Converging Technologies

Introduction

As we head into the 21st Century change will continue to accelerate and challenge us. Convergence of technologies will increase convenience, expand capabilities, raise expectations and lower costs. Learning and communication technologies will rapidly converge cell phones, computers, land-lines, mobile systems, satellite and cable, into a unified system that will dramatically expand both capabilities and convenience for accessing education.


Today’s students have been described as having an ‘information age’ mindset, being Millennials or members of the Net Generation. While this portrayal of generational learning styles can be oversimplified, the technology and media used by children during their formative years do have an influence on how they learn, as do the media used by adults. However, technology is no more static than people. The internet is a constantly evolving infrastructure that now supports many media, including disparate applications. (Dede, 2005)

According to Gingrich (2001),

“ We are today starting to live through two patterns of change. The first is the enormous computer and communications revolution or the digital age. The second only now beginning to rise is the combination of the nanotechnology-biology-information revolution. These two curves will overlap. It is the overlapping period that we are just beginning to enter which can be described as the Age of Transitions ”.


The Age of Transitions is a new and as yet unappreciated wave of change that will combine with the already remarkable pattern of change brought on by computers, communication, and the internet to create a continuing series of new breakthroughs, resulting in new goods and services. We will be constantly in transition as each new idea is succeeded by an even better one. This will be the Age of Transitions, and it will last for at least a half-century.

The Industrial Revolution and the Communications-Computer Revolution are both examples of the concept of the S-Curve (Gingrich, 2001). The S-curve depicts the evolution of technological change. Science and technology begin to accelerate slowly and then as knowledge and experience accumulates, they grow much more rapidly. Finally once the field is matured the rate of change levels off. The resulting pattern looks like an S.