That certainly doesn’t happen over night, which I think can be fairly frustrating. The early days of blogging are testimony to that I think, and understandably there are days when we completely question our motives for continuing. E.g. “Why blog if no one is reading me?”

I can wholeheartedly say, as I think I’ve articulated here, that it is worth it in the end. If you stick around and participate for long enough you’ll start to experience the “social” side of social media and it will become a vehicle to connecting with others, rather than a space you go to.

Likewise with the implications for open online courses like CCK09. I could write reams about the affect it’s had on my outlook on learning and online learning – but for now I’m late for work and have to dash

Welcome and nice to meet you!

I guess it’s relevant to bring up Michael Wesche here, when he said “Media isn’t content, it’s more than means of communicating. When Media change, human relationships change.”

I don’t think he’s saying one form of media is better or worse than another (and here I’m considering face-to-face interaction as a form of media), but rather their characteristics appeal to, or target different aspects of ourselves.

For instance, visual imagery can be deeply emotive or carry broad connotations or inferences in ways that text cannot. That’s not to say that text can’t be deeply emotive, but rather that it does it in a different way.

Likewise asynchronous interaction, in the ways that much of online discourse is, is a very different dynamic to the immediacy of face-to-face discussion. So I think naturally the mindframe we inhabit when we communicate through each of these mediums is going to be different.

For me at least I’m a quite different person communicating online than I am in public. Particularly in text (e.g. blog posts, emails, Twitter updates) I’m far more confident and in some cases can be far more assertive than I am in public, where I am fairly reserved and less likely to be in the centre of a discussion (more of a listener).

So the “Mike” who blogs is in some ways a different “Mike” than the one who goes to lunch with colleagues during the day. Even if the topics might be exactly the same, the way I participate in them, and the way I interact with my colleagues is not necessarily the same as if the same conversation occurred online. Again, not better or worse; just different.

Perhaps strangely, online interaction appeals to me as much as it does because I don’t feel as personally inhibited or insecure in expressing my beliefs or ideas as I do in face-to-face settings. I’ve always preferred to explore ideas on paper in my own time, and it’s only after I’ve come to firm conclusions about what I think, feel, or believe that I’m confident enough to articulate them to others (perhaps not even then). Contrastingly, I’m a horrible brainstormer and terrible in group discussion.

So for me at least the asynchronous nature of the web has been extraordinarily valuable and indeed has facilitated the development of relationships that might not have emerged under different circumstances. That’s not to say the friendships wouldn’t have happened, just that they would have been different.