A few days ago while waiting on a pdf download to complete (often a very long process here), I played a few games of online Hangman. I am typically pretty good at the game and rarely lose a round. I realised I had actually "gone native" when I could not figure out the missing letter from L E G A L I ... E D. Of course, the first letter I tried was "S", and when that didn't fit, I tried every letter I could think of that might create some random, off-the-wall word used in obscurity. It never dawned on me until the game was over that I should try the letter Z. Where I live, "legalised" is not spelled with a "z".
Where I live, there is also no implementation of ideas or technologies representing "collective intelligence", the "global mind", "many-to-many discourse", or "publishing on the Internet". Where I live, the Internet is used, sparingly, for email, light-duty facebook interactions, and sharing text-based jokes (EFbJ). I struggled mightily with that when I first arrived here, and for the first 6 months, I felt like a stranger in an even stranger land. But, something has changed. Now it is when I engage in online interactions that I feel like a stranger, like I'm playing a game, and often, like I am wasting valuable time.
A year-and-a-half ago, I lived on the Internet. I was actually quite happy to have little or no face-time with people outside of my immediate family. When my husband was in Nigeria, and I was at home, I occasionally went for DAYS without interfacing, F2F, with a single person. I banked online, communicated online, shared files online, taught [non-academic] courses online, interfaced with clients through drop-boxes and video conferencings, and read and researched to my heart's content, all from the comfort of my own office chair in my rural home on the Gulf Coast of Texas. My life was tied to technology, my income was derived from my expertise with technology, and my business and communications activities were, to an extreme extent, conducted online.
Then...I relocated.
After the 6-month settling-in period, I began to notice something odd happening. I began to notice that my online interactions (outside of email) were relegated to activities occurring state-side only, and since I was less-and-less involved, or even interested in, state-side activities, I began to notice that my former life was becoming something of a memory.
Now that I've been living and working in PNG for nearly 1.5 years, I find that I am really struggling with this class. I am taking 2 classes this semester, but my project in my 5389 class involves an effort to reduce HIV and STI incidence among truck drivers in PNG. Other than conducting online research, my activities for that class are occurring in my "real" PNG life. But this class...well, this class is another story. If you put together the fact that we are seeking to discover ways to engage in, understand, and learn from the "many-to-many discourses" found on the Internet [outside of the Pacific Island nations] with the fact that I am in a place where I never actually encounter anyone that engages in something other than the EFbJ interactions I mentioned earlier, surely you can see my dilemma. It comes down to the fact that once a week I "pretend" to live another life and engage in class discussions, three times a week I "pretend" to be a member of an online community that would never actually occur where I live, and on the weekends I struggle (again "pretend") to understand how the readings extolling the widespread availability of the Internet around the globe has anything at all to do with my life. Sadly [I freely admit this fact] my life has changed. The Internet technologies that were once central to my personal and business life are now merely a distraction from my real world.
The project I am working on for this class is not something I explain to people when they ask about my coursework. Why would I? In the context of where I now live and work, it makes no sense. Spending time discussing a tool that is available only to the upper echelon in this country, is unfamiliar to the people I live, work and interact with, and does not really have a place in my life for the next three years is, well, useless. So, I struggle. At first I thought I was struggling with the idea of "personal agency". I set out to read additional articles on that specific topic in an effort to gain some insight. As it turns out, "personal agency" as defined outside of the use of the Internet seems to be EXACTLY what I am engaged in daily; using the Internet to engage in it, however, seems to be too foreign to who, and where, I am today. So, pre-1990 articles on "personal agency" seem to be right on target with me. Hmm...perhaps it means that I am really just living in the past.
I have half a semester to go in this class, and I feel like I will be able to complete the work. I am up-to-date on my readings, am a regular participant in the two forums that are the focus of my study, and find the readings and discussions interesting. The fact that I don't find them applicable is my struggle. But then again, there is this one mitigating factor: at some time in the next 3 years, I will leave my disconnected world and move back in to the one that I came from, the one that enables me to live and work on the Internet. Perhaps the mindset that will help me get through this, and other technology-focused classes, is this. Perhaps I should view these exercises as preparation for the time when I leave my simple, unplugged world and begin engaging with the rest of the globe in the virtual spaces of the Internet. Perhaps then I will begin to view my interactions with the Internet as something more than just a weekly escape from my real life.
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