Flaneur

Have I become a Flaneur of technology? How did THAT happen? Awake before 5 a.m. this morn and my mind was on full-power reviewing some of the interesting facts that came out of a Video conference/chat last evening. The LIB3 "gathered" and some had visual and sound, some had sound sometimes, one could see and one could hear, but typed to communicate. It all worked very well. Speaking of technology ... (!!)
I learned the word Aggregator last night. I roughly knew the meaning of the term outside technology, but learned about its application within. Constituting or amounting to a whole, total, to come together, sum of its constitute parts (Dictionary.Com)
In technology, for instance, a person can gather together in one spot, information as it is added to another location. So, for instance, the LIB3 instructor can gather all student BLOG posts to one location; it saves her the hassle of going "into" posts to keep up! Very cool. I suppose this was what a Clipping Collector used to do for news about a specific celebrity. Comb all printed text for reference to a specific person - and now technology, in many sophisticated ways, can do the same thing!

flaneur \flah-NUR\, noun:One who strolls about aimlessly; a lounger; a loafer. (Dictionary.com)

Can one become a flaneur of technology? Can one be a techno flaneur: always on the Internet, always learning more, always grazing and roaming and ranging over the hills, valleys and peaks of technology? Inference of never becoming quite expert, but interested vaguely and always on the move. I feel as if I am in technology-flaneur mode and the aimless lounging and loafing is the learning - try this. Experiment here. Invest some energy here. Go ahead - you can do it! It is the aimless strolling through technology that has some amazing outcomes for my learning. My aimless strolling in the last eight weeks has opened up my eyes, ears, and mind to just how much is going on out "there."

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Weekends go so fast...

Although...so do the weeks. It is hard to believe that we are at the end of October. I never feel more humble these days than when I am trying to Tame Technology. Technology has become a living entity to me over these last few weeks. Although I knew it was a vast subject, I had a rather naive understanding of just how V A S T. Believe it or not, I can make connections to enhance my understanding of technology by thinking of Lake Superior.

Lake Superior is huge. It is so vast that one can look in each direction: N S E W and not see shore. It is deep and dark and cold. Lake Superior changes its personality many times during one hour, one day and one week. IT can be calm and peaceful, and yet a wind can come up on very short notice, usually as clouds blacken overhead, and the Lake can come to life as a killer. The shore can be lined with beach and/or trees of leaf and branch, and yet be rocky and dangerous and impossible to approach in other places. Some parts of Lake Superior have been tamed by humans - entire sections will never be fully demystified.

To Technology - substitute the word Technology each time you read Lake Superior above.