apcampbell

Here is Robert Patterson on Going Home:

I believe that Social Software is a vector to a return to an old culture.

When I say old culture, I mean the culture that fits the essential nature of humans and that fits nature itself. I imagine a return to the custom of being personally authentic, to a definition of work that serves the needs of our community, and to a society where our institutions serve to enhance all life.

Whether old or new, it certainly makes a lot of sense to me. For I see societies of people alienated and manipulated by institutions of government, big business, advertising, and healthcare, while institutions of education merely provide more fodder for the status quo machine: brainwashed, powerless, and mentally enslaved “citizens” who equate happiness with material possession and consume, vote, and act in accordance with such conditioning. This becomes even more problematic when actual war results just to keep those big institutions running and the power structure stable. How else can we explain how Bush was re-elected by popular vote and that Iran is soon to be the next victim of a violent military and cultural invasion? Is this what the concept of ‘democracy’ was meant to embody? Of course not.

Such a tragic situation cannot be changed for the better merely through political and social means, but is actually a battle that must also be fought in the mind itself. I believe the answer lies in the cultivation of autonomous mind in the individual; not the autonomy of merely a detached, objective person with freedom of choice, but rather one that emphasizes a process oriented, interdependent, critically reflective, publicly engaged person whose very notion of self identity includes the other, suggesting compassion.

The possibility that personal webpublishing might encourage a move toward autonomy is real. Just as Fromm argued that the social structure determines which aspects of the social character are dominant, perhaps likewise the semantic social network as learning environment might play a role helping learners become more autonomous in the way described above. If institutions of learning founded their pedagogy and practice on learning methods that allowed the learner to develop this kind of autonomy en route to cooperative knowledge creation and the development of useful skills, we could indeed achieve at least a partial degree of sanity and peace in this world.

I believe that Robert is right in predicting the enormous benefits that can result from the widespread use of social software, or what could also be called personal webpublishing.