Shift to the Future

When February 1st arrived, I was grappling with how quickly time seems to be passing by.  I know, it’s an age thing right, as we get older time seems to speed up.  To check this theory I asked my youngest son if he felt time was speeding up.  He said yes – he’s 20 so it’s not an age thing after all.  I know, not a very scientific conclusion.  But seriously, I wonder if the rapid changes that we are experiencing in our lifetime are in effect like a time warp? My wife reluctantly lets me keep this 45 year old clock – it was ten years old when given to me by someone when I was 15 and working as a sales guy in a ski shop.  It still works!  Notice it’s cool pre-digital look.  The numbers flip over as the minutes tick by.  I suspect the iPhone 5 I have now, which has a simple digital alarm clock feature, will not work 45 years from now.  It probably won’t work 10 years from now!  What might clocks look like, work like, in the future....

If you read my last post , you’ll know that I attended the 2011 World Future Society annual conference last week.  Days 3 and 4 of the conference had quite the array of sessions to choose from.  As a short detour from this post topic, my 11:00 session on Sunday was canceled and I struck up a conversation with a guy while in line for a coffee.  We ended up talking for over an hour about politics, health care, taxes, forms of government, war, religion, economics, etc.  This guys was brilliant (PhD Economics, strategist in the US Navy’s ‘think tank’ in Washington, DC) and our talk was as good or better than any conference session I’ve experienced.  Isn’t it amazing how you can get so engrossed in a deep intellectual discussion with a complete stranger?  I think that online learning practices should require connecting students to brilliant people for the purpose of engaging in deep learning – it’s a powerful thing. Edie Weiner (president) and Arnold Brown ...