Definitely, the most sensible thing i have seen in a long time….

When it comes to who owns learning, I am probably to the left of Stephen (!). What one learns belongs to the individual wherever she is located, be it school, corporations, or home. It’s all life. I have not heard anyone advocating that corporations own personal learning.

As for the characterization of business, let me say that I just returned from a conference focused on business and technology. The presenters talked of how web 2.0 can help businesses share information, be more transparent, and encourage innovative thinking. Smart businesses are shedding industrial-age models as fast as they can. A number of us are working to accelerate corporate transition from the industrial age to the network age.

It’s easy to criticize corporations, and often the criticism is justified. It’s also easy to criticize schools; ask any parent. When corporations decry schools for not knowing what’s going on, and schools pillory corporations as robber barons, nobody wins. It’s no longer a zero-sum world. I’m in favor of institutions that challenge their participants to lead more fulfilling lives.

Corporations aren’t THE BAD GUYS but they don’t qualify as cute puppies in the marketplace either.They are supremely self-interested.

I think there are some interesting monologs taking place about PLEs and whom PLEs should belong to. Steven is obviously on the side of keeping PLEs personal and I applaud him for this.

If there is a problem with the terminology I suggest you guys get your heads together and figure out something that makes more sense. We accept your leadership and your willingness to lead on issues such as this.

But please let’s keep personal learning environments out of corporate control. Corporations aren’t the bad guys but they do have issues when it comes to self-serving thinking and I don’t think they are natural stewards of life-long learning.

On the other hand, the focus of most corporations is to sell than to create a learning environment. If a learning environment can help boost productivity and profitability, that’s fine. This is not a simplistic anti-capitalistic argument: because the desire for profitability also promotes research, innovation and new thinking. There’s nothing right or wrong with this fact. Like all facts, it remains outside the moral realm (if at all there’s a realm like that).

We all read and learn a lot from Stephen, but not from his politics. It amazes me the hold that this kind of neo-Marxist disgruntlement has over so many intellectuals. (Or, maybe it doesn’t.) It rests on the assumption that capitalism itself is a kind of enslavement, despite the fact that we all have more freedom, more choice, more great technology, and more wealth than ever before. I doubt if Stephen had a deliberatly hostile intent, but his analysis lends itself to some pretty wacky extrapolation – ‘Jay Cross wants to enslave people!’ I wouldn’t take this too personally becasue it’s absurd.

There are companies who will use PLEs in the right way and companies who will use them in the wrong way. This is called freedom. The rule that applies to companies is the same one that applies to individuals: you have the freedom to choose your own course of action as long as its within the law.

I’m not saying it’s the case with Stephen (I’ve never met him) but the academies are full of people who deeply resent the free market and the ‘corporations’. Thery create much of the intellectual climate of our age. They cut themselves off from the markets (to pursue the much higher calling of the intellect) but realize when its too late that they hasve cut themselves off too, from its spoils.

Surely it’s up to the individual to decide whether or not he wishes to use a PLE in his work and personal contexts. Only free indiviuals in a free market will drive this development forward.

Long live Hayek and keep up the great work!

So I was tempted to let this stuff pass and just continue doing my work. However, there are important issues underneath these squabbles, and we have a lot better odds of coming to agreement about them than the Dalai Lama has of regaining Tibet.

I’ll be back in a day or two with a few thoughts about where things appear to have gone off the rails.

Pitting individuals against corporations is not productive. Nor is the implication that businesses are out to steal workers’ intellectual property. Nor is twisting discussion of the appropriateness of the word “personal” a foundation for suggesting that consultants are conspiring to take away the personal freedom of “the rest of us.”

Catch you later.

A little spat between Stephen Downes and Jay Cross triggered by the current discussion around Personal learning Environments ( PLE ) may help to uncover important fundamentals.
Jay Cross seems to think that the social revolution against corporate ow…