From Wikiversity

The goal of this page is to prompt students to think about how the mediums of communication limit the nature of what people can and cannot communicate to each other.

Communication in software

A second goal is to prompt students to think about the way that communication technology (and software in particular) is playing an increasingly important role in providing the mediums of communication and to ask students to ponder the impact of technological decisions on communication.

Explorations and Activities

This section may be well served by the Software Freedom/Controlling Communication Activity.

Alternatively, the following related activities or explorations might help the students explore and discover the key concepts in this section. Each is framed in terms of the key questions it raises.

Activity: Designing Communication

An activity or discussion around an actual communications technology that has been intentionally designed to prevent a certain type of use.

Some good examples include Digital Rights Management technologies that prevent copying or types of copying. Questions to raise in discussion might include:

• Was the design of the system fair or unfair? Why?
• Whose interests were being served by the design in question? Whose interests were not being served?
• If students could redesign the system, how would they do so?

This might also involve an experiment that prompts the users to modify an existing communication program on their computer (e.g., through the creation of "filters"). This might be as simple as an email filter that hid, redirected, or changed incoming messages. It might also be a filter for the IM client that made a superficial or meaningful change. It could be something more complex as well.

Students would then be asked to share their projects with each other and reflect on issues that each one raised:

• What is the purpose of the filter? What is the effect? Are these different?
• Would these systems make it easier or more difficult for people to communicate with you?
• How might these filters affect the way you understand messages?
• In what ways might your understanding of a message be different than the intention? Is this a problem? Why or why not?
• Would you use this filter? Why or why not?

Exploration: Communication Control and Censorship

An activity that prompts students to compare any previous background or reading they have done in the area of censorship with the idea of network filtering or more "innocent" changes to communication technology that alter the terms on which students communicate.

Key concepts

Student could walk away from this section with:

• An understanding of the way that medium can effect messages being communicated.
• Knowledge of the power of communication technology (and computer software in particular) to control and limit the spread and the message of information.
• A feeling for the way the interests of individuals and organizations -- for better or for worse -- can be reflected in the technologies and have a meaningful effect on what is and is not communicated and how.
• An understanding of the student's role in relation to this technology and a feeling that they are not completely passive observers
• The various methods of communication that affect civic discourse and how media can be leveraged to influence political decisions.

Additional readings

• Lawrence Lessig's Code is Law: And Other Laws of Cyberspace
• Richard Sclove's Democracy and Technology

Related activities

• VoIP activity group - Interactive learning resource for hands-on experience with Voice over Internet Protocol systems

See also

• Communication skills
• Communication (Wikipedia)

References

1. Donnelly, E., & Neville, L. (2008). Communication and interpersonal skills. Cromwell Press: United Kingdom.