Digital Young

In terms of media, technologies, communication and their uses, I recently read a post that really made me think a lot. Here’s the link: farisyakob.typepad.com.
The blog is written by Faris Yakob, EVP Chief Technology Strategist at McCann Erickson New York. And here are the points he talks about that would explode and are full of potential for 2010: gestures, banners, the socialisation of Media, content, hyperconnectivity and transmedia.

I am not such a big name as he is, but I will have something to say referring to his ideas:

1st: I totally agree with his view on all points, in terms of dynamics.

2nd: still, it is a little bit difficult to see (for an outsider) the link between those points – gestures, banners, socialisation of media, content, hyperconnectivity and transmedia.

So, just for the sake of thinking, what are they? How can we link them in order to reflect the user profile?

All 6 are forms of appropriating media by users. The appropriation has been made in a really pesonal and individual way. They describe an interesting relation between technology and users.

From Faris’ description, I see there is a recurrent view that comes out: the user’s empowerment. The user changes, transforms, re appropriates a technology, in a rhythm that over-passes any prediction. If I look to my friends around me, they stay a lot of time on the internet, they prove a real pleasure on playing with technology (entertainment dimension) and they like to communicate and to keep in touch.

But something came up talking to my students etc: all this entertainment has a purpose now. Before, they were just playing by doing a blog, to give an example. Now, it became more serious. The hyper-specialization of abilities and the explosion of people “doing” things on various media led to a more exigent view over their own abilities and knowledge.

This attitude will have an important impact over the aspects that Faris was talking about: the content that is generated by an user will be shared under some restrictions (the user will control what to share and how to share), the communication will become a controled process (by the user), and all this with the purpose of branding themselves. I have encountered to my students this perspective over their own content: I like to generate new content through technologies, but a controlled content, something that will brand me.

I think that this should also be discussed when talking about “some big next things in 2010″: “branding myself” through media, socialisation, communication and technologies.

In the context of a scientific project, I collaborate as an assistant researcher. It has as theme the nonformal education and its strategies at young people. So, I researched the ways that youngsters – preteens, teens and young adults – learn through ICT’s, learning as a basic process for the appropriation one. So, besides methods like interviews, observation, I used also the method of making videos. The project is not yet finished, but it has a very interesting purpose: projection of a pilot-institution for youngsters, something like a youth center, but just as it should be.

Another research that I talked about in a previous post, when talking about reading practices and ways of purchasing books at youngsters in Bucharest, a mini-study, had a qualitative and quantitative methodology: interviews, observations and questionnaires.

Right now I have two other researches on the way: practices of using spare time (loisir) at young people and practices of coffee consumption. Hope to finish them both very well and to find out interesting things.