Punk might not be your scene, or have been your scene, but it’s always been around….

Punk is subcultural, almost tribal, and it ebbs and flows, but there’s been kids out there making the scene *somewhere* pretty consistently for over thirty years.

As an historian, 30 years isn’t even a wrinkle in human history as far as I’m concerned – so how can it have ‘always been around’?

@Scott: Apologies, but perhaps it’s impossible to follow everything in the edublogosphere – I don’t even think the mighty Downes manages that. The reason I mention never having heard of Jim Groom is to show my readers that I too have difficulty keeping up with everything. Jim’s obviously an established part of the Edublogosphere, yet he hasn’t even registered on my radar in the past 3 years. Hope that clears things up.

Punk might not be your scene, or have been your scene, but it’s always been around.

In the US, you can connect almost any year with where the punk scene was biggest– the late seventies NYC, the early eighties LA, mid-eighties DC, late eighties Bay Area… and on and on. There’s been a punk scene for the last thirty years. I know you’re in the UK, but I’m virtually certain this is true there as well.

It’s bigger in certain places at certain times, but the network of zines and small mail-order record labels made certain that the scene– or at least dispatches from it– were available to kids in the most backwater towns… who were then free to go out and try to foster and encourage a scene where they were. (The essence of DIY.)

I should know– I’m a small-town kid from a rural town in the Midwest. I read Maximum Rock & Roll religiously as a teen. I went to shows. At 29, though, if Sid & Nancy had had a kid, he’d be a few months older than me. Simultaneously, Lindsea at Students 2.0 (the very spelling of her name makes it virtually certain she’s close to ten years younger than I) resents a bunch of educated people who’re pushing forty coopting the label punk– they’re too old to be punk. Punk is something her generation “owns.”

Punk is subcultural, almost tribal, and it ebbs and flows, but there’s been kids out there making the scene *somewhere* pretty consistently for over thirty years.

…The word may not draw you in, it may not be your scene, but claiming it’s a generational difference is an historical fallacy.

Given that you've only been picking up Jim's posts relating to higher education and things like Blackboard, iTunesU and Sakai, it's understandable I haven't heard of him. Thanks for the feature – now that I know about it, I'll be using it a bit more. :-)

You can follow-up on the work of any author on my website like this; the full list of authors is here: http://www.downes.ca/research_authors.htm

Of course – if you don't read my newsletter, you won't have heard of Jim Groom, and you won't be familiar with this feature… ;)

You know, these memes and themes and groups pop up on Twitter and the various blogs. Part of me wants to participate yet I resist. I still feel that if I get caught up in it I will become an 'educlone'. No, I did not coin that term 'educlone'. Someone used it on a group called EduGeek. :P

Time to filter my reader as well.

eduCheers, eduJohn.