Man! Dude! Session #204

(D)ude: Man! I cannot get the images of Syrian refugee children holding onto their siblings and mothers’ hands out of my conscience. I know there are those who are commenting Mark Zuckerberg’s initiative to equip all humanity with an Internet access as being too hyped and motivated by potential profits.

(M)an: Dude! But couldn’t Zuckerberg take his vision and equip the child refugees across the Middle East with computers by companies already attempting to place laptops in the hands of children across the world, like the OLPC, or the “one laptop per child” organization?

D: Man! Early childhood intervention is critical and we live in too fast an existence in terms of the sharing and integration of knowledge generated. I have heard people criticize Zuckerberg as being too invested in bringing technology to places needing drinking water and food first. But I argue, will that not be solved as well when companies that are partnering with Zuckerberg’s to bring the Internet via corresponding mechanics like broadband that are involved in establishing the critically needed steps towards connecting people everywhere on Earth?  

M: Dude! I believe Zuckerberg’s figured out Steve Jobs’ mantra for personal and societal growth. He addressed an audience this past August about his proposal and it’s basics by clearly stating, “ “There are companies that define themselves by the way they do things, and companies that define themselves by a concrete way they change the world.”

D: Man! Isn’t there a Facebook mantra too? What’s that fundamental principle of play therapy when 

fostering a professional relationship with the child client?

M: Dude! Do not build a relationship based on the child following the professional but the other way around. The professional should take the child’s lead.

D: Man! That’s it! Facebook allows employees to “Move Fast and Break Things” which brings about instantaneous changes because the company doesn’t nest, on its inventions and subsequent products, until attaining perfection. But Zuckerberg is not reckless and, like play therapy, there do exist best practices.

M: Dude! Sounds practical. Sounds very Steve Jobs, again. That the personal and the societal must remain interconnected and not lose awareness of each other’s ups and downs is critical. Zuckerberg has heroically chosen to address the issue of global connectivity instead of resting on his laurels.  

D: Man! Nesting on his laurels?

M: Dude! Either or!

D: Man! I was thinking about the refugee crisis in the Middle East due to the Syrian Civil War. I saw this photograph of a boy looking down in despair but still holding onto his younger brother’s hand while his brother looked to him for affirmation of hope and protection from harm. If the United States of America doesn’t invest in its own infrastructure, that of the countries depending on US for aide in order to keep their borders open to the growing influx of refugees from Syria will collapse into the hands of terrorists extremists.

M: Dude! I am afraid of that happening too. If the Republican GOP doesn’t address the horrors of the floods that have swooped Colorado residents into tragedy upon tragedy for several days now, and it’s not getting better until sometime after this coming Tuesday, then they deserve to be reprimanded and addressed as oppressors, not obstructionists.

D: Man! Every citizen has to vote in the midterms and the American Press, entrenched in the status quo mentality that corporations can function without government, needs to kill its neoconservative bias before it is tuned out and replaced with far greater global television markets. Is it I, or do you too prefer British programming, however limited and dated, on public television on the weekends?

M: Dude! Before I forget, did you know that The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is offering a selection of its MBA courses free online? Almost 700,000 enrollees in 173 countries have enrolled. Apparently, these massive open online courses, or MOOCs, originated from a common practice of “flipping” a class format by having students view the lessons beforehand to facilitate discussion than rehashing the lessons themselves.    

D: Man! The adult refugees need to be equipped with laptops as well as the Wharton online coursework too. Isn’t there an OLPC for adults? And who is the e-learning content developer who has created the interdisciplinary multi-format book entitled Gold Dust?

M: Dude! You’re talking about Hardyna Vedder from Germany! And, yes, her book Gold Dust, is being utilized by OLPC and it is quite effective in bringing together the fundamentals in a video game format interactive that subtly resembles The Humanistic Tradition by Gloria Fiero, which too could easily be transformed into an interactive literary journeying for undergraduates. 

D: Man! If I were a missionary I would choose to take Gold Dust in place of a children’s version of the Holy Book, and The Humanistic Tradition  in place of the Holy Book.

M: Dude! I agree! We have amassed too many literary cultural greats since the time of the printing press. And we are in a global community faced with global warming, a point upon which the Republican GOP’s blatant disregard for such phenomena is contemptible.

D: Man! This Republican Sequestration is making local fire departments have to plan for such severe cutbacks that it’s more like that intellectual game we used to play in earth science, the seventh grade, regarding the items we would pack if we were to leave Earth for the Moon. Remember how that one guy in class insisted he only needed poison and wished to put himself to death rather than live with the people whom he was assigned to devise a positive outcome?

M: Dude! The Congressional Republicans need to leave Earth for the Moon with only firearms! And they should be told about that greatest room in the world one more time. They’re so illiterate that they cannot read Secretary Kerry’s classified documents and, instead, rely on the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal’s pseudo-intellectuals to interpret the declassified documents and provide rhetoric that they can keep repeating and then renounce and keep repeating whatever may result from that.

D: Man! The largest room in the world is that of improvement! But the Republican GOP isn’t all that together upstairs to begin!