Why NOT blog about what you wouldn’t talk about?
Quite often I hear advice to the effect of ‘Don’t express online what you wouldn’t be happy defending offline’. I agree with this insofar as it protects the writer, but I no longer agree with it as an attitude with which to approach the web.
If (as I have written before) we should be willing to accept that some people will always be more comfortable with offline social interactions than with online ones, then we must also be willing to accept that the opposite will be true too. Some of those who have traditionally found conversation and debate difficult will find a new voice online. And now that there are teenagers whose entire lives have included the internet, I suspect the proportion of society that is less comfortable living offline will have risen dramatically. (I’ve no evidence to back any of this up, mind!)
What then does this mean for bridging the gap between the two? We don’t want to push anyone too far out of their comfort zone, but if we’re not very careful the ‘digital divide’ will only widen. ‘Digital mentoring‘ is an idea currently under discussion, but it tends to be discussed in a way that presumes the grass is greener on the digital side of the digital divide.
I would prefer to drop the ‘digital’ from ‘digital mentoring’ (though god knows what I’d replace it with) and concentrate instead on skills of debate and social interaction, bringing expertise from all fields into a two-way learning process.
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