A couple of years ago, a group of students at McGill University decided to form an independent class on a topic that wasn’t being offered by the school. They built the curriculum collaboratively and taught each other without the help of teachers. There were no grades, no credits, and the course was never officially recognized by the university. The students were simply exploring a subject that they felt was relevant to their understanding of the world. Within a semester more indie classes were already popping up on campus.
While the web must have made it easier for the students to collaborate, these indie classes weren’t the product of a new technology as much as a new mindset. Indie classes grew out of a shared ‘realization that the world is ours to take apart and reassemble.’
There was nothing stopping us ten years earlier from doing the exact same thing and starting our own indie classes … except that going to school in the mid 90’s you didn’t have the sense that the world was so malleable or open to suggestion. As a kid, the phone in your house was hardwired to the wall and plastered with an intimidating sticker that said it was a crime for anyone but author-ized technicians to open it up and look inside. No joke.
Fast forward only a couple of decades and an entire generation is growing up with a radically new understanding of their world.
The peaks of author-ity are dissolving under the logic of the net. And all the rigid structures that have shaped the adult world for centuries, no longer seem like unmovable walls but pieces that can be picked up, moved around, and modified at will.
It’s only stretching things a bit to say that if a ubiquitous device like the iPad is a closed box it threatens the openness of our entire view of the world.
That said, you can bet your ass I’m still buying an iPad.
