There’s so much to digest here, Brian, that I’m not sure where to start. I started off intending to put all my thoughts into a comment here, but I think I’ll need to try to put it in a full blog post. For now, I’ll express my appreciation that you have pulled these threads together in such a coherent way. (Or at least coherent feeling – I’ll get back to you on the actual coherence after I’ve re-read and thought about it awhile).

1) except at the most basic level, “content” has come to mean many different things to many different people and the refraction that “everything is content” starts coming into play, and

2) there’s this “other” thing out there that we all keep taking about about in some way, using various terms: creating meaning, sharing process, context, etc without any clear articulation anywhere as to what that operationally, physically or materially *means*. Personally, I think some of this is a red-herring– I don’t think creation of meaning or context can be “shared” (which is why it comes back around to “content” so often), though I do think that artifacts can be shared that allow educators to create conditions for that to happen. Context and meaning only exist situationally and contingently as part of an ongoing process. So OERs can share more kinds of content to help that, but I’ve seen absolutely no ideas that actually reach beyond what I would call content. I’d love to see something otherwise.

Of course within each of your bullets is a world of work and thought to be done and considered. To point out just one, I see a major dissonance in the idea of creating context-sensitive output formats and, at the same time, maintaining a low-friction, less formalized and institution-like approach to sharing. How shall the twain meet? Philosophically I am in complete agreement, but when the rubber hits the road I can’t find for myself– nor do I see any evidence that anyone else has found– a solution to this simple conundrum. Yet it’s at the heart of the complaints that OER initiatives end up creating so much similar, corporate-style content.

Not to mention my current frustration, which is it becomes rather hard to spend time trying to make things better and better when there is so much unused capability and capacity already there. The adoption of Open Ed, implementation of emerging tech and pedagogies, use of open materials and facilitation of open activities is so feeble and meager… it becomes easy to wonder if continuing to accelerate the lead car is important if all the rest are no longer attached or following.