December 17th, 2008
Has the age of 1:1 finally arrived?
I read an interesting article on PC Magazine last night outlining one columnist’s view of personal computing in 2020. The author envisioned,
By the year 2020, a majority of tech savvy citizens will be attached to their touch-screen and voice recognition-based smart phones, blurring the lines between personal and work time, as well as physical and virtual reality, according to a Tuesday study.
I, for one, think that 2020 is very conservative; eleven years from now, it’s hard to imagine where we’ll stand in personal computing. Could you have imagined syncing your iPhone to your Windows 95 computer 11 years ago? I think we will see a further explosion in these sorts of convergence devices, as well as a converged lifestyle (the idea of “blurring the lines” between work and play).
As the article points out,
People are currently addicted to their BlackBerry or iPhone devices, but by 2020, those devices will be the primary Internet connection for most people around the globe, according to the report from Pew Internet & American Life Project.
We already are seeing pushes in many developing countries to deliver educational content via mobile devices because it is easier to build cellular infrastructure than anything else. Similarly, the growing affordability of netbooks, new generations of which will include mobile data access, suddenly starts making the world envisioned by the PC Mag author sound right around the corner.
It’s time to start developing content and curricula to leverage these new devices; we won’t see this sort of convergence in 2020. We can start seeing it in the schools in the next couple of years and can already take advantage of the wide array of content available online right now.
This, of course, leads me to wonder if it’s time to make 1:1 a reality wherever it is financially viable.
Follow Chris Dawson on Twitter! Christopher Dawson is the technology director for the Athol-Royalston School District in northern Massachusetts and a member of the Internet Press Guild. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations, but always keep in mind that the opinions expressed here are his own and not those of his daytime employer, even if he talks incessantly about his day job.
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