2020 and beyond

I love discovering what people think our future will be like, the ideas and innovations they think will change our world. I find it fascinating that so many things that we that thought "pffftttt, that'll never happen!" when we saw them in the movies are now emerging as fact. And also I get a chuckle from those things that we thought would make it and which have just failed to hit the mark at all...

I was reading a new pubication from futurelab in the Uk entitled "2020 and beyond". Looking into the murky world of the future it proposes several scenarios and their implications for education. They have based these scenarios on research and development that is happening NOW.

A couple of things (actually a few things) caused my mind to go into hyperdrive. The first was the idea of a "life recorder", a device that would capture an audio/visual record and then enable you to recall it whenever and wherever. Microsoft are already working on one. Lost your keys? Rewind a couple of days and say "search for keys" and your recorder dutifully shows you the exact moment you misplaced them...

What does this mean for us in the classroom? When you can bring up facts and events in the blink of an eye (literally!), will the ability to search and archive information become paramount? What will be the goal of education when all information, from fact to skills advice is constantly available to us?

What about privacy? What would an EULA (end user license agreement) look like for one of these babies? Ouch...