Shift to the Future

I wonder how much we really think about where we’re going on this technology amplified journey we are all on.  We are so enthralled with each new invention or improvement that we clamor to do everything we can to get the new.  We’re kind-of like Alice… “she ran across the field after it [the rabbit], and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.  In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again”. ( referenced Oct. 28, 2012 ) We need now to be more thoughtful than ever in our adoption and pursuit of technological solutions.  We need to think beyond the “rabbit hole” about what may lay down the path.  We need to ask “why” before determining our journey with technology.  Too often we simply follow the crowd.  In a world where funds are scarce and technology is abundant, we need to “choose wisely, for while the true Grail will bring you life, the ...

I was sitting in a School Board meeting recently watching an interactive presentation by some middle school students and their school librarian.  They were showing our school trustees how the Battle of the Books competition worked.  Kids are given a list of books to read and then they are involved in a Jeopardy style competition to answer questions based on content from the books.  It seems like a great motivator to get kids reading and remembering.  I am a voracious reader myself so anything that motivates kids to read, in my opinion, is a good step. The students were in teams of three and lined up on either side of a table with their teacher-librarian playing the role of Alex Trebek asking the questions.  Each student had a bell to ring in with when they felt able to answer a question.  Two trustees were asked to be judges to determine which student / team rang in first for a given question.  I was impressed with the speed at which the students we...

It is amazing what we don’t know.  We take for granted so many inventions.  It seems sometimes that we have become immune to innovation.  Often we see blog posts or tweets complaining about what some new product or service doesn’t have rather than sharing their awe at what it does have.  I too get caught up in “what’s missing” sometimes.  Well, in this post I share some amazing (my opinion) things researchers at IBM are doing. I had the pleasure of joining about 40 educators and IT directors at IBM Research Almaden in San Jose (Silicon Valley), California.  It is located on the outskirts of the city on a high hill in its own private wilderness of 690 acres.  Researchers (currently about 800 chemists, computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and physicists) at Almaden have invented a whole host of new processes and capabilities including: relational database architecture (crucial to databases that govern our livelihoods and lives) al...