Disappearing into the Network (With the Blinders Off)

Baudrillard, in conversation:

[...] one hides in the network, that is, one is no longer anywhere. What is fascinating and exercises such an attraction is perhaps less the search for information or the thirst for knowledge than the desire to disappear, the possibility of dissolving and disappearing into the network.

Bill Readings, from The University in Ruins:

The question posed to the University is thus not how to turn the institution into a haven for Thought but how to think in an institution whose development tends to make Thought more and more difficult, less and less necessary (175).

Yesterday's New York Times most popular online story-link:

Textbooks have not gone the way of the scroll yet, but many educators say that it will not be long before they are replaced by digital versions — or supplanted altogether by lessons assembled from the wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos and projects on the Web.

The digitally-born generation, that is to say the Net Generation, arrives back on campus in two weeks. What will they think of this place that still presents itself as the gatekeeper of knowledge? What can they teach us about the evolving forms of digital media literacy and the growing influence of social networks on personal forms of expression? How will the Net Generation apply their distributed network aesthetics to collaborative learning with or without the university and how will the university ever keep up given how far and fast it is falling behind??

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Metadata: philosophy, net generation, digital learning, the university (in ruins), education