Amy's E-learning and Digital Cultures site

One person can be part of many communities. Communities can be seen as overlapping and connected circles. Though each individual is the connection for the coming together of those particular communities – they are the thread running through, much like the single pencil line of a spirograph.

What does it achieve?
Does it tell us anything about ourselves or how a society works?
Does inter-culture division only cloud judgement of what is important?

It’s often thought that making things more connected and ‘more digitalised’ is a way of saving time. Yes, you can do things quicker, but so is everyone else! Sometimes the constant stream of communication can be overwhelming, saving time to spend more time doing more of the things you’re trying to save time doing and doing them in a time saving manner only to find there is no time spare, every bit is spent!

Communication Snobbery

Noise > Spoken word > Image > Written text > Lengthy prose, embedded structures

… then the internet came

Lengthy prose > webpage short text > twitter even shorter > youtube videos > spoken word (recorded)

Communication has cyclic development. So why not cyclic appreciation too – why is there such snobbery, e.g. Twitter = regression of comms to a primitive form, to hold on to ‘Hard Times’ embedded clauses?!

I’ve always been that person who prefers non-fiction reference books, skim reads fiction, jumps chapters, skips to the end to confirm plot assumptions, and seldom finishes an entire book (it has to be pretty exceptional!) ever since a young age. I love reading on a computer screen, opening hyperlink tabs, using ‘find word’ searches, and find the linearity and inflexibility of paper oppressive. I also have a very low threshold for boredom.

It’s interesting how opinions differ on the format of text. Despite the ‘digital age’, we are by no means all going ‘native’ (yet!)

The Earth as imaged from the Voyager 1 Spacecraft, as it exited the solar system in 1990. Earth is nearly 4 billion miles away in this image.

Pale Blue Dot – bit like a MOOC