Joel Barker on Future Technology

Joel Barker was a keynote speaker on January 30, 2006 at the Texas Association of School Administrators‘ Midwinter Conference. His presentation is available as a video podcast, along with other presentations from the conference (most are audio-only, however.) I did not attend this conference, I just listened to and watched the video podcast. These are my notes and reflections. Overall this preso was OK, but I thought it was a bit dated. Some of what he called “human technology” is not technology at all, at least in my understanding, and he had nothing to say what-so-ever about web 2.0 or the read/write web. The read/write web is qualitatively different from preceding information technologies because of the way it has simplified the requirements and processes for publishing and interacting online. (That’s just my opinion, tho.)

Joel is the author of the book “Five Regions of the Future: Preparing Your Business for Tomorrow’s Technology Revolution” along with Scott Erickson, and his keynote was subtitled “The Coming Dominance of Technology and What It Means for Education.” Joel’s website for the book is www.fiveregionsofthefuture.com, and he also referenced “The Implications Wheel” in his presentation, which is:

a strategic exploration tool… [that] draws upon group wisdom to quickly and effectively uncover the short and long term implications of any change.

“What should our children be learning for the 21st Century” was the first question Joel tackled in his keynote. He quoted Frank Shrontz, former COE of Boeing, who said:

America’s future will be no greater than the one we prepare our children to build. We must not handicap them with obsolete tools.

According to Joel, his book (Five Regions) has a two-part thesis:

It is imperative that we become more precise in our descriptions of what our technologies actually do.

and

We cannot be clear about our economic direction unless we are clear about our technological direction.

By 1984 Joel and Scott had mapped the “five regions of the future.” The big “A Ha” for Joel and Scott in the late 1990s was that they were mapping the emergence of technological ecosystems. The regions are:

• SuperTech Region: bigger and more is better, time for human beings to move beyond nature with our own devices,
• Limits Tech: efficiency is beautiful, don’t waste things, take care of things, mother nature knows best, honor and protect planetary limits, you can live a wonderful
• Local Tech: small and local is beautiful, first two are globally focused, believe it is important to solve problems, humans are shepherds of nature
• Nature Tech: oldest and the newest of technologies, basic understanding is “nature is beautiful,” first domestication of animals was in this region, DNA paradigm and manipulation of it fits here, nature has already solved all our problems, we need to discover them in partnership
• Human tech

Every region offers solutions to our problems, but they are very different!

The latest fusion reactor in France is about to reach “break even,” where it produces as much energy as it consumes
– and it is just going to keep getting better / more efficient
– nuterium in hydrogen (every droplet of water) is very plentiful
– fusion is favored by supertech advocates

Limits tech folks favor power by wind, waves, solar energy, geothermal energy

Nature tech favors diesel trees (in the Amazon rain forest), also have bacteria that eat pollution and produce hydrogen

We have now developed a robotic arm that responses to the thoughts of a person (see recent issue of Popular Science)

SuperTech favors ubiquitous computing: computing everywhere
– RFIDs are an example

We are only beginning to understand the complexities of nature and its solutions to problems

If technology is going to be a dominant force in the 21st century, shouldn’t we know more about these technologies?

5th reason: Human Technology
– biggest, most important region
– what we have been endowed with physiologically, cognitively, affectively, spiritually

This is education’s region

human tech example:
– mother’s milk
– facial symmetry: women use it to measure men (across cultures, 80% of women picked symmetrical faces)
– placebo effect: a sugar pill can help you because if you believe it will help you, your brain will actually create the medicine you need to heal
– stem cells: cells that can differentiate into any cell of our body (this was not invented by supertech, btw)
– laughter: this is a technology of a sort

[MY THOUGHT: I DO NOT THINK THIS IS HUMAN TECHNOLOGY. THIS STUFF IS IMPORTANT, BUT I DON’T VIEW THEM AT ALL AS TECHNOLOGY.]

When a baby is born prematurely, a mother’s milk changes every 24 hours to meet the child’s needs

chronobiology: discussed in the book in the walk into a school in 2020
– measurement of whether you are a morning person, evening person, etc.
– take your temperature throughout the day every hour and plot it, you’ll find it rising and falling
– when you are at your highest temperature, you are at your most creative and problem solving
– everyone has a daily cycle unique to them
– during cool off cycle, best at absorbing info
– at the bottom of that cycle, you shouldn’t be doing anything

question: who are our schools designed for? is that discrimination against afternoon and evening people?

human tech: we are only beginning to understand this

Joel asked the question: “How many of you believe technology is going to get simpler in the 21st century? I don’t think so.”

[MY RESPONSE: IF I WAS IN THE AUDIENCE, I CERTAINLY WOULD HAVE RAISED MY HAND! JUST LOOK AT THE READ/WRITE WEB AND THE WAY IT HAS SIMPLIFIED THE ONLINE PUBLICATION PROCESS, AND VIRTUAL CONVERSATIONS. THIS IS DEFINITELY SIMPLIFICATION VIA TECHNOLOGY!]

We need a much deeper technological literacy at all levels of technology
– our children must be literate in this technology
– if you don’t have tech literacy: democracy is at risk
– living in a “black box” society means you don’t have a clue about how something is happening, that is a dangerous thing

[MY THOUGHT: WHY ISN’T JOEL TALKING ABOUT OPEN SOURCE HERE? IF WE WANT AN OPEN SOCIETY AND TO AVOID BLACK BOXES THAT CAN ENDANGER US, THEN CLEARLY WE SHOULD BE EMBRACING OPEN SOURCE SOLUTIONS AND FAVORING THEM OVER CLOSE SOURCE SOLUTIONS THAT REMAIN “MAGICAL” BECAUSE WE CANNOT LOOK INSIDE THEM AND UNDERSTAND HOW THEY WORK.]

2nd literacy with tech literacy is implications literacy
– goes hand in hand with democracy and technology
– implication literacy asks, “Then what?”
– what are the long term implications of deploying this new technology?
— avoiding ‘unintended consequences’

We are not very good at asking the “then what” questions

Sony eBook coming out this spring
– will hold 20 books internally
– font size control
– 7500 page turns before recharging
– could be priced lower than $375

Joel asked the audience how many think this could be important and useful for schools

[MY THOUGHT: THIS IS NOTHING NEXT TO THE $100 LAPTOP. FIRST OFF, THIS EBOOK IS A TRANSMISSION-BASED TOOL. IT IS PASSIVE FOR THE READER / LEARNER. WE NEED READ/WRITE TOOLS, LIKE LAPTOPS, NOT PASSIVE BROADCAST-ONLY TOOLS LIKE EBOOKS. WE NEED TO ENGAGE IN EDUCATIONAL CONVERSATIONS, NOT BE SUBJECTED TO FURTHER CLASSES OF MANDATED CONTENT ABSORPTION.]

eBook implications:
– all textbooks in one tool
– easy to update and change
– no paper or printing costs
– easy to customize
– light to carry

Think about what Texas would do to the market if the state would buy 1 million of those

So let’s do some “cascade thinking” about this
– this is the heart of implications literacy
– you need to read “The Wisdom of Crowds” by James Surowiecki
– Crowds properly arranged can make wise decisions on a continuous basis
– democracy in the 21st century needs to use the wisdom of crowds

We need to get good at “scouting the future”
– wagon train leaders always sent out the scouts, to see what is on their horizon

Good scouting must be fast, qualitative, use sampling, multi-directional, and enhance decisions

[MY THOUGHT: WITH TECHNOLOGY AND ONLINE ACCESS TO SURVEYS, FOR EXAMPLE, THERE IS NO REASON WHY SCOUTING UNDER THIS DEFINITION MUST BE LIMITED TO QUALITATIVE. IT CAN EASILY BE QUANTITATIVE TOO.]

the new litearcy of the 21st century: implications literacy, teaches us to think this way, about long term implications

[MY THOUGHT: I WONDER IF HE IS OPERATING PRIMARY FROM A TECHNOCRATIC FRAME, RATHER THAN A DYNAMICAL ONE. I THINK HE IS.]

We were invited into NASA last year to think about cascading thinking
– generated 14 first level implications
– the more heterogeneity in the group the better, it is in the interactivity of diverse group members that the most value is added to the process

When you do cascade thinking, sometimes you see that something with little 1st order importance can have BIG significance in 2nd and 3rd order analysis

New lesson of the 21st century: from things that look trivial, come things that will be very important

[MY THOUGHT: HE IS TALKING ABOUT ILL-STRUCTURED PROBLEM SOLVING HERE]

diversity of thought and a pattern of thought that is recorded is the key

benefit of cascading thinking is reducing uncertainty
– we need this at all levels
– this is a new basic skills for all our students

The world will not wait for us here in the US
– technology is coming from everyone
– a new age of responsibility comes with this
– our responsibility: be at the forefront of this thinking, not lagging behind
– this is your challenge of leadership!

“It is important not to mistake the edge of the rut for the horizon.” – Anonymous

[MY THOUGHT: THIS IS JUST LIKE BILBO IN THE FOREST OF MIRKWOOD (in “The Hobbit”), WHEN HE CLIMBED THE TREE AND FAILED TO SEE THAT HE WAS IN A VALLEY. HE WAS ACTUALLY VERY CLOSE TO THE EDGE OF THE FOREST, BUT BECAUSE HE WAS NOT PROPERLY ORIENTED HIS GROUP (THE DWARVES) MADE SOME VERY PERILOUS DECISIONS THAT WERE ALMOST DISASTROUS. (THEY LEFT THE FOREST TRAIL AGAINST THE COUNSEL OF BOTH BEORNE AND GANDALF, CHASED THE LIGHTS OF THE FOREST ELVES, AND ENDED UP BEING CAPTURED AND ALMOST EATEN BY THE SPIDERS OF MIRKWOOD.) THIS WOULD BE A GREAT ILLUSTRATION TO USE IN A FUTURE PRESENTATION!]

If you enjoyed this post and found it useful, subscribe to Wes’ free newsletter. Check out Wes’ video tutorial library, “Playing with Media.” Information about more ways to learn with Dr. Wesley Fryer are available on wesfryer.com/after.

On this day..

• Harry Potter Style Live Photo Albums – 2023
• Comparing Sharing Spaces: Google Classroom and SeeSaw – 2017
• The Post-PC Age is Upon Us – 2013
• Teaching with an iPad in Minnesota About Playing With Media – 2012
• How to automatically publish blog posts to a Facebook page – 2011
• Painting with Light! LCD Pens, Circuits and Creativity – 2010
• No iPad Keynote Importing for Keynote ’08 – 2010
• Quickly make a PowerPoint slideshow with 200+ photos – 2010
• Help make EduBloggerCon09 fantastic: Join the live conversation Saturday! – 2009
• Meaningfully addressing underage alcohol drinking – 2008