Michael Wesch was the keynote at our TLT Symposium and he was truly a wonderful participant. Humble and quietly brilliant, his talk resonated with the entire audience in ways I hadn’t seen previously. His new video above doesn’t share the same pace as his previous work, but it demands attention none the less. What is interesting to me is that he didn’t push the video’s message as an agenda item last year, but it was clear it was in him. What I wonder is how long has he been thinking about creating this new narrative?
I’ve seen a number of Wesch’s presentations – in person and online. I’ve seen bits and pieces of all of this video over the last several years in his general discussion of education.
When you mentioned “creating this new narrative,” I thought the video might address the need for a new narrative within education – a new driving purpose for education within our culture. Wesch spoke about that at ELI 08 (I believe it was that year). As he described it then, there’s always been a cultural need for educational improvements and achievements: industrialization to the space race to … Now, however, education is floundering without a specific purpose. If I remember correctly, Wesch suggested a more global narrative focused on conservation and preservation of resources; the term “spaceship earth” comes to mind for some reason. Seems like the discussion leaned toward a notion of deep ecology though my memory’s a bit fuzzy.
-cmd