Musings on education, techology, and life..

I was an early Twitter adopter– #26603, in fact—and quickly became an enthusiastic supporter of the service as a place to connect with my peers and colleagues. It wasn’t long before hearing someone say “I don’t like Twitter” based on the content made no more sense to me than saying “I don’t like blogs”… in both cases the technology is just a medium for creation, connection, and conversation. Find the right group for any (or better, all) of those three, and Twitter, like blogs, are glorious, dynamic places. Casually drop in on conversations, skim the words of a bunch of people one doesn’t know, or randomly attempt to connect, and they are horrid wastes of time. One may was well say “I don’t like books” or “I don’t like words” because so many of each are terrible.

That being said, a few days ago I nuked my longstanding Twitter account, summarily dropping the 300+ people I followed and the 1100+ people that followed me. And it feels good (this is where my friend Jen can say “I told you so.”) Twitter doesn’t provide any easy way to scratch and rebuild one’s network, which is what I feel compelled to do in light of my changing interests. And even if it did, I don’t know that keeping the username would have been useful.

For at least a year now I’ve become disenchanted and disillusioned with the bigger picture of education and technology. Increasingly, I find myself feeling as if I’m looking through the wrong end of the telescope, my vision narrowed down to a tiny circle. It’s time for me to leave those conversations and battles to my betters, those who are smarter and/or stronger and/or more ambitious than I am. Pressing the button that irrevocably deleted my Twitter account was both frightening and cathartic. Frightening because I severed a primary connection to many fantastic people I’ve come to know and work with… in many cases in no small part thanks to Twitter. I hope I don’t lose (too many of) those friendships. But the deletion was cathartic because the community that supported and sustained me had become, as of late, a kind of weight around my neck, preventing me from looking up in the direction I need to go, and too often shining a bright light on my growing dissonance and contrast with a world I no longer fit in.

The final push I needed to make this long-contemplated decision were the reactions from my community to Larry Sanger’s Educause essay on “Individual Knowledge in the Information Age,” readings which ranged from simply uncharitable to the ideologically-driven, with a healthy dose of willful misreading and cherry-picking added into the mix. It’s not that Sanger is 100% correct or that many of his points aren’t arguable… it’s how forcefully those readings demonstrated to me that I am completely out of step with that community. @fncll was the first casualty… this site may be next. I think I’m finally coming to a point where I’m comfortable merging the two parts of myself—the artist/creator and the technologically-inclined—that have become increasingly (and increasingly painfully) disconnected. The split has always felt artificial—but as of late it has become soul-killing. I’m not sure where my newly-fused, newly-whole self will find its home online. Maybe here. Maybe Cosmopoetica. Maybe somewhere else entirely.

I still exist on Twitter as @cosmopoetica, where I tweet about writing, art, music, literature, publishing, copyright, and whatever else suits my creative fancy. Technology and education topics will surely come into play there, but only as they pertain to these core activities and interests. Technology and education—and most assuredly “ed tech”—as such simply don’t interest or engage me anymore. And that’s a good thing.

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