
Dwelling in Possibilities - daveambrose
http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i27/27b00701.htm
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This is horrible. It's just an overexplanation of the exuberance unleashed by
computers and the internet.

The author observes the habits of modern-day college students and assigns a
deep meaning to them. Whenever he notices some superficial similarity between
two activities (hey, having lots of low-commitment sexual partners is just
like moving quickly from one webpage to another!) he points it out. Whenever
he can quote some literary figure saying something roughly similar to what
he's been writing about, he does. It reads like deliberate _Stuff White People
Like_ bait.

~~~
ryanmahoski
The author's literary style may be overzealous but I thought his philosophy
was at least credible. He echoes Tolle, Zittrain and others who warn (as
Zittrain puts it) "the internet, in many important respects, is a collective
hallucination." Consider how many people today will spend most of their waking
life sitting stationary, staring directly at a display. Is that a rational,
enlightened way to live given the opportunity cost? I don't know but debating
the question as this professor is doing doesn't seem to me horrible or
baiting.

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patrocles
Well, he does make one good point in that each student should learn to "know
thyself".

However, the rest sounds like he's trying to rationalize his perceived
inadequacy relative to his students' potential.

Instead of becoming a luddite, he should realize that classrooms have changed:
we don't need to be in the same "broadcast domain" to disseminate information
anymore, push those lectures into PDFs they can read outside of class; use the
face-time in class to pose questions for the group to solve/discuss; take more
class time to answer questions students have (or add a digg-style interface to
students questions before class so that the questions important to the
students get discussed; etc.

Technology bridges gaps that this guy just wants to widen....

