The dilemma for OERs:why they will not survive as socially created,shared, free entities.

This is a brain-dump too, as it appears, according to my wife, that this is the type of writing is of which I am most capable.Maybe I should write my own On The Road?

As we were encouraged to rant, I will oblige accordingly

If our most successful OERs in 'production' or 'mass circulation' now are the ones that are highly organized and stripped of cultural content, and if we agree that OERS that are the most pedagogically beneficial should be imbued with socially, politically, economically or culturally relevant context embedded or integrated, then we have a huge diametric contradiction here; one that cannot be solved by love nor money. Also if the ultimate goal is to have the underclasses of the world maximize the use of OERs, we need to scrutinize their underlying objectives, both overt and covert.

Are they to:

1/ gain legitimacy or prestige for the content creators and the 'experts' on these much debated learning objects

2/ build momentum for rapid adoption of OERs based on altruistic, democratic, humanitarian and philanthropic reasons for all learners to usher in a new golden age of teaching and learning

3/ monetize all online courses to eliminate the messy human element of teaching in favour of a more streamlined, cost effective, non-unionized, self-directed learning model for all learners, while still applying the ShirkyPrinciple.

We must examine not only who the target audience is for these individual OER commodities, but also , if we are serious about their use as a 'global levellers' for education, how we can give the content creators, regardless of geographic and economic constraints, the means to create their own OERs and by extension, their own reality. While this is on the radar I think it is imperative to any successful global pragmatic implementation or sustainability
I think I would have to agree with Douglas Rushkoff's argument in his recent book Life Inc., that global societies have essentially been systematically stripped of social interaction in favor of passive consumerism. We, as individuals, have become slaves to our ideals of private ownership and are only capable of identifying ourselves through branding and consumption. (For me, MIT's branding is the main reasons for MIT's success in the OER field). Because this anti-socializing corporate mentality is so firmly embedded in the global psyche that even questioning the power structure is tantamount to heresy, we cannot even approach framing a cogent argument toward the fact that OERs cannot exist in the diametrically opposed medium in which it (and all of us) exist.

As Rushkoff and many others point out, there has never been a level 'playing field' for any human endeavour since the ascendancy of money but rather one of privilege and monopoly. A lot of us are just becoming aware of this in the crisis situations unfolding around the world but rationalize this out of our academic and everyday lives. This rationalization is being applied in huge doses to the online OER debate."If the OERs had full funding...." or "If this technological roadblock were only removed...." or "If the Institutional leaders could only see....The commercialization of this section of the Internet has the same underlying constraints as those of the green energy revolution: Unless it can be controlled for private gain, it will be always subordinate to, if not actively fought against, by the status quo of more profitable means of business. There is no money in poor folks (former Yugoslavia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda...........) and no money in OERs. Thus they will not continue.