The refrain from a teacher who often critiques kids “playing” on their laptops instead of “learning” with them….”I am a Luddite”…. This in turn prompted my response that

A. The Luddites knew their machines better than most and

 B ( A Question….) were the Luddites fighting machines or autocracy and the subversion of the commons–the factory?

These interactions with academicians occasionally wield deliberative dialogue that I feel is vital in the worlds of education today and hinge on questions, the most important of which may be.

Do the machines of today and the internet have a massive potential for enabling human self determination?

 Undoubtably we must seek to understand machines well….so we can also understand the stupefacient uses that hold court in so many networked environments today.

Networked Learning holds a potential for the human to be engaged in a ubiquitous free and wild relationship with other humans and themselves.  To do so wwe must act to enable networked (digital and face to face) learning ecologies that promote freedom, conviviality and mutual aid while also questioning our use of machines with deep and active awareness.  For when machines enable the erosion of our free convivial and mutual lifeways we to must raise ourselves into a new-Luddite movement for change.

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