Let's leave aside the fact that there is no longer a corporate or state-ist stranglehold on what information and knowledge is disseminated to whom. It's a big, no, HUGE, topic but not the one I want to talk about at the moment.
My emphasis is upon the tools for thinking and communicating that are now available that were unavailable, say, twenty years ago. We're only indirectly talking about machines. Yes, this thinking and communicating is done on machines and with the aid of thinking devices made possible by machines. But all of this has magnified our ability to know, to teach, to communicate and to organize.
Let's look at what a professional educator and communicator had 30 years ago: chalk, blackboard, overhead, book, movie. S/he was bounded both in what was learned or constructed and what s/he disseminated by those tools.
Now add,say, personal ability to construct and manipulate data-basesthe ability to converse, at length and indepth (via discussion groups, blogs, chat rooms, etc), the ability to access and/or collaboratively construct complex knowledge systems on wikis and the ability to construct concept/mind maps (FreeMind, NovaMind(NovaMInd), and timelines via Dipity(Dipity). With these tools we've considerably aided our ability to think and communicate as individuals.
It's not just that we've empowered groups of people to think and decide as a group. We have! And bravo!!
We've given tools for thinking and communicating to individuals that considerably enhance thought processing, organization and the ability to communicate complex ideas to others.
Individuals with enhanced idea processing and accessing power are working with others similarly altered.
We should expect a magnified ability for learners to conduct self-directed learning and for teachers to communicate information directly and, more importantly, to aid individuals in their quest for information and skills that give them the power to manage their own life spaces.
If part of the ability to rule is to control information flow and to minimize understanding and organizing powers of subject peoples … I think government that is run for the few off the backs and lives of the many is becoming less and less likely.
I eagerly await new developments.
