Changes in our ways of being, our ways of life, often affect the newer generations most profoundly, as they are born into the “new ways” unknowingly, and grow into them on the fly. This occurs regardless of our perceptions of what those new ways might entail…or our lack thereof.
To most effectively guide and educate the new generations, learning must be understood in appropriately different terms and methods, or risk losing the attention and involvement of the learners. That’s not an easy challenge for large institutions, such as school districts and statewide education departments, or federal academic learning theorists… which can be notably “behind the times”.
~ Confucius translated..or simulacrum thereof.
“Understanding Media” lies somewhere between science and intuition, and can safely be said to currently be beyond our capabilities to fully “grasp”. But then, many core essential questions about who we are, where we came from, and where we are going remain unsolved by science. Religions offer answers, if belief is present, but those answers vary by religion, and don’t form uniform perspectives on “Life, the Universe, and Everything”.
Compounding our difficulties in knowing is the constant change in media that has been ongoing during the age of technology. As has been noted many times, perhaps starting with Toffler’s “Future Shock”, and including more recently “Whiplash” and many more since (see Exponential Age post coming soon)… the rate of change is changing; some say in an exponential manner.
IOW, the graphs of tech change, and media change, are getting very steep…with us being somewhere on the upward swing of a J graph.
As McLuhan noted, we see where we are going by looking in the rearview mirror at where we have been. That vision is pretty much all we have to go by, unless perhaps one turns to fantasy and sci-fi worlds and hopes to find predictions there.
Or one might try on Kurzweil’s “Singularity” concept, of reaching a point when tech change enters a rate beyond our comprehension…based on exponential increases in processor speeds, algorithms, and machine learning. But that’s the opposite of finding a “place we can adjust to given enough time, or the right tools.”
If all our academic tools from psychology, sociology, political science, history, literature, archeology, biology, etc could all be blended into something outside of their silos, would we come close to knowing what we’d like to know? Or should we consult the mystics, and spiritual savants amongst us? Or explore mind changing methods, and see where we get?
While we wait for or pursue enlightenment, the current buzz is Virtual Reality, and “The Metaverse”. Our newest media environments are opening means by which our search for identity is branching out into multiplicities, multiple personas, and that is surely changing our sense of self, and our perspectives on our way of life, including education.
Here’s a recent article from the New Yorker that explores current attempts to explain just what “The Metaverse” might be, or entail, especially as it’s expressed through popular culture and Marvel movies.
Is the Multiverse Where Originality Goes to Die? | The New Yorker
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