In his great, yet now hardly known-of book, Deschooling Society, philosopher and social critic Ivan Illich suggests alternative means of acquiring knowledge. Inbedded in his critical discourse on education as practiced in “modern” economies, is his notion of “learning webs.”

His description of these webs was prophetic in many ways, relating to current uses and ideals of Wikipedia, Craigslist and of the Internet more generally. For example, Illich says, “The operation of a peer-matching network would be simple. The user would identify himself by name and address and describe the activity for which he sought a peer. A computer would send him back the names and addresses of all those who had inserted the same description. It is amazing that such a simple utility has never been used on abroad scale for publicly valued activity.”   

                             

 I bring this to your attention for this reason: In a time when many of us are concerned with the role of modern technology in our lives, hope remains. We can use such innovations for good. Illich, as an anarchist, was dedicated to decentralization and saw these webs as populist movements, escaping the centralized “bigness” surrounding us, whether it be education or business. Both are dehumanizing. And this very blog attests to the fact that modern technonlogy can be utilized as a tool for spreading information for the purposes of true education, something the public school system is deficient of. Just let us not fail to heed T.S. Eliot’s warning: “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge wehave lost in information?”

Hey peeps,

I’ve added a few links to the sidebar. Enjoy.

Local Harvest

Slow Food

On the Commons

http://www.colossiansthreesixteen.com/

 This guy’s blog seems wonderful, check it out.

I randomly found it while searching for calvin’s commentaries.

In addition to being a cool phrase, Obscure Sound is one of the coolest music blogs around.  High high quality mp3’s with nearly every post gives you the chance to sample the band in question, and they very much have their ear to the ground in a way that Pitchfork just doesn’t, anymore.  Easy to read, short posts, but very interesting!

 http://www.obscuresound.com

(They also have an MP3 of Sufjan’s Majesty Snowbird, if you search for it)

Hey, it’s due time for us to put up a series of approved links on the sidebar. You know, links to sites that we agree with ideologically. Sites like the one Amanda gave in the last post or sites on distributism, traditional conservativism, etc.

What say ye? I’m thinking it would be best to paste them into the comments sections of this post and I’ll add them to the sidebar.

I noticed that since the founding of this noble blog, there has been very little activity over at The Friars. This makes me sad. So I took it upon myself to post a new thread over there under the Politics section, regarding an issue I’d like to discuss. Just thought I’d let you all know.

I’ve added links to some of the blogs run by memebers of this blog. If you want me to add any more links, either to blogs or web sites, let me know.

Hey folks.

I’ve had a few complaints about this blog turning into “another college political rant.” I won’t argue the validity of such statements but I do think it would be a good time to reinstate my (our) vision statement for this blog and recommend a few general rules for us to follow.

First, the vision. I see this blog as Primarily a place for friends and relatives to post updates, pictures of babies and homes, and stories about life and love. Secondarily I see this forum as a place to post philosophical/political/theological ramblings, NOT to prod fellow friends into debate, but as a way to share with all the intellectual journeys we are taking. I hope we all are mature enough not to be offended by the difference between us but instead see it as an opportunity to better ourselves intellectually.

Now, given this vision, let me recommend three general rules/recommendations on posting:
1) Don’t post leading statements with the purpose of spurring debate. Debate is fine and leading statements are fine too – just not here. I have created a Forum for this purpose and it does it’s job quite well. Use it. http://thefriars.net/phpBB/
2) Limit the number of short posts that simply offer links to other blogs or short quotes by someone you’re reading. Again, use the Forum for this. The reason I want to limit these posts is because they tend to clog up the blog. We want the highest number of posts to be about personal happenings/etc.
3) Categorize all posts. Let’s not make people browse through 20 unrelated posts to find the one they are looking for. Use the categories (you can create new ones if needed).

Sound good?

One other thought.
This is OUR blog not MY blog. As far as possible I want this be democratic. If you feel these rules are good/bad or could be better let us know. Comment below.

Folks,
For the present I’ve come up with a way to have a special place for you to have a little blurb about yourself.
Notice my post directly below this one. It’s a normal post. What’s special about it is that I’ve copied the link to that individual post (click on the title to get the individual post page) to the “website” field in my “contact” area of my user option in Dashboard. That way, when you click on my name in the sidebar it takes you to my “About” page.
Nice, huh? Now I can edit my post to include whatever I want on it. And you can do the same! Have fun.
If you have a question, just ask.

Ok, here’s your step by step guide.

1) Find you picture, open it in Paint (for all you non-mac users)

2) MAKE THE PICTURE SMALLER. Don’t be a jerk and upload mega large pictures that eat up all the bandwidth. Thanks. To shrink the picture simply go to Image–>Stretch/Skew. Type in a percentage to shrink it by both vertically and horizontally.

3) Once you have the picture about the size you want it (SMALL), save it to your desktop or wherever and exit Paint.

4) Browse to the blog, log in, and head over to the “Write” tab.

5) Look below the section where you write the post to the section with the tabs “Upload”, “Browse”, and “Browse All”.  Click on the ”Upload” tab and then click the “Browse…” button. Find your picture and click “Open”

6) Ok, now your picture is on the server. You should be able to drag it from the box below the Post section into the post section.

7) Select the image. Click on the little green tree or hit Alt-m. Change the Alignment tab to Right, Left, or whatever you want.

That should be it. Good luck! 

Ok peeps. This is all pretty easy. To post, simply scroll down to the “Meta” section on the sidebar and click on “Site Admin.” Once you log in you’ll find yourself in the “Dashboard.” Simply click on the “Write” tab to start writing your post. If you don’t finish on time simply hit the “Save” button and you will save your post as a draft. You can then publish it later. You should be able to upload pictures directly from there into your posts. We have limited space so eventually we may need to start using Flikr or some other photo hosting service. If that day should come, we’ll work through the process at that time.

 Have Fun

The above picture is stock for this theme. However, I browsed around and found these pictures with which we could replace it. We’ve all been voting a lot lately, and, why stop now!? Let me know which picture you like the most.