Trust, technology and transliteracy

Please note: This post has moved

I attended an event on 'Transliteracy'€™ at the Institute of Creative Technologies (IOCT) at De Montford University yesterday. As a simple soul, I normally like to shy away from words of more than 3 or so syllables and from difficult (to say) concepts such as ‘interdisciplinarity’ and ‘transliteracy’. Having said that, I was intrigued by the work Prof Sue Thomas and her colleagues are doing at the IOCT so decided to participate.

Transliteracy is fundamentally it is about communicating effectively in different ways and sometimes using different technologies, but has a much more detailed definition you can find here.

Effective communication and building trust gets a lot more difficult when technology is involved as you don’t have the usual body language and eye contact that we often take for granted in face to face interaction. Blogs, social networks or online environments like Second Life, all have their own cultures and etiquette, which are often not obvious to the uninitiated.

Also, it is often said that something like 95% of communication is non-verbal. If this true, then there are real challenges to communicate across distance using technology, which is usually text based. The style of communication also varies massively depending on the communication channel (e.g. irony is difficult in email as I frequently discover to my cost, small talk is the norm at the beginning of face-2-face meetings but not in some other forms of communication etc.).

In particular, when talking about stimulating innovation, I would argue that all innovation is fundamentally collaborative. With increasing specialisation in business and academia in recent years, this has led to an increasing need for organisations and individuals to develop wider, more open networks, partnerships and trusted communities to share ideas and to innovate. In particular, a powerful source of innovation is to collaborate across traditional boundaries, be they organisational, disciplinary or geographic.

Therefore, much of the discussion centred upon how can we communicate effectively and build trust across these disparate communities. Technology definitely has a major role to play in supporting these boundary-disrupting collaborations, but perhaps there is a need to further develop most peoples ‘transliteracy’ skills (idea for a future Nesta programme perhaps).

Another possibly interesting observation (to me at least) was that, through the use of technology, it may reduce the need for facilitators or super-connectors (which are critical in off-line collaborations) because more background information is typically available in a technology facilitated collaboration. For example, it can be easier to ‘scan the room’ for interesting people to talk to in an online environment where peoples profiles are there for everybody to see. If only most networking events or parties were so easy to navigate. And yet, if you are unfortunate enough to get stuck in the (virtual) corner talking to that boring bloke who just split up with his girlfriend and he wants you to talk through it’s last days of their relationship in real time, it is still far easier to ‘exit stage left’.

I’m pleased to say that the event was interesting and populated with a diverse and interesting bunch of people, who surprisingly were not technologists, but included sociologists, anthropologists, musicians, writers and a museum curator! We probably posed more questions than answered, but I guess that is par for the course at this stage. As de Bono argues in his book ‘Lateral Thinking’, it is important to suspend judgement and not kill off an idea too early until it is more fully formed. I think there is still a lot to do with this concept of transliteracy, but it certainly provided some food for thought.

PS. Being flippant for a moment, I am increasingly conscious of the trend to coin a phrase ‘xyz’ and then for ever more being referred to as the person who coined that phrase/term/meme. Transliteracy could be included in this category, as could crowdsourcing, web 2.0, the long tail, the wisdom of crowds and many more. I want to capture the zeitgeist by coining a new meta-phrase which encapsulates this phenomenon – how about ‘coinification’? As in “that’s just utter coinification”. :)

Comments

[Jess]

Hi Roland,
We're very glad you made it to the Translit. day and found it interesting. (And you even blogged about it! Woo hoo!) You're right, it was wonderful to have such a variety of backgrounds and experiences around with which to share new ideas. As you say, there is lots more to be done but we enjoyed the amazing feedback which has provided much impetus for future work. Thanks!

BTW: sadly, coinification seems to already exist. Check out this posted e-mail here: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/ABOUT-WORDS/2004-03/1079492910

[Roland Harwood]

What a shame. I should have checked shouldn't I :) back to the drawing board I guess. memeification is gone already too...

[Miko Coffey]

Re: the email citing 'coinification'
http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/ABOUT-WORDS/2004-03/1079492910

I'm not sure most folks would agree with their definition of Bushification - to create more foliage, verbiage, etc. I'm sure there'll be a much more sinister definition out there.

[Jerry Fishenden]

At the risk of being called a pedant (and doubtless not for the first or last time), "to coin a phrase" means to use a phrase already in every day usage. It does not mean to originate a new phrase. That would probably be "to mint a new phrase" if we want to carry on the analogy .... or maybe "to mint a whole new currency" in this context.

On a less pedantic note, the Transliteracy workshop was stimulating - and helped contribute to my thoughts "beyond Caxton - the post-literate world" (http://ntouk.com/?view=plink&id=284). Lots more debate to be had here I think...

Jerry

[Roland Harwood]

Thanks Jerry,

Pedantic comments always welcome. You are right of course - pedants always are :). How about the word 'mintification' instead then?

Interesting link on the post-literate world.

R