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Serious_Fun
Joined: 28 Jun 2005
Posts: 1171
Location: terra incognita
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 Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 12:28 pm Post subject: Kids set for �Matrix� future |
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http://itn.co.uk/news/3c6e12c1200afdfca7dee5bb3cc176e4.html
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Kids set for �Matrix� future
Published on Sunday, June 01, 2008.
Children will learn by downloading information directly into their brains within 30 years, an education expert has predicted.
Chris Parry, the new chief executive of the Independent Schools Council, said "Matrix-style" technology would render traditional lessons obsolete.
"It's a very short route from wireless technology to actually getting the electrical connections in your brain to absorb that knowledge" - Chris Parry, Independent Schools Council
He said: "It's a very short route from wireless technology to actually getting the electrical connections in your brain to absorb that knowledge."
Mr Parry, a former Rear Admiral, spent three years determining the future strategic context for the military in a senior role at the Ministry of Defence.
He said the Keanu Reeves thriller may not look like science fiction in 30 years' time.
"Within 30 years, sitting down and learning something will be a thing of the past," Mr Parry said.
"I think people will be able to directly access, Matrix-style, all the vocabulary you need for a foreign language, leaving you just to clear up the grammar."
Mr Parry is now preparing the ISC's 1,300 private schools, which collectively teach half a million children, for a high-tech future. |
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johnslat
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
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| Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 1:06 pm Post subject: |
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"Within 30 years, sitting down and learning something will be a thing of the past," Mr Parry said.
In many classrooms, learning something is already passe.
But seriously, will we finally have those flying cars and those robots that clean the house then, too?
Regards,
John |
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Teatime of Soul
Joined: 12 Apr 2007
Posts: 905
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| Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 1:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Should have taken the blue pill. |
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rusmeister
Joined: 15 Jun 2006
Posts: 867
Location: Russia
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| Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 7:21 pm Post subject: |
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Meet George Jetson!
His boy Elroy!
Daughter Judy!
Jane, his wife!
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johnslat
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
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| Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 10:02 pm Post subject: |
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And yet - despite those advanced educational methods, George is still, well,
not the brightest bulb on the chandelier, is he?
Regards,
John |
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rusmeister
Joined: 15 Jun 2006
Posts: 867
Location: Russia
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 6:27 am Post subject: |
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A good point, John, that a great many people seem to miss. CS Lewis expresses it wonderfully in his essay "The Funeral of a Great Myth" where he posits evolution as a scientific theory vs "evolutionism" as a popular myth of improvement.
Here is an excerpt; I apologize for missing context, but am trying to stay within fair use; it's really worth reading the whole 8 or 9 page thing:
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For in the Myth, �Evolution� (as the Myth understands it) is the formula for all existence. To exist means to be moving from the status of �almost zero� to the status of �almost infinity�. To those brought up on the Myth nothing seems more normal, more natural, more plausible, than that chaos should turn to order, death into life, ignorance into knowledge. And with this we reach the full-blown Myth. It is one of the most moving and satisfying world dramas which have ever been imagined.
The drama proper is preceded by the most austere of all preludes; the infinite void and matter endlessly, aimlessly moving to bring forth it knows not what. Then by some millionth, millionth chance--what tragic irony!--the conditions at one point of space and time bubble up into that tiny fermentation which we call organic life. At first everything seems to be against the infant hero of our drama; just as everything always was against the seventh son or ill-used step-daughter in a fairy tale. But life somehow wins through. With incalculable sufferings (the Sorrows of the Volsungs were nothing to it), against all but insuperable obstacles, it spreads, it breeds, it complicates itself; from the amoeba up to the reptile, up to the mammal. Life (here comes the first climax) �wantons as in her prime�. This is the age of the monsters: dragons prowl the earth, devour one another, and die. Then the irresistible theme of the Younger Son or the Ugly Duckling is repeated. As the weak, tiny spark of life herself began amidst the beasts that are far larger and stronger than he, there comes forth a little, naked, shivering, cowering biped, shuffling, not yet fully erect, promising nothing: the product of another millionth, millionth chance. His name in this Myth is Man: elsewhere he has been the young Beowulf whom men at first thought a dastard, or the stripling David armed only with a sling against a mail-clad Goliath, or a Jack the Giant-Killer himself, or even Hop-o�-my-Thumb. He thrives. He begins killing his giants. He becomes the Cave Man with his flints and his club, muttering and growling over his enemies� bones, almost a brute and yet somehow able to invent art, pottery, language, weapons, cookery, and nearly everything else (his name in another story is Robinson Crusoe), dragging his screaming mate by her hair (I do not know exactly why), tearing his children to pieces in fierce jealousy until they are old enough to tear him, and cowering before the terrible gods whom he has invented in his own image.
But these were only growing pains. In the next act he has become true Man. He learns to master Nature. Science arises and dissipates the superstitions of his infancy. More and more he becomes the controller of his own fate. Passing hastily over the historical period (in it the upward and onward movement gets in places a little indistinct, but it is a mere nothing by the time-scale we are using) we follow our hero on into the future. See him in the last act, though not the last scene, of this great mystery. A race of demi-gods now rule the planet (in some versions, the galaxy). Eugenics have made certain that only demi-gods will now be born: psychoanalysis that none of them shall lose or smirch his divinity: economics that they shall have to hand all that demi-gods require. Man has ascended his throne. Man has become God. All is a blaze of glory. |
The Jetsons pretty well fit this bill. |
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