No6

ICT has got many advantages - that's a cliche. To say that the University is a union of people is also a cliche. The question is what is the relation between those two statements?

In the XXI Century we will, like it or not, rely more and more on technology. We will e-learn, e-work, e-meet, e-love, e-desire, e-fuck (e-provoke).

Let's get back in time to the year 1968 for a sec - Imagine the crowd of students demonstrating on the streets of Paris. Listen to what they shout, see the way they hug, hold their hands, sing, walk, fight the police. Revolution.

Now imagine them in the year 2010 - joining a protest group on facebook. Period.

You may say that they can meet in the real world. You may say that they may influence the authorities by signing an e-petition. But does it have the same meaning?

For me the Univeristy is not only a virtual union of people but also the place, the space of the buildings and parks around the university grounds that allows them to unite. The university is the place where I can listen to the students talks when I pass them by, a place where we meet in front of the coffe machine and a place where we (how ancient of me) ask each other to barrow a lighter in the smoking area.


Can one expect a revolution that can be 'shut down' from our eyes with few clicks to be more than superficial? It's way harder to turn your eyes away from the bricks. Still.


Not to be to bombastic let me finish with an example (not from the University but from the High School).

Being rebelious, resistant, nonnormative is essential for me in case of making the world a nicer place to live in.
Can you imagine this scene to happen online? It's the last episode of 1st season of the tv-series Popular. The story is that the teacher sends photos of one of the classes to all the places that they could go to during the "skip day" (last day of school) and informs the police of their planns. So as the only group they have to stay at school. Why they start to sing is yet another story...