“Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.” – Edsger Dijkstra

When I began this (Borderland) project about 9 months ago I had no idea what I was doing. Since then I’ve learned about some exciting new internet authoring technologies. And so, like a person sending out postcards from an exotic vacation, I wrote about that. But it’s time to move on. I revised my About Borderland page. I think that I’ve crossed the chasm and that my interests lie more with the pragmatists than the visionaries. Yesterday I found this statement:

When it’s 30, I expect it to be much more stable, something that people don’t talk about. Really when you talk about an article, you don’t say, “Oh, I’m going to write an article on paper!” The fact that we use pen and paper is sort of rather understood.–Berners-Lee on the read/write web

And I thought, “That’s right!” The cutting edge people are already doing a fine job of envisioning the revolution, but without a methodology that is geared for transformative change, people are going to only do the same old things with different tools. There has to be a deeper rethinking of education as a social process before socially enabled software is going to make much difference.

I want to explore the possibilities and practical limits of constructivist methodologies, the contradictions between what people want and what they ask for, the power of personal knowledge, and the notion of lifelong learning as a public policy agenda item. This all has relevance to technology, but also to culture, psychology, history, philosophy, sociology, linguistics, politics and I’m not sure what else. And because I can’t separate who I am from what what I’m doing, I’m going to talk about what I know best - my own experience.