by definition.

By contrast, the digital immigrants are those who have slowly adapted to web surfing, emailing, texting and the instant world of social media and on demand entertainment. In the education world, you can have a mix of immigrants and natives and it may seem that a generation gap exists. But as more and more immigrants immerse themselves in the digital world, the gap is closing, and perhaps disappearing.

Dealing with this difference may have less to do with technology and more with the two worldviews they represent. According to the U.S. writer who in 2001 coined the popular term "digital native", Marc Prensky claims the digital native is becoming the dominant global demographic, and the digital immigrant is in decline. Author Jeff DeGraff analyzes how the worldviews of these two groups affects how they communicate and how others can relate to them in the workplace, the classroom and other areas of life.

DeGraff summarizes that the digital immigrants divide the world into hierarchies, mostly across lines driven by values. These can include race, religion, marriage and even government. But people of different generations will always see things differently. In contrast, the digital natives view their world more equalitarian. In a horizontal way there are no hierarchies. The sharing of ideas, things and even work can cross these boundaries.
So how can people of these two groups work together? How can digital immigrant educators teach digital natives?
It comes down to creating opportunities where they learn from each other. The generations, in some ways, feed off each other. Digital immigrants invented the microchip, the Internet, the cellphone, text messaging, all decades ago. But the greatest users are the natives. Collaboration is the key. Allowing for a variety of people with a variety of abilities and experiences must be paramount.

For teachers, it means developing lessons based on building horizontal solutions. There are many ways to come to a conclusion, and with access to so many means, embracing all the technology available only leads to broader understanding of the problem. Including a place for values in lessons will also allow a deeper connection to the problem and the solution. Digital natives are driven by productivity. Their goal-oriented working style may seem aggressive and competitive so incorporating more value in the process may be a good strategy.

Learning from the natives

We may never become true digital natives, but we can and must begin to assimilate to their culture and way of thinking. Rupert Murdoch

From the natives, the immigrants can learn to be more open and willing to engage with learners of differing backgrounds. There is less reliance on an institutional structure in the open meritocracy the native lives in. Immigrants can learn from the natives how to sift through and focus the resources, which are aplenty and be not as overwhelming for the native. They can learn to scale the learning and build what is possible.

Learning from the immigrants

Digital immigrants can teach natives to achieve goals quickly. They can help the techno wizards scale the learning and build what is possible. They can look at the existing institutions and repurpose them or rethink their vitality. For example, in an adult course about scrapbooking, a native may be able to offer great ideas for layouts, image, design and labeling, while the immigrant would contribute their knowledge about storytelling and the value of including worthy artifacts. The real world value of personalizing the memoir emerges.

How can teachers born before the digital revolution better prepare students for the future?

The best approach for integrating technology into today's classroom is through adopting a hybrid learning model. The blending of new ideas, with the student-teacher relationship still holding everything together, works well. Student's interest will always lie with the teacher's ability to create learning experiences that go beyond the traditional classroom, regardless of their own technological savvy. Teachers need to guide the student learning by providing questions and context, designing instruction, and ultimately assessing the quality.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Digital Immigrants vs Digital Natives: Closing the Gap

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Our culture loves to produce labels for everything. So it may not surprise you that there is a term for people who were born before the digital age but now live in the digital age. Rightly so, they are referred to as "digital immigrants".

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‘Heathcliff whr r u’: literary classics by text message

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
To text or not to text… that was never the question. But what if Hamlet or Jane Eyre had got their hands on a mobile phone? Mallory Ortberg introduces her series of literary masterpieces reimagined for the 21st century

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We are all familiar with the emoticon, the little symbol we use to strengthen whatever it is we really mean or would like to convey in a text, chat, message or email. The symbols have become more important as these forms of communication have supplanted some forms of face to face contact. Researchers have now learned that our brains no longer treat emoticons as a form of punctuation, but have started to respond to it as if it were a real face. A study published in the journal Social Neuroscience found that the part of the brain that is activated when we look at real faces is now triggered by smileys too. It's yet another example of how our brains are adapting to the changing demands placed on them by technology, a subject that not only has profound implications for the way we relate to technology but also the way we work and the ways we design and manage our surroundings and especially how we maintain focus and interact with our colleagues.

The emoticon study proves one other important point: the way we relate to new technology is not innate, but learned. It found that babies do not have the same neural response to emoticons as adults. Our brains are pretty much what they have always been, and any significant changes in behaviour are predominantly cultural.

That is not to say that our brains are static. They can change throughout our lives at both an anatomical and organisational level in response to the things we learn, behaviours and cultural associations.

The problem is that the way our brains are changing in response to the changing work and technological environment does not always match the things we demand of it. So while the members of Generation Y, and other people immersed in technology, may have heightened skills for multi-tasking, complex reasoning and decision-making, they may lose out in an ability to focus and empathise with others.

When we are working on a specific task, the information we need is held in our short term memory. Researchers estimate that this can hold on to only four to seven pieces of information at any one time. By combining those pieces of information with the resources and knowledge we have in our long term memory, we have what we know as focus. Focus allows us to transfer valuable information from our short term memory to long term memory - and to think about it and process it properly.

This key skill is often at odds with our working environment. There have always been distractions in our surroundings but never as profoundly as right now. Not only are we disturbed by colleagues and their associated visual and acoustic distractions but also by the technological environment and a common belief that we should be able to multitask. In fact, researchers such as Clifford Nass at Stanford University have discovered that people who multitask become less able to do it the more they try.

Multitasking and distractions are detrimental to sophisticated thought processes such as learning. The brain doesn't really multitask, it switches from one thing to another making us less able to process either. This is OK for some activities but for others, which benefit from our undivided attention, it can be fatal.

This is an innate feature of our neural makeup. It's not something that can be unlearned so that we are able to perform multiple tasks or process information simultaneously to the same standard we would do if we were paying full attention. Just because Generation Y consists of 'digital natives' doesn't make them superhuman and nor is it true for previous generations who are similarly immersed in a technological environment replete with distractions.

How we process information, understand it and use it to generate new ideas is consistent across the generations. It is predominantly the environment that has changed, not the person within it. But the environment is getting us into bad habits and changing the way we act and think. For example, research shows that we remember things far better when we repeatedly recall information from our own memories rather than relying on Google, a hard drive, The Cloud or an Intranet to act as a surrogate memory, which is what we increasingly do.

There is no doubt that the things that distract us most - our colleagues and our devices - can be invaluable in helping us to be more productive and do things in new ways. But they can also be counter-productive. The challenge is to remember the person at the centre of it all, with all of their limitations, motivations and abilities and design spaces that allow them to make the best of the times they need distractions and the times they need to remain focussed on just one thing at a time.

_______________________________
Charles Marks is the Managing Director of office design and fit-out company Fresh Workspace. www.freshworkspace.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How the way we interact with technology is changing the way we think - Workplace Insight

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We are all familiar with the emoticon, the little symbol we use to strengthen whatever it is we really mean or would like to convey in a text, chat, message or email. The symbols have become more important as these forms of communication have supplanted some forms of face to face contact.