Stephen Downes

Audrey Watters blends two things: the soon-to-be-released book Vaporware, Inc (paywalled) by David Karpf, and the twenty-year anniversary of the Shift Happens (more) video by Karl Fisch (she credits Scott McLeod). Karpf argues that the tech billionaire class is in the storytelling business. "What they're selling is not so much technology (and, my god, it's certainly not science) as much as it is story -- a story about the future that, as the subtitle of his book puts it, is their attempt to control the present." That's also what was happening in Shift Happens. "That shift could be seen in 'more' – more data, more devices, more TV viewing, more text messages, more eBay revenue, more MySpace users. More and faster. 'We are living in exponential times,' the presentation claims." It's all a sales pitch, of course, more about pumping stocks than helping humanity. "The rationale for ed-tech adoption is framed, in this storytelling and elsewhere, almost singularly about 'job readiness' marks an abdication of any other, civic or democratic mission for schools. 'We are currently preparing students for jobs and technologies that don't yet exist,' the text reads – a made-up claim that Benjamin Doxtdator countered in a marvelous essay about several years ago." She concludes, "What ed-tech has forgotten to prepare students for: their present lives. Their humanity." That's true. Of course, there's no money in that.