“With today’s rapid pace of technological and economic change, the skills gap is widening worldwide. People need new skills to succeed in the changing economy, and organizations can’t find the talent they need to grow and thrive. Governments and nonprofits are on the front lines of efforts to close this gap.” Continue reading “Talent Development and the Future of Work” →

For some time, we’ve been envisioning the next phase of learning in Maine. We’ve met a number of times, in different places, to try to capture our vision of the future of education. And we’ve done this while being surrounded by the pervasive disruption of our familiar ways of educating students. Continue reading “The Future of Learning in Maine” →

For some time, I’ve been concerned about the loss of creative work inside corporate social networks, so I’ve avoided posting unique text or images into Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Continue reading “A month inside walled gardens” →

This afternoon, the wind whipped the leaves into wispy funnels that danced out around the woodpile and up the back hill, inviting us to come out. Continue reading “Into the liminal: an ode to autumn” →

In response to N.J. Smythe’s insightful commentary: If The Web is Really Dead, What Have We Lost?

As healthy people and societies evolve, they approach new experiences and then integrate them into a more expanded structure. I believe this applies to the evolution of technologies and media, too.

In television, we may have 500 channels, but several programs are still water-cooler experiences, albeit of a higher-common-denominator than the top 10 of 1970. The same goes for magazines. Just as diversity divides without common ground and unity becomes uniformity without multiple perspectives, so, too, will new online ecosystems — open and proprietary — facilitate the very experiences we need as humans.

So, while we may have moved beyond the first-generation excitement of the Wild, Wild Web, the social needs it satisfied will still push online experiences forward.

I believe the next Web — Web 3.0, the “Live” Web — will still provide open spaces where we will be challenged with new ideas because that’s what human learning and development demand. It will also provide the echo chambers we choose when we want to be validated by others with our own opinions.

Some define the Web as “www” and “HTTP.” I think the Web is more like the noosphere that Teilhard de Chardin envisioned 50 years ago: a place where our collective knowledge and insight (and, I’d add, natural systems captured through sensors) will live organically all around us.

The One and the Many drive media evolution. Those with the ability to tell the universal story — and also ground it in the personal and individual — will dance across boundaries and make meaning that resonates throughout our communities.

• Image by Dimitry B. via Flickr Creative Commons