[7] Online Education by Kerry Miller astingsh@ksu.edu In Computer Underground Digest, 6 March 96, Mike Godwin wrote, "Telephones work best as one-to-one media. And there's no greater proof of this than to try to participate in a conference call. Conference calls are attempts to use telephones as many-to-many media and they're always exasperating. For even longer, we've had one-to-many media, from one central source to large audiences. These include the newspaper, a couple of centuries-old technology, movies, broadcasting." He might have added that Education, as the charge to the paradigmatic schoolmaster or mistress at the blackboard to bring her students to the light (even as they sit in ordered rows of desks) has been known, is an example of misplaced one-to- many techniques, trying to simulate what used to be the one-to-one relationship of guru and chela. Historically, natural limitations on human capacities made a messenger or mediator necessary for any broader interaction with the world than one's own immediate experience. By the same token, they also provided channels for power. Against hearsay, it was the *king's* messenger; against royal dictum, it was the clerical scribe copying books one at a time. Against the church, it was movable type; against the press tycoons, "mass media" broadcasting. And now we have an Internet, and once again the powers that be are feeling threatened, as Mike Godwin goes on to elaborate. Not accidentally, the historical use of power has been to maintain the status quo ante, to keep power in the hands of those who had it to start with. Thus, although each technological advance at first seemed to be a liberating development, later it was subordinated, becoming a controlled and controlling part of ever more extensive "administrative services." Under the layers of mediated interaction, personal experience had become almost an irrelevancy. Competence in one's field of endeavor gave way to "competitiveness," while the vocabulary of "communication" itself lost almost all connection to community. And education, once the collective cultivation of new citizens, became entrenched in the overarching power structure; institutionalized into a hierarchical series of as sessments, certificates, and qualifications to the point that the word no longer refers primarily to a subjective process of learning but to the objective process of instruction by "educators." (I argue only against the exclusivity of this descriptor; not against anyone presently using it God knows, they're trying.) "The Net," Godwin points out, "has changed all this. It is the first many-to-many medium. It is the first medium that combines all the powers to reach a large audience that you see in broadcasting and newspapers with all the intimacy and multi-directional flow of information that you see in telephone calls. It is both intimate and powerful." Access to online books and to governmental acts is certainly part of the Net advantage, but access to each other is the revolution. No longer students (or teachers) defined by our obedience to the regime, we are suddenly displaced people struggling to make a community from scratch. As we discover that it's not easy to be Netizens, we also realize that together, collectively, we can learn, and that learning to be is what community is all about. We are all educators. In Netspace, we all carry the charge. Simply put, institutionalization preserves only the form not the spirit of a society. Whether cast as the King's law or the Church's Bull, static structures do not work for consciousness. Thus, Michael Hauben writes in The Netizens and the Wonderful World of the Net, ch. 16, "Both the printing revolution and the Net revolution have been a catalyst for increased intellectual activity. Such activity tends to provide pressure for more democracy. When people have the chance and the means to start thinking, ideas of self-rule appear. This increased accessibility of people to each other means we can all gain and learn from the interests and knowledge of others, more so than from any single teacher." (www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/) Suddenly democracy means more than pretending that a delegate to the power structure represents one's interest. It means each of us must take the responsibility of understanding what our interests actually are, and learning to locate it in the panoply of interests of all of us, to value it not absolutely but relatively, to give it quality. This never-ending process is what education should be, but our antecedent schooling has sadly ill-prepared us for the exercise. More sadly still, laws like the Communications Decency Act (passed for the purpose of protecting the public from the risk of Net access, but reflecting the awareness that our learning to qualify ourselves constitutes a *structural* threat) reinforce the idea that access is not to be thought of as a right, but as a privilege, to be administered (surprise, surprise) by authorized, certified, credentialed and "qualified" establishmentarians. The Haubens continue, "Netizens are not just anyone who comes online, and they are especially not people who come online for isolated gain or profit. They are not people who come to the Net thinking it is a service. Rather they are people who understand it takes effort and action on each and everyone's part to make the Net a regenerative and vibrant community and resource. Netizens are people who decide to devote time and effort into making the Net, this new part of our world, a better place." Currently, a "blue ribbon campaign" protests against the infringement of free expression which the CDA represents. ASCII Lambda Cy is the next step: an honorary association of Netizens who believe that communication is something more than expression. Leaving the metaphors of "coming of age" or "growing up," for the perverted and/or censorious, the viability or vibrancy of a community whether in cyberspace or on the ground lies in its ability to transcend itself; that is, to learn from its gurus, to teach its newbies *and vice versa*. In this belief, ALCy collectively advances the public's right not only to do its thing, but to do better; not only to open its eyes, but to have something of quality to look at. An Oath for Online Educators I vow to involve /\ myself only in projects which, through \ \ conscientious exercise, I believe contribute \ \ / to the continuing education of \ \ / / all beings in peace, dignity and self- / \/ \/ /\ fulfillment. I vow to work through / / / / my communication to reduce noise, \/ /\ /\ / stress or invasion of privacy of any / / \ \ individual, minimise pollution of the / \ \ earth, air and water, and avoid destruc- \ \ tion of the natural beat and beauty \/ of the noosphere. Ascii Lambda Cy (Text after M W Thring, "The Engineers Conscience"; best viewed when using mono-spaced type.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Reprinted from the Amateur Computerist Vol 7 no 2 Winter 1997 available free via email from jrh@umcc.umich.edu and http://www.umcc.umich.edu/~jrh/acn -----------------------------------------------------------------------