How Will We Think in 50 Years

It is difficult to know anything for sure, but after reading the essays assigned for today and thinking about how thinking has already changed due to technology, I suspect society’s thinking will change in two major ways. I think society will see academic disciplines and careers as more interrelated in the future than it often sees them today, and I think individuals’ thought processes will slowly undergo noticeable changes.

Lev Manovich mentions in his introduction “New Media from Borges to HTML” that new media has helped create and strengthen relationships between disciples like computer programming and art. Randy Pausch and those honoring him made similar connections in “Dying 47-Year-Old Professor Gives Exuberant ‘Last Lecture.’” I foresee computer programming becoming linked to all disciplines as each discipline begins to become more involved in technological developments for teaching or other purposes. I also believe that these connections will not only exist between computer programming and other disciplines but between all disciplines to some degree as new media will make it easier for teachers to implement theoretical approaches like teaching or writing across the curriculum. I have noticed a tremendous difference in the teaching materials available to me the last two or three years as sites like YouTube and others have gained popularity and become readily available. When I was student teaching, I often wanted to make connections to other disciplines like history, the sciences, etc. but I often lacked the resources to effectively do so. Today, all sorts of resources are only a click away. As teachers and professionals become more aware of these programs and use them more often, future students and workers will no doubt begin to see the world less as a place divided by diverse interests and fields and more as a place connected by collaboration and interdisciplinarity.

Individuals’ thought processes will change because of these connections between fields or disciplines but also because of the way they will process information. Jorge Luis Borges explores ideas of time and how alternate endings are possible if different variables are taken into consideration in his story “The Garden of Forking Paths.” The ideas Borges mentions have huge consequences for composition theory and its abstract concept of truth or truths. What is true if the story is always changing depending on the day, time, reader, etc.?

On a more concrete level, technology has already changed the way scholars conduct research. While technology has made information more accessible and research easier, it has also made it more complicated. I remember one of my college teachers telling my classmates and me about a study she had read a few years ago about the difference between how researchers use traditional versus technological research methods. The traditional researches tended to follow a much more linear path whereas technological researchers often found themselves exploring multiple paths at once, becoming overwhelmed with information and much more indecisive in terms of topic and focus. Like in “The Garden of Forking Paths” individuals will need to change the way they think in order to understand the potential as well as how to overcome the challenges accompanying new media.