What’s taken me so long to post this week? Partly – I came over all
pithy and just wrote: The trouble with
books in HE could be exactly that weight – that sense of reified knowledge –
that implacability – and ... the Reading Lists. I have seen students on
just one module (of four) expected to read 8-12 books per week before each new
seminar. Of course the lecturer probably means ‘dip into’ rather than read in
depth – but the task is impossible and makes the students feel like failures
every week. It also leaves them in no doubt as to their role: shut up – read
this – you have nothing to say here… So – we have this juxtaposed with the
more fluid, potential space of the oral – and of the quasi-oral which is the
web. It feels more participative, engaging and engaged. Unique among media it
invites transmission rather than just consumption. We evoke the camp fire and
the tribal elders telling their tales of a shared collective history. An
ever-present. Cool. But who gets to tell the tales – and who
gets to hear them? These societies also ‘other’
the inconvenient and rebellious…
Just a small
point about the task itself: wasn’t Dave in his paraphrasing of the ‘Is Google making
us stupid?’ question, not really posing an either/or question – but challenging
the peremptory nature of such questions? And wasn’t he also challenging the
arrogance of the book-bound with their dismissiveness of all things web? I
cannot imagine how many right-wing politicians must have nodded their heads in
self-congratulation when they saw the Google = stupid proposition. Nothing
seems to terrify them as much as a free and risky web. No, no they say – we
need to make it safe – wrap it all up – tame this thing. The only point of ICT
are the skills needed by business. Books embody the safe and controllable for
them – whilst we know they also ‘light a fire in the mind’… We aren’t the ones
who burnt the books but we might be the ones to sail the web as Digital Vikings
as Amy Burvall suggests…
So Karen sang:
And Jenny Mackness said:
And so many replied… The rest is silence ;-)
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