This document summarizes key ideas from Howard Rheingold's book "Net Smart" on how digital participation and media can help build a more democratic and diverse culture. It discusses how learning to participate online effectively develops skills in knowledge and media production. Quotes emphasize helping others to get help, using social media in the classroom to recognize new opportunities, and how attention and distraction skills can be strengthened through education.

1. People who think of
themselves as capable of
creating as well as
consuming are different
kinds of citizens, and our
collective actions add up to
a different kind of society.
Knowledge, power,
advantage, companionship,
and influence lie with those
who know how to
participate, not just
passively consume culture.

2. Learning to participate effectively online is a matter of
mindset and practice– and the payoff can be big… Done
mindfully, digital participation helps build a more
democratic, more diverse culture. Howard Rheingold

3. “The heuristic for crap detection is to make skepticism
your default. Don’t refuse to believe; refuse to start out
believing.” Howard Rheingold

4. One of the side effects
or what we call
collateral learning for
kids who do engage in
geeked out, interest
driven activities is that
when start engaging in
knowledge or media
production, you tend to
develop a much more
sophisticated
understanding of how
knowledge and media is
produced more
generally.
Mimi Ito quoted in
Rheingold

5. “'What can you do?' has been
replaced with 'What can you and
your network connections do?'
Knowledge itself is moving from the
individual to the individual and his
contacts.” --Jay Cross, Informal Learning
quoted in Rheingold Net Smart

6. “The most important
criteria for getting help
is helping somebody
else. If you want help
in the future, help
somebody now. Pay it
forward. We have had
data on that.”
Wellman, Networked
quoted in
Rheingold, Net Smart

7. We use social media in
the classroom not because
our students use it, but
because we are afraid that
social media might be
using them– that they are
using social media
blindly, without
recognition of the new
challenges and
opportunities they might
create. Michael
Wesch, quoted in
Rheingold’s Net Smart

8. When it comes to interacting with
the world of always-on
information, the fundamental
skill, on which other essential skills
depend, is the ability to deal with
distraction without filtering out
opportunity. Howard
Rheingold, Net Smart

9. An antidote to our epidemic distraction lies in a
set of astonishing discoveries: attention can be
understood, strengthened, and taught.
If focus skills can be groomed, the important next
question is whether, and how, attention should be
integrated into education.
Maggie Jackson, author of
Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the
Coming Dark Age, quoted in Rheingold Net Smart

10. “All people and media are available all
the time, and in all places, but
relatively few people appear to use the
ubiquitous informational access and
social connectivity politely and
productively.”
Rheingold, Net Smart, p. 36

11. The war on
distraction can go
too far for your own
good– Distraction is
a real issue, but
dwelling exclusively
on its dark side can
be a form of
selective inattention.
 Rheingold, Net
Smart

12. The meaning of unproductive, like distraction, requires both context
and a firm idea of one’s goals. If your aim is to produce a certain
amount of external output, as opposed to the more internal production f
learning), then the invitations to serendipity, play, and digression that
digital media offer are obstacles and dangers. If your aspiration is to
learn, help build community, and explore, then the issue gets more
complicated. Rheingold, Net Smart

13. Knowing how to
blog, tweet, wiki, search, innovate, pro
gram, and/or organize online can lead
to political, cultural, and economic
value.”
Howard Rheingold, Net Smart

14. Used mindfully, how can digital media
help us grow smarter? My years of study
and experience have led me to conclude
that humans are humans because we
invent thinking and communicating tools
that enable us to do bigger, more powerful
things together.
Howard Rheingold, Net Smart