The Generational Curriculum and Cyberspace

The generational curriculum is a specific portion of Cyber-Space started by Dr. Leon James. It's what we call a Cyber-Community. A community of people, ideas and relationships that exist in Cyber-Space. But what is Cyber-Space. Well, Cyber-Space is kind of like an undiscovered country, an alternate dimension if you will, where the rules of trvel, interaction and even existence are very distinct and often extremely dynamic. I say dynamic because as we explore and expand the boundries of Cyber-Space the acquistion of new insight, ideas, problems, and obstacles forces us to reevaluate the current situation, how it relates to us, and the protecol demanded. You see Cyber-Space (the space created through man's use of cybertronic communication equipment and his mind) has a very different structure from the rest of our physical existence. It's more of an abstract communal plane of existence where many minds meet consciously and have relationships. When you throw in the fact that the information you put on the Internet (a name we use for the interconnected Cybertronic hardware) will remain there for eternity you begin to realize the spritual nature of Cyber-space.

It is this Spiritual nature or aspect of Cyber-space fromed by its ability to transcend time, space and prejudice and connect millions of people on several levels that garners to the "net" such diverse powers and potientials. These inhearent qualities of the internet make cyber-space another realm that I can only compare to something like heaven. This is because in cyber space the physical laws don't apply in their usual first-order way. In cyber-space ideas, intentions, insight, analysis, mentality, wisdom, knowledge and perspective form the basis of exisitance in that they form the platforms for the evolution of communications and relationships on the net. Materialism is cast aside as a decideing factor because of the shear fundamental lack of it in cyber space. The same way Materialism has no foundations in the mind, the same is true of cyber space.

One of the most interesting things that I've come to understand about Cyber-Space is the importance of your Cyber-presence. In other words, your presence in Cyber-Space that other people interact with. You see here in Cyber-Space, you don't shake hands with the people you meet. You don't get to look them in the eyes and form a first impression. The only things that a reader is allowed to form impressions on is the page and format of the actual text on his screen. This constriction of normal interaction makes your Cyber-presence very important. Remember, people only believe facts if they feel they come from a credible source and because the normal avevues through which we make those decisions are altered here in Cyber-Space there is a tendency to focus heavily on a persons home page and more acutely on the ideas that an author presents through his own page. In my mind, here in Cyber-Space, it's not really how you say something, it's what you're actually saying, why you say it, and whether or not it actually helps other people. It's as if suddenly we're all on the same playing field and we're all going to have a chance to bat. The prejudices of reace, religion, sex and millions of others have no existence, and whether you win or lose the only determining factor is the strength of your thoughts, the creativity of your ideas and the acuteness of your analysis.

Getting back to Cyber-presence and its effects within Cyber-Space, be sure to remember that everyone is different. What appeals to one man appauls another. For me, I like the no frills approach (theory of parsimony) because if there's a shorter, better way of getting the same job done or the same thing said; I'm all for it. I'll enjoy the frills of having time to ponder other things and activities with the time saved. When I apply this to Cyber-presence however, I find I have particular tastes. I went browsing through the Generational curriculum and found that I liked Jill Kaneshiro and Sondra Blake's pages because they loaded very QUICKLY . I also liked Tina Smith, Braden Kato, Lori Morita, and Lori Kim's home page's because they were simple yet very effective. Kyle Fujii's page has a good blend of text and photos and Noel Nedli and Karla Dias' pages are well organized. Helena Joseph's page is informative but Kristie Hoe's page is a nightmare to read. If she wanted to play a joke on us it worked. I also thought Ross Takara had a cool page. Remember these are my subjective opinions based solely on my point of view and being that there are millions of points of view accessible to you right now I suggest you check some of them out. People have opinions on everything from Virtual Reality to personality types of home pages and a lot, lot more.

For those who come after me

If you ARE reading this for the first time there are some things that I need to tell you. The first is that it took me over a 100 hours of out of class work to get to the point that I'm at now.That's good and bad. Bad because if you don't have the time to put in those kinds of hours over the course of the semester you'll probaly have a hard time. It's good because if you do have the time it doesn't matter who you are you'll be just fine. I know this because when I first started in Dr. James class I was almost completely cyber-illiterate. I knew about word processing and had heard about the net but that is nothing compared to the level of understanding ( or should I say OVERSTANDING ) the I now possess. It's really amazing. I would never have thought that in only one semester I would be publishing web documents with embedded commands,giving critiques on hypertext formats and have my own page that I created and love. Hell a few months ago I didn't even know what web publishing and hypertext were. Now I feel like a pro.

If you are haveing doubts about your abilities in the class what you need to do is make two commitments to yourself. ONE- I am going to be openminded and discard all resistance to learning as I become aware of it and TWO- I am going to make the time needed ( check with DR. James on specific class requirements) to be successful and put those hours in regularly.

This formula might sound kind of simplistic but it has worked for me and that's how i know it can work for anyone. If a country boy like me, form the hills of kauai can do it anyone can. You just can't let your nervousness and technophobia stop you. In the end the work put in wiil be worth a 1000 times more than you could have thought.

About cyber-communities

The generational curriculum is a cyber-community. In other words a community of relationships that takes place in cyber-space. Cyber-communities are becomming more and more popular as the public becomes more aware of the possibilities the internet can provide. They can provide a means of interaction that only a few years ago was unheard of. I have really enjoyed being a part of a cyber-community and feel that it has benifitted me on many levels. I only wish that I had taken Dr. james class sooner. I've enjoyed talking to fellow students through e-mail really enjoy talking to student in different parts of the world. It's like all of a sudden the classroom is the whole planet. Many other schools as well as organizations are forming cyber-communities.Americas Town Square is an organization the helps form cyber-communities and provides software and information to those forming or a part of cyber-communities.

Many universities are also forming cyber-communities like the generational curriculum.The University of Maine at Farminghton for example has a newly formed cyber-community.

For more information on forming virtual communities or aspects of the communal mind check out Dr. James article on Cyber-psychology. He has some very acute thoughts and insights on the subject as well as other related topics. The generational curr iculum also has a plethora of information on these subjects as well.

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