Stephen Downes

The field trip has always been a staple of my intellectual process. Even when I was younger and had no money, I found ways to travel, buying cheap bus tickets and using it as my hotel. Later, in my car, I explored every road I could, covering vast swathes of Canadian countryside. I combined this with hobbies that would take me out of the vehicle and into the environment, forcing me to experience and feel; hiking and photography took me there. Even studying philosophy, I would find different places to read - Mill's On Liberty in Calgary's Devonian Gardens; Quine's Word and Object in the Edmonton River Valley; the Tao Te Ching on a B.C. ferry; Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript in a dive bar called Andante. That's why forcing people to attend an office or a classroom is so pernicious: it robs people of this, and substitutes conformity for development.