Maybe not so much surprising as interesting, is that Weller (2020) reminded me in chapter 02 1995 that the web was an evolved system:
which had no central authority, meaning that it was difficult for established agencies to control what was published on the web. What anyone could publish and debate was not governed or censored. In many ways, the Internet acts like a living organism, driven by these social values, and in this both the potential for good and ill was established. (p. 17)
In technology and organics there are filaments of attachment that form and bring together, inform, trigger, and inflect. Electrical. Chemical. The space between filled with so much potential and possibility!
Weller talking about the web as something “like a living organism” (p. 17) was reminiscent of Wilson (2020) when he explained in his presentation, Research is Ceremony, that the space between is sacred. He invited his audience to shut their eyes and to imagine small spots of light…one, two, ten, twenty, and so on. He then asked his audience to imagine these spots of light growing luminous threads that begin to connect; the connections, the space between, is medicine he said.
Fast forward to chapter 08 2001 and Weller (2020) explained how there was a shift from a system, the web, which appeared more organic, to a system of standardized institutional management. This raises a question for me; how much control and restriction are required between what is organic and what is institutional? When does one hold on or let go?
Since I like my ‘once upon a time’ stories I would probably go back as far as I could to write a similar book to Weller’s; however, my book would have many voices through a muti-faceted lens…and it would include the quiet voices too.
“By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.” – E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
References
Weller, M. (2020). 25 years of ed tech. Athabasca University Press. https://doi.org/10.15215/aupress/9781771993050.01
Wilson, S. (2020, February 26). 200213 Research is Ceremony: Researching within an Indigenous Paradigm – Shawn Wilson