Dave, phrases like “Maybe more dangerously, we might get taken up as thinking that learning is something that happens to the person, and not as part of a complex rhizome of connections that form the basis of the human experience” drive me nuts. Even read in the context it was written, it seems like a lot of hand waving. I understand blogging is rough drafts and unfinished thoughts, but…

Are you seriously suggesting that learning isn’t something “a person” does? I totally understand that “a person” is socially situated, uses language (which by definition needs to be social) and learns with/from other people and artefacts that are part of a larger social context. But none of that means that learning isn’t something that “happens to the person.” I am NOT saying that knowledge and learning can’t also reside in organizations, in networks, in devices, but that doesn’t mean “people” don’t learn too, as individuals. To show this is so, it is simple to state the opposite – “Scott has never learned to swim” where swimming is a commonplace ability, understood as the “phenomenon of staing afloat in water and not drowning,” and something that is regularly taught and learned.

I really want to understand what you are trying to get at, and maybe I just need more coffee this morning. But I find language like this, tending to hyperbole, does not help clarify the points trying to be made.