We’ve been in touch with Stig (orcid profile link) in the hope that he will contribute to the book we’re planning, and he kindly agreed to release the lovely VLOG he made for us in 2021. This was previously only available to those who had booked onto our 2021 workshop. Back then, when we moved online, the idea arose to broaden the Day 2 ‘Voices from the River’ session into a VLOG series. ‘Voices from the River’ is inspired by Heidegger’s metaphor concerning the need to learn phenomenology by doing it, as with learning to swim… as depicted in hanfod.NL’s swimmer logo.

In the video, Stig offers a few ideas on what a phenomenological lens can bring to networked learning, drawing especially on Heidegger’s discussion of bridges, e.g. in Discourse on Thinking (PDF). How can we have a dwelling (Gestell) in a society increasingly made uniform by technology? But have networks helped us to ‘dwell’, especially during the pandemic lock-downs? According to Illich’s vision, skill exchange is a key part of networked learning.

Stig’s ‘Philosophers of Technology’ is a good place to explore these ideas further – DOI link. You can read Stig’s astute response to the 2020 community definition on networked learning in Post-Digital Science and Education, which drew attention to a distinction between stipulative, descriptive and functional definitions. We loved his allusion that, “NL is much more of a bazaar, with a multitude of theoretical voices, than it is a cathedral.”

The VLOG is hosted, with permission, on archive.org, which does not impact on privacy or ownership as some video-sharing platforms.