Why must we put ourselves through the sort of stuff that Tyrannosaur makes us go through? This is a film about an abused wife, an angry drunk with nothing to lose and a vision of a completely dysfunctional society?

Well, it’s quite obvious really. Sometimes there’s redemption and hope in the worst possible situations, and in Tyrannosaur we get get a glimpse of that, but Paddy Considine’s directorial debut doesn’t make it easy for us. The opening is hard to get through and without giving it away, it plays on my biggest emotional pull making it hard not to just give up then and there. I didn’t though, because Olivia Colman has steadily worked to become one of Britain’s brightest talents; her smile melts my heart and I wanted to see her in a performance unlike anything I’ve ever seen her in.

As Hannah, a religious charity-shop worker, Colman radiates warmth, deep anger and vulnerability that at times delight and shock in equal measure. As her story develops with Peter Mullan’s Joseph, a man who opens the film on the warpath of anyone unwise enough to fall in his path, things change for both of them and a bond grows which gives an idea that things could be a bit less grim. However, Hannah’s husband James, played with great evil gusto by the omnipresent Eddie Marsan, is the trouble. He is a violent husband who we all know so well from many films and TV dramas of the past. Charming in real life and able to flip a switch into terrible rage behind closed doors. The scenes with Hannah and James, cleverly limited by Considine so as not to dilute the power, are absolutely electrifiying. It is said with the highest praise to Colman that at times, her weeping and mannerisms seem all too real, leaving me wishing I could help somehow.

The resolution is as gritty and uncompromising as the rest of the film and as the credits rolled, I wondered if I watch films like this as a reminder that some humans are evil, and some can change. Despite the rage and violence in Tyrannosaur, there is also a glimmer of redemption and a hope that some people can escape a life of horror and despair. This film wouldn’t have worked without the three excellent central performances or assured direction and through this, it is raised to a film that, pardon the pun, packs a mighty punch.

Being of sound body and mind, I found it desirable to visit Dungeness nature reserve on a hazy spring day. The journey there was a testament as to why people drive cars! I got a tube to St Pancras, a Javelin train (so smooth! so quick!) to Ashford, where I was born, and then a slow train to Rye. This was followed by a lovely lunch and cheeky half pint at The Ship Inn before a bus to Lydd, followed by another bus to Lydd-on-sea.

From here, we were able to head to the enormous and frankly, weird, beach which headed down to the sweet humming symphony of Dungeness Nuclear Power station! Enjoy the pics!!

Rye - gorgeous

What Rye could boast in the timeless beauty of Britain in Spring, Lydd-on-sea and the nature reserve gave back in bleakness and intrigue.

Lots and lots of abandoned stuff on the beach as far as the eye can see

The old justapositionaroony trick

Any idea what these tiny mini rails are for? Did they carry boats?

This reminds of the second album by the Longpigs. What a brilliant caravan!

Ahhh, lighthouse family!

This article in the Guardian inspired me to visit Dungeness in the first place!

When will people cut this out? I hate this poster now!!

Through the readings I have carried out for my MA module on internet cultures I have been thinking a lot about how the digital world operates, how students access it and about lessons teachers can learn to enhance their lessons.  The articles by Neil Selwyn on Digital Inequality and the research paper by Bachel et al on Civic Engagement both had many important points to make, so I am going to sort of haphazardly mash their ideas together!

What comes up regularly is the idea of top-down regulation from Government on policy regarding technology in education and attempts at sorting out the digital divide; I alluded to this previously arguing that students who aren’t used to autonomy might suddenly become revolutionary, but it is more likely if an idea is planted in their head or if their educators alert them to ways in which they can start to help things evolve. As many colleges are pushing a ‘student voice’ agenda in how the college operates, then it is only right that we encourage students to have their say on how technology can be utilised to support them best. As Selwyn writes, we may see a reduction in ‘digital inequality…if genuine efforts are made to empower young people to use ICTs for what are truly their own modes of participation in society’. This means putting the students at the top of the agenda.

What Selwyn finds is that the better-off, the white, well-educated, urban-dwellers are the ones enjoying better quality of technology. This was argued in Brereton & O’Connor’s paper on DVD add-ons too; when they studied the ways in which three sets of students from different types of schools used DVD extras, it was the more prosperous, urban school that used them with the most benefit. From this I considered that ICT inequality mirrors inequality in life and so any interventions from Governments or other agencies will need to approach the digital divide in a way that can reach out to the less prosperous. One way of doing this was a more informal approach to digital inclusion – interventions that have happened in petrol stations, youth centres and shopping centres. Unfortunately, Selwyn wrote this paper in the heady, pre-crash days of 2006 before youth centres, libraries, community centres and so on were faced with funding changes or closure. It seems that when something approaching a useful solution was found, it was snatched away pretty quickly. However, one area which might be safer and more successful in bridging this digital divide is the internet itself where Government and other agencies were able to develop ‘online communities of young people clustered around common interests such as education, the environment and political representation’ (Selwyn, 2006).

Coming to the research paper on civic engagement, I noted that a stumbling block was that young people were seen to think that citizenship comes without duties but also comes with many rights. This concept of rights without responsibility is a dangerous one and apathy or disinterest is the likely outcome of that frame of mind. A remedy for the decline in civic engagement, which I believe connects closely to digital inequality, was the creation of websites that gave young people the tools to volunteer, know about voting, and join in other aspects of civic participation. While the research paper by Bachen et al was produced in America, there are areas of similarities and issues in both the U.S and Britain regarding youth involvement. From this paper, I realised again that young people will not simply engage because a website exists, rather, a number of teaching techniques and website features need to be in place to capture the imagination of the young and get people wanting to do something. An example I found of this sort of website is the Labour Party website in the UK. They have a “Campaign Engine Room” website that breaks down the actions people have taken, with a current total 59,000 actions from 40,000 people. What actions did people carry out for the campaign about NHS frontline resources?

-          Signing an online petition

-          Sharing information on Twitter, Facebook

-          Emailing information to someone

-          Downloading campaign resources

-          Commenting

Will those examples inspire young people to get involved? Perhaps not, as these are mostly simple activities that require a few minutes of requisite anger before being able to say “I took a simple action” and moving on. Bachen et al singled out websites in the way that they allow people to engage, the websites that allow you to control the content you see, through links and options or the websites that allow you to take part in human-to-human communication. As both papers are now a few years old, the Labour website includes both the ability to filter and the option of human-to-human communication.

Despite Labour’s social media activities coming across quite well, I can’t feel entirely confident that the site isn’t just an information hub with fairly sophisticated social media add-ons. The public are encouraged and given opportunities to get involved but these contributions are secondary to the information the party wants to deliver. The website directs people to a page where they can learn how to use Facebook and Twitter for campaigning, and also buy a domain name for a campaign. People are able to set up their own campaign, but equally people can then report the campaign for being inappropriate. I did a search to see if there was a hub for young people who wanted to blog on issues – and have it somehow connected to the Labour site (with the usual caveats about Labour not being held responsible for the content) but what I found was another website called Labour: Central where users could link to and share blogs from Labour figures, but it seems that within the Members area, non-members are able to blog. To me, this all seemed a bit complex and did not seem designed to really grab supporters immediately though youth membership for £1 and allowing non-members to have an account in the members’ area are certainly steps in the right direction.

Ed was amazed at the Labour party website new features!

An area of interest in the Bachen et al paper was around sites that used active teaching techniques and they found the most effective websites were the ones where real opportunities were embedded into the website:

Consistent with their missions, the sites offered opportunities for young people to address real-world problems, express their opinions to others, take part in discussions online, and participate in some type of civic activity… in other words, they supplied opportunities for youth to develop civic skills. Most of the high-scoring active pedagogy sites also involve youth in designing or providing the editorial content.

What we can take from this is that if websites really want young people to get involved more, the way they construct their websites should change quite dramatically. As Selwyn notes, people blindly assume that ICT is empowering, but I see ICT as empowering only if you want it to be or you have access to the tools that can make ICT empowering in the first place. One of the main issues Selwyn picks up on is that ‘only a minority of young people are creating and maintaining their own websites, authoring and updating their own blogs and actively contributing to virtual communities’. He goes on to highlight that many youth use ICT in a way that has no ‘real purpose or overtly empowering outcomes’, things such as downloading games and films, Facebook and instant messaging.

When Selwyn concludes his paper, he argues that part of the problem is that a social problem of young people not being particularly interested in civic engagement cannot be solved through technical fixes alone and that the problem should be solved through social solutions. However, he sees that Government websites and plans allow for ‘top-down and one-way delivery of services’.

If Gove says it, Bart does it

In 2012, Michael Gove stated that ICT lessons were not fit for purpose and had this to say about using technology in school:

While things are changing so rapidly, while the technology is unpredictable and the future is unknowable, Government must not wade in from the centre to prescribe to schools exactly what they should be doing and how they should be doing it.

We must work with these developments as they arise: supporting, facilitating and encouraging change, rather than dictating it.

Despite Gove being a divisive figure, his BETT speech sounds promising; he wants the focus to be on teacher training and helping teachers make the most out of technology, not a stream of new technology appearing in the classroom when teachers can’t make the most of it. His entire argument was one of reform that moves away from top-down edicts, and one that moves towards giving ICT teachers the chance to teach the students how they see fit. This may well be a disaster, but it could help many students who want to move beyond making spreadsheets for a business they’ve no intention of running, or sending letters to clients they don’t have. Perhaps engaging students in making apps, learning coding, understanding how the technology industries in Britain work and a more vocational approach is what is needed. My only concern here is Gove’s comments on how teaching should go back to basics…yet at the same time he’s encouraging people to be more forward-thinking. Let’s just hope he can allow innovation to blossom.

“Imagineer the narrative!!!” – Quote from The Thick of It

The picture of Malcolm Tucker to the left is for people who don’t want to read about education-related stuff. For those that do, please continue.

Through my reading on education, the internet and technology, one of the things that keeps coming up regarding how students are accessing the curriculum now and how they will access it in the future. Decentralisation, bottom-up organisation and collaboration are favoured.

“Chalk and talk” and “the sage on the stage” are becoming swiftly old hat and are being replaced by ideas of students using creativity and ingenuity in how they learn. Both methods are bristling with positive and negative aspects and at the moment, I feel we are in a crossroads in how teaching is done and how it will be done. This, and the way organisations push an agenda when designing curriculums, is highlighted in Wikirriculum: Curriculum in the Digital Age by Ben Williamson. He writes that where a faith group might want less of one thing, a parents’ group might want something very different. In the UK, with the rise of academies, faith schools and free schools, things are likely to fracture even more.

The Dark Lord, innit

How can this apply to education though? There is a simple pattern to teaching and learning; which you could define as the teacher teaches and the students learn. Yet, my experience has shown that a teacher who talks all the time is criticised, and so the activities must be tailored to the individual needs of the learners, which can create an environment of trust and solidarity. By purposefully designing activities that focus on the students thinking skills, the teacher uses their influence in a new way which some might think is some sort of demotion, putting the teacher as a mere “facilitator” rather than the voice of authority.

Williamson argues there’s a shift from centralised knowledge management – the National Curriculum, core competencies, Functional Skills etc., to a looser, decentralised focus on knowledge production that is concerned with how students learn through multimedia and participatory cultures. For this to work there needs to be a push towards students becoming empowered to try and find new ways to learn. Clearly, this can’t just happen – students can’t just turn up at the school gates and demand something to happen, so it needs to come from the school/college itself. One teacher on the Enquiring Minds website wrote:

“Most of the school curriculum is what we want them to learn, which is fine but it maybe doesn’t tap into what they want to learn, or tap into their own interests, or things that they value as important.”

I gather that part of the idea behind websites like Enquiring Minds is that the curriculum moves about and changes all the time. Imagine ten years down the line it becomes apparent that success rates in literacy are adversely affected by the continued insistence of learning Shakespeare;  will a so-called Wikirriculum make the move and reduce the Shakespeare taught, and embed more contemporary writers? Here lies the dilemma of the core curriculum – if I think back to school, I have to wonder if learning about the Egyptians or the dreary Tudors and Stuarts was worthwhile at all.

So boring...I know nothing of this lot as I never listened

Personally, I’d love to have learnt about Communism/the Growth of American and Globalisation which can all be wrapped in a British Empire to World Wars I and II cover. But that’s just my own opinion. Could we be radical enough to let students choose their own pathways of study and focus on that, rather than just giving options for GCSE years? Maybe this already happens! Perhaps that idea would actually limit their ability to expand their knowledge.

How this all connects to the teacher-as-partner idea of education is that the teacher will have more input into the curriculum of the class and in a sense, edit it and curate it, with input from the students. Every group will have a different dynamic and so one group may be fascinated by Shakespeare but another might find George Orwell to be much more interesting and a teacher may find that as long as assessment occurs, to the same rigour across the subject, the content can shift in focus to better support the students. That is certainly something that benefitted me at university where I avoided Shakespeare like the plague and the module that included Dan Brown as a core text. Is it so bizarre to be an English Literature graduate who has no advanced knowledge of Shakespeare? I would rephrase this – is it so bizarre that a university might broaden the students’ horizons so they can learn what they feel happiest with? In my case, I enjoyed Victorian sensation novels which opened up my knowledge of the social functions of Victorian Britain – following this up with Utopian/Dystopian novels as well as 20th century classics such as ‘American Psycho’ suited my literature interests and I feel I achieved better as a result of it.

This is such a dynamic area that I can only begin the scratch the surface of changes in education but I have seen and used some curriculum design ideas which have taken away the classroom setup of teacher at front, and students eagerly writing notes down. For instance, iTunes U offers many videos from teachers that students can access whenever they want; how’s that for a good homework task? I recently found that UCL film lunchtime lectures, film them and put them online for downloads. From this I got to learn about how a British space research lab that I visited lands a rocket onto a planet at 600mph. However, I do not agree that students will, unprompted, flock to these sorts of resources and use them. Rather, teachers will still need to shepherd their students to explore their learning and report back on it.

As Crook writes in Education 2.0? Designing the web for teaching and learning, the abundance of resources available via the internet entails much more searching for the useful materials:

In adopting web 2.0, education will have to confront the challenge of cultivating learner discernment as well as that of stimulating learner participation.

This means that the students will need to develop their search skills and realise that the first page of Google is not always the best page for what they want. This reminds me of Prensky’s argument that students are now ‘digital natives’ and teachers can’t keep up with them. Having not read his entire argument, I can’t fully disagree with him, but when he writes things like this, I can’t agree with him on much at all:

Today’s students have mastered a large variety of tools that we will never master with the same level of skill. From computers to calculators to MP3 players to camera phones, these tools are like extensions of their brains.

It’s hard to know how old the technophobe savages are he’s talking about, but I don’t witness students carrying out astonishing acts on their phones. If the iPhone app where students can pretend to drink a can of Carling is “mastery”, it’s a rather bizarre argument he makes. I’d also argue that when it comes to calculators, I have to wonder when I last saw a young person use an actual calculator. It’s been so long since I used a calculator I can’t even write ‘Hello’ on one anymore.

What I would agree with though is that the new forms of media available for use in education, including blogs, collaborative wikis, file sharing, forums, desktop editing, mash-ups, social networking (though the very notion usually creates panic in colleges) and new literacies require teachers to keep up with the technology, in a way that they feel comfortable with. Some teachers don’t trust the technology and remain didactic to the core, others rely on it too much and go rogue…some plonk students in front of Google and get them to “research” an ill-defined topic. I am excited about the future and if that means I work with my students as a team on a journey of sorts, I am on board with that. If anything, I see the extension of how we can use technology in the classroom as a great leveller where we can all learn new things from each other along the way.

Don’t bother pretending there’s a band better anywhere on the planet than Radiohead. I won’t listen, and like my hero Kim Jong-Il, I’ll send you to a gulag if you insist on such capitalist lies.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

There’s something special about going to a seaside town in England. Perhaps it’s the slow decay visible everywhere, or the pier smouldering gently in the background as yet another one gets burnt to the ground. Maybe it’s the wonderful variety of Fish ‘n’ Chip shops, or the seagulls/drunks threatening to steal your food at any second.

For me, I enjoy the architecture, the colours and a chance to find some delightfully outdated signage and snap away. I got lots of funny looks as I took pictures in Weston. They had no idea how excited I was to see a staircase that reminded me of the work of Le Courbusier!

Amazing staircase

The shopping centre still has the Christmas decorations up, but they’ve cunningly disguised them as Christmas lights, turned off.

Christmas

I love shops like these! Who buys this stuff? Will I go to places like this in the future? A prospect that I don’t care to think about.That sign is beautiful. I really mean it.

Signage of dreams

It is always sad to see an attractive building in the middle of the town rust away. There must be a use for this building! I’ll have it.

"Grand central"

Genuinely yummy Fish and Chips!

Yummy

Please don’t think I’m hating Weston…I wouldn’t want to live there at all but parts of the town retain a genuine charm, looking out across the mud and Bristol Channel. I love how massive the seafront is, at some points it’s hard to see the sea at all! Seeing the mists caused by hitting land is pretty cool as well.

Wonderful view

As Putin declares himself to be the winner of Russia, the world may like to remind him he’s an enabler of the murder taking place in Syria and that his idea of democracy is pretty disgusting. In Britain, at least Cameron and his lot are pretending to care about the best way to destroy the NHS, to evicerate the poor and make life progressively worse (it’s their idea of being progressive). They debate their evil plans and put on phoney listening exercises. Putin just dictates and I cannot wait until he falls from grace.

But where was an opposition that was worth believing in? His main opposition was communist…give me a break!

Similarly in London, there’s Ken Livingston working flat out to make a fool of himself – his tax-dodging and high-spending nonsense makes me feel uneasy. He has misjudged the mood of the people if he thinks promising people gold works – people know money’s tight and that Boris resembles a Polar bear on roller skates…but Ken’s got it all wonky in my eyes. And then there’s the other guy.He’s so low key he’d need to petrol bomb a Spar to get attention.

In France, blah blah blah. In Syria, the referendum that never was while the world squabbles about what comments they are able to write on a letter to the government. Brilliant!

In the U.S, Obama fights against a bunch of religious fundamentalists – Santorum is anti-gay and believes that privacy doesn’t extend to the bedroom and he’d put back Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell back in the military. He’s all for a stupid fence between America and Mexico, he wants to “drill everywhere” for oil and thinks condoms are bad and that abortions can only exist if the mother’s life is in danger. In short – he’s a complete fool and he disgusts me. I have literally felt queasy hearing what the Republican party thinks is acceptable to say in public and to campaign for. Newt Gingrich is just an abomination, I don’t even want to consider him. I despair at the leaders the world is offering. There’s a distinct lack of humanity and decency happening.

I get criticised for saying I like what Ed Miliband says because he’s isn’t what people expect a leader to be. If having principles and actually sticking by them is bad (he may become like the others and disappoint us), then perhaps I need to move to a quiet place and rage alone.

But if you read this far, you may notice that something’s got my goat. It’s true. I need to vent and if someone disagrees with what I’ve said, let me know and explain to me how America can lay claim to be free if people bicker over contraception and basic human rights. Or why the church in Britain is so very against same-sex couples deciding they want to be devoted to each other. Tradition is lovely…unless it leads to discrimination.

Santigold dun gone released a new single though, so there’s something good! And BBC4 has Dirk Gently back on this evening. It’s not all bad, back to your telly, people!

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

In a previous post I harped on about being an indie boy, but I swear I’m moving away from what is a sort-of definition of indie boy to something different. Basically, the music I’m going to be peddling to you is much more electronic in influence and some is very chilled out.

Part of my discussion of identity was wrapped up in music; my favourite song ever being Tori Amos’ ‘Cornflake Girl’ is a very different proposition to the stuff I’m playing now. As I go to clubs less, I think the pace and agressiveness of the music is slowing down, into a more atmospheric groove. ONWARDS!

• Eight and a Half – Scissors

• Annie Clark’s ‘St. Vincent’ is just wonderful. Her voice, her looks, the videos, the sheer intelligence of the music…wow. This has been on repeat for the past few days after I bought a CD (wiki ‘CD’ to find out what they are, digi-friends) of their new album Strange Mercy. It is their third remarkably album in a row.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

• The Decemberists – This is why we fight. More familiar territory, but a gorgeous track. The video is all a bit Lord of the flies and rather beautifully shot.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

• Johnathan Johansson – Blommorna. Heading to Malmö for the latest delightful slice of electro-pop, Johansson has appeared on my radar a few times and this is no bad thing. Again, the drumming from Kate Bush’s Running up that Hill surfaces, that’s three songs in the past year that’ve used it that I know of!!

• M.I.A – Bad Girls. This needs a mention for the cinematic music video alone. It captures an Arab vibe pretty well – you know, inexplicable fires, nobody doing any work…oh hang on, no, M.I.A is pushing some agenda like usual, and I’d wager that it’s a really incoherent agenda. As a person she seems tiresome but as an artist she really knows how to make a stellar pop song and working again with Roman Gavras she has produced a genuinely thrilling video. I fancy filing my nails while riding at a mad angle on a car, too…

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Online interaction is something I’ve been doing for a number of years, and so it is really interesting to read about what theorists have to say about it. Guy Merchant of Sheffield Hallam University writes that a lot of adult interaction online contains an element of ‘identity performance’. As an alternative to face-to-face communication, it is certainly arguable that our online personas need to be more “us” to compensate for the fact that we are communicating through writing rather than through talking, using facial expressions and body language. Humans take in something like 80% of the information in their lives through the eyes, so losing that visual communication must require some other stimulus when communicating online.

Gee argues that we live in an age of ‘new capitalism’ and so our identities evolve as new communicative tools are launched, and we become more focused on our likes and habits instead of old dividing lines like age, class and gender. In my last post on identity I wrote that I identified myself in the past as an ‘indie kid’ and so would quite happily judge someone for being a great Justin Bieber fan, while I indulge in the music of Chromatics, Modeselektor, Iamamiwhoami and Patrick Wolf. Likewise, others will mock me for listening to Modeselektor who have been called the jokers of the Berlin scene.

Merchant writes of the concern that online identities have been seen as inherently untrustworthy – concerns parodied brilliantly in the Brass Eye paedophile special.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Gaming comes up a lot in theories surrounding online identity; but this is an area I have no experience of, having never played online games and having no desire to ever do so. Aware as I am of the possibilities of creating characters online, it is not something I have ever done with intent, aside from the characters I have created in my comedy writing. However, the argument about identity performance widens as other theorists argue that we interweave our real lives with embellishments as a person’s online biography cannot be completely false.

Davies and Merchant carried out a study on blogging and wrote the following:

I have an ongoing story. But I think we have several ongoing stories. I also think that if   we bear in mind a particular audience, we change our story to suit them and thus change our notion of who we are according to our audience.

This quote really interests me as there are certain things a blogger will do when publishing an entry on their website, such as filling in keywords and an abstract for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and tagging collections of words to help define the article. To attract traffic to the site, the blogger may then put out messages informing people on social networks such as Facebook or Twitter of the new blog post. The keywords and SEO data will seek to bring in a certain type of audience who would be interested in the work, so there will always be a general sense of direction in the blog; a blog post on the best cheap restaurants in London wouldn’t be targeted at those who frequent Gordon Ramsay restaurants for example.

This is life in Norway...

My friend, who runs the http://www.lifeinnorway.net/ website is very talented at defining an audience but is currently having to work out the audience for another idea that broadens the Life in Norway concept. His homepage includes links to Twitter, an RSS feed and Facebook. The Facebook page has 125 fans and the bottom of the webpage has many keywords on what he writes about, all of this seeks to connect a certain internet-savvy audience who is an ex-pat living in Norway or is interested in Norway. I would question whether this site gets a lot of native Norwegians visiting as they already live in Norway and wouldn’t really need the knowledge of a British guy living in Oslo.

My website has recently undergone some changes as a result of the Internet Cultures module at university and these are changes discussed by Davies and Merchant in their blogging study:

In addition to this, many bloggers use the sidebar to provide additional information which helps to locate them in specific social networks. Blogrolls and favourite web-links are quite explicit ways of showing one’s affiliations… and links to photosharing sites (such as Flickr photostreams) all provide opportunities to showcase anchored and transient identities.

Recent additions to my site include the Flickr sidebar and a Twitter feed in the sidebar; this means that all my online-sharing activities are brought together through my website so that writing, photography and Tweeting are all connected and accessible from one place. I have condensed my online personality to one site on purpose and I give the illusion of sharing a lot but I maintain a lot of privacy on Facebook and never publish anything overtly personal; I certainly don’t release data that I feel would compromise me or anyone else. Despite me saying this, Merchant believes that more is given away than is realised… ‘I am confident that a richer sense of identity may well be communicated at a deeper level, in ways that lie beneath the conscious control of the author.’

Online data sharing, in whatever form, is an opportunity to ‘author the self’ says Holland, and I believe that to be true. We all want to be seen in a positive light, so it makes sense that our online identities would strive to achieve that aim. Now, I am off to listen to some music you’ll never have heard of, and perhaps I’ll read some of the work of Karl Marx before watching a challenging foreign film.*

*Hmm, reality is I’m listening to Metronomy, Goldfrapp and Bon Iver, I can’t be bothered with reading any Marx on a Sunday and I’m dead excited about watching the final Harry Potter film again later.

Who I am varies depending on who I am with. That’s not to say there’s a dozen alternate Chris’ all doing their own thing, but identity is never entirely about freedom so much as altering who you appear to be to different set of people. An example of this; I wanted to apply as an English teacher at a Catholic Sixth Form in Bristol, but I felt my position as an atheist would be problematic at a religious college, despite their equality and diversity statement on the website. I think it’s more me assuming my identity as an atheist to be a problem but as a side comment the college reports that 87% of the staff is heterosexual, 0% is gay/lesbian and the rest are unknown. Infer from that what you will… but if we are to talk identity, that statistic stuck out. Perhaps 0% is realistic, but I don’t believe that to be the case.

My own sense of identity, linked to the question “why on earth do I indulge in social media and put myself out on the internet” is always bashing with my concept of the 1/3 life crisis which I feel I’ve been going through over the last two years. As a teenager, I had my issues but I always knew I wanted to do ‘A’ levels, then university, and it was inevitable that I’d do teacher training. Throughout my life I’ve always known my own path and I’ve barely deviated from it, making my own choices all the way and somehow ending up where I wanted to get to. Yet this 1/3 life crisis is trickier. I’m grown up now, but I feel unfulfilled and I don’t know what I want.

• Do I want to travel the world and never settle? 4 years into a relationship suggests I don’t. So why did I apply to a job in the Middle East last week then? It’s nothing to do with being in an unhappy relationship. I fear I suffer incurable wanderlust.
• Do I want to a cottage in Devon where I can read books and make jam? Of course I do. But I already live in a cottage with lots of space for reading but I find myself wasting time instead.
• Should I go out to clubs? I can’t be bothered, though.
• Why do I even care about quantum physics and why do I keep buying books about it? It confuses the hell out of me and I’m not a scientist!
• Shall I become trendy? Well, I’ve never done that so far so it’d be odd to contrive to be trendy now.

I'm with Labour and I'm not afraid to show it!

The David Buckingham article I read for university this week was all about identity, and a great quote came up about adolescents being ‘incomplete’. If I ever felt incomplete as a teenager, it’s never gone away. If Stern thinks making blogs and websites is all about self-reflection, then I’ve been doing that for over ten years. I love being able to trace back my thoughts to earlier times. I was a lot more frantic ten years ago, my writing was frankly a ton of ideas that sometimes formed itself into a cohesive whole (The Comic Sans Appreciation Society, Sister Bendy Wendy and my advent calendar, Patron Saint Porn Stars) but often it was a bizarre selection of words.

The article had an argument about identifying with our class background. Well, I’m an oddity there because my parents and entire family are working class yet I was bought up in the military which allowed me to skip my destiny as a working-class kid from Birmingham. I can’t even identity myself as a Brummie, let along working class. It’s as if I don’t even exist sometimes. Where do I come from? I don’t know. The best sub-section I could ever associate myself with was the vague notion of the Indie Kids. Yes, if something becomes popular, it’s suddenly toxic and must be avoided and mocked.

Goffman talks about ‘impression management’ and putting on a performance when you are with people. I know this all too well and it’s funny to read about this after I was told twice in a week that I should seek out a niche as a stand-up comedian. That idea horrifies me, yet at the same time I’m well aware I can make people laugh quite effortlessly, and I actually get wound up if I can’t make someone laugh. No doubt about it, I want to make a good impression and my neuroses are such that I spend a lot of time reflecting on my personality and consider how I can get rid of the bits of it I dislike. It’s impossible and exhausting at times.

Similarly intriguing is what Faucault wrote about power, that we need to regulate ourselves and be encouraged to exist within the norms. For teachers who are online, this means we need to not look drunk all the time on Facebook; for MPs, it’s to try and not say anything remotely controversial unless you’re a professional buffoon like Boris Johnson. We are reminded that our data is monitored, that companies can find out what we post online. It can all be held against us in the future and, oh look, suddenly our lives have become a mixture of 1984 and Kafka’s The Trial. Saying this, life doesn’t feel like 1984 because we are essentially free, even if freedom means most major companies know all they need to about me to and much more. I’ve often dreamt of falling under the radar, but have become too obsessed with collecting points on my array of loyalty cards to ever do it.

Thou shalt not allow recruiters to ever see you drinking, even if just one pint costing £6 in Sweden.

dana boyd wrote that youths can ‘write themselves into being’ on social media sites and it’s scary because it’s something I’ve seen. I know of people who have multiple Facebook accounts to deal with their ‘other’ sides…piece together the jigsaw and you just have a person suffering from low confidence trying to invent themselves anew. Social media allows us to re-invent ourselves, but I believe the truth will out in the end. It is interesting to read that there is an argument that we are encouraged to identity with the consumer culture on social media. Facebook is always littered with people’s likes and fan pages exist for everything, Twitter had paid-ads that appear as promoted tweets, gaining many views. Even in our own social media bubble, we give more of ourselves away to content-producers, yet few people question it or change their social media habits because the identity we have created online gives us a certain social capital that we want to cash in on.

I have written previously of my concerns about the way technology is used in education and I’d add to my concerns that I sometimes feel the obsession with the “information superhighway”, “information society” or the “knowledge economy” is just fluff. Or as Jack Dee put it, it’s not a highway, you’re typing on a keyboard in your bedroom.

The internet is of course enormous and bigger than us and therein lies the problem. Students often don’t know how to actually search for anything online, grabbing at the first random webpage that comes up, copying stuff and forgetting about it. It becomes a reflex and nothing is gained of value. So, a knowledge economy and an information society needs to know what to do with this wonderful knowledge but I’d wager that people just store things and do nothing with it. However, could I have successfully planned a ten day trip to Cuba without the internet? I could, using guidebooks, but I’d be a slave to someone else’s opinion of what makes a good bar. The internet has given me a number of viewpoints to work from, so I know where the best beaches really are, and I know how to get the best mojito’s.

This is the identity you want online; studious yet casual.

From my experience, when people make arguments that young people, or digital natives if you will are wildly creative, obsessed with finding out information and making full use of the possibilities of the information available to them, I can’t help but snort with derision. Don Tapscott argues that for young people, “using the new technology is as natural as breathing.” The problem with this analysis is that breathing is as natural as breathing, but just as singers needs good breath control, people need good skills in collecting and interpreting data. These skills don’t just turn up and work with digital natives, they are earned and not everyone can hope to earn them.

There are those who can manipulate the infinite information available out there and make good use of it, and there are those who can competently handle a computer and make good use of social media, but I think as we get more integrated in these social networks, we lose a little more of our privacy and of ourselves. In the end, our identity may just become a mask, a list of likes and dislikes and a Spotify playlist.

What I know of myself, of my own identity is that I am an incurable knowledge-seeker, that I want to stand out from the crowd but not have to appear as an outsider, that I want to show myself online as fun but serious about a variety of issues. Sometimes the identity falls apart but at the core it’s always the same. We just have to try and not lose who we are as the information society develops.