But I’m not alone in feeling like this Utopia has turned out to be no “good place.” Rather, as old Adam cautions in “As You Like It:” “This is no place.” After we emerge from our yearlong experiment in placeless education, there will be some who will insist that educational technology can only improve. As every teacher dutifully points out, the word Utopia puns on two Greek roots: it can either mean “good place” (eu-topos) or “no place” (ou-topos). In 1516, when Thomas More invented his fictional commonwealth, he also invented a name for that island state: Utopia. And, like most technology, it doesn’t do much to raise up the people who aren’t already benefiting from those parameters anyway. Like most technology tools, this functions tolerably enough for people who are already benefiting from those parameters. From my experience, that’s meant very small groups of previously acquainted adults, during short, focused sessions with a shared goal, involving dedicated participants who are mature enough to stay engaged (and even that’s hard!). When we have no other option, we can make do with meeting online. When I revisited my evacuated classroom, its absence of life evoked Sonnet 73′s pained rumination about “Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.” Now the notion of place itself had been pulled out from under us, much less the table. But the trick exposes how vulnerable we feel without something in common between us: a book, a stage, a table, a classroom, a sanctuary all provide what philosopher Ivan Illich called “tools for conviviality.” They sustain a focal point for practiced attention, where making of the highest human kind can take place. It’s “ a quaint device,” as the Folio’s stage directions term it a trick. Arendt’s imagined scenario reminds me of a scene in “The Tempest,” where Ariel deceives the shipwrecked crew with a mirage-like banquet on a table before making the banquet vanish.
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