Technology Thoreau Might Like

Day Two of the Willoughby Fellowship and already I have some strong opinions. My fear is that the time spent getting up to speed on technology will be time taken away--for students and for me--from the time we will need to read and write and think and learn about the academic topics under discussion. So here I sit spending hours learning about Blackboard and Tweeting and control panels and optimal settings when I should be thinking about HDT in the Maine Woods, or Emerson reflecting on the rights of nonwhite humans, or the nineteenth-century sources of our twenty-first century ideas about our environment, ecology, and the fate of a planet that existed long before we were here and will exist long after we are gone. The anthropocentrism of our species is the key to most of our problems. Replacing anthropocentrism with ecocentrism will be the goal of this blog, of the course that emerges from this blog, and of the texts and discussions that will be the lasting result of our efforts. Thoreau said, "In wildness is the preservation of the world." Not wilderness, WILDNESS, and that difference makes all the difference. Wildly yours---A.N.