After watching the videos and reading “A Personal Cyberinfrastructure” by Gardner Campbell to say that I have a response is a bit of an understatement. First and foremost I would like to address Campbell’s essay, the videos I will touch on later. Having no clue what a “personal cyberinfrastructure” is going into this reading definitely made me prepare for being bored to death by something that was quite possibly (and most likely) over my head. However, as I began in on the essay I realized right away that what Campbell was addressing was exactly what ds106 is employing, though on a much smaller scale than he discusses, and with this realization came my attention roaring back and diving in head first to Campbell’s ideas. While I do agree with the basic idea that Campbell presents a functioning online community of a university based not around blackboard or and eaglenet type portal, but a wholly customizable and interconnected series of personal student domains. While I do not disagree with Campbell in any sense of the word I do believe that he is being highly optimistic of a student body, especially consisting of college students who are infamous for laziness and apathy, meeting the extremely high level of involvement that would be needed for a cyberinfrastructure like this to be successful and usable. As I’m sure most, if not everyone has seen The Social Network the concerns that I have are very similar to the concerns Zuckerberg had for Facebook when it launched mainly the sheer volume of information and use that this infrastructure would need to be functionable and the concept that Facebook was “cool”and that’s what it was able to thrive off of, and as a college student I can assure you that anything endorsed or created or run or affiliated with the administration of a college or university will never be “cool”. Don’t get me wrong I think that many college students would love the idea and the ability to play around with the online freedom they have been given, but all it takes is a small seeding to become uninvolved and the interactiveness of the infrastructure suffers and along the way the whole thing quite possibly falls to the wayside.

Now, this is not to say that I think that this would be a complete failure of an experiment, or that I subscribe to the idea that my fellow college students and I are lazy and apathetic towards anything besides drinking and sleeping in, quite the opposite in fact. I believe that Campbell’s infrastructure instituted in the right setting and cultivated properly could be an extreme step forward in online interactions and learning experiences. Campbell mentions “training wheels” but focuses more on freedom, while I agree the proportion should be in favor of freedom the freedom can not be too great, while participation and involvement can also not be forced. If the infrastructure gains reputation as “work” or an obligation that the students have to their school then it takes on a negative connotation and becomes a burden as opposed to an enriching and educational experience that it has the ability to be. I believe the implementation of a class such as ds106 is a great place to start with the creation of this infrastructure, a way to test the waters if you will and expose the infrastructure to those who want to be exposed to it as opposed to all. By exposing only those who are willing and interested the infrastructure is able to grow and support itself and potentially and hopefully thrive maybe eventually being introduced to the entire student body with members who are already active to help lead the way and employ a sense of “cool” that is necessary to invoke any legitimate interest, especially when it comes to college kids.