Digital Maoism
I've been grappling with collaborative learning, both as a participant in my Masters degree course and as its subject of study. Sometimes I've found myself fighting collaboration, othertimes wanting to flee from it.
In a recent issue of Edge, Jaron Lanier writes about Wikipedia and the hive mentality, which is a macrocosm of online collaboration. Wikepedia has received much attention recently (eg. its architect questions its use for academic citation).
the problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it's been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force.Whilst provocative, the best material is in the responses to the article. This from Clay Shirky:
The personal computer produced an incredible increase in the creative autonomy of the individual. The internet has made group forming ridiculously easy. Since social life involves a tension between individual freedom and group participation, the changes wrought by computers and networks are therefore in tension. To have a discussion about the plusses and minuses of various forms of group action, though, is going to require discussing the current tools and services as they exist, rather than discussing their caricatures or simply wishing that they would disappear.
Category: Collaborative (e)learning
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