Digital Facelift/ Cyberinfrastructure

While watching the video and reading the articles, I was sort of entertained.  I don’t personally do a lot of stuff with technology but thinking about having a personal space online where I can enhance my learning abilities is pretty neat.  Imagining spaces to interact with other students and professors without anyone holding anything back is also a neat thought.  I think that the video has some interesting points on the fact that we need to sort of let go of insecurities, especially when he discussed the Three Opennesses.  Being open to the public, open to other students/teachers, and being open to ourselves is something that I think most people don’t think about doing online.  The idea of being architects to our own personal cyber infrastructure is also neat.  I mean, yes, people post things online, but Gardner’s thought of people not curating things is pretty much true in my mind.

One of my favorite things that Gardner said is that he believes that we are at the beginning of the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race.  I completely agree with Gardner that we’re not in the middle of it.  I think we really are just at the beginning of what could possibly come in the future.  It’s kind of scary to think about, but I think it’s true.  I can’t see us being at the middle right now.  Yes, we have advanced a lot in the past few years, but with all the progress we’ve have, I just don’t see it slowing down and coming near the end.

Some of the article and video were kind of confusing to me.  I think in a big picture kind of way, I get what Gardner is saying, but I’m also a little distraught on what he necessarily thinks the future of education is going to look like.  Not saying this is true, but it seems like he is all for teaching and learning online.  Managing domains and having a personal space on the web seems like he wants a wholly digital world.  Which of course, I know that’s not what he is meaning completely, but at some points it come across that way to me.  I do like the fact that there is tons of information on the web and also tons of people too, but I still like not being fully reliant on the technology I own.  I mean, I love the fact that I can keep in touch with my friends that go to other colleges, but the people that are at my college, I like actually physically interacting with them and really laughing with them and talking to them.  And I know we can do a lot of this online, but I just don’t want everything to go digital, if you will, because I’ll miss out on things that I enjoy in life.  Social networking is great, but like I said in class, I really hope we don’t end up like the people in Wall-E.  I think technology is great and I’m all for seeing where it takes us, but I would also like people to not get too wrapped up that they lose their sense of their physical surroundings.

So, those are some of my thoughts on Gardner’s video and essay.

Until next time… Adios.

T.Hobbs