Archive for the 'Future' Category
From the start of elementary school until high school graduation, students spend two million minutes preparing for their future. Director Chad Heeter’s documentary 2 Million Minutes explores the dramatic differences between the way Western students spend that time versus students in China and India.
Howard Rheingold on “way-new” collaboration
Recorded in 2005, Howard Rheingold talks about the critical importance of collaboration, participatory media and collective action in shaping a better and more effective world. Great historical examples of human interdependence, cooperation, helping and other civilised behaviours that helped humans to thrive and survive through adversity - all alternatives to more destructive models that have obscured reason, ethics and the simple logic of alternatives. See a complete screencast (animated visuals with voice over) here.
I suggest we honour this talk - and items like it - with the following delicious tag: “newway”
Howard has been a formative figure in my thinking about the relationship between community and reciprocity - and how all of us can contribute to the world in unique and positive ways (if only we choose to).
As some of us funwall our way through the day, others are using social and participatory media to shape the future. One of these people is Social Signal’s Rob Cottingham who asks Can web2.0 change the world?
“It’s easy to get fixated on the shiny toys of the Web 2.0 world: the latest invitation-only beta of the hottest new collaborative technology using the coolest whatever. Nothing wrong with that; our natural affinity for cool and new helps provide a built-in audience for technological innovators.
But the bright glare of technological promise can obscure its social impact… and not just the negative effects that technology’s critics are fond of citing.
The social web holds enormous promise for social transformation. Alex recently posted about how you can help steer the web toward that promise, but it’s also worth asking: just what makes us think the social web could be so transformative?”
Continue reading ‘Web2.0 world changing: It’s happening already’
Why the word still rules
I’m all about words. And so is the web. If Marshall McLuhan was still around, he’d say this is no coincidence.A while back, I wrote an article about the role of McLuhan’s literacy legacy in his media theory. I argued that his identity as an English professor was not merely a pitstop on the way to media gurudom but the core of his intellectual operating system.From his forecast of the collective unconscious and his understanding of media as extensions of our sensory apparatus to the problem of narcosis and the emergence of a neo-tribalism, he saw the shape of things to come through his academic rear view mirror. For McLuhan, our play with words - arguably the cornerstone of human cognition - offered the most clues about how we organised the world in our own image. These insights are especially prescient in our current technological moment, which is all about the word.
Do schools kill creativity?
Sir Ken Robinson, from his TED talk on creativity
If you haven’t done so already, you must watch Sir Ken Robinson’s wonderful TED conference talk “Do schools kill creativity.” He’s got the timing and wit of a comedian combined with the uncommon insights into future of learning and business. View it here.
According to Robinson, the problem with creativity is not that we lack it, but that we don’t really get much of a chance to nurture or explore it. And this isn’t our fault. Robinson says we’ve unlearned it as a result of traditional learning models that privilege literacy and numeracy above other forms of learning and effectively “kill” the original gift of creativity we all possess.
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