Just in case it’s not clear, I think the “postdigital” project is a worthy one. As I read it thus far, it’s recontextualizing the predictions made by, among others, digital nativists (I’m making words up left and right today) w/r/t an assumption of what is currently seen as a separate, digital problematic as a subsumed, integrated part of life. There’s obviously some (critical!) difference in considering when that will happen– some of the digital native enthusiasts appear to think it has already happened in a significant way– but the important work of considering what that means to be a teacher, a learner, a community member– a human being when this technological bubble we live in is no longer confined and divided, when it is no longer digital, but just is… well, that’s important stuff.
It’s also a risky activity, necessarily abstract, still in its earliest days of infancy and highly likely to be completely wrong. We just aren’t very good at these kinds of predictions which are about transformation rather than extrapolation. Recognizing that we are bound inside a cultural and technological frame unfortunately doesn’t provide a way to step outside it.
But this thinking and guessing and feinting and throwing out of ideas does need to be done and I admire Dave and others for tackling it and clearly striking a nerve right away. If this discussion and evolving philosophy is an avenue that can be used to shift the conversation from the machinery to the humanity, then things I’ve written and talked about here and in public for just the past month (not to mention for a long time before) should pretty convincingly attest to my support and sympathy. If it can provide a path so that people like Jen and I can stop talking past one another and get to the things that I know we agree on but can’t seem to find a settled place to engage with and enlarge upon, then consider me signed up and ready to make a donation.
Unfortunately, the only donation I have to give– my thoughts on what I’ve read so far– is wholly inadequate and causing more distress than good. It’s not what I want and the way I seem to be coming across doesn’t represent who I am or want to be.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
huh. my guess is that this got posted before you saw my apology. Damn you instant digital communications!
We’ll figure it out face to face some time. The world is about to be obfuscated by NECC rubber band ball blogging. That’s when I deleted my Twitter account last year. I think this is just a conversation beyond the digital. It needs more than language.
If that’s the case, and it probably is, many of “our” (everyone’s) conversations are doomed. That’s why I regularly opt completely out of them and at some point will probably have to do so permanently!
Maybe that’s the true problem of the digital native. Maybe they’ve evolved to not rely on pheromones and body language.