Stephen Downes

Notes and slides for Audrey Watters's talk at the OpenEd conference. I think she nails it. "Christensen's 'disruptive innovation' story taps into these same powerful narratives about the end-times, told, as always by the chosen ones — be they Americans, Christians, Shakers, Heaven's Gate followers, survivalists, Java programmers, venture capitalists, Techcrunch, or Harvard Business School professors." And it's worth asking: "Where in the stories were telling about the future of education are we seeing salvation? Why would we locate that in technology and not in humans, for example? Why would we locate that in markets and not in communities?"