Dana Blankenhorn

2014: Forgetting And Beginning Again

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 52 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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While in New York recently I got a powerful insight into what the next year will bring.

I decided to visit the site of the World Trade Center, “Ground Zero,” or “The Pit,” as it's been variously called.

Construction is transforming it. The new One World Trade Center, with its huge antenna, has been topped out. A shorter building, called Four World Trade Center, is going up nearby. The buildings that survived 9-11 are being redone under the name Brookfield Place .

Right now, a visit remains like going to a grave site. There are tickets, and tours, of the site where the Towers once stood, now transformed into a memorial. But there is also scaffolding everywhere, and it obscures the view of what's actually happening, the beautiful process of rebuilding.

Next year, that scaffolding comes down. Next year, New York can begin the important process of forgetting.

We all talk about remembering the past, of memorializing it, but it's also important to forget it and move on. You can't mourn forever.

Some time next year, New York will finally start to move on, and so will the rest of us. Instead of the empty, elevated courtyard of the old site, the new site is at street level. The new World Trade Center isn't separated from the rest of the city, as the old one was, but is integrated into it.

2013: The Shifting of the Political Wind

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 51 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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It is the job of any crisis leader to deal with a fundamental shifting of political winds.

It happens just once in each generation. An existential crisis causes a rising generation to adopt new values, and causes some in the older generation to shift theirs. The result is to turn the old majority into a new minority, and vice versa. Until next time.

This has happened 5 times in modern American history. The Civil War. The Progressive Era. The Great Depression. The 1960s. Now, the Great Recession.

Presidents elected at a time of crisis have a unique opportunity. Success puts them at the forefront of great American Presidents. Failure doesn't change the history, it doesn't prevent the turn, but it passes that opportunity on to a successor.

Who are generally acknowledged to be our greatest Presidents?

Teaching the Internet Part 2

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 50 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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Last week I asked, “What would you need to be taught if all the answers, to all the world's questions, were available at the touch of a few buttons?”

I asked it for a simple reason. This is the world we're living in. When I first became a computer journalist people like science fiction author Jerry Pournelle were among the few predicting such a thing could happen, and he was such a speculative writer few people took him seriously.

But he was absolutely right, down to the year – the year 2000.

Now that it's happened, what happens to education? What should we be teaching, and how should we be teaching it?

Last week I offered two basic answers – teach people to read what's online and understand it.

Today I want to look at three more.

 

Solving College Football

My old alma mater, Rice University, is playing for a conference title today, at home, against the Thundering Herd of (We Are) Marshall, as seen on a movie channel near you.

Didn't know? No one else does, either.

That's because Conference USA, where the Owls play these days, isn't considered a “major” conference. It's a “mid-major” conference, thus beneath contempt.

For the last several years, a host of schools have been moving between conferences, and among conferences, based on the size of their alumni, the power of their football teams, and the school's willingness to spend money in order to find a “better” home.

The system enriches only football coaches, and ex-football coaches. It's one of the biggest scams going. The players often get nothing (some get a decent education, if they apply themselves and the coach doesn't fire them for poor play), and the schools are also left destitute. Only a few dozen schools actually profit from football, and they plow the money into athletic facilities, enriching coaches in minor sports.

The system is broken. Time to fix it.

Teaching the Internet

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 49 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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What would you need to be taught if all the answers, to all the world's questions, were available at the touch of a few buttons?

This is a subject I'll be discussing both this week and next week. Come along for the ride.

It's an important subject because that is precisely the world we're living in. Yet hardly anyone has begun to get their arms around this, let along build a curiculum around it. Instead we're still teaching kids using factory methods from the 19^th century, and a set of curricula from the 20^th century that doesn't take the Internet into account at all.

And if today's kids are going to be contributors to society, the most important course isn't even being taught, not even in college.

No one is teaching the Internet.