I met with an individual today who is creating a virtual world for young teens. The project is conceived as serving a niche market. Of course, we all feel our ideas are unique or our particular circumstance is different from others. I left the meeting with a sense of “why are people still building these things? why not take advantage of infrastructure that is already in place?”. Operating systems and platforms that are used as the base of innovation are increasingly free. The value is in the creativity and innovation unleashed by many contributors. Google gets this. That’s why they announced OpenSocial. And Android. Competition based on openness.
Stephen Downes continues his reflection/future thinking with What Not to Build (this follows his important Future of Online Learning: 10 Years On). In this (shorter) paper, he offers advice to the elearning industry on what not to build…what is being built…what is a fad…and what might be worth building. I don’t agree with all of his statements. iPhones are hyped, but I don’t think they are a fad…though Android and RIM may impact their market share. Cloud computing will not be noticed because, well, that’s the point. The technology becomes transparent. People are already “using the cloud” without being fully aware of it. This may depend on how one defines cloud computing - i.e. if it includes Google Docs, Gmail, MobileMe, and other hardware/software applications that don’t confine computing to a particular device - then I don’t think it’s a fad. Those two small points aside, Stephen has written a good article that will make edtech professionals rethink future/emerging projects.

Every year, The Edge asks prominent individuals a big question. This year, with the humble introduction of “New tools equal new perceptions. Through science we create technology and in using our new tools we recreate ourselves” (sounds like McLuhan’s “We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us”), The Edge asks: What will change everything?
Responses cover enormous territory, including the mind, human nature, technology, biology, and more. A bit of skepticism is found as well - nothing will change everything. Edtech folks will find a bit of hope in At Last: Technology will change education.
It’s not light reading, but well worth the time.

End of the year/start of the new year reflections always seem to centre on meaning and depth. We desire to eliminate meaningless and shallow pursuits in favor of more substantial ones. John Connell asks how to best move to greater depth: “Do we need the bloggers’ equivalent of the Slow Movement? Authentic blogging? Critical blogging? Reflective blogging? Blogging09?” Will Richardson picks up on a similar theme: “I did some counting yesterday. Totalled up all of the blog posts and comments on those posts for the last three years, and found a pretty interesting relationship. Seems the less I write, the more people comment”.
A healthy sign of maturity for any field is the recognition, partly reflected in Perry’s scheme of intellectual and ethical development, that a larger reality exists outside of the field where we personally spend most of our time. New literacies do not necessarily replace what was important previously. Previously important literacies are at least partly subsumed in new literacies. The maturation of blogging is partly found in main stream media adopting blogs. The other critical ingredient in maturing the field will be found in bloggers participating in previous publication forums (journals, books, etc.).

I’m not sure why future forecasts always require 10 items. Why not 6? or 11? Does selecting a nice round number like ‘10′ provide a glimpse into our assumptions that the future will exhibit some type of order?
The World Future Society has listed its top 10 trends for 2009 and beyond. Some are fairly obvious (growth of electricity access, urbanization). Others are intriguing in terms of implications to education: “Professional knowledge will become obsolete almost as quickly as it’s acquired. An individual’s professional knowledge is becoming outdated at a much faster rate than ever before” and “Everything you say and do will be recorded by 2030″.