[iDC] The Bronx Blog Project

[tobias c. van Veen]

ola -- quick note to say ::brilliant:: it's good to know there were opt-out
options for blogging, as strange as that may seem (if not
counter-productive!), & a good deal spent obviously thinking about it on
your part, Joshua. 

I must admit, the "liar" episode intrigues me. Did you feel it was because
the student didn't understand the public nature of his blog that he wrote
the critical / vengeful comments concerning the professor?

Or was it because the student understood very well the public nature of the
blog, that everyone was going to be reading it, and yet also understood the
raison-d-etre of blogging itself, or rather, the desire of blogging, the
impulse, what drives us to air dirty laundry and write the unspeakable, to
upset the figure of authority -- and to invert the private to the public --
and wanted to up the ante on what the Course was suggesting?

Was this really an emergency lesson in blogging or the moment that blogging
punctured a hole through educational - institutional strictures &
structures?

Was your warning serving to restore the balance? Did it effectively end
expression of dissent even if wrong or vengeful? What was the intervention
of yourself at this moment? Very curious (as I browse new photos on
http://webdeleuze.com w/ revolutionary slogans & flags spraypainted on the
walls -- when was the last time this happened in your university? is it
happening now, then, on blogs?).
    [ http://www.webdeleuze.com/php/image.html ]
    [ http://www.webdeleuze.com/php/pics/deleuze5.jpg ]
    [ http://www.webdeleuze.com/php/pics/deleuze12.jpg ]

> In other classes I've struggled to convince students that
> advertising should at the very least be distrusted and investigated; many of
> them don't mind that they're being studied and prodded by marketers as long as
> they get their stuff.    

Yes, I have faced the same problematic & I am sure many teachers can nod in
agreement : trying to convey a sense of why retaining invisibility -- I
think of privacy as a kind of invisibility, at times, from the watchdogs of
the world -- is a right unto itself puts one in the strange position of
being a metaphysician in the 21C. For the given truth that all information
is accessible to all and that it only exists to begin with from the grace of
the Corporation is the fundamental of understanding and world_view for those
born, say, after what, 1988... (in a particular socio-economic strata /
geographic slice, we accept).

Thanks again for the information on the project & for following up on these
exchanges.

best,

    tobias


> Tobias and Ankur, thanks so much for your comments.  
> 
> The issue of privacy and teaching "safe net" practices was a one of the
> defining moments of my project.  I had made it clear to the students that
> their blogging would be public -- that Google would index their writing,
> allowing anyone online to find them, that online writing is a public act --
> and any students that were uncomfortable blogging were asked to simply write
> their assignments on paper.  
> 
> Nevertheless, the defining moment of the project came when one student, an
> outspoken leader of the group and the one who took to blogging the most,
> thought there was a disconnect between the goals his teacher and I had
> outlined at the beginning of the semester and how we'd proceeded with the
> project.  He was upset, and blogged about his disappointment.  In his posts he
> called the teacher a liar, which upset her, and many of the students offered
> their support in the comments.   
> 
> It was a mini-crisis, and a lesson in the public nature of blogging.  I
> explained to him that I could read his posts, his teacher was reading his
> posts, and anyone who had heard of the project was reading the posts.  I was
> happy that he used his blog in this way, but I needed to make sure he
> understood that his blog was a public space and that what we wrote on it
> affected the real world. 
> 
> After an emergency lesson in the nature of online media, things were cleared
> up.  
> 
> The point is, the privacy issue is real, and I wonder if the younger
> generation that's using MySpace and Facebook is aware that all of their
> digital utterances are being indexed for posterity.  Did I devote time to
> explaining this beforehand?  A little, but there really should be entire
> classes, or at least chunks of a semester, devoted to this.  
> 
> I also think that, perhaps because online social networking has changed the
> way people think about culture, MySpacers, bloggers, etc. are not as concerned
> about their whole life being online as we think they are.  The woman who
> posted pictures of her children on her blog may or may not have realized that
> they were accessible from anywhere, but I think having a publicly accessible
> space made her feel empowered -- she was feeling more connected, joining the
> networked world.  
> 
> No matter how benevolent their actions (so far), it's dangerous to allow so
> much of our data to be owned and controlled by private corporations like
> Google.  But we haven't yet seen a better business model that can process and
> sort such massive amounts of data.  Of course these social networking apps and
> other profile-based sites are harvesting our information, and their users know
> it!  These are kids and adults raised with a a cynical acceptance of
> advertising.  In other classes I've struggled to convince students that
> advertising should at the very least be distrusted and investigated; many of
> them don't mind that they're being studied and prodded by marketers as long as
> they get their stuff.    
> 
> -Josh


tobias c. van Veen -----------++++
http://www.quadrantcrossing.org --
McGill Communication & Philosophy