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Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Debate Summary:
Lake's Last Word.
Lake's Last Word.
It's
all in the mind and fingers... The future awaits.
I GET THE LAST WORD. My opponent and I have decided to finish the debate at the risk of running around in circles. Who won? Hope had its supporters, but Despair generally seemed to rule the comment threads. We undertook this debate in order to get all of you, my fellow commenters, reading and discussing again with passion (on a post that wasn't about a sci-fi movie). It worked, though a few of you still sabotage every comment thread you enter. I'm looking at you, Helk.
I would count my own performance as a loss in the present, but
with the potential for a future win when we see what actually happens.
My opponent wasted no time pointing out how dire our current situation
is and how hopeless the future appears in the hands of the next two
generations. I responded with pie-eyed optimism about the transforming
power of technology to redeem the Gamma generation. Many of you rightly
saw that neither of us completely held the points of view we argued.
As a teacher, there are many days when I come home with a deep
despair for my students and their prospects, and I work at a very good
school. I was glad to hear from some fellow educators in the comments,
even though you were prone to despair as well. I have to ask you the
question that I ask myself on a fairly regular basis: Why do we keep
doing this? The answer, of course, is hope. Deep down, we hope that
we'll get through to just a handful of promising students a year, and
this drives us forward and keeps us motivated to continue bringing our
best. But I'm not consumed by hope, not every day. I live and work at a
real school, and the situations I face make me frequently question the
future of these children.
My opponent, Robert, is not consumed by despair either. How could
the man who first dreamed of the fire on South Street despair forever?
Something from nothing: a fiction and a dream, Dirty Rotten Varmint,
until someone makes it real against all the odds. Robert is convinced
that another term of Obama will be the final nail in the coffin, a
point of no return for the country. He's been arguing this for years,
and the mission of the site has become the defeat of the incumbent. I'm
going to fight like hell here in enemy territory (New England) to
ensure that Obama loses, but you know what? Even if Obama is reelected,
I think there's hope for the future. The youth are not turning out like
they did for Obama the first time. Four years revealed to them just
what a poor President he's been, and I most often see dismay and anger
toward him in even the most liberal online communities. I don't think
he's going to win, but as Robert points out, things don't really get
started until the conventions.
Beyond this summary, I wanted to expound briefly on my expectation
of the internet's role in a hopeful future. On its own, the internet
provides no hope whatsoever, and it can even march us to an even
quicker despair. As pointed out by Robert on this site, much of the
internet is poorly written bulletin board postings, masturbatory memes,
and outlets for narcissists. Facebook and Twitter, Reddit and World
Star Hip Hop, YouTube and the blogosphere: all allow the worst of our
society to spray the lowest and meanest words and images onto a
world-sized stage. But even the Punks were making music before fire
came to South Street. I think it's a step in the right direction that
people are competing to produce music, art, humor, movies, and stories
online, rather than just sitting back and consuming television. It is
in this potential to share with a wide audience and therefore to
motivate new creation in internet users that I find some degree of hope.
In the debate, Robert mentioned Gammas 'stumbling upon' the keys
to learning, thought, and knowledge. As most of you know, there is in
fact a site called StumbleUpon.com,
a site that many of my current students are hooked on. At its worst, it
is no better than channel surfing -- 10 million channels with nothing
on -- but it can serve to stoke curiosity and exploration, to dive
deeper and learn more. It unfortunately plays to the ADD-like need for
instant gratification that is so rampant among them, but again, it
gives me some measure of hope.
The hope for the future is not in the internet, it is in the
people. I spoke of another generational rebellion against the current
state of being, and I hope that I can be part of its trigger. I have a
vision of students who want to learn more, to write better, to *think*
just to spite their progenitors. It will take much discomfort to
provoke this, and we're not there yet. But we may be soon, and I want
to be there to convince them that there is hope.
What about you, the commenters who despair? Are you really so
uncreative that you can't think of a scenario where the tide turns and
things get better? Don't go back into your holes. The debate got us all
talking again, let's see where this takes us.
