Technology Talk about more Learning

Talk of technology quickly turns into talk of power. Who has it (power)? By what means did they attain it? By what means do they hold it? What are they attempting to do with it?
Technology embodies ideologies, and the choices made by its designers influence what its users will be able to do (or not do).
Learning management systems (LMS) - in contrast with personal learning environments / webs / networks - enable certain approaches to learning while discouraging others. An LMS also supports and fosters a certain relationship between the educator and the learner.
The ability to open or close a discussion forum or to grant and deny course access is fundamentally imbued with power. It is little surprise, therefore, that governance and public engagement are influenced by technology.
Open tools will produce open conversations and open thinking.
Public Engagement. Public Empowerment addresses the relationship between tools / technology, ideology / governance, and power:
Direct engagement in politics has been the purview of an educated and powerful few until recent times. Indeed, the role of the politician, and the executive that serves him or her has largely been to tell us, the sheep-like masses, what is good for us and to expect us to blithely follow along.
We change our minds only in the face of corruption and excess, and exercise our democratic rights to switch to a lesser evil at times of election. But oh, my! How the world has changed.
…In a hyperconnected world, our ability to readopt these denser forms of association, made sustainable by tools such as social networks, become reality.
We become the true global village, as much the neighbor to the bloke next door as some geographically remote but by association, close, neighbor with whom we share an interest.
The article occasionally moves into the Land of Happy Hype, but the central message of increased engagement in civic discourse enabled by participatory technologies is important to share.