Jim Musgrave
Faculty
Grossmont College
This is the moment of calm. Can you feel it? We're in the eye of the hurricane. We are inside the hurricane of new technology that is ready to hit us again, full force and without warning, unless we can prepare to enjoy the tumult instead of fear it. Unlike F.E.M.A., we can organize and plan to ride the three dynamic waves caused by this mammoth new digital hurricane's force. I will cover these waves, one by one, to give you an idea of what's coming and how you can maneuver your board onto the crest, into the curl, so you can comfortably move out to the front of your board, to hang five or goofy foot, without wiping out. Are we ready? Let's go techno-surfin'!
Technology Wave 1: The Consumer Wave
Congress has passed a law that all televisions to be sold after January 1, 2007, will be digital and that all broadcasters must shift to digital from analog by 2009. This means you will have to learn an entirely new dimension of entertainment reality. In fact, just as our beloved government was not prepared for Hurricane Katrina, it is also not prepared for the complex technology that digitized TV will bring.
For example, the much lauded High Definition TV (HDTV) format will not be on your screens the way experts predict. It costs too much, for one thing, and it also does not work for the shows that people watch most often (news, dramas and comedies). HDTV is only good for sports and action shows because the details are captivating and life-like. However, who wants to see the pimples on our star's soap-opera face? HDTV will be for special shows, period.
What will, most likely, develop right away is a hybrid "computer-TV" model, allowing users to program their entire entertainment schedule and even their family communications so that the enjoyment is seamless and without interruptions (including those "nasty" commercials). In fact, many advertising agencies have already started gearing up for this phenomenon, by marketing their wares "inside" movies and entertainment programs.
However, if you prepare for this consumer revolution by practicing on your home computer, you can dodge the tricks of these fellows in entertainment. The smart providers will be giving the consumer control over the content, in much the same way that TiVo is doing now. TiVo allows users to program their entertainment through a content box and play it back later without commercial interruptions. You will also be able to download and record your entertainment on these computer-TV hybrids, so get prepared. Join independent groups that learn how to tailor their content for unique purposes, just as some TiVo folks have done. The one thing you must understand is the fact that in the new consumer wave of technology, you must remain in control of the content. The government wants to control it, the advertiser wants to control it, but, in a democracy, you can and must control it!
The cellular phone will also take on a new look, riding in on this consumer wave. These phones will be high-powered devices that will allow you to take advanced photography and possibly videos, enjoy popular music and movies "on the fly," and, using Blackberry technology, communicate in writing and image communication format with friends, relatives, employers and teachers.
Also, music and entertainment centers in your home will be equipped with powerful wi-fi systems that will allow you to broadcast and/or receive the same collected and individualized programming of music and/or videos to your car or some other transportation vehicle. In fact, entire communities, such as Chaska, Minnesota, just outside Minneapolis, have developed powerful commercial wi-fi networks to serve their town's needs.
Finally, print magazines (like this one), will also become hybrid affairs, allowing readers to participate in the action more directly. Interactive Television (ITV) will become a forum for readers to click-and-respond to a publication's survey, readers' poll or even a specific article, in order to establish a close relationship with both the content of the publication and its publishers, editors and writers. Today, these are separated onto the Internet and the print (paper) worlds of publication. However, when the new consumer wave comes crashing down, these systems will eventually morph into a variety of hybrid affairs, which will include such developments as flexible, electronic paper (see Education Wave, below ) combined with full-color, light-weight ebook readers. You will, therefore, be able to download the complete publication onto your reader and enjoy it instantly, and it will, most likely, even contain multimedia content!
Technology Wave 2: The Employment Wave
The second wave of technology will affect the way you work. In addition to the developments mentioned in the consumer wave, recent progress in technology will facilitate group meetings and client presentations, which will be orchestrated from high tech rooms equipped with the latest communication wonders.
Employees will be changing from what the late Dr. Peter F. Drucker called, "knowledge workers" into what I call "accessable workers." This new technology will make you more and more necessary at all times, and the old nine-to-five job will "virtually" disappear!
However, wi-fi hotspots and synchronous communications will assist you in your job, and the employer will be implementing many of the new technolgies in the work space. In her book, The Internet in the Workplace: How New Technology is Transforming Work, Patricia Wallace discusses the impact that the Internet has made and its central role in work and employment in contemporary organizations.
The rapid increase in the use of computers and the Internet has contributed to numerous changes in traditional work methods and opened new horizons for the creation of flexible work patterns. The emergence of netcentric technologies gives new meanings to concepts such as what constitutes a workday, a workweek, or work-life balance, when workers are reachable anytime, anyplace on the globe.
According to Wallace, this "always on" style has become second nature for many individuals. Moreover, it has emerged as one of the foremost accomplishments or shortcomings of the Internet's effects on the workplace, depending on one's perspective.
In addition to making your job easier, this new technology also causes surveillance and privacy issues to become problematic. Most companies in the United States keep tabs on what employees do online, and with the advent of the new employment wave technology, your privacy "box" may, indeed, become smaller. It's rather ironic, in some ways, which as the employer expects employees to think "outside the box," the boss is, at the same time, making that box increasingly more difficult to get out of!
In order to successfully ride this next employment wave, you must, first of all, learn your rights as an employer or employee. For example, did you know that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, even though initially written to assist employers whose company secrets could be stolen, employers are still forbidden by the same act from intruding upon the individual employee's privacy of email and other electronic communications?
In addition, you should know your creative digital and intellectual content rights, as much of what you create in your job could become yours or your boss's, depending upon how the law is handled. Become an informed digital surfer before getting up on your creative board.
Technology Wave 3: The Education Wave
As a writer and educator, this aspect of the technological hurricane holds the most promise of blowing stuff around a bit. More and more, content and digital creativity are being driven from the bottom up. In other words, the children growing up in this digital age are demanding that we give them better, more efficient and more entertaining ways to learn the skills they need to become digital surfers themselves. In order to keep up with the Employment Wave, schools will also develop a streamlined, digital access format.
For example, the heavy student backpack will soon be replaced by the lightweight, "electronic book" developed by combining the Massachusett's Institute of Technology's miraculous digital pages that look like quality paper pages, and the student will simply download the text and/or class notes content for the upcoming course, and it will fill-up the waiting pages, again, "on the fly." E-ink and Sony, Phillips have already announced an ebook reader, and better products are on the way down the pipeline, including electronic paper displays that can be rolled-up and taken with you for demonstrations or other presentation needs or put up onto billboards for all the world to see. Students will no longer pay the high-priced "rip-offs" of academic publishing's paper text tomes, and professors will get together to become their own independent publishing market.
One of the most fascinating developments in adult education is the merging of digital content and classroom presentations. A company named Tegrity is slowly building an educational base to present lecture content to students in a variety of interesting formats.
Another method for instruction in the classroom is to use the free resources out there to establish your own web site and Course Management System (CMS). For example, Blackboard is a very expensive CMS that many schools use, but there is also a free version of Moodle that all educators can use if they have their own web site and server. When an educator can establish his or her own presence on the Internet in this way, combined with free synchronous learning programs like the ones at CCC Confer, then the cost of riding the education wave just got a lot less expensive for both the teacher and the students! Educators, to be effective, must learn to cut costs to save their school districts' and their students' money.
Simple Techno-surf Preparation Steps
Now that I have covered the three major technological waves of this coming hurricane, I can give you the steps you need to take to be prepared for your wild ride. These steps will allow you to techno-surf the rapids instead of being swamped by all the new developments.
Steps for the Consumer Wave:
- Practice downloading and organizing video programs on your home computer. Establish a unique "entertainment schedule" for your family's needs.
- Use a program like TiVo to get used to the interface of the future computer-TV hybrids. The new TV-computer hybrids will require that you learn how to organize and utilize the digital content to its maximum advantage.
- Develop a newsgroup or discussion group to network with people who want to control their own digitial content and destiny. You can help each other get through the technical barriers to being a successful and artful consumer.
Steps for the Employment Wave
- Research your electronic privacy rights to see how you need to protect yourself in the increasingly invasive working climate online.
- Learn wi-fi and how you can use it to improve your accessability on the job.
- Study your creative and digital intellectual property rights and see how you can benefit and not be "ripped off."
Steps for the Education Wave
- Take an Internet online course to see how you can learn in this new education environment.
- Learn about independent publishing and the ebook alternative for educators. This will be the saving grace for both students and faculty.
- Visit CCC Confer, or some other equivalent education site, to participate in a free "webinar" to see how the latest synchronous learning is being used. Our children will be the driving force behind the new education technology, so we must ride the techno-wave with them!
Jim Musgrave is the owner of Contemporary Instructional Concepts (contempinstruct.com) an education and technology consulting firm in San Diego. He is also the author of The Digital Scribe: A Writer's Guide to Electronic Media (AP Professional Press) and the novels Iron Maiden, Sins of Darkness, Russian Wolves, and Lucifer's Wedding, and the short story collection The President's Parasite.
