The Reason for the Title

The story is told that, long, long, ago, the Egyptian god Thoth told the Egyptian Pantheon that he had revolutionized knowledge with a new invention. He called it writing.

Although he expected excited responses and, perhaps, some praise, the other gods reacted with dismay. "You have destroyed memory," they told him. "Now, man will not try to remember things. He will simply write them down."

Now, in the fuzzy area between history and myth, there was probably a Thoth figure -- the man who invented hieroglyphics. He probably worked for King Scorpion.

Whether you are willing to accept that there is a historical core to the story or not, there is no getting around the possibility that the debate on how education should be conducted goes at least as far back as the invention of writing.

I suspect the fiercest these debates are triggered not so much by pedagogy but by new tools -- writing, the scroll, the book, the library, the symposium, the university, the standardized test.

I may live to regret the pun that is the basis for this blog's title. We'll see if it was a pun worth making. I could have equally gone with "The Age of Caxton," which sounds more dignified. The reason for it, though, it that I suspect we are now living in a time when such a transformation is beginning to take place. I suspect that the possibilities offered by the computer and tagging and other forms of metadata -- coupled with the power of the internet -- will transform the current (essentially Medieval model that had been modified by the Renaissance) of higher education. That model bloomed with the availability of less expensive books and expanded as books -- the primary transmitters and recorders of knowledge -- became more ubiquitous.

What will happen, I wonder, when the next technological revolution makes it possible to access entire libraries of print, audio, and video content on a hand held device that will not crash or be destroyed when you drop it from shoulder height. How will the university change?

More pressingly, how must the university change if it intends to remain a relevant source of learning and not become the equivalent of today's monasteries.

What I think I need to sort my own thoughts out on this process is a place to gather them, tag them, and see what happens.

I suspect these thoughts -- assuming I continue this project -- will owe a lot to myth, to James Burke's idea of the knowledge web, and to tech. That being said, I have no idea where this will go beyond knowing that my thoughts will likely ramble a good deal.