Another year, another MOOC.

I shall use this space to blog as part of my participation in etmooc. The name refers to the warning given by police in the US to supsects when making an arrest, the wording of which includes the phrase “You have the right to remain silent” and the warning that “anything you do so may be used against you in a court of law”. This is useful advice for someone who is under arrest. 

The Miranda warning exist because the suspect’s statements may be recorded. In the current context of the Net, the same kind of diligence is not generally observed. Though warnings about the use of our data or our statements exist, they are largely buried under mountains of legal verbiage, and thus effectively hidden. Some of the subject areas of ETMOOC (arguably all of them) are affected by the tensions between privacy and transparency, and the degree to which the individual can act and interact freely on the Net. Miranda Warning therefore seemed an interesting title for this blog.

The name Miranda, to me also evokes the character Miranda from Shakespeare´s “The Tempest” and her innocent wonderment on arriving at the island: “Oh brave new world, that has such people in it” she exclaims, and the reply of her father, Prospero: “’Tis new to thee”. This exchange seems apposite with respect to the Internet, and indeed to the number of xMOOCs appearing at present. This one appears to be closer to the original spirit of the cMOOC.

Image: Miranda – The Tempest by J.W.Waterhouse