What's going on in NY?

This is a blog post from ahead-of-the-curve Dave Winer, a journalism scholar.
It's part of a series of post where I simply cut-and-paste stuff here with a few minor alterations - as minor as I can make them without removing all sense. All the altered words are italic. I occasionally have to use a little poetic licence, especially with Proper Nouns.

But that's not all.

All my career there's been a tension between technology and education. Very early in my career I saw they'd meet, and I made a good choice to put myself firmly in the technology world, because that's where the growth was. I don't think that's where it is anymore.

I also don't think the growth is in education, believe it or not. I don't think the big organizations are going to turn the corner. I think they're finally coming around to that belief too.

But if it isn't tech and it isn't education, what is it? Ahhh.

We don't have a name for it yet. I call what I do "education hacking" and like the new Japanese doctor on Lost, I am using a phrase that only approximates what's going on.

Here's what's going to happen, imho.

There are a bunch of smart, mostly young, people who work either in tech startups or inside big HR and Learning & Development departments who will, in a few years, form the companies that are hybrids of technology and education that will lead us into the future. They won't be like Google, Facebook, Twitter or Apple. And they won't be the MIT Open Courseware, the Open University or even University of the People or Connectivism or Connected Knowledge. But they will learn from all of them.

Intuitively, I feel North America is where this is going to happen.

I also think a university will play a role, like Stanford and Cal did in the various tech booms, in bringing people together. That's where I belong right now, and that's why that's where I am.

Vague? Yes. But it's a Ouija board. Lots of people get to shape the future, and only ideas that work will be part of that future. The way to get there is to try lots of things out.

As I used to say in the early days of the Web boom: Zoooooooooooooom!

And Coooooooooooooool.


Disclaimer: this is blatant nicking from Dave Winer. But unlikely to 'steal' anything from his work. If you disagree, I'll take it down. This is Dave Winer's blog and you should go check it out.