Straight Lines and Spirals

In the west we have an unspoken assumption regarding the linearity of progress. Things go from simple to complex, from laborious to automated, from undeveloped to developed. As someone currently being taught how to teach, I notice this assumption at work in the way the future is presented to aspiring teachers-in-training. We are told that we will be working with technologies unimagined a few years ago, and the implication is that to be technologically illiterate or clumsy is to risk being unable to connect with students who will have grown up in the midst of the new ways of interacting.

I would like, for a moment, to call into question this idea of the projection of past rates of 'progress' into the unknown future.

No civilization before our own thought of time as a straight line, but rather saw endless repetitions of the same themes over and over. Our idea of linear progress and growth stems from the fact that living memory only ever spans a century at best; a cycle which lasts several centuries will seem like a straight line of progress from the perspective of a few generations, in the same way that the Earth seems flat from the perspective of us tiny humans.

Repeating cycles surround us on all sides - astronomical, agricultural, reproductive and on and on. I make the point because I think we set ourselves up for a fall by not acknowledging that there are limits to growth and progress, from a linear perspective. Simply put, what goes up must come down. There is a major energy problem on the horizon, one of the outcomes of which will be a forced reorganization of our food from imported to very local. This is the reason why I started teaching myself to garden, and the reason why anyone reading this might want to consider doing the same.

With this in mind, does it make sense to bias curricula towards technological achievement based on the trajectory of the past century? Should we be teaching more fundamental skills like permaculture and biointensive gardening instead of courses in digital media?

As teachers, part of our duty is to equip students to make their way through the world. This must to some degree involve contemplating the future world that they will inherit.

I highly recommend this BBC documentary on permaculture. Its in five parts, but well worth the time. Click on the YouTube link to get to the other four parts.

Upper Class Tweet of the Year

New social media, sometimes referred to as Web 2.0, is a funny thing. Take Twitter, for example. Right off the bat, you have to wonder why anyone would come up with a name that suggests you are a twit for using it. If the posts themselves are called Tweets, why not call the whole thing Tweeter? I don't get it.

What's so different about Twitter? It seems to me to be a spiffy version of instant messenger technology like ICQ, which has been around for probably two decades now. Beneath all the hype, it's just a rebranding of older technology, with a snazzy new interface. Its like having the status updates of Facebook without all the other (admittedly useful) stuff. I confess that I still don't get it.

The fact that Twitter seems to be a revamping of pre-existing technology makes me feel a bit manipulated. I can't go out and cram my new invention down people's throats, insisting that its the next big thing, when its just a pair of shoes with some lasers taped to the side. But that's the difference that a massive ad campaign makes I guess.

What reactions are people out there having to Twitter? Any converts?

I couldn't resist adding this video...