The connected world final paper david compton
- 1. DavidCompton LIB 686 Final Paper 1 The Connected World of 2041 The year is 2041. As you wake up in the morning you blink a couple of times to scan through the morning headlines. You find an article you want to read and with the swipe of your hand through the air, the article appears on the wall in front of you, but you don’t have to read it. Your personal electronic assistant is dictating it for you. You are free to go about getting in the shower, which has already been turned on and set to the perfect temperature. You have to be quick because water is a precious commodity. The kids have already gotten dressed and their own personal assistants are going over their homework from the night before. An alert pops into your eye that it looks like rain today, so you get the kids their jackets. On the way to school you go over the lesson plans that their teachers have sent out to all of their students. There is a quiz today so your car starts quizzing your kids on the Mayan Civilization as you stop for a quick coffee at the Starbucks. You forgot your card today so they just scan your wrist and the money is taken out of your electronic wallet. Everything in your life is connected and more importantly you are connected to everything in your life. It is sometimes easy to think of the future as mysterious. The year 2041 could hold so many great things when it comes to technology, but are we really that far off from what it will probably be? I tend to think that the technologies that we are using today are going to be the same technologies we use 23 years from now. The difference is going to be in how we use them and how they all connect to one another. There was a time where a new technology was radical and mind blowing. It happened so quick that for a time you truly believed that there might be flying cars or that we would all own self-tying shoes and hover boards, but there are some limitations to what we can produce. It’s a physics thing. However, the things we have today are awesome and far beyond
- 2. DavidCompton LIB 686 Final Paper 2 what you might have thought possible 23 years ago. My goal with this paper is to talk about the things that we will be using 23 years from now and how they will be designed to create connections between your life, job, school, and every other part of your being. Connectivity is the future. Let’s start with Education. Education has been changing for as long as we know it, but the structure of education has largely remained the same. However, recently there has been a push for more alternative style and online learning at an early age. Between the 2009-10 and 2013-14 academic years there was an 80% increase in the number of students interested in online or blended education (https://www.connectionsacademy.com/news/growth-of-k-12-online- education-infographic). At the same time the number of school districts in the United States offering online options increased 50%. At one point you might have heard of online programs for those in college, but today K-12 institutions are allowing online learning for younger students. In 2041, I think we will see a lot more of these online learning opportunities. According to a blog on nerdymates.com a Babson Survey Research Group reported that 71% of students think that virtual learning provides more flexibility and freedom to take classes (https://nerdymates.com/blog/education-future). Having classes online will lead to having more data to share with those who need it. Students and parents already have access to their academic progress thanks to programs like Naviance that allows students to connect their education towards the goal of secondary education. Even if students are still in traditional classrooms 23 years from now, their learning will be largely online and the teacher will become more of a guide on how to use new technologies as opposed to the all-knowing authority of the classroom.
- 3. DavidCompton LIB 686 Final Paper 3 Hopefully, in 2041 students will have a clearer goal of what careers are going to be the best for them. As an admissions professional I feel that there is a lot of confusion when it comes to connected education and training to career goals. Some of that has to do with the nature of a young, developing mind, but students are figuring out later than necessary that what they do in school can have a direct impact on their career. The types of jobs that will be available are going to be tech jobs, obviously. Regardless of what industry you are in there is going to be a strong reliance on using current technologies to improve your work. Production lines are using computers and electronics to make their processes safer and more reliable. Car industries are requiring more knowledge of computer interfacing to connect your car to your home and leisure time. Even in the construction industry you see a move towards more technologically advanced procedures. 3-D printing is now a viable option for building portions of homes. Nano-particle paint is a newer technology that has an exceptionally hard surface, is self-cleaning, and can change colors (Goodman, 2016). Every part of industry will have something to do with technology so the education for these jobs is going to need to be steeped in technology. In my first paragraph I gave a scenario of the morning of a family in 2041. Obviously some of that stuff might not happen, but for the most part we already have the technologies in place that would allow us to connect our daily lives to each other. These personal assistants already exist and many homes use them. Perhaps, using the nano-particle paint I just mentioned, our walls will be able to display images. Google has already created contact lenses that can act as screens. Google’s smart contact lens allows your eye to become a computer, much like Google Glass does for your glasses (Anthony, 2014). Our day to day home lives are going to be much like they are now, but the devices we use are going to be a little different. Instead of buying TVs we might be able to have a wall in our home act as that device. Our phones, while still important, will be
- 4. DavidCompton LIB 686 Final Paper 4 able to display directly into our eye. When we drive around our cars are going to know what we have planned for the day and be able to prepare certain things for us. It will all be connected so we are never without technology. Just like it has been since 1990, when the World Wide Web was launched, the internet is going to be a huge catalyst in further connecting communities across the globe. Using data and the internet we are going to use the devices we own to connect individually with people from thousands of miles away. The barriers we have today are largely language related as well as parts of the world still having dreadfully slow data rates. These slow internet rates are something that is of concern and is being addressed by many in the business and tech fields. “Affordability is probably the single most important aspect” of getting internet to the whole world (El-Darwiche, Herzog, Singh, Samad, Elmir, Goel, 2016). The world is working on solutions to this as we speak. So, what will the world be like 23 years from now? Again, I don’t think it will look and feel much different than today. It was almost 20 years ago that Apple launched the iPod with the new ability to listen to music as mp3s. That technology has not changed much in the last 20 years, but the way that we listen to them and how we connect to them has. That is going to be the biggest change we will see. Our shirts are going to have connectivity to your devices to keep you warmer on cold days, or to let you know when you are perspiring. Our shoes are going to be able to let us keep track of the miles on them and when the rubber is breaking down. Our phones are going to completely replace our wallets because all of our information and buying power will be right there at the end of our hand. It will all be connected from the moment we wake up until the time
- 5. DavidCompton LIB 686 Final Paper 5 that we close our eyes to sleep. Just don’t forget to power off that contact lens. You don’t want the 24-hour news cycle keeping you awake at night.
- 6. DavidCompton LIB 686 Final Paper 6 References Connections Academy. Retrieved from https://www.connectionsacademy.com/news/growth-of- k-12-online-education-infographic Nerdy Mates. A glimpse at how education will possibly look in 2050. Retrieved from https://nerdymates.com/blog/education-future Goodman, J. (2016, August 2). Five technologies that will change the future of home building. Retrieved from http://www.ecobuildingpulse.com/news/five-technologies-that-will- change-the-future-of-home-building_s Anthony, S. (2014, April 15). Google invents contact lens with built-in camera: Superhuman Terminator-like vision here we come. Retrieved from https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/180571-google-invents-smart-contact-lens-with- built-in-camera-superhuman-terminator-like-vision-here-we-come