Howard Rheingold sums it up: we need a good "crap detector"

21st century media literacies from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Howard Rheingold is a pioneer.

Howard hit on one major take­away that I had from our week in the UK. “Increas­ingly I think the dig­i­tal divide is less about access to tech­nol­ogy and more about the dif­fer­ence between those who know how and those who don’t know how,” he said. He’s con­vinced that what’s most impor­tant is not access to the Inter­net — we have more than a bil­lion peo­ple on the Inter­net now and there are 4 bil­lion phones out there — but access to knowl­edge and lit­era­cies for the dig­i­tal age. “The abil­ity to know has sud­denly become the abil­ity to search and the abil­ity to sift” and dis­cern. “Skill plus social” is the key.socialmedia.biz, Howard Rheingold on essential media literacies | Socialmedia.biz, Jul 2009