Diebert’s introduction to “Parchment, Printing and Hypermedia” posits some difficult questions about humanity’s relationship to communication technology and how it influences our progress as a society. By presenting an examination of history framed through a medium theory lens, he forces the reader to consider their own assumptions about political authority, the influence of communication technology and even how the world is structured.

Of particular interest in examining the problems of modern society and communication is the collapse of boundaries that modern society has created between discrete political entities. Diebert says “We should not presuppose the "modern" distinction maintained between "politics," "economics," and "religion" in the composition of past or future world orders (p. 10)." This framework is a key analysis tool for comprehension of modern international relations, but is becoming rapidly obsolete. Unfortunately, navigation of this post-modern world order is in its infancy as it is a world of “de-territorialized communities, fragmented identities, transnational corporations, and cyberspatial flows of finance. It is a world in which brokers, cultists, and khalifs are as much in prominent relief as Canadians, Poles, and Kuwaitis. It is, paradoxically, a world made up of plural worlds, multiple realities and irrealities, digital artifacts stitched together in a web of spectacles, cineplexes, and not a single "global village;' and even less a system of territorially-distinct nationstates, postmodern world order is, rather, a pastiche of multiple and overlapping authorities - a quasi-feudal, "multicentric" system. (p. ix)”, which brings us to the question: how do we shift our own concepts of power structures and political entities to meaningfully interact in the new world order?

“While it is far too early to provide a clear outline of that emerging world order, the trends unearthed point away from single mass identities, linear political boundaries, and exclusive jurisdictions centered on territorial spaces, and toward multiple identities and nonterritorial communities, overlapping boundaries, and nonexclusive jurisdictions. (p. 15)”. A few examples that came to mind particularly in reading Diebert highlight the turmoil in the Middle East. The last major conflict that the United States engaged in, Vietnam, was a fight against a regime (and a political ideology with global implications, true), but a clearly defined regime. While this is definitely reductionist, the basic idea holds true. In America’s current conflicts, the enemy is far more nebulous, confined by neither country nor region, and the nature of warfare is adapting rapidly. Likewise, in the recent Iranian elections, global attention came down on Iran, shifting views on citizen journalism and protest methodology as well as raising questions about citizenship and democracy. Why are non-Iranians invested in Iranian elections? Where does the sovereign authority of a nation-state have to be accountable to a global sense of democracy? What does a global sense of democracy MEAN in a world still drawn up into nation-states?

While these are all weighty ideas that I look forward to exploring in great detail in this course, the crux of what got me excited and curious relating to my own studies came from the series of emails. In my program and career, I hope to utilize new media technologies to help secondary and post-secondary educators of the humanities improve their teaching and more effectively reach their students using all the tools available to them, so when I see statements like “The problem in reality is not that some schools are failing schools; it is that schooling, as our only educational strategy and system, fails with a significant portion of the population. Like any institutional system, schooling has its functional capacities and its functional limits. Children stumbling through the process with scant benefit and teachers struggling with miserable results does not mean that the children are uneducable nor the teachers incompetent; it means that the system of schooling has been pushed to the limits of its possible effectiveness,” it gets me very excited to think of how educators will be able to move outside conventional methods of education and re-imagine the process of study in ways that will encourage individual learners to reach the height of their potential.

When the author spoke of how e-learning should not be an electronic delivery system for a conventional textbook based education, but rather the springboard for a whole new look at learning, it made me realize how much my frame of understanding was limited by this traditional idea of education, even though I attended extremely progressive schools. In my office right now, we are working on a Global Classroom initiative with Jeffrey Sachs and the Earth Institute. Every day, twelve classrooms across the world connect through a video conferencing system to participate in interdisciplinary lectures on the problems of sustainable development by leading international experts in the field. Not only would this not have been logistically possible without advances in current technology, it would likely not have been conceived. It is not a very conventional approach to education.

I can’t wait to see what other assumptions will be challenged over this course of study and how it will help me think of my own role in education in a different way.