The relentless unforeseen
Posted on: July 6, 2018
I have never been comfortable answering the “What is the future of…?” question. I have reflected on how myopic we are.
John Green described our collective myopia more eloquently. He cited Philip Roth’s “relentless unforeseen” when describing our technological crystal ball gazing:
One never sees the future coming… We don’t know how it’s going to end, or for that matter, how it’s going to middle.
My field is technology-mediated pedagogy. When driven purely by teachers, technology use tends to recreate the past. When driven only by industry, technology designs try to grasp a fuzzy future.
When do we focus on the now? It is shaped by the past and it shapes the future. Relying on past successes makes us increasingly irrelevant; focusing too much on the future makes us blind. The middle now, as difficult as it might be to juggle, is a way to stumble into the relentless unforeseen.
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