Tonight was the first time that I got together with some fellow bloggers from my MMS class. The high of a fun gathering of like-minded people is definitely much more engaging than a satisfying communication with blogging. But I feel that blogging has spoilt me somewhat for normal conversation. Why? Because I missed the "linking" part of blogging, being able to show somewhat concrete support of my point of view, without having to elaborate so much. Normal conversation now seemed to lack the precision of blogging. In conversation, the subject does tend to go off to various tangents and I felt that I had less control in the flow of conversation than in a blog. (Have I become a control freak?...Well, I know I tend to be one in my household...understandable as a mother to teenage kids...but I find it unpleasant to face that situation with my friends.) In conversation we spontaneously touched upon a whole bunch of subjects which would not have possibly been done with a blog. So I came home a little bit intrigued by this question: "Are blogs tools of control or are they tools of 'free' expression?"
Of course, the tone of this thought was already set into motion by Leo Reitano's presentation of his Phd. research on the "Polysphere Model" earlier in the evening which gave rise to the occasion of the class gathering. Leo passionately put forward the notion that "just using the web, ...blogging, even different modalities of technology is not enough (in shifting the paradigm of learning and education)....what's important is examing the assumptions we have taken before using these new learning modalities,... did we assume unconsciously that it was to serve our outdated modes of command and control, divide and conquer?" A strong challenge was put out by Leo and for those who are interested to find out what he proposes as an alternative model for learning, I understand that Leo's research paper will be posted for viewing somewhere on the McLuhan Program homepage.
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