The virtual wilderness

Here we go – it’s already nearly the end of the second week – this should have been posted a couple of days ago.

Last week we used Flickr to graphically announce ourselves, naked, to the Web. Course participants were rather shy about what they put up, and understandably so. I put up a few personal pictures, amongst others, but now have restricted access to them.

Working in an academic environment where, by-and-large, folk are generally civil to one-another, one can lose touch with the world outside. Because my work involves using the Web quite a lot, and because I use relatively civilised parts of the Web, I can be lulled into a false sense of security and think rather naively about the virtual world that is the Web. A bit like, I suppose, being chauffeured from one well-off university campus to another in a car without windows, via a sink estate or a war zone.

But there are some very nasty places out there, in the world, yes, we know, and out there on the Web. And some nasty influences. Nowadays, with the advent of broadband, it’s quite usual to have a virus-checker and a firewall on our PCs. How many of us didn’t bother with these, until a virus came along, or our PC was hacked? So we know that this virtual world is no virtual rose garden, and so we’re very cautious about what we put up there.

If we were to post some pictures behind the security that a university virtual learning environment (VLE) - such as Brookes Virtual - affords, then most of us wouldn’t have a problem with posting a picture of ourselves, though a number of us would do so only with some reservations – as at the start of an online course, participants generally don’t know each other. However, as the online course proceeds, little-by-little we disclose more, especially if what we’re disclosing is related to the course content. However, whjat we’re prepared to do is rather different if all that we do is exposed the Web.

However, that’s what we did last week with Flickr, and that’s what we’re doing right now with this blog. Do I mind? Not much, not yet, but that’s because what’s here isn’t much, yet!