Every revolutionary technology starts with a whimper. Its full revolutionary impact is realized only later after fundamental structural changes are made to accommodate the new technology.

The first ice-making machines were used to make ice for iceboxes. Once or twice a week the ice company delivered a block of ice to your home and you put it in your ice box. It was decades before the ice companies vanished and everyone had their own personal ice machine, called a refrigerator.

Steam was initially viewed as a solution to a problem for sailboats, not as a replacement for them. Steam engines were first installed on sailboats because of the persistent problem of time wasted in the doldrums. Only when there was not enough wind would the steam engine be fired up. In the end, of course, sail power vanished and steam permitted faster, larger, safer, all-metal ships that could move goods much more economically.

In the history of technology there are countless examples of when a new technology was first used to address a narrow problem within the existing order. Only later did it overthrow the old order. The delay is inevitable because structural changes are needed for the new technology. In the case of ice machines, universal access to electricity and lower costs through mass production were needed before everyone could buy a refrigerator. In the case of steamboats, deeper harbors, new construction techniques, and railroads to supply coal and move cargo were needed before large steamers made sense.

There is a dawning realization that the current economic boom has technology to thank for the structural changes it has caused in business. Productivity is up, businesses are far less hierarchical, and financial markets have been democratized. But the technologies we see today will look feeble and clumsy tomorrow because the technological revolution is far from complete. We are only part way through fundamental improvements in the technologies that enable computers and networks. One indicator of this ongoing change is "Moore's Law," an observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, several years before helping to start Intel. Moore observed then that the number of transistors on a microchip was doubling every eighteen months. Remarkably, this incredible rate of advance has remained true for thirty years, and could for another thirty.

This kind of exponential change applies to the entire information industry, not just computer chips. Experts expect these changes to continue for ten to twenty more years, but no one really knows. The result might be a trillion-fold increase in performance since 1965 and a million-fold increase from today.

One would think that the enormous advantages technology has brought to business would be reflected in education. But in spite of the decades that computers have been in schools, we have yet to see the revolution they could cause in learning. Educators are still delivering block ice made by ice machines, still using steam only in the doldrums. This is because business competition rewards improvements while education is organized to conserve and pass on the best of the old. In addition, education is highly labor-intensive, and the cost of labor has been bid up by the buoyant economy. We are, nevertheless, overdue for a surge in educational performance driven by the technology--as soon as we are willing to make the necessary structural changes.

It is impossible to predict what new applications these improvements in the underlying technology will enable, but it is certain that the structural changes necessary to exploit them fully in education will take additional decades. Developers of educational technology are writing just the opening speech of the most dramatic play educators have ever witnessed. Our grandchildren will write the next intervening scenes, and their children will enjoy the finale.

Robert Tinker is president of The Concord Consortium.
bob@concord.org

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