Alright, so here is my little index of posts so far this semester:
Hello Everybody!
Changes in the Humanities
Who is Really in Control?
The Moby Dick Metaphor
Greatness
Learning
Why Hashtag?
Choose Up, Not Down
In my "Learning" post, Dr. Burton left a comment that said this is the "age of the self-learners". I think that we can achieve greatness as we learn, which kind of ties together the "Greatness" and "Learning" posts, and by submersing ourselves into learning about Digital Culture, we find new ways of greatness and how to help others along their own paths. Also, in my "Choose Up, Not Down" post, I discuss how climbing up a spiral is how we continue to learn, but it is also easy to fall back down into old habits, etc. I think that we master ourselves and our spirals by continued learning. Looking back through these posts, I saw my old ideas, and I am thinking about how I can improve them or push them further, and I feel like I have been having little moments of mastery in the digital world. In my "Who is Really in Control?" post, I discuss how we need to fight to stay in control of the machine, or else it will control us. However, can we ever actually master the machine in the digital world (like the Michael Wesch video we watched)? Or is the fact that we need to be forever learning proof that the machine has mastered us? We can achieve greatness along the way, but only through usage of the machine and our dependence on it. So how can we truly master the Machine?
I think this falls into the idea of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." There are so many things to master in the digital world, and honestly, we will never be able to learn to master everything. You're right when you say we need continued learning, however, I don't think we will ever have enough time to catch up with all of the learning we would need to do to truly master the machine. That being said, the machine wouldn't exist without us and will only continue to exist as we use it. Once we accept these things, we can do our best to master parts of digital culture and find way to use those to add meaningful content in digital spheres.
ReplyDeleteI like how you pulled small ideas from a bunch of your posts to come up with this thought process and question. I think this is a good question, but also one that seems very broad. Maybe if you define what to "master" something really means and what you consider to be "the machine" that would help your topic to feel more focused, but I really like where you are going with this.
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