The American playwright and Pulitzer Prize winner, William Inge, once wrote, “Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.”
When it comes to the digital world, there is much that is, “the spirit of the age.” As a student of digital culture, I recognize the fact that I am often studying digital sand castles. Each technology and educational trend will soon be washed away, assimilated into, or used as a foundational idea for the next. Or maybe another metaphor works better. It is like I am a student of digital clouds. The clouds come and go, take new shapes each day, and sometimes disappear in what seems like minutes or hours. So it is with the digital world. At times, I’ve become caught up with this study of digital clouds so much that, upon remembering the fluid nature of it, I fall into small moments of despair. What is the point? All of this is fleeting? Cloud shapes are nice, but there comes a time when we crave something solid, something stable.
Solid and stable ideas are not popular today. Sand castle and cloud metaphors for truth, life, reality, and the digital world are much more in vogue. However, the more I look at the digital world and each time I reach those tiny moments of despair, I find comfort in discovering that not all in the digital world is shifting sands or clouds. People are at the heart of digital culture. Studying people in the digital world often leads to revisiting the fundamental truths and yearnings of humanity.
1) Humans are social creatures. From our beginnings, it was evident that it was not good for us to be alone.
2) Humans are constantly seeking new ways to connect with others…and at the same time seeking new ways for self-autonomy.
3) We are drawn to things that give us pleasure and avoid that which is painful…and yet there are other things at play in the human experience that sometimes leads us to disregard reject the pleasure/pain principle.
4) We yearn for unfailing love an acceptance.
5) We are continually seeking to build the next Tower of Babel. And when we manage to do so, it very often amplifies the worst in us.
6) We seem to be born with a craving for something that will last forever.
7) As a general rule, we are drawn to things that are similar to us, and we create personal worlds that reinforce our existing beliefs and ideas about the world.
There are many others that we can list, items that some would consider both positive and negative. But as I think about the digital world, these are the types of truths that I find myself rediscovering and revisiting. It is not as much about technology or digital environments as it is about digital spaces full of people with yearnings and traits that go far beyond the spirit of the age. I suggest that this is an important perspective for the educator and educational technologist of this age. When educators ignore this, and marry the spirit of the age, education becomes a lever for pedaling the next technology or product. We turn our schools into advertising agencies; “educational research” becomes synonymous with market research; and lesson or courses become commercials for programs, products, fads, and fashions.
We study, live in, prepare for, educate amid, and seek to serve as active citizens in the digital world; but we do so aware that much may wash away with the next tide. And so we ground our thoughts and ideas on those truths which stands firm across high and low tides…truths about humanity, the world, and (if you are able to tolerate such a notion in this day and age) divine reality.
