This…

The implications of our online lives as been in my mind since I first sat in awe of my first online community, Electric Minds. Over the years I have seen great good, but even greater swaths of harm. I’ve never thought it was all about the technology. Nor have I experienced technology as some neutral platform upon which we act. Technology is NOT value neutral. And everything that is wrong cannot be blamed on technology. Today a piece by the brilliant danah boyd nailed it. (And read the whole thing. It is superb. It leaves us with the question, why aren’t we centering children in every aspect of our ecosystem. Tech is not the solution.)

view of Nancy's grandchildren from behind on a sunny spring day

The problem is not: “Technology causes harm.” The problem is: “We live in an unhealthy society where our most vulnerable populations are suffering because we don’t invest in resilience or build social safety nets.”

danah boyd

One more snippet…

By all means, go after big tech. Regulate advertising. Create data privacy laws. Hold tech accountable for its failure to be interoperable. But for the love of the next generation, don’t pretend that it’s going to help vulnerable youth. And when the problem is sociotechnical in nature, don’t expect corporations to be able to solve it.

danah boyd

I am a noodle

Here is one rescued from the draft archives when I was poking around today.

A great blog post by Keith Hamon exploring the idea of rhizomatic learning, but here is the quote that knocked my socks off when I drafted this post. A metaphor that stuck.

Think of a plate of spaghetti. Keith Hamon is one noodle strand intertwined and thoroughly embedded in the mass of noodles, and my sense of myself or your sense of me as a discrete entity totally depends upon where along the noodle strand you or I happen to be focusing and what other noodles intersect me there.

via Communications & Society: #change11 Defining the Rhizome.

Exploring Other Ways of Knowing

Last summer I was reading multiple books at the same time. (Well, you know, I don’t actually read them simultaneously!) Notably, two non fiction, which is not my common summer practice. Two standouts were Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and Everybody Come Alive by Marcie Alvis Walker. Serendipity in action. The writing of these two amazing women both brought, and continue to bring, me a deep, embodied sense of other ways of knowing. The ways different than the ones I use in my life, mostly without awareness. These books helped me to begin to notice the limitations of my own views and stances. And the importance of querying myself to understand where I’m coming from as a stepping stone to being open to others’.

This week another piece of writing, this time from Bayo Akomolafe came across my screen and this sense, this idea of our separateness and togetherness, of what we do or do not identify with and how we presume power over it or not jumped out again. He was asked to provide an alternative definition of nature than the Oxford English Dictionary and he wrote:

So, I offered this:

‘A theoretical, economic, political, and theological designation from the Enlightenment era that attempts to name the material world of trees, ecologies, animals, and general features and products of earth as separate from humans and human society, largely in a bid to position humans as masters over material forces, independent and capable of transforming the world for their exclusive ends.’ 

It’s as far as I could go without waxing poetic about nature as a colonial trope for biopolitical interventions. What felt important to say was that ‘nature’ is a performative, speculative gesture, a ritual of relations that rehearses a dissociation from the world. A subjectivizing force. A lounge in the terminal of the radioactive Human.

Now to notice how I am “performing…”

What are you doing with Hybrid events?

goofy old picture of Nancy
Old picture to connect with the fact that I last wrote about hybrid meetings in 2013!

Hey friends, at least the seven of you who still read here – wink wink. I’m working on some writing about doing Liberating Structures online and one section which needs inspiration is a short section on hybrid gatherings. I last wrote about hybrids in 2013 so it has been a while. I’d love any of your favorite pointers. THANKS IN ADVANCE!

UPDATE: Please read the fab comments from my friends below. There is actual useful insight but it is in the comments!!!

Happy Holiday Fudge – Reprise

In my childhood, my mother, Dolores Wright, got a fudge recipe from her friend Nadine Seedall. Nadine said it was the recipe from See’s Candy – then a small local chocolate company in California. It has been made year over year as a family tradition. Some years, multiple batches were made so packages and tins of fudge were given to EVERYONE. Now we make one batch – some to give, some to eat together. Today my grandpeople and I will make this year’s batch, passing the tradition down. The fourth generation in my lifetime so far…

Image of a dirty old recipe card of the fudge recipe. Link in article for the full recipe.
My copied over version of the famous fudge recipe

I’ve blogged the recipe multiple times (see here) and offer it as a sweet bit of gratitude to all of you. Happy Holidays!