Break my arms around the one I love
I’ve written before about my love of blogging. But post-Trump victory, I’m questioning everything. On the plus side it has seen a flurry of great blogging. With news forced to normalise it, and fake news a testimony to our ability to drown in comfort rather than face truths, blogs are the place to turn to for informative comment often.
But on the downside, as David Kernohan points out, much of the grinding engine of paranoia and hatred is driven by these same tools and approaches. The ones I’ve happily championed for years. And more fundamentally I think we have to question the role of education, educational technology and educators now. As a blogger I don’t want to write about the new world, because there are others who have a better understanding of the socio-political threads coming together in this new fabric, and I don’t think I have anything new to say (apart from a long primal scream). But I can’t write about anything else. This post then really is just flagging up some blogistential angst. Damn Trump and his ilk, they’ve even contaminated this space.
While I figure this out for me, here’s a selection of some great posts:
Sherri Spelic – Incuriosity is a thing
Jesse Stommel – This paragraph was written before the world went to shit
Mike Caulfield – Fake news does better on Facebook than real news
Audrey Watters – Education Technology under Trump: A syllabus
Tressie McMillan Cottom – Digital redlining after Trump
Helen Beetham – Ed Tech and the circus of unreason
Lorna Campbell – The wrong side of history
And while we’re here, let’s have some National:
19 Comments
Steve Bamlett
Please don’t give up on us< Martin. We need you more than ever!!!!!!
admin
Thanks Steve. It wasn’t so much about giving up, more that I don’t know quote how to proceed.
sheilmcn
Similar thoughts as Steve – don’t let them contaminate your space. Your voice is needed and wanted by many.
admin
Thanks Sheila. I wasn’t planning on some Greta Garbo exit, just pondering how blogging relates to all this stuff. I think it came across bleaker than I intended
paigecuffe
Yes, we’re selfish, but not now Martin, not now. When Reason leaves, what remains?
admin
Cat pictures, we’ll always have cat pictures 🙂
Simon Thomson (@digisim)
Your space isn’t contaminated. Like the other spaces you mentioned it is a place to come, to breathe in the freshness and escape the contamination.
admin
Thanks Simon. I meant contaminated in that I can’t come here and not have to address their stuff. I don’t want to be a political blogger particularly (because I’m not very good at it), but it makes that of all of us.
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dkernohan
In. Against. Beyond.
admin
Underground. Overground. Wombling free. 🙂
CogDog
Like others here, on first reading your post it sounded like “I may be leaving blogging”. On a second reading, it came across is “I don’t now what to say about this ***** but saying that is saying something”, and then a third pass brought be back to the first interpretation.
This is not a plea to decipher. Leave it as a question.
But your highlight of David’s observation has me thinking that, while I keep in mind Audrey’s message that all technologies have an ideology, in this case, can we really blame the tools? The values humans use/exploit it for seem to make what we call “blogging” as being neutral on values.
This space (which at first I read as blogging as a whole, but then I read as being your space) may be contaminated; so when you find it, contaminate back. Make blogging grea— oh fudge it.
Appreciating the ambiguity (I mean that) cause its making me think.
admin
Yes that’s right Alan, it was more a confusion about where all this fits in, rather than a “I can’t go on” dramatic cry. Let’s pretend I meant to be ambiguous 🙂
Steve Bamlett
Phew! That’s a relief, Martin. But your point is a good one. There is nothing in this medium that is comfortably neutral and lots that has danger and peril in its purview.
Sometimes I have to take a break to stop me disturbing myself!
I haven’t yet identified my desire to tweet and blog as like that of the Trump!
Anyway, now I know you are staying, I can go to bed.
All the best
Steve
Steve Bamlett
Trump of Doom I meant. Another resurgence of apocalyptic imagery!
When I firstb typed that it was ‘Rump of Doom’ I blame Steve Bell!
macurcher
The thing is Martin, that you make me (and others) think and that is part of the point of being an educator isn’t it?
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Lorna Campbell
Not sure there’s anything I can add that hasn’t already been said above, other than that I do think it’s important that we all keep speaking up, even if our voices appear to be drowned out, we need to keep speaking because we need that multiplicity of voices.
Oh, and I’m always up for a bit of The National :}
admin
Thanks Lorna – am contemplating only blogging through the medium of National lyrics 🙂