Every blog needs an angle, and the above will be mine.
This is an issue that holds personal, philosophical and, perhaps, even political importance to me. The longest phase of my career occurred while I was in business development and strategy at AOL during the emergence and first major wave of consumer involvement with the Internet. At the time, we of course had an obligatory "education" strategy called AOL@School.
But, what really interested me was the "informal" ability of AOL and the Internet, more generally, to "educate" people. Whether it was communities of interest, searchable archives, or breaking news, it seemed like education was everywhere.
During my AOL stint, the technology half of the issue certainly loomed largest in my day to day work. But, in 2002, when I began working on a PhD in medieval Irish and Welsh literature at Harvard, education accelerated to the forefront of my consciousness. I certainly interacted with technology in the course of my work - thanks very much, Jstor and HOLLIS - but, relative to my time at AOL, it was comparatively absent. Moreover, what technology I did encounter came very much from the "Cathedral" instead of the "Bazaar." Databases were totally siloed. Interfaces were complex and drowning in features. The Web was a presentation layer not an application environment. This probably would not have mattered to me, except that my greatest concern as a student was a profound sense of isolation.
The first consequence of this isolation was a frequent sensation that I was recreating the wheel. Instead of standing on the shoulders of giants, it seemed to me that I spent hours sifting through possible research sources that had been sifted by many before me. If only, I knew who to ask, I would have been so much farther ahead. The other related consequence of my perceived isolation was of a more personal nature. I was dying to talk to someone about everything that I was learning. Even in a graduate community, I found such interlocutors few and far between.
What I really wanted was a Web community built around academic research - not one siloed with a single discipline - but a true "Bazaar" environment where any serious idea could be traded and exchanged. And it seems I was not alone.
As a result, with the help of some good friends from AOL, I decided to synthesize the two major threads of my professional life by founding Carmun, a Web site dedicated to make students lives easier and richer by leveraging the power of community and simple, intuitive Web-based tools. In this space, I will talk about a lot of the possible implications and issues associated with Carmun, as well as bigger issues related to the intersection of education and technology.
I appreciate your interest and look forward to any thoughts or comments you may have as I go along.
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