“How do we move beyond the fascination with the latest and greatest and focus on sustainable innovation?” This was a question asked by our guest speaker Dr. Ellen Wagner in last week’s class. I suppose the best answer to this question is when the people can control their need to constantly consume. People like stuff. Doesn’t matter if it’s useless and doesn’t matter it’s bad for you. If it is what people are talking about, then it is what people want. After all of the hype, something new will come out and steal the spotlight.
The Gartner research describes these trend in stages. First, a new kind of technology will come out and spark interest, which is known as the technology trigger. The early adopters jump on the wave and it starts to circulate to more and more people. It eventually reaches its height and the peak of inflated expectations starts to drop and enter a trough of disillusionment. It isn’t until sometime later does a product show to be useful for a variety of reasons that it enters mainstream adoption and then it becomes a plateau of productivity. That plateau of productivity is the “norm” or every day uses. An example of these are wikis and blogs, which have been around years before they gained their popularity. Now companies and schools are using it as a regular communication tool. As Dr. Ellen Wagner describes it, “The path from innovation to adoption is a lengthy journey of implementations and evaluation to determine the benefit/return.”
How does an average person keep up with all of this technology? My answer to that is, learn what you find most interesting and the rest will eventually filter out. If you were to try to sign up for every new social networking site, virtual reality game, interactive tool, every kind of wiki, and learn about all of the technology trends, you may drive yourself insane.
So far, I’ve learned that the web 1.0 defines the world wide web in its beginning stage, mainly in its one way flow of information through websites which contained ‘read only’ material. Web 2.0 has brought a new medium to communication with socialnetworking and sharing information. Then you got Web 3.0, which is 3D communication. An example is the Wii. Here you are combining physical movement with virtual gaming/ communication. But wait…now they are talking about web 4.0! Web 4.0 deals with tracking devices. It almost sounds like a scary sci-fi, but Dr. Ellen Wagner used an example of having your house set up to know when you come home, the lights will come on, the bath will be ready (with the tempurature you like), your house will know how much energy to use. Anything and everything will be programmed and you won’t have to worry about everything because it is all taken care of…Then there is web 5.0, 6.0. Let’s just skip to infinity point O. If you think about it, who decides what makes web 2.0 or 3.0? Can you really find any valid sources that defines this phenomenon?
There are all of these new things out there, and no matter how great it is, people are investing in researching even newer things to top them. The new technology may be great, but may require system upgrades, installments of other softwares, and other compatability issues. What can we use now that we know will be sustainable in the future? What kind of tools can I use to teach curriculum without the need of replacing them or having costly upgrades? Before we start thinking about what can be invented for the future, let’s look at what we can use today for multiple uses of productivity. As Garth Algar puts it, “Live in the Now!”
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