HORIZONS ...

In the 'Horizon Report 2009' http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2009/chapters/trends/ we can read that because companies like Apple has opened for third party development to their mobile technology 'educational content grow at a fantastic pace' and further that 'Collective intelligence may give rise to multiple answers, all equally correct, to problems. The notions of collective intelligence and mass amateurization are redefining scholarship as we grapple with issues of top-down control and grassroots scholarship. Today’s learners want to be active participants in the learning process – not mere listeners; they have a need to control their environments, and they are used to easy access to the staggering amount of content and knowledge available at their fingertips'

In chapter 7 of 'Angles fear' Gregory Bateson claims that rule-following in acts of knowing mainly serves the purpose of protect the fragile boundaries and make people able to tell the difference - between the sacred and the profane, the aethetic and the coveted, the intentional and the unconscious, and between thinking and feeling. These boundaries, the tacit rules, are continually under pressure, Bateson claims, and gives examples of what he sees as violatio.

To me, claiming that finding content on a webpage by a mobile device and discussing it with friends in a coffeeshop should give rise to 'collective intelligence' is a violation of the notion of knowledge. I want, once again, to return the wisdom of the Little Prins in Saint Exupery's novel: 'It is the time you waste on your rose that makes it so precious'. There is no way a round it: the high road to knowledge is hard work: blood, sweat and tears - it is experience that counts: always mobile, seldom intelligent, travelling from the collective realm to the personal ditto, and then back for verification.

Paul Ricoeuer said it so clearly in 'Time and Narrative': SPACE OF EXPERIENCE, HORIZON OF EXPECTATION or think of the WABI SABI aesthetics - thanks Jo, for the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00j8bkc