From the SandBox: Collected Ideas

Quote from Barry Wellman, from Little Boxes, Glocalization, and Networked Individualism:

This is a time for individuals and their networks, and not for groups. The proliferation of computer-supported social networks fosters changes in “network capital”: how people contact, interact, and obtain resources from each other. The broadly-embracing collectivity, nurturing and controlling, has become a fragmented, variegated and personalized social network. Autonomy, opportunity, and uncertainty are the rule.

June Kaminski, BC Literacy Forum posting

Positionality, is a quality of having a keen awareness of one’s place in the world. Obviously the process of developing this awareness requires a comfortable and conducive environment to attend to all aspects of oneself, including family, personal concerns, and so on.

The process of developing this awareness in Pre-Colonial times involved oral teachings from parents, elders and other community members. Becoming cognizant of one’s unique gifts and talents was a big part of this process. Becoming attentive to one’s “inner fire” was another aspect.

From an interview with Jean Baudrillard:

Baudrillard: We are changing our system of values, changing all our identities, our partners, our illusions, and so on. We are obliged to change, but changing is something other than becoming, they are different things. We are in a “changing” time, where it is the moral law of all individuals, but changing is not becoming. We can change everything, we can change ourselves, but in this time we don’t become anything. It was an opposition put forth by Nietzsche, he spoke about the era of chameleons. We are in a chameleonesque era, able to change but not able to become. This is our challenge.

URL: http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-between

Quote from Pedagogy of Difficulty: Exploring Liminality

Gadamer’s (1989) notion of the Hermeneutic Circle, in which the model is constructed as a spiral because once individuals experience a transformational learning event, they can no longer return to the same point from which they began their inquiry (see Figure 3). Instead, they continue on until provoked by another perturbation-which holds the potential for re-entering the reflective process.

Identity as Personal Debris?

The WayBack Machine is an example that archives earlier versions of web sites. Try entering netizenzoo.com to see the period of time it “lived” online as a working web site.

I emphasize to students who took my internet literacy courses that they leave a virtual footprint when they send an email, post to a forum, or create and then orphan a vanity web site.

For the most part, the legacy we leave behind online is unintended, unconscious, random, unconnected, and scattered, but once the personal conscious intention is there to streamline and impose order, and make an effort to create a virtual story of our identity(ies) over time, the potential for leaving a lasting legacy becomes a possibility.