The+Future+of+Technology

The Future of Technology media type="youtube" key="4Q75KhAeqJg" height="385" width="640"

Reaction In the field of educational technology, the 2009 video "The Future of Technology" is one of the most polished, unavoidable messages out there. In educators and educators of educators, something in "The Future of Technology" strikes a major chord. Its graphical polish probably has something to do with its success, but why else has the video - a simple collection of facts about population and computer speed - become so popular in the educational world?

"The Future of Technology" works by turning conventional wisdoms - that English is rarely spoken in China, that we know what jobs for which we are grooming our students, that the number of words in English is staying the same - on their heads. Some of these "surprising" facts are simple restatements of mathematical tautologies and population facts. For example, since the US population is around 300 million and India's population is (almost) 1.2 billion, it's tautological that there are as many people in the top 25% of the Indian IQ distribution as there are in the states. Similarly, it shouldn't be as impressive as it sounds that China, with 1.3 billion people, therefore has 1,300 one-in-a-million people. I would say that the value of these rhetorical flourishes is that they make astronomical numbers like 1.3 billion feel "real" to the limited human brain.

And in fact, the main messages of the video are simply factual, but tremendously important. The human population is growing at exponential rates, unprecedented in geological history. Computer speeds seem to be doubling around every two years, with incredible results. And the amount of raw information that humans are exposed to is changing. I remember last year that Stephen Hawking made a post on Yahoo! Answers asking "How will humanity survive the next fifty years?" Our unchecked population growth make that an important question. I would say that the answers lie in the potential of biotechnology, solar power and, yes, the Internet. But the solutions won't arise unless people become more aware of the problems, of the raw facts of our situation, and this is what I would say "The Future of Technology" is good at doing. I just wish its tone communicated more danger and urgency, and less idle wonder.