Bill Kerr perplexes me. A voice in a growing chorus of non specific Web2 in education criticism, his post Don’t be too proud of Web2 has me a little confused. On the one hand he is calling for deeper thought, but on the other is reluctant to model it in this brief critique and uses the throw away language that he holds others to task for. In his observations of the web2 movement being a bit full of itself:
Global village idiocy, like the uncritical promotion by some of conspiracy theories of history on the TALO list
And that’s why I’m writing up Bill’s post. He’s talking about me there. Me and a couple of others in TALO that found Zeitgeist to be a film worth considering. Bill came in on that TALO thread and dismissed the film as conspiracy theory and reckoning that the US leaders are not that organised and that history is not that simple, but he didn’t try to back that up and has only watched half the movie selectively…
I’m not defending the movie, I still have little idea if the claims in the movie are true or not, that doesn’t matter to me as much as Bill’s all over dismissiveness. Its not village idiocy to want to discuss the film. Surviving the deflation of Bill’s mere conspiracy theory, the counter was to talk about the film in terms of it being a device for motivating inquiry learning or encouraging questioning generally. I’ve started a wikieducator page around the movie for just that very purpose. If Bill’s not energised enough by the movie to start looking into its claims, then maybe the global village will have a go.. Off list Sean and I had a go at the Wikipedia bureaucrats who deleted the movie’s article, which is one of many many topics that can spin out of Zeitgeist discussions…
I find it perplexing that of the hundred or more claims in the movie, and the thousands of details behind Web2 really, that Bill is calling others proud fools… and being dismissive without being specific. Bill?
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July 24, 2007 at 12:08 am
Alex Hayes
Bill Kerr perplexes me also Leigh.
You also perplex me.
Why keep this conversation on open world village record ? Surely such tousle thwarts bolstering your web credits ?
Digital accoutrement’s as vitriol I’m fashioned to consume, but sledge is becoming less becoming.
Give us a little of your more enamored critique on Mad Max. Does Zeitgeist compare ?
When did brush beget pen and when was it last you afore fingered fiction ahead of fantasy ?
Pride is paying a pound per pony.
July 24, 2007 at 12:56 am
Alex Hayes
Ps. Zeitgeist reminds me of ‘Killing of America’. I recall watching it following an orgy of cones and ‘Mondo Cane’.
Twenty years on it co-incides with a range of anti-religious texts which are coming out in droves and filling the book shelves in Melbourne particularly in a time of Antisemitism and other religion driven racial intolerance.
A blog from 2006 – http://uncrediblehallq.blogspot.com/
2007 in-humane depravity – http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/200512_an_atheist_manifesto/
All things that surface at these times are infatuated odes to the fears which we bespeak.
“Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved……..”
Lest we bind our own narcisistic pessimisms with institution and bury our claims that web 2.0 saved us.
July 24, 2007 at 11:37 am
leighblackall
Ha Alex, yes. 🙂 The past 5 days I’ve been siting in bed with a terrible flu. 2 years of sickness free have caught up with now, no end in sight yet 😦 So as a result I’ve been catching up on a lot of social network and enjoying a little “boundless narcissism” as you imply. Its useful to stand away from the Reader for a time and come back to it in Earnest. You get a strong sense for the over all topics through that time – and blunt, aimless anti Web2 is pervasive. Perhaps its rightly due, would be a shame though, as the ideals it carries are good I feel. With all bandwagons there are the idiots, and I may be one. But the grand claims as to social change afforded by web2 are not things to be held accountable to! They are age old ideals, and this time round it is this technology that provides the platform for those reinvigorating those ideals. Sure! like religion, using these platforms for ideals is dodgy, if not for the easy pickings for the contrarian/atheist nay sayers like Keen.. is it they that claim to be saved?..
July 24, 2007 at 11:49 am
leighblackall
btw, that manifesto is revolting. It is indeed the atheist claiming to be the saved! In that manifesto at least. I could think of much better ways to present atheism.. in fact, if atheism was all rational, and considered, it would probably conclude that while there isn’t a God according to the claims of old texts and everyday human stinkyness, there may be a genuine need for God according to the discoveries of neuro science, quantum mechanics and meta physics. Or maybe more simply, when the horrors of nature come to visit that privileged class on a daily basis for hundreds of years, maybe then will they be ready to accept an abstract notion of God to help with their anguish.
July 24, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Mark Nichols
I don’t recall promoting the movie, but if I’m an idiot I’m at least in good company.
I noted that Bill mentions the 1,000 monkeys theory. This from Wikipedia:
—
In 2003, lecturers and students from the University of Plymouth MediaLab Arts course used a £2,000 grant from the Arts Council to study the literary output of real monkeys. They left a computer keyboard in the enclosure of six Sulawesi Crested Macaques in Paignton Zoo in Devon in England for a month, with a radio link to broadcast the results on a website. One researcher, Mike Phillips, defended the expenditure as being cheaper than reality TV and still ‘very stimulating and fascinating viewing’.
Not only did the monkeys produce nothing but five pages consisting largely of the letter S, the lead male began by “bashing the hell out of” the keyboard with a stone, and the monkeys continued by urinating and defecating on it. The zoo’s scientific officer remarked that the experiment had ‘little scientific value, except to show that the ‘infinite monkey’ theory is flawed’. Phillips said that the artist-funded project was primarily performance art, and they had learned ‘an awful lot’ from it. He concluded that monkeys ‘are not random generators. They’re more complex than that. … They were quite interested in the screen, and they saw that when they typed a letter, something happened. There was a level of intention there.’
—
The last two sentences may well illustrate Web 2.0, but not the whole two paragraphs!
July 24, 2007 at 2:38 pm
leighblackall
Thanks Mark 🙂
I just came across this transcript of a recent speech by John Pilger in Chicago:
The title of this talk is Freedom Next Time, which is the title of my book, and the book is meant as an antidote to the propaganda that is so often disguised as journalism. So I thought I would talk today about journalism, about war by journalism, propaganda, and silence, and how that silence might be broken. Edward Bernays, the so-called father of public relations, wrote about an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. He was referring to journalism, the media. That was almost 80 years ago, not long after corporate journalism was invented. It is a history few journalist talk about or know about, and it began with the arrival of corporate advertising. As the new corporations began taking over the press, something called “professional journalism” was invented. To attract big advertisers, the new corporate press had to appear respectable, pillars of the establishment—objective, impartial, balanced. The first schools of journalism were set up, and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around the professional journalist. The right to freedom of expression was associated with the new media and with the great corporations, and the whole thing was, as Robert McChesney put it so well, “entirely bogus”.
July 25, 2007 at 10:11 pm
OLDaily[中文版] » Blog Archive » 2007年7月24日
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August 2, 2007 at 3:15 am
Alexander Hayes
Sounds a little like leaving a computer keyboard amongst a group of Institute Directors no ?
Same shit = different channel. At least you’d know that the perpetrator was instructed to do so.
The focus letter would be ‘f’ for……………… get well. No one likes sick thilosophers.
🙂
August 2, 2007 at 3:18 am
Alexander Hayes
Ps. The Nuclear clubs doomsday clock was moved to five minutes to midnight …….last night.
Google it.
August 2, 2007 at 3:20 am
Alexander Hayes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock
October 21, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Zeitgeist: Addemdum « Learn Online
[…] was reluctant to watch it after the mental upset the first Zeitgeist caused me, but watch it I did. It is 2 hours long and pretty riveting. We intend to restore the fundamental […]