An Interesting Choice (Continued)

One quick comment on this class I am attending. As I said, It is online. The class is on the Blackboard platform. And with that just one more layer, one more challenge. Before one had to make it from one’s dorm or wherever to the classroom. Now one must have access to the internet and log in.

Blackboard and the internet is just another layer to work through. Multiple layers. Previously, me and my classmates in prior classes just had to make it there at the specified time. Today, with my old Mac speakers in my laptop, the various microphones we each are using, and standards and technology that allow it all to happen and pipe it to each of us does add a further challenge to grasping what the Professor is saying in regard to Kant, duty, autonomy and the like. It may be the best we got at the moment in this age of variants and Covid, but still it has left me asking more than several times so far, “WTF? What did he just say?!” And we have only just begun the semester.

Add to this that we are in various environments. I take a break from work, but am still vulnerable to its intrusions. I still have coworkers messaging me on Teams as I try to follow the lecture. That is minor.

As I am next to the MTA Harlem line, I got trains coming up and down the line routinely. And lately they have been doing some serious maintenance on those tracks. Probably a good thing, but another challenge when I am trying to engage in the class. Microphone on, microphone off. Oops. No, it is not on. . Oh shoot! forgot now to turn it off.” Trains going up and down the line, with their horns and bells warning us all of their coming and going.

I keep my mic off. For what it is worth.