Dadamac, Gurstein's Community Informatics on Glocality - and Fola in Ago-Are September 4, 2012
Thanks for this analysis Mike. I'm looking forward to reading the articles. As you know I'm outside of established academia, doing practical things, but with a strong interest in threading together theory and practice. I find that CI is a "comfortable academic home" for me. Your concerns and language always make sense to me regarding the practical work that I do.
You mention "conceptualizations in the age and context of the Internet". I hope there will be more discussion on that. I'm continually finding stumbling blocks where "Internet age reality" has moved ahead of existing shared vocabulary. Given the inter-relatedness of language and thought, this is a communication block which can lead to all kinds of confusion. (BTW I have now stopped thinking of myself as "outside established academia". Instead I think I'm "inside alternative academia". I won't define "alternative academia" now, but mention it because it ties in with your first paragraph and "the continuing desire to retain the traditional categories of the pre-Internet age". )
What you say about glocal ties in strongly with my reality in Dadamac. Our network/community includes people from different countries and continents, most of whom are actively involved in local projects. We routinely "rub minds" online, and have been doing this for years, sharing our knowledge with each other, and doing so with an awareness of the wider global context.
It is hard to explain ourselves to "outsiders". There is "an entity" which is Dadamac, which is constantly evolving. Compared with traditional organisations we are tiny. Regarding the number of people involved our "community" is too fluid to say where it starts and ends. Measured in financial terms we are too small to register. and yet our knowledge-wealth and "other-value capital" is tremendous. To say we are "International" or "transnational" suggests an organisational scale and structure that is definitely "not us". To say we are "local" is equally inappropriate and incomplete. We are locally informed and active, but globally aware. We connect across many cultural boundaries and are scattered widely across the globe. The term glocal has very real meaning to us.
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By the way - a practical Dadamac example happened as I was about to press "send" for this post. My google chat box opened up. It was Fola from Ago-Are with six students. He was glad to find me online as he wanted to demonstrate Skype to them. We tried and I was able to hear one "hello" - but the bandwidth failed us for anything more.
He explained that he is also teaching them about blogging (something he learned back in 2008 on the "Independent Learners" course that I ran at Fantsuam). Back then we used Blogger. I told him I now prefer Posterous - so he's checking that out with his students.
This is what Dadamac usually means by online learning - just sharing knowledge - not enrolling on set courses.