LIVING AT (CYBERSPATIAL/REAL) HOME

The diasporics and nomadics of the world share a new sense of global space, but, also, a concomitant placelessness. In fact, I believe nearly everyone in the world does today to some degree. From the "global souls" written about by Pico Iyer to the stay-at-"homes" (with "home" now a contested term) who experience telepresence while viewing their TVs which show event-spaces around the world--we all now have some expansive sense of global space while feeling the alienation of placelessness.

Yet, as the world globalizes--and because of it--people feel the need for a renewed sense of place: The need for attachment and rootedness to a place to counter the deracinated global sense of space. Using the term "glocalization," which indicates the interweaving of localities into larger economic spaces, I call the cognition of the continuum from local to global spaces, "glocal spatial cognition."

We live in spaces from local to global. In the case of bloggers--those who maintain a presence in their own blog sites, including ones such as MySpace--we create cybernetic space, to afford us some identity and sense of "home." Further, our cyberspatial presence also is partly defined by our presence in "real" space wherever we live (and vice versa). Indeed, we who have our own blogs are creating some sense of home--albeit, partly cybernetic and partly "real."

The computer and "real" space are now interwoven--we live at "home" with the machine. Thus, "home" itself is now cyborgian. So is our spatial cognition.

COURSE IN GLOCAL GEOGRAPHY

These are some of my ideas of how a geography course for high-school students should be conducted with ideal outcomes of global knowledge.

The purpose of a geography course is to provide students knowledge, understanding, and skills that enable them to live in, comprehend, and take an active part as informed citizens of the Planet at various scales from the local to the global. The geography course intends to afford students the requisite perspective to assess their place in the world spatially and culturally (their sense of place), both as resident of a local place and as world citizen (cosmopolitan citizenship). Through these two intertwined affects, the cognitive processes of full self-comprehension of where the student lives in time-space and her development of responsible local-global, or glocal, citizenship will be enhanced.

Ultimately, the geography course intends to enrich both students and society by developing overlapping and nested sets of awarenesses: of self (where and how the individual fits in the world), of local and global society (both influencing the individual), and of methods that the student can use to further understanding of the time and space in which we now live. Self-knowledge and social awareness are essential outcomes of a course in geography.