Technology for Learning

Stephen Downes delivered the keynote today at TLt Summit 2008 in Saskatoon. This is my first attempt at almost-live blogging. Enjoy.
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Artifacts that are relics of the past that help us to understand our present and predict our future.
http://www.downes.ca/page/60/
We were invited to enter content during the presentation.

photo credit: sbzondergeld

Future #1:
The web will be pragmatic.
Absurd that we cannot predict the future. Would you cross the road when the light was red? And traffic approaching? Why? Because you can predict the future. That kind of prediction governs many of our actions. Immediate future is easy to predict. Descriptions of both the future and the past get more difficult the further you get out.
This has everything to do with educational technology. Everything we are talking about has to do with the future. How will the future change our practice,
The semantic web will not give us context. In the pragmatic web, the content will not give us meaning, but will have information, will use it to make sure that the info presented is never off topic and never beyond our understanding.
The pragmatic web is also the web that we use everyday, in the conduct of your everyday life.
Do you believe this? He made this prediction based on knowledge from another domain – Philosophy. Three domains: syntax, semantic, pragmatic. So the web is now syntax, semantic – what do you think would be next?

Future #2
Computer network will dwarf the intelligence of the current processor. It won’t just be the hand of the marketplace, it will be the whole body. All of the sources of information combined and used on a world-wide grid. We won’t understand it. No way for us to have perspective on that network.
How does that prediction tell us how to go about predicting the future? Combinations of things are more powerful than individual things. A lto of what happens in the world is outside our own camp. The questions we will ask are as important as the answers we will be able to find.

Future #3
As an aside….. These are ten independent futures. No requirement as consistency. However, we could try to imagine what it would look like if they all came true.
We distinguish between the physical world and the digital world. But the non-physical will seem as real as the physical. This is not at the conceptual level, but the perceptual level. A kind of hyper reality, using the same senses to perceive both worlds.Barak Spinosa’s work supports this thinking.Descartes distinguished between mind and body. Spinosa said everything has soul. The physical world and the virtual world will act as one.For example, is money real or virtual? When we spend money, do we get real or virtual goods in return? Money exists as an abstraction. Think about the past – money used to be physical when it was gold. Think about the change in our society when money went from being gold to being credit. So think about the thing that could never change, and then think about what the world would look like if it did change.

Future #4
We’ll not be in a place of material want. We have capacity to produce more than we need. In future, everyone will have access to wealth. India does not need to build things to send to Canada to create wealth, can produce online games to create wealth. Using only thought. There will be abundance, but not wealth. Wealth is produced by hoarding and we won’t need to. Keeping books would be a wealthy man’s folly.
If we don’t value the accumulation of goods will we stay in one place?

Future #5
Efficient and effective processing systems. Assimilation. Excellent pattern recognition devices. Have the capacity for language. Human contributions for the economy (system of production of material goods for the sustainment of life) providing inputs to the machines that do the work. For example, the tractor does the work, human serves as input device. Same phenomenom but across society. Dervice value by allowing human minds to work together to produce goods needed to sustain life.
Think about the relationship between Grey Cup and Saskatchewan economy.
Where do we derive value? Where do we derive the mechanisms to distribute goods and services? The artist went from reproducing reality to surrealism when the camera could reproduce it better. And interpreting reality. When we look at how our environment will change, we look at how we will derive value inthe future. We will need to feed and clothe ourselves.

Future #6
Smart Objects.
Bruce Stirling wrote a book – Distraction. In it there is a crew that gets together and decide to build a hotel. Materials arrive. A pile of stuff. One piece says “Start with me”. The hotel instructs the crew in how to build the hotel. The material manages its own construction. We will have lots of stuff that has its own instructions. And will be connected to each other. Will tap into the pragmatic web.
The smart fishing rod. Go to the lake, cast your line and your fishing rod says – You have not fished before have you? It interfaces with your video device and shows you how to fish. Interact with you to train you.
The objects are connected. When you consume a jar of strawberry jam, a new strawberry plant is planted somewhere in the world.
If you are predicting capacity. Writing can be everywhere. Imagine things that way. Imagine what our society would look like if all our computers had no keypads, only a wheel. How would we communicate?

Future #7
Holoselves
In 2068, switched to holoself at meeting in Denver. Then switched to walk through Amazon reserve. Then shifted to a meeting in Zurich. Then switched to real self for dinner in Cairo. A holoself is any combination of biological and physical that can be attached to our sensory perceivers. Whatever can be attached can be as real as our physical self. When occupied, have all the rights and obligations of a human. This will challenge our legal systems for example. Are you here or are you there? We could improve our physical fitness while we holo-sit in meetings.
If you dream as your holo-self is it real?
Keep in mind that the way we perceive the world does and will change. The way we perceive before and after language was significant.

Future #8
He was presenting without text so we have to listen to hear what he is saying. The only slides are from the backchannel chat. Words will cease to be the dominant mode of communication. We will use multi-modal artefacts as communication.
Our powers of expression will become increasingly sophisticated. Since we are no longer limited to words, we will no longer limit ourselves to words. Think about printing protein-based artefacts, we can then produce living artifacts, so why would we use words. In Harry Potter, the owl is the message not the carrier of themessage. The message can be interrogated.
Lolcat – Creating a picture to reflect a point. Our expressions may be cultural icons, think about the meaning of a red rose? A white rose? There will be abuse – living graffiti on walls for example. Spam will be literally spam. The best place to advertise will be in our food because we have to eat.
What do we learn from this prediction? Technology will be misused (comment about the backchannel). Fantasy implies intentionality.

Future #9
Global non-government. Nations will become obsolete. People will emigrate back to homelands that are now economically viable. Now there will be economic sectors rather than countries. Nations will no longer be allowed to govern some things. For example the fisheries because nations would not manage the fisheries properly. A global fisheries council would take responsibility. As each national government mismanages, the global government would take its turn. Beyond the producer alone taking control of the resource. From government to corporation to those with interest.
We need to factor into our predictions the desire of people to run their own lives, out from under the thumb of corporations and government.

Future #10
Easiest to predict. Cyborgs. These will be easy to create. It won’t feel odd to us. The initial successes will not feel unnatural. But there will be significant issues to be addressed? At what point do you stop being a human?
Think today about how much we value is based on our concept of the abstract – one person, one vote for example. In the future, things that are based on metaphor will be as important. This general principle that we can make the world what we think it should be. The future is our own creation. To understand the future, we study ourselves and our own artefacts to know the world and what it will be.
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This post is much longer than probably should be (based on Brian Lamb’s advice yesterday to keep posts brief. But there is much to think about when Stephen presents. I think we need to engage with Stephen’s work where it makes sense to us individually – conceptually or pragmatically. Find the connection, embrace what we can scaffold into our thinking, and archive the rest for later retrieval.
For Stephen’s writing on this topic see Ten Futures.