Hi John
You are right to speculate about these issues. Remember that old cliche, Be careful for what you wish, you may get it. There are many fables which also echo these ideas, including Midas.
There are those who are so enthralled with the technological possibilities that they become irritated at those who would riaise philosophical issues whether it is around the "digital divide", Open Source, or Open Access and their variants. One can remember nuclear energy which was going to be so cheap that we wouldn't have to meter our electricity, the "Green Revolution" and the entire "appropriate technology movement.
As I have mentioned, elsewhere, Dr. Gelernter, a victim of the infamous "unibomber", wrote that at the end of WWII science/technology had realized the largest dreams presented at the 1939 World's Fair and yet, the problems which plague humans are still with us today.
If one understands the underlying issues surrounding the arena of Knowledge Management, one understands, quickly, that while technology is a facilitator, the problems of knowledge access and exchange are primarily contextural and human, issues not resolvable by technology.
Does this mean that one capitulates? No! But what it does suggest is that stringing physical and virtual wires and distributing hardware in remote locations bypassed by the digital highway is a simple default position. It is easy and safe to see and touch hardware. It borders on "cargo cult" thinking. There be dragons here.
thoughts?
tom abeles
John Hibbs wrote:
Thank you Andy Carvin for a fine, fine post about an exceptionally complex subject - the Semantic Web. Stephen Downes has helped me along with this sort of thing, especially with his daily publication, <http://www.downes.ca/news/OLDaily.htm>
{Plug for Downes: Nobody on this list won't already have a full mail box; but if ever there was a publication that deserved attention by innovative people, it that which Downes manages to write almost every day.}
But -- About the Semantic Web - Am I the only one who thinks this all sounds Orwellian? Could all this end up being counter productive?
While I have written extensively that we live in a globalized and Googlized world, I often wonder if the attraction of all this knowledge sharing and inter, intra, instant, international networking doesn't - in the end - cause us to be too cemented to the new machinery?
When is it timely to NOT turn on our desktop? laptop? PDA? cell phone? iPod? pager? Did I miss something by not watching C-span? posting to my favorite blog? reading the political editorials? most recent technology magazine?
When do I get time for Sports Illustrated? Hustler Magazine? My grandchildren?
What is the last straw that we can put on this camel? Or our own individual camel? At what point do administrators and teachers throw up their hands and extend to the innovators the middle finger? Does it make for greater divides? Or smaller ones?
Is there never a time when it's okay to just go out and play?
*Nobody* knows the "answer" to these questions. I just raise them, partly to thank Andy and others on this list for their observations and commentary -- which I value and read closely. But also, partly,to vent my own frustration - and worry - that while this stuff is both fuel for deep thinking it's also an addictive that makes for fat arses---- and, maybe, less love making?
Should we, like cigarettes, put "warnings" on our packages?
John Hibbs http://www.bfranklin.edu/johnhibbs
At 2:45 PM -0400 9/29/04, Andy Carvin wrote:
Tim Berners-Lee: Weaving a Semantic Web http://www.edwebproject.org/andy/blog/
The MIT Technology Review Emerging Technologies conference featured a keynote by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web. Promising "a one-hour talk in 30 minutes," Berners-Lee gave an animated, rapid-fire presentation -- more like a 90-minute talk in 30 minutes -- about the Semantic Web, his latest initiative.
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