In the past, education adapted the mind to a very restricted set of available media; in the future, it will adapt media to serve the needs and tastes of each individual mind … The Knowledge Machine (a metaphor for much more varied forms of media) will provide easier access to richer and fuller bodies of knowledge than can be offered by any printed encyclopedia.
Predictor: Papert, Seymour
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 article he wrote for Wired magazine, Seymour Papert remarks:”In the past, education adapted the mind to a very restricted set of available media; in the future, it will adapt media to serve the needs and tastes of each individual mind. In my forthcoming book ‘The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer,’ I use as a thematic image an encounter with a 4-year-old girl who heard that I grew up in Africa and asked if I knew how giraffes sleep. I did not. But the ensuing conversatin led me to pursue the question when I got home … As I enjoyed the chase, I pondered the unfairness of being able to get all this fun out of the girl’s question – why couldn’t she do what I was doing? Not long ago the answer would have been obvious: She can’t read. But today, there is no technical obstacle to creating a ‘Knowledge Machine’ that would allow a girl of 4 to navigate through a virtual knowledge space where she could see for herself how giraffes live. It will take time for the vast quantities of information available in print to be recast for such a machine. But it will happen; and when it does, the Knowledge Machine (a metaphor for much more varied forms of media) will provide easier access to richer and fuller bodies of knowledge than can be offered by any printed encyclopedia.”
Biography:Seymour Papert, a mathematician, was one of the early pioneers of Artificial Intelligence. He is internationally recognized as the seminal thinker about ways in which computers can change learning. He wrote “The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer” (1992) and “The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital Generation Gap” (1996). (Pioneer/Originator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: E-learning
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Obsolete Skill Set: The 3 R’s – Literacy and Letteracy in the Media Ages
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.papert.org/articles/ObsoleteSkillSet.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Ritz, Nathan M.