Monday, August 13, 2012

Shock and Awe of the Future

In this revealing slideshow by the Pew Research Center, we get a peek behind the curtain at the future, including how millennials will live, the future of money, the impact of big data, and the future of higher education.


Digital technology impacts by 2020 from Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

I pulled two quotations out of the slideshow almost immediately: "Mobile is the needle, social is the thread, people are the cloth." And, "These technologies caused revised conceptions of man's place in the universe."

In reflecting back on school district leadership, I am both excited to be leading in a time of such innovation and concerned about the uneven distribution in the understanding of and access to digital-age tools within schools and homes. We frequently talk about achievement gaps. We should also be frequently talking about accessibility gaps and ignorance gaps in light of digital-age tools, including gaming, mobile devices, etc. Indeed, the shock and awe of the future may not be as much about the amazing nature of the devices themselves but the amazing disparity of understanding, access, and use of them.