Collectives vs Connectives [#CCK12]

Networks and connections have progressed to such an amazing degree, that at present time, there are very few people with no connection to somebody else. The time of monkhood and solitude is all but extinct. Networks are, for all intents and purposes, all-encompassing.

But within the Network (with capital "N") is a broad range of diverse relationships. It could be formed in a one-to-one-communication (such as an email), or a one-to-many (such as twitter) or many-to-many (such as wikis). But also within this framework is a gradient of privacy and boundaries, from a totally connected and permeable unit that the world can peek trhough (remember the curious case of Mr and ex-Mrs Ashton Kutcher?) where all happiness and unhappiness that springs forth is completely visible to the world; to the almost disconnected individual, whose appearance in the grid is probably through an email or two. And what about the masses of individuals in countries where censorship of the internet is the norm or maybe insidious that they do not even know that they are being censored? How do we classify their connection? In Facebook alone, there are many ways to determine one's level of privacy and permeability of information.

Whatever the level of connections within the network, all these people belong to the Network, and as such the Network is present with Diversity, variable openness and privacy, on one hand the fully collective (sort of posse, groupie kind) to the connective (connected yet with individual opinion; think of blogs).

There is a certain parallelism to a real-world phenomenon of migration, wherein the recipient countries (and cultures) have variable policies; from one of pure assimilation and integration to one of multi-culturalism and preservation ethnic diversity. The individual families and the society determines which level of openness and acceptance are acceptable. [more on this on my blog article on "The Great Migration" 23 Jan 2012]

To me, there is very little need for debate about groups and networks because in the greater scheme of things, the collectives and the connectives all exist within the very inclusive walls of the Network. it is up to the individual as the learning unit, to determine his level of openness ideas and disclosure of his opinions to the world.