I made a few alterations to this post. It appears that David missed my point, and I think that this has to do with the way that I originally wrote my ideas. All alterations appear in italics. I also added a follow-up paragraph at the end that provides an explanation for what I thought David was trying to do.

Before I put his book, The Future of Ideas, back on my bookshelf after 50 pages, Lawrence Lessig taught me something new: There is a difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web.  Prior to my brief reading foray into this thoughtful yet boring treatise on “commons” and the web, these two words melded together in my vernacular like Hershey’s and chocolate- they meant the same thing to me.  I used “Internet” and “WWW” interchangeably in spoken and written communication, and I undoubtedly thought that I knew what each one meant when hearing it batted around.

I was wrong according to Lessig.  These two words are less like my perceived notion of commonality (Hershey’s=chocolate) and more similar to the chocolatey symbiotic relationship of peanut butter and chocolate in a Reese’s peanut butter cup: The Internet and the WWW are distinct elements that, together, combine to form the ubiquitous communication tool that billions enjoy today.

If you’re free from geekhood, you are likely not to distinguish the WWW from the Internet.  But in fact, they are quite distinct.  The World Wide Web is a set of protocols for displaying hyperlinked documents linked across the Internet.  These protocols were developed in the late 1980s by researchers at the European particle physics lab CERN- in particular by Tim Berners-Lee.  These protocols specify how a “Web server” serves content on the WWW.  They also specify how “browsers”- such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft’s Internet Explorer [as well as Firefox, Safari, and Opera]- retrieve content on the World Wide Web.  But these protocols themselves simply run on top of the protocols that define the Internet.  These Internet protocols, referred to as TCP/IP, are the foundation upon which the protocols that make the World Wide Web function- HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) and HTML (hypertext markup language)- run (p. 42).

Distinct and different are the words Internet and WWW.  The term that often dominates communication platforms is Internet, a word that seems to be a generic embodiment for talking about Facebook, Youtube, etc…  Yet, WWW or World Wide Web or web is more appropriate; people see the results of web-based protocols when they visit their favorite sites.

This leads me to my main point: Does the terminology misuse really matter?  If we, the general population, know that the meaning behind the terms is contextual despite evidence to the contrary, is that alright?

I want to ask these very same questions to David.  More specifically, his quasi-veiled admission that he is not going to use the word Education in 2010 in lieu of… learning?  Aren’t the two inextricably linked like the peanut butter and chocolate of my favorite Reese’s?  Can’t I infer what you mean by the tone and context of your words?

I have to agree with David that the focus and driving force for education should be learning. However, in my mind, education is a word that is packed with a number of connotations. Education is comprised of people. Education involves community. Education contains laws, rules, and procedures.  There’s a healthy dose of testing balanced by teaching and pedagogy. And, probably most importantly when effective, education leads to learning. It involves learning.

I have to disagree that one should substitute (his words, not mine) “learning” for the word “education.” There is value in considering, not disregarding, the multitude of facets within education. David’s blithe substitution list is what I find troublesome- this is not a situation where one can or should invoke an Interent-WWW rationale.  The words are too different.  If he had simply wrote that he (we) need(s) to emphasize or focus on learning, I probably never would have written this post (he did not despite claims to the contrary).

Maybe I am wrong.

1. For many of Mike Rowe’s jobs, safety is actually third on a list of priorities. It’s not that safety doesn’t matter; safety on a crab-fishing vessel in the Bering Sea is a matter of life or death. However important safety might be in a occupation like this, safety is still third because of the job itself. If he or the other fisherman “put safety first,” they would not be able to function because of the inherent dangers associated with crab fishing. Heck, they would not even be able to leave the dock.
2. Mike Rowe shouts “safety third” because it snaps people out of their daily daze. It forces an inevitable, “Huh? Shouldn’t safety be first?” Safety then becomes a focus not possible with the more commonplace phrase. It’s disconcerting.

I believe that David was trying to make a “safety third” post employing Mike Rowe’s second rationale. He was trying to be provocative, and it definitely caught my attention. I just find fault with his choice of words for the aforementioned reasons. If this was not the case, why would David still refer to himself as an educator instead of a learner?