Spirit desire.
– “Teenage Riot,” Daydream Nation
Last week we christened yet another host node server at Reclaim Hosting (Fugazi filled up quick!), this one was named after NYC’s indie rock pioneers Sonic Youth. It was interesting timing because the first school we got setup was NYU—their Library will be running a pilot web hosting service for their community through Reclaim. Last week was also when Audrey Watters released the aspirational Kraken that was her post on Indie Ed-Tech. It’s a brilliant follow-up on her year-end post about the Indie Web in 2014. I read the post several times while listening to Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation (I recommend the experience), and what struck me is the strong, brilliant chorus of aspiration—a desire to challenge what’s peddled in the pedant realm of the possible, a bending of the very genre of what ed-tech is, was, and can be. And no one sees that spirit of desire more clearly; articulates what we can’t hear more soundly; or sings the story of our field better. #NOBODY!!!
…indie ed-tech underscores the importance of students and scholars alike controlling their intellectual labor and their data; it questions the need for VC-funded, proprietary tools that silo and exploit users; it challenges the centrality of the LMS in all ed-tech discussions and the notion that there can be one massive (expensive) school-wide system to rule them all; it encourages new forms of open, networked learning that go beyond the syllabus, beyond the campus. It’s not only a different sort of infrastructure, it’s a different sort of philosophy than one sees promoted by Silicon Valley – by the ed-tech industry or the (ed-)tech press.
We may fall, but not without giving those bastards everything we got!!!
It’s an anthem in a vacuum on a hyperstation
Daydreaming days in a daydream nation