Collaborative

This article seems a bit off the mark to me. Yes, the Internet facilitates Collaborative Creation but one doesn't mean or need the other

This idea of collaboration vs individualism seems to me to have very little to do with tradition and new age or text vs digital. "Outside of the realm of academia, social networking is providing the glue to hold Creative Collaboration Process together." I don't agree. First of, this tug of war between the creative process being an individualistic (selfish) endeavour (pursuit) and it being a collaborative effort is been around since probably the birth of the printing press, the early ages of sculpture, paintings...The artist or the creator most often sees him/herself as one against the world-whether it be the primitive or the digital world. So naturally, it makes logical and emotional sense to me, that the creator will be reluctant to collaborating on or embracing someone else's opinion on/when producing anything they feel a strong sense fo entitlement to.

Second, "Social Networking" is, looking at the big ones like Myspace, Facebook, Twitter are another way for people of creating a 'false' sense of purpose and existence for themselves. The fact that one needs to create a profile, upload their pics, vids and music before joining any of these sites is problematic to me. The "Conversation" that "As the World Wide Web increases, so does the "Conversation" suggests is completely absent from all of the sites mentioned above. I think if anything, these sites and these social networkings are furthering and inflating the individualistic mentality-"me, me, me, me...." The internet allows many people to feel more self-important, to feel like the world really cares about your new pair of shoes or your ailing cat. These social sites are mostly Celebrity Magazines in html code and with our faces as celebrities always with a third "I" staring back at us and gossiping (not commenting)

So, what to make of all these questions: "Where are we collaborating?" The 'collegewriting.us', 'writingwiki.org', 'teachingwiki.org' and others will most likely only be visited by and received contribution from people in a same specific circle or with shared interests. Meaning the example, that the article gave of teachers in the past only being able to share ideas on lesson plans and teaching methods in the hallway before the boom of the internet hasn't really changed that much. For instance, Aris (I hope this is the right spelling), a site controlled by the D.O.E and open to teachers, parents and administrators to share ideas, make suggestions...is only visited by parents, teachers, administrators just as if they were all in a meeting or conference room.

Then the article concludes with "We want to balance the emphasis on winning and individual effort..." which I agree with and am for. But I just don't understand the digital world being in any shape and form a facilitator for this "balance".