There is something comical about being mortal, thank goodness. I received
several friendly corrections off the list, but it was Bill's that relieved
my chagrin, a bit, and here he apologizes. I've been thinking about computer
literacy, that it is like any literacy, only done critically insofar as the
medium itself is made visible. What excuse have I, whose 1st computer was
the sewing machine variety (a KayPro that traveled w/ me everywhere).... How
many years has it been? My excuse is that I've used it as a tool, I've
wanted it transparent. I don't want to think about it. Not much excuse, but
that's about all i could offer as a comment on internet ecology, which is
the least I owe in thanks again to Bill for his exemplary decency here,
replenishing the commons.
Judy
At 08:34 PM 1/17/00 -0500, you wrote:
>What Judy and I have just unwittingly demonstrated are the consequences of
actions as we have been culturally conditioned to enact. Judy was never at
any fault here, and in my view ought not to be chagrined, because she is the
host of a 'parasitism' created by the people who initiated the original
email, playing upon our strategies for self-benefit, as are also their
strategies, as WE have been deeply enculturated to exercise in this
society. As Harding points out, it is our cultural destiny to deplete the
commons. Yet... and yet, here we are, and the Internet is still functioning
just fine.
>
>I, in turn, reacted, without due deliberation of the consequences for Judy,
and for that I wish to repeat my apologies and thanks to Judy centerstage.
In hind sight, I could have realized there could have been another time,
another context, into which the topic of the Internet as the commons could
have been raised. Yet, with a deep commitment of my own for fostering a
greater ecological understanding of shared renewable resources, and under
conditions of zeitnot, my own hasty actions have not preserved one of our
most important shared resources -- Judy as a person and the mind-trust that
she materializes in constitution with the rest of us. There is far more
to mind-as-distributed than cognition-without-affect, and I think both Judy
and I not only have shared that belief in the past, I hope we have enacted
its importance today.
>
>"[They] will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new,
universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around
and within [them]; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in [their]
favor in a more liberal sense, and [they] will live with the license of a
higher order of beings. In proportion as [they simplify their lives], the
laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be
solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. " --- Thoreau
>
>Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
>Lesley College, 29 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790
>Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169
>http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/Barowy.html
>_______________________
>"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
> and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
>[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
>
>
>
Judith Diamondstone (732) 932-7496 Ext. 352
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 01 2000 - 01:02:15 PST