The Social Life of Information

I just finished John Seeley Brown & Paul Duguid's 2000 book The Social Life of Information over the weekend... (I know I should have read it 10 years ago...). It is interesting to read "future looking" books 10 years too late, however, as you have the advantage of 20-20 hindsight. (Try it with an Alvin Toffler book... read any of his books and it is scary how accurate his predictions were!)

Th most interesting chapter to me was their last on on education. Although the focus was on higher education and they recommended caution when approaching for profit distance education higher education (and the news of the last year suggests they were right), I did leave the chapter with the conclusion that we who work in brick-and-mortar schools whose students actually come in the classroom and sit in the chairs and whose school and technology leaders have seen fit to create reliable and robust information technology infrastructure and engaging curriculum really can have our cake and eat it to.

We can build community and enjoy the benefits of safe, reliable, and easy informal interaction between and among students and adults, and we can access ICT-based information and interaction to expand our classrooms and to manage those redundant tasks.