Week 4 Reflections

I've had time this week to think about Thomas Friedman's "Flat World" as it applies not only to education, but also how it applies to my personal life. During the sixteenth century, the first century of European expansion and exploration, it took up to two years for a decree from Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (Carlos I of Spain) to reach the colonies in the New World. The pace of life and of change was necessarily slow as a consequence of the speed of communication (or lack thereof). And yet, because of the increase in the volume of ideas communicated by the recent innovation of the movable-type printing press the sixteenth century was a time of great intellectual, religious, and social change. As the volume of printed material increased throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the pace of change increased. The spread of Enlightenment ideals was dependent upon the ability to be published and spread far and wide. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the speed at which information can be shared and spread increase exponentially. The telegraph, telephone, radio, motion pictures, television, and eventually the Internet and the World Wide Web rounded out this first phase of the democratization of access to information and education. The Web 2.0 is the second phase. It's the ability for anyone with access to an internet-connected computer or device to create and share content. It's also the ability to collaborate with anyone around the world. The pace at which this next phase is developing and changing is absolutely astonishing. The pace of communication and the pace of change could, once again, go hand in hand. This week I was able to share a video and pictures from my recent trip to Europe with friends all over the planet on Facebook almost instantaneously. That's a shade faster than the two years it would have taken Charles V. :-)