"The web itself should be independent of the social... the first order, it should be not an institution but a completely blank piece of paper, a medium upon which society can do what it needs to do and what it wants to do." TBL
this is a normative claim not a factual claim.
From a research or scholarly point of view nothing is lost by seperating the technology from what human behavior is conducted using the technology. In some respects TBL is saying that the Internet is a blackboard on which great things are created. It is our job as scholars to bring illumination to how it is used.
This would be a false claim, as it universalizes one somewhat rarely accepted viewpoint. From a scholarly point of view, indeed from most scholarly points of view, many things are lost by claiming separation between technics and civilization. In fact, what is lost upon separation is most of the explanatory power...
It is unnecessary to disparage the contribution of TBL past or present to express disagreement. Whatever his motive and whenever it occured TBL has more stature than the bulk of us and comments below do not show collegiality and cross-disciplinarity to the world community.
i think you will find that appeal to expertise is a common rhetorical strategy and the way you actually use it above might even be called a common fallacy.
I remind you all that Elijah has a habit of calling people names and discrediting them. Do the rules and the interests of us all not apply to flaming someone who is not a part of this body.
Personally, i did not see him flame you, but I am beginning to suspect that you might be someone acting under a pseudonym, which is clearly against the list rules. Do you have a vita or other way of verifying your identity that you could share? What I did see him do was call to task MIT's perpetual claim to being the first, which seems to be part of their marketing regime... Take someone else's major idea that has been happening for many years, then claim you are doing something new... They tend to do this, many people realize it and it should always be questioned and critiqued as it perpetuates their own internal mythos and implicitly devalues the work of groups outside of MIT who actually originate the work they later claim. For instance, who else remembers UCLA's courseware project?
In my opinion TBL has it right. He should know because he single handed gave us a gift of the world we are supposed to be researching
That is a false statement, please learn the history of the web, it was created by several teams of people, of which TBL was a significant figure in one. (well, your opinion is your opinion, the rest is false)
have a nice day Jeremy Hunsinger School of Library and Information Science Pratt Institute () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.aoir.org The Association of Internet Researchers http://www.stswiki.org/ stswiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ LI-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series