A few days ago, I had the following Twitter exchange with Anya Kamenetz:
Me: @opencontent @anya1anya Here’s why I fear the university system may be unable to adapt to open education: http://bit.ly/cF0Hby
Anya: @mfeldstein67 as a system, probably not. Legacy assets/components? Yes. Roman Empire falls. Rome (city) thrives to this day.
Me: @anya1anya Easier to be blithe about the fall of the Roman Empire given that the Romans who suffered through it are all dead.
Anya: @mfeldstein67 I’m not blithe about any of this. I think the times we live in are utterly terrifying.
Me: @anya1anya Terrifying is the right word. The question we face is, what was Pandora’s moral obligation *after* she opened the box?
Anya: @mfeldstein67 Pandora or Cassandra? tbc on http://diyubook.com/
Me: @anya1anya Depends. Are we agents or witnesses? Maybe both. But I think it’s easier to be Cassandra than Pandora. No responsibility.
Anya: @mfeldstein67 Actually, I’m just the kid in The Emperor’s New Clothes.
Me: @anya1anya I don’t buy that. If you believe it, then why bother writing the book? You are only Cassandra if you choose to be.
I was surprised (but probably shouldn’t have been) to then see her reflect on this exchange thusly:
We just need to start being very creative about how we deal with the acceleration. I want to be a friend of change. I think there’s been a little bit of a debate already about the book coming out. I get asked, Are you a Pandora opening up Pandora’s Box, or are you a Cassandra, declaiming that things are doomed and that other things are coming up in their place? I kind of don’t want to take responsibility for either of these [viewpoints]. I think we are all imagining a different kind of future and I want to be on the side of the future and not on the side of the past.
It certainly wasn’t my intention to imply that Anya personally is releasing all the horrors from the box. Nor, I see now, was the idea I have in my head regarding Pandora (and Cassandra, for that matter) what came through in my tweets. Apparently, Twitter is not a good medium for midrash. I have also struggled to communicate the same feelings in conversations with folks like Jim Groom and Stephen Downes. So I’m going to try something a little different here and take an uncharacteristic flight of literary fancy. I hope you will indulge me.
The question I want to address is this: Should Pandora have opened the box?