Sunday, February 21, 2010

The More Things Change, the More They Should Stay the Same...

flickr CC image via robinrkc

We live in a strange and wonderful time. Our world is changing at a rate never before witnessed in virtually every aspect of society. Arguably, the advancement and integration of technology in society is at the forefront of this change. In the context regarding how technology is changing our lives, a curious irony is taking place.  As our technological capabilites expand, the distance and wonderment between previously unreachable networks of people shrink at the same time.

Technologically speaking, we appear to be rewriting the book on so many things: collaboration; cultural awareness; sharing of skills and knowledge; popular culture; real-time news... navigating this change is a fast-moving train. As a result, I am anxious that ethical and moral relativism is rearing its ugly head. Responsible utilization of digital fluency means different things to different people, and the rationalization of purpose and need regarding technology can take questionable forms. This is why I say, the more things change, the more they should stay the same.

In times of quantum change, there is a tendency to focus on rewriting the rules we think need to align with the change. We forget that, philosophically speaking, everything worth discovering has already been discovered, and that the challenge is to discover it again. In our quest for increasingly faster channels of technology evolution, I believe we can lose sight of deeply entrenched, historical values and essential truths that should be guiding our evolution; timeless bits of wisdom that never go out of style. Ethically and morally speaking, in order to guide the evolution of our new technology paradigm, I believe we should get back to ideological basics in the way we treat each other, the way we govern and the way we lead change.

I have stated before that there is no better arena to lead technology change than within the institution of learning. Can there be a better environment to synthesize timeless truths with the minute-by-minute advances occuring within the digital world? However, in order for this to happen, attitudes and perspectives need to be re-evaluated.

In virtually every collection of thoughtful insights since the beginning of intellectualism,  whether within Toltec wisdom, the Ten Commandments, the Book of Tao or countless others, sages have been extolling the virtues of ethical and moral well-being. Can we define a set of contemporary moral and ethical guidelines for the use of our expanding technology knowledge? Is anybody writing this book? Assuredly, everyone has an opinion related to how technology should be affecting and shaping our lives, and this needs to be respected, but also analyzed from a critical perspective... grounded in the timeless ethical and moral frameworks that already exist throughout the world. As a teacher and advocate for children, I believe school is the perfect place to begin filtering these frameworks alongside the technology integration challenges facing society.

A culture of learning is a culture of inquiry that values discovery and supports creativity, but it's also a culture that acknowledges discoveries of the past that guide our inquiry. Relative to the intense inertia surrounding advancing technology, there is without a doubt, contemporary wisdom to be gained through modern thought processes that will help us continue to learn and develop insight into how to maximize the advance; but there also exists timeless wisdom yet to be fully acknowledged by contemporaries about how leaders of technology change can ground their work ethically and morally. It is the integrative nature of combining the two spheres of wisdom that will allow us the largest capacity to frame technology so its potential to affect society positively will be fully realized.

Calling all schools: this is our task... are you prepared for the challenge?

2 comments:

  1. A fantastic posting, thank you. This is an area that I am deeply fascinated with: this notion that each generation must completly reinvent the wheel. It seems that we spend so much time ignoring our elders that we just end up repeating the same mistakes over and over again with newer and newer toys.

    There is so much wisdom in the words of those who have gone before. This applies as much today as it did when the words were spoken. It all leads back to my current thought on the goal of education: respect. We need to start respecting that our problems are the problems of our anscestors and they fought valiently against them as we do now. What they learned should not be ignored just because they did not live now.

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  2. Matthew, we are completely on the same page with this. I too am fascinated with timeless wisdom... it's timeless for a reason; it makes sense! SO much so that contemporaries start to consider it cliche, and the "reinvent the wheel" mentality ensues.
    I'd love to collaborate with you on something in this vein; perhaps a post thread or paper to publish. As I told you before, I am heavily influenced by First Nations spirituality and wisdom, and I'm wondering if you have seen "Recreating the World..." by Michael and Judy Bopp? http://tinyurl.com/y8672ql

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