Tag Archives: disruptive technology

Innovation + Disruption Symposium Keynote, plus additional talks

Skip to around 9 minutes in to hear Clayton Christensen’s keynote. It is definitely the story of those who pay no attention to history are doomed to repeat it, with great storytelling analogies involving the steel and automotive industries. I was particularly interested in the bit about how the only companies to survive the industry disruption were those who set up a silo operation whose task it was to take down and control the main companies interests. (edX anyone?)

Also some interesting points about the significance of our Alumni and how so few things we do for students contribute to their ultimate support of our brand. (And how those things that do matter are not given any consideration in any meaningful way.)

Around 2 hours 20 minutes in, is a talk by Karen Harpp which has a very interesting description of the engagement of alumni and the current students for a particular class on the development of the atomic bomb. This included face to face and video conference interaction with the alumni. She also discusses a nice project that went over the course of several weeks where students did roleplay on twitter.

Screen Shot 2014-05-07 at 1.24.57 PM
how alumni participated during the course

In between the Keynote and the talk about the innovative course talk, was a panel of college presidents, which I found to be rather disingenuous. I couldn’t help but think that these people got their positions because of their ability to talk and represent themselves well, not necessarily because they were actually suited to be candidly talking about disruption happening in higher education.

 

Augmented Reality is coming…

We exist in a awkward point in time.

Information has been given to the public domain, our media purchases and software live in the cloud. We can access this data from a device that we carry in our pockets… and we do!

photo by UltraSlo1 (flickr)
photo by UltraSlo1 (flickr)

However – we have to hold this device and look down at it. This method of access creates walls between us and the rest of the real world. This is a temporary situation. Not long from now, people will look at this moment in time as incomprehensible. How could we function that way? (Just as they will when they release car control to computers and they think back to the bygone days when hundreds of thousands of people used to just drive willy nilly with no assurance of safety – and thousands would die every year.) The difference is that we have been driving cars for decades now. We won’t be accessing information by staring down at our pocket computers for more than a brief blip in time.

Google Glass is but a prototype. It is still bulky and crude.

prototype device from Brainstorm that could record all of a person's senses for another to playback
prototype device from Brainstorm that could record all of a person’s senses for another to playback

The future interface will be completely slick and integrated. Trust me.

Peer into the future with me and tell me, do you think we are ready as a society to handle this? Do we have protections in place that will allow us to walk around without seeing ads everywhere?* Do we have ethically unchallenged leadership that sincerely cares?

Ready or not, this blip we are living in, will be over soon.

*As if this wasn’t already a problem.