Fear of the future, leads organisational culture to believe many things about the present. It’s not useful to measure or think about the past in decades. In educational technology, the golden era of eLearning (1995-2005) was one where large organisations held the power and produced research which proved they were correct in buying large proprietary systems and creating specialist centres with expert staff capable of moving the mouse around for peon-users. Even today, some deny that Web2.0 every took place (2006-2011) and that Web3.0 (the internet of things, the semantic web) is now happening. By 2015 the landscape will have changed again. Even worse, some think Web2.0 was (or is) a thing that they can – if they so choose – selectively allow in or out, as though eLearning was not simply an epoch in broader culture and the on-going domestication of technology.
So much effort is made towards establishing what is in decline (and therefore who can be ejected) and so little in not investigating why organisations hold on to old ideas for so long, that their ability to spot (and deal with decline) also gives them even the barest insight into the future – which by and large they avoid or simply dismiss.
The best technology ever invented is a head-sized box of sand.
Playable 