“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” —Mahatma Gandhi

I found this quote as I was reading through some of the blogs featured in the edcmooc news.  It has no real relevance to our theme of Utopia and Dystopia but I like the idea of learning for as long as you live and living life as fully as you can.

Living in the here and now – is that what the characters in the “Inbox” were doing? Making the most of a random opportunity, responding to a situation, communicating, connecting, building futures?  Utopian or dystopian? Once the connection was made there was hope, when the link was broken, hope remained. Makes me think of La Condition Humaine – Man’s Fate – an existentialist state where man chooses his own path, his own destiny, which dictates how people communicate with each other and how they interact with the world.

“Existentialists believe that when someone or society tries to impose or demand that their beliefs, values, or rules be faithfully accepted and obeyed it destroys individualism and makes a person become whatever the people in power desire thus they are dehumanized and reduced to being an object.” 

So where am I going with this?  I’m not really sure but I have a glimmer of something in the back of my mind that is glinting that I can’t quite grasp!

Does technology, do the shiny, pretty things, the gadgets and gizmos, the tweets, FB, the constant updates impose rules, beliefs, values on us that we don’t want to accept?  Do we risk losing our individualism and our personal freedom?  Or do they offer us the opportunity to discover ourselves, to find out who we are, to unlock our potential, and find happpiness?  Or is that just too black and white?  Are there more shades of grey?  Do we need to recognise that life is an essential mixture of utopian and dystopian experiences?

Communication, connections, webs, networks …..