Traversing the Online/Offline Gap

Today I am finalizing my presentation, my final project for the CMC11 MOOC.

Until just now it was called "Bridging the Online/Offline Gap." I had already eschewed the tired old phrase "the Digital Divide," and it just hit me ... I am not talking about bridging. I also eschew "Bridging"!

Here are the notes I just made for myself. If you watch my preso you will hear me talk about this. If you don't, I'm sharing my notes here as food for thought. MOOC for thought...

"Digital divide" calls to my mind a thin line that we can step over ... and for the past 15 years or so the phrase has been used by those who believe that simply by putting computers in schools we will erase that line.

The online/offline gap is bigger. It is multi-dimensional. It is not only about economic status. It is generated within the differences in culture, geographic location, language, age bracket, literacy, resource availability, and, yes, economic status. It is generated between what is happening in community rooms, church basements, barber shops, nail salons, youth drop-in centers, and the buzz on social networks and virtual collaboration spaces. It happens in the space between the Amazonian medicine man and a nurse living in Canton, Ohio. It exists in the empty space between an Aboriginal father teaching his son their tribe's portion of the Songlines, and downloading the latest mp3.

The "digital divide," to me, reeks of "first-world" superiority -- those poor folks who are not connected need to learn from us and need to receive computers from us and then we can bestow (impose?) our information upon them.

The "online/offline gap" speaks to the veritable chasm between worlds within our world. As things stand now, I believe both sides are losing. The "gap" speaks to the wisdom that could be lost by not directly hearing the voices of offline communities. For "the connected" to document those voices and then post online is not the same as hearing those voices and engaging in exchange with those communities.

"Bridging the digital divide" has been used to impart the sprouting of a lifeline from those of us who consider ourselves Privileged to those whom we consider "underprivileged". It implies value in making everyone more the same.

"Traversing the Online/Offline Gap" implies a continuous two-way journey between different realms, with communities and people on both sides each having unique value. it is about honoring and understanding and celebrating our differences as much as it is about recognizing our shared humanity.

For my final project I am inviting you to explore how we might make that journey real, how we might establish a web of connections that traverses the gap. Until we do so, if we believe we have established an "Open" platform and are communicating "globally," we are deluding ourselves. We are missing out. We are qualifying what is important based on whether it can happen on the Internet. So, how do we traverse the online/offline gap? After spending time observing face-to-face exchange, reading and watching others' ideas about in-person meetings and activities versus online interaction, after looking at existing and unfurling modalities for human exchange that hint at the kind of gap-traversing I want to see flourishing on the planet, after stuffing it all in the corners of my mind to percolate for a while, and after somehow making it through CMC11 with my sanity intact, I propose that the key will not be "getting everyone online" but, rather, will lie in the hands of Online/Offline Ambassadors.

If you are in the CMC11 MOOC please tune in for this evening's presentation. If you are not, at some point soon after I finish this semester at Empire State College, should I survive, I will be uploading a narrated slideshow and will come back here to post the link. 

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