I've been blogging extensively for the past fifteen years. In that time I've accumulated millions of views, had posts republished on professional, academic and news sites and honoured an early internet ideal of freely sharing my thinking with the hopes of engaging others and perhaps making things a bit better. Dusty World was also an essential part of my teaching practice; an opportunity to critically review what I'm doing and provide perspective in order to improve my practice. In the process it prompted conversations with colleagues and (I hope) moved the needle on how we teach and use technology in education.
You may have noticed some posts have vanished recently. I'm in the process of backing them all up off-line and bringing down the tent. Reader numbers have tumbled in our brave new world of paid-for content delivered by 'influencers' who post for eye balls rather than quality. A blog about pedagogy was never going to compete in that sordid attention market. (Human) reader numbers have fallen as a result.
What pushed me into action was reading Cory Doctorow's Enshittification. I'd urge you to buy it from your local independent book shop. If you get it from Amazon you'll regret it by chapter five. Having wrapped it up now, I know that things are bad (I knew that before), but I also know that things could improve, though these days I'm just hoping we avoid World War Three as many countries seem to have forgotten who they are.
If you've been reading Dusty World for awhile, thank you for your support. If you're one of the vanishing minority still working to create digitally literate graduates who have the tools to protect themselves in a vicious disinformation mediascape on digital devices increasingly limited by design for the benefit of billionaires, I can still be found online though for how long I don't know. The urge to become a ghost in the machine is strong.
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