Reflective Blog-Sociotechnical Change

Sociotechnical change and aggregated service sites. Sociotechnical change is a new term I have not yet heard describe the social and technical changes we have happening in the world around us.  One of the biggest pieces to this movement is surrounded by a name that most would consider synonymous with the internet-Google.   What Google offers people in a single location to find multiple social outlets.  By logging into one site, you have email, IM, virtual calls or phone calls, document access, shopping access, site and more consolidated into a single site you log into.  This is an incredible feat in today’s day and age, and as Google continues to diversify and expand their service offerings for a growing online community. What Google manages to do it is expand a network so that individuals are able to reach out to a potentially larger and more varied pool of culture and information (Varnelis, 2008 ).  Facebook is taking subtle queues from Google and partnering with games, photo-sharing, reminders, contact lists, apps and settings in many online devices like laptops, phones, and tablets.  Again, what this does is centralize your information and allow you the option to “share” what you would like through one interface.   What this is limited to is what Jenkins refers to as the Participation Gap-who are the ones that will be left behind in this online movement and social importance and pressure of being part of a participatory culture?  As technology continues to evolve, there may be a larger gap made more apparent in the socio-economic differences of students-those that have access to computers, social networks and technology accessible to experience with and those that do not. It has become more and more apparent that understanding technology and having the ability to participate in this online society is more important and almost required for a successful future as a contributing citizen.  What should concern us as educators is the challenge of filtering the information available at the click of a button and legitimatizing sources in a world where so many options are available to us, and where ads are targeted directly at online readers and users based on their likes, browsing history and previous purchases.