Enlightenment…

I returned to my college last October.  Recently I came across this Thank You note I wrote to the professor of the 1^st period class.  Thought I’d share…

Dear Prof. Harris,

I thoroughly enjoyed your first period class “Games & Culture” Friday, October 25^th .  And I salute your early morning enthusiasm.  I particularly noted your encouragement to one of your students that it’s better to be present and tired than not present at all.  I would have benefited from that advice fifty years ago!

Thank you for making me aware of Jaron Lanier’s work, You Are More Than a Gadget©.  Your discussion of his “Serfdom of Crowds” resonated with me.  Your definition of serfdom and serfs directly connects to the slogan I trademarked literally last century, Dark Ages Computing®.

I made my living selling in the technology space.  I primarily sold “leading edge” software (aka bleeding edge; betaware; alphaware; demoware; vaporware; visionware) all in the chase of leveraging technology for competitive business advantages.  I started in the mainframe world and sold throughout five more technology shifts in the marketplace: mini-computers; client-server; web-based; cloud; and mobile.  Today, I poke fun at the next technology shift that’s upon us -  AI and “the machines”.  Here’s an example:  https://gpokorn.blogspot.com/2024/09/authentic.html. 

You posited; has the noosphere become crowd-sourced knowledge, and can the accuracy of AI search results of the noosphere (manipulated by technology behemoths in search of money) be trusted?  It’s amazing how willing American are to trade their privacy for entertaining apps.  Reminds me of:

            Todd's Political Principles:

·         No matter what they're talking about, they're talking about money

·         Truth varies

Unknown Sage

I wasn’t familiar with "echo chambers" and liked your explanation of it as the absence of challenges to assumptions and opinions; limiting the ability to engage across disagreement. 

Your students might believe, “Digital Space itself is neutral”  but please assure them in the real world it is anything but neutral.  How the Digital Native generation decides to coexist with evolving Digital Space matters.  We are all counting on them to recognize the ramifications of:  

Neutrality:  the state of not supporting or helping either side in a conflict.

Thank you for helping enlighten your students.

We can all benefit from a little enlightening, true?

                                                            GAP

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.