AACE Phoenix
Nov 05, 2003
CRLFI'm on a DRM panel opposite Robby Robson, Magda Mourad and Harry Piccariello, an elite group in which I am no doubt out of place. Except... except... someone has to fight the good fight, even if it means airline food, the exhaustion of U.S. customs, and immersion into a largely self-congratulatory medley of e-learning professionals locked in pre-digital age modes of commerce, commodification, and hierarchical group-think. Some of the links just below reflect my dissatisfaction, and perhaps I'm more critical than I should be, but there are days when I think that the entire industry has gone blind, that what they're up to has less to do with the provision of education than self promotion, institutional promotion, and, of course, a good run of profit.
CRLFLast weekend I spend a long time on a href="http://www.downes.ca/files/resource_profiles.txt" class="Troll">draft of a technical paper, redefining and redesigning the content and metadata relationship (right-click and download; it's in text format). But who will believe it if they don't even get what it's all about, what it's all for. If you want an open and accessible content distribution network, it's pretty clear how to go about it - but what if that is not what you want? Maybe people will read this paper - who knows? But what will they see?
CRLFLast weekend (in between sections) I also reread Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols. Days like this, I need Nietzsche, need him like a warm rum and the taste of a last stale cigarette before the end of a cold and sleet-laden November day. Need him like a dirty old coat that's been with me around the world and is up, maybe, for one more time into the breach under the eclipse of the autumn moon.
CRLFMaintaining cheerfulness in the midst of a gloomy affair, fraught with immeasurable responsibility, is no small feat; and yet what is needed more than cheerfulness? Nothing succeeds if prankishness has no part in it. Excess of strength alone is the proof of strength. A revaluation of all values, this question mark, so black, so tremendous that it casts shadows upon the man who puts it down--such a destiny of a task compels one to run into the sun every moment to shake off a heavy, all-too-heavy seriousness.
CRLFI don't know whether I can show people the this one either, but I'm tired of waiting. And I think about it. Am I allowed to release these? Am I becoming what I fear?
CRLFIn the latter item I write,
CRLF"So few people - Gibson among them - have grasped what it means to live and learn in the information age. Along with predicting the decline of America as a world power, precisely because the locus of innovation shifted elsewhere, he depicts life in a state of constant flux. Douglas Rushkoff describes people who have adapted to this new reality as people who 'ride the wave' - it is no coincidence, he asserts, the modes, means and manners of those who surf the waves, surf with skateboards, and surf the internet are so similar. It is not possible to grasp and hold a reality - those people who, for example, are only just now coming to grips with blogs will read with dismay the ebbing of this phenomenon, but this is life as usual in Cyberia (the inhabitants of which grin at the idea of some newspaper columnist who believes he has finally 'got it'). The *only* way to survive in such an environment is to be free - not free in the sense of being able to vote for one's dictators every few years, but really free, in the sense of living (and working, and learning) autonomously, that is, in a self-directed (not isolated) manner. The very technology that makes self-directed (and self-motivated) learning possible, also makes it necessary. You don't get the benefits of becoming an agricultural society without also having to live on farms; you don't get the benefits of becoming an information society without also having to live in information."
CRLFLike a bird
CRLFon the wire
CRLFLike the drunk
CRLFin a midnight choir
CRLFI have tried
CRLFin my way
CRLFTo be free
CRLF(Cohen)
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