Thoughts on Groups, Networks, Social Comfort, and Lurking

In our week 3 elluminate session we began discussing the necessity of social comfort to learning. In order to learn effectively we must be comfortable socially and since groups encourage control and silence the thought is that networks are a more effective place to learn. My question is with this line of thinking. I understand the reason that groups may not be conducive to learning in that they do not allow a person to deviate from the norm easily. However networks could just as easily be socially uncomfortable. The idea of sharing an idea with a network is daunting because you don't really know how the network is going to react. Even though the network is based on reason I may have a particular emotional tie to my idea and end up being socially uncomfortable when my idea is rejected. I think the concept of social comfort is precisely what keeps us from learning. We become to worried about being uncomfortable that we miss the learning.

My other thought is about lurking within a network. I have been especially guilty of lurking in this class. I find that as I read the posted readings, moodle comments, blogs, diigo comments/articles, and twitter posts for this course I often don't have anything to say. I have not fully formed my opinions or thoughts about a subject and so don't really have anything to say. Should we be forcing ourselves to say something just for the sake of interacting? Is this part of making a connection in a network and so not saying anything is an opportunity lost?