That's all there is to it. Age, searching, internet, none of that is relevant other than being conditions under which it can happen. Identical results can be had with kids doing stem completion tasks (E A _ _ _ = E A R T H), college students doing a Stroop task (words naming colors, in that color or a different one), and any brain you can get to sit still and problem solve while stuck inside a tube with horrible noises going on.
TFA is a prime example of someone doing a far too specific test on a general principle and either thinking or pretending to have discovered something. I'm going to go with "pretending" since the new results after practice were seen in the middle and interior frontal gyri, and he claims these results are due to two specific processing tasks, but neglects to mention that the two regions make up more than half the frontal lobes in which there are obviously a great number of things going on, many of which would be occurring during the task, their design is completely incapable of telling the difference between excitatory and inhibitory activation, and there is no word on whether the 'enhanced' neural activity correlated with improved ability to search and/or answer relevant questions, without which one could just as easily make a case that the increased activation was a sign of boredom for having to do the same damn stuff again that they've been doing the past two weeks at home.
Someone needs to do a study and see whether asking hard questions about this stuff of researchers giving talks on it when they clearly don't know enough about what they're doing makes their brains light up in the right places, because if you make people think, their brain works harder. Wouldn't have happened here, because they wouldn't have been forced to answer the questions -- this was just a poster. Anyone can get any poster into one of these conferences as long as it says fMRI on it.
I teach elderly people how to use the internet along with other computer skills. It actually does help them as unlike simply learning something new, the internet and computer skills quickly leads onto a range of other skills that they can pick up quickly by themselves.
If you think young people are good at picking up computer skills you should try working in primary schools with mainly young women teachers. Most can hardly get past simple word processing.
The difficulty of teaching the elderly in not to do with their brain power but they are not motivated enough to want to learn as they have few others to impress.
I also teach martial arts, scuba diving, bebop guitar, and DIY skills. Mainly to younger people - who want life pout on a plate for them.
Oh yes, I'm 79 you can check out who I am by looking up my various web sites on how to make movies, for children.
I was 40 before I ever saw a computer. At 45 I had written books on them. At 78 I teach computer animation. It depends on your market. If you choose to specialise and study your market well you can survive doing just about anything. My experience is that most degrees involve learning much of what you don't need or may never use. Pick your market firt then learn what you need to know, who you need to know, and how you need to apply it. You may find you even need a degree.
I've never attended university, or passed any exam of any sort other than a driving test which I took for the first time at 54.
I did take up the guitar to learn bebop at 70 though, but that was after I won a film award at 68 but before I started gym classes at 72.
At 78 I do find my mind declining, but that is because I find learning programming quite hard, though it appears from my acquaintances, not as hard as it is for the 30-somethings who have other things to do.
My friends in the 70-80s write books, go scuba diving, play jazz, run companies. Some have degrees and some not. Those that have feel that it doesn't make much difference providing you are generally active and not too much concerned with what you are supposed to be doing and concentrate on what you want to do.
I am not a programmer (in fact a 78 year old ex-sailor), but I do waste my time doing puzzles like those on jigzone. It seems to me in my ignorance, that it may be possible to have a Captcha like a puzzle that has two or more pieces that can be simply put together with a mouse. Does that sound stupid?
How do you fix education? Very easy; get children and young people to make their own educational movies. It has been shown in studies that children learn best from each other, next from self-learning, next from parents, and lastly from schools.
I have run many such proejcts with children, and in particular Special Needs children, some who were regarded as unteachable, yet had good results.
My government sponsored (Millenium Award) site is the outcome of this at www.makemovies.co.uk.
I have a genetic defect which my daughter has inherited. A specialist stated it might affect my daughter to the point where she might not want children herself (she was three at the time). Now in her late twenties she has a degree in philosophy, runs her own rock group, recorded several CDs. Organises charity events, and won several prizes in art.
I look forward to having some defective grandchildren.
The internet is far from making us stupid. I almost never read now but I use the web to get lessons on new computer programs, music, and various hobbies and studies. I use it constantly for communication with people I would have lost touch with. I write regularly to various authorities by email who I would not bother to write to by post. I check my health and ailments all the time. I trace friends and relatives. My life is full due to Google. My friends who are computer illiterate live increasingly isolated lives. .
The Internet is the best thing that ever happened to civilisation, it has created the global village http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/bas9401.html predicted in the 1960s by Marshall McLuhan.
Reading based on words (as against reading images) is inefficient and will eventually disappear. The generation gap is due to young people abandoning reading and writing in favour of imagery.
I am 77.
The argument about child porn and images commonly reports how the images incite offences against children. The facts commonly left out is that a significantly high number of paedophiles were themselves abused as children, and quite commonly come from single-parent families - usually without fathers. Anyone interested in this side of the discussion might look up PAS (parental alienation syndrome)which is becoming more common. This is not in any way a defence or justification, just a point that requires consdieration.
If wind farms actually do produce enough energy then I see politicians cashing in on it and forcing everyone to ear hats with propellers on top. But they could be a good thing as you would need to run to generate enough electricity to operate your computer that you are wearing built into your clothes. Running will keep you fit and a visor will enable you to operate your machine while running. A built in navigatiion system will stop you bumping into things. Fat people will obviously not run fast and become computer illiterate, but will compensate by having more clothing therefore bigger computers which will take over their lives.
When it happens remember you read it here first.
As the oldest person on slashdot (probably) the idea of having everying tagged so you can find it is a brilliant idea. I have to put numbers on drawers and make lists of where everything is. I have to put down my glasses and say loudly to myself "Glasses on top of the microwave". Why do I put them on top of the microwave? because that's the sort of thing you do when you are old, vague, confused, and read slashdot because you can't find anything useless to look at on TV even if you could find the control. Bear in mind that a very large proportion of old people live alone. Good luck to the person who suggested tags on everything -whatever his name was (of was it a her). Now...where did I put the cat, it was here a minute ago.
The biggest advance in education will be the time when pornography is taught as a curriculum subject so that children learn what it is about and how to relate to it.
Those of us familiar with the 'Third World' situation know that children in those areas learn to cope with death, starvation, deprivation, disease, tyranny, ignorance, and a life devoid of hope. Most survive.
Our children (in the West) will survive the awareness of pornography, which will come whatever is done to block it by whoever has a vested interest in doing so.
Shakespear is boring; much of his work is trivial, and most of it plagiarised. His genius lay not in his works as such but the way he used language; the rhythm of his phrasing; making nouns into adjectives; bending grammatical constructs; using imaginative analogies; and creating characters well suited to their parts.
To suggest that there is no Video game comparable to a Shakespear work is untrue. My first computer game was 'Rocket Lander' played on a teletext machine in the late 1960s, you typed in coordinates and waited for a printout to see the effect.
It took geniuses to create the screens, solve the Hidden line problems, and all that eventually created the 'Computer game'. In effect such games turned audiences into performers.
In fact the development of computer games is by far the most important development in history. They are the spin-off from a world that is fast changing from verbal to visual communication. Written language is on the way out.
Shakesspear cannot be read in English by someone who doesn't read English, but computer games can be played in any 'language'.
If there is ever to be world peace then a common language is required. That will come from the essense of computer games. The effects and possible solutions to global warming, asteroid impacts,and god-given disasters will be shown by computer simulation that has been developed by those whose profits come in some way from computer games.
Is Space exploration worht the cost? Yes because it keeps Sci-Fi writers in business. Is inventing a way to make pretty designs on textiles worth inventing? yes because it led to computers being created. Is wine drinking good for science? yest because it lead to making wine glasses and eventually to laboratory ware (the Japanese were late comers to science due to drinking saki out of bowls). Is animation a the most important discovery of the 20th century? Yes because it led to single-frame cameras (CCTV/crime prevention)digital imaging in every sphere you can think of. Is the Iraq war worthwhile? Yes because it empowered the government to set up surveillance systems on crime, safety, etc that would not otherwise have been acceptable. It also proved beyond doubt that our reliance on oil in well overdue and that alternative systems have to be sought in a hurry, and the answer to global warming will be a result of the war. Does it matter that by the time the war in Iraq and Afghanistan end they will have killed something like 500.000 by the time they are settled? Not particularly, as that is far less than die in a week from disease and starvation. In fact more people are killed from snakes in India every year than are killed by guns in the USA.
The easiest way to learn is by Positive Transference, which is by incorporating what you want to learn into what you already know. If you want to learn French and like music, then listen and sing french songs as against studying french grammar.
Knowledge does not in any way limit innovation. If you have the knowledge to solve a problem then you don't need to innovate. The real problem is that innovation is destructive and replaces something that someone has an interest in, and there is a resistance to it.
When computers were shown to be able to do creative work as in computer graphics, it was the computer people who backed it because it was seen as a way of selling computers. Very few artists backed it because it threatened them. I know because in the 1960s I ran conferences on it, and they were full of computer salesmen who couldn't tell a work of art from a roll of toilet paper, but they could see the applications. On the other hand those working in the arts (with a few exceptions)made arguments against computers.
Another aspect that has been studied is how 'success' leads to failure. Someone gets a good idea and forms a company. They then employ and administrator to run the company. The company grows. The admin department grows, but employs other admin people who know about running companies but not about the customers needs. At some point the admin people see their job as being essential but the customers needs as secondary. The companies income goes towards the admin needs, and the company loses its innovative skills. This leaves the market open to a new innovator, and the sequence starts again.
A third aspect is that innovators invent because they like inventing. Most of them do not have a need for their own inventions. In fact, once they have an idea the biggest problem is convincing others that the idea is needed at all. Anyone who has seen TV programmes on budding entrepreneurs will know what stupid ideas are presented for funding. Also anyone working in advertising knows that selling totally useless things is an industry and well established in the fashion, medical, and eletrical gizmo worlds. A visit to your local charity show will show how many people spend their lives designing/producing/selling/ articles that serve no purpose other than filling cupboards and drawers. Useless Christmas presents are a tradition (is there a recorded instance of anyone getting a really useful present at this time?).
True innovators who see a 'real' need (not a percieved one) are few and far between. And the need they see is usually obvious and not actually noticed by others. If your children watch too much TV there will be some brilliant person who will make a TV that checks on the children and regulates their watching time. A not so brilliant person will simply give the children something more interesting to do that watching TV. An innovation that suffers from the perception that not watching TV is a deprivation.
My five predictions for the next ten years. House prices in the UK will soar so young people will end up living in vans which will be fully equipped with communications but not have dishwashers, washing machines, and other energy/time wasting devices. In fact the gadget era is close to over already.
Like the Golden Age of Greece which had slaves, no work saving inventions were made during that era (in spite of the steam engine and computer being invented during that time). We will reach a stage where we have all the information we need, and we will need less as people will not need to gather it any more, it will be done automatically.
Marriages will break down, and less will take place. One in three children will lose contact with one or other parent, but mainly the father as women become more empowered in the workplace. Charity shops will not exist as people will not buy so much trash as they will have nowhere to put it.
Oddly enough religions and related beliefs will expand as more information becomes available showing that the world will eventually come to an end and we will all end up as photons zipping around in space.
Scientists will learn how to measure happiness, goodwill, kindness, care, and sympathy. These attributes will start to replace money, power, and material wealth as a measure of success.
Most people in the western world will be employed in some form of research, the bulk of which will have little impact on daily life.
The decreased use of oil will see oil producing countries go through great political and religious changes as they have to adopt new economic models.
As most machines will become highly reliable, or cheap enough to be easily replaceable then choices will be limited. Only a few types of car, phone, etc will exist as they will all perform the same.
Pornography, which currently takes up about 65% of browsing, will grow. It will be added to by robots. It will no longer be seen as a vice but and essential part of living, and will be a major contributor to the decline of the population,and will be part of normal education. The decrease in population and increase in everlasting goods will result in about 5% of the population being able to supply all the food, transport, housing, and energy requirements of the population. This will leave most people the choice of doing nothing most of the day other than social pursuits, or spend time studying hobbies of their choice. This in turn will create 'tribes' of people will common interests such as sports, music, arts, etc, who have little to do with each other, and will create their own languages and culture.
The decrease in production generally will alleviate global warming. Also, High street shops will disappear apart from a few convenience stores. The space taken up by shops will not be replaced by housing but by various services like the Citizens Advice Bureau which will cater for personal problems needing human intervention.
With increased medical breakthroughs people will live longer, and older people will be the norm. This will result in less crime and more political stability, though politics itself will large be a cosmetic excercise.
Writing as a means of communication will start to disappear and communication becomes mainly audio-visual.
Computer games will be largely bio-feedback machines.
The law will be drastically changed as various lie-detecting mchines become automatic and be allowed in courts.
Genetics will largely predict our probability of illness and capabililities. This in turn will effect our life style.
Money will disappear except for special forms such as coins with chips in that are used for machine operation.
The mobile phone, Ipod etc will all be incorporated into a headset or spectacles, and people will walk around largely oblivious to what is going on around them.
Criminals will be allowed to take the choice of being scientific guinea pigs instead of sentences.
The first cities will be made under the sea, and the discovery will be made that those livingunder the sea never suffer from obesity due to the fact
Teaching is now as much about searching as it is about instilling enthusiasm about a subject.
Having worked as a lecturer in animation for some years I set up several projects in getting children to use technology for making their own teaching movies. This is at www.MakeMovies.co.uk
In the linked blog (www.MakeMovies.co.uk/blog/index.html)there are thousands of links to animation sites offering lessons on just about anything you can think of.
The best use I found for technology was teaching children to find the information they needed themselves, and to make their own teaching projects with the help of other children. The teacher becomes a resource for when they need help.
Slashdot Mirror
... their brain works more.
That's all there is to it. Age, searching, internet, none of that is relevant other than being conditions under which it can happen. Identical results can be had with kids doing stem completion tasks (E A _ _ _ = E A R T H), college students doing a Stroop task (words naming colors, in that color or a different one), and any brain you can get to sit still and problem solve while stuck inside a tube with horrible noises going on.
TFA is a prime example of someone doing a far too specific test on a general principle and either thinking or pretending to have discovered something. I'm going to go with "pretending" since the new results after practice were seen in the middle and interior frontal gyri, and he claims these results are due to two specific processing tasks, but neglects to mention that the two regions make up more than half the frontal lobes in which there are obviously a great number of things going on, many of which would be occurring during the task, their design is completely incapable of telling the difference between excitatory and inhibitory activation, and there is no word on whether the 'enhanced' neural activity correlated with improved ability to search and/or answer relevant questions, without which one could just as easily make a case that the increased activation was a sign of boredom for having to do the same damn stuff again that they've been doing the past two weeks at home.
Someone needs to do a study and see whether asking hard questions about this stuff of researchers giving talks on it when they clearly don't know enough about what they're doing makes their brains light up in the right places, because if you make people think, their brain works harder. Wouldn't have happened here, because they wouldn't have been forced to answer the questions -- this was just a poster. Anyone can get any poster into one of these conferences as long as it says fMRI on it.
I teach elderly people how to use the internet along with other computer skills. It actually does help them as unlike simply learning something new, the internet and computer skills quickly leads onto a range of other skills that they can pick up quickly by themselves. If you think young people are good at picking up computer skills you should try working in primary schools with mainly young women teachers. Most can hardly get past simple word processing. The difficulty of teaching the elderly in not to do with their brain power but they are not motivated enough to want to learn as they have few others to impress. I also teach martial arts, scuba diving, bebop guitar, and DIY skills. Mainly to younger people - who want life pout on a plate for them. Oh yes, I'm 79 you can check out who I am by looking up my various web sites on how to make movies, for children.
I was 40 before I ever saw a computer. At 45 I had written books on them. At 78 I teach computer animation. It depends on your market. If you choose to specialise and study your market well you can survive doing just about anything. My experience is that most degrees involve learning much of what you don't need or may never use. Pick your market firt then learn what you need to know, who you need to know, and how you need to apply it. You may find you even need a degree.
I've never attended university, or passed any exam of any sort other than a driving test which I took for the first time at 54. I did take up the guitar to learn bebop at 70 though, but that was after I won a film award at 68 but before I started gym classes at 72. At 78 I do find my mind declining, but that is because I find learning programming quite hard, though it appears from my acquaintances, not as hard as it is for the 30-somethings who have other things to do. My friends in the 70-80s write books, go scuba diving, play jazz, run companies. Some have degrees and some not. Those that have feel that it doesn't make much difference providing you are generally active and not too much concerned with what you are supposed to be doing and concentrate on what you want to do.
It's called The Man, the Method, and the Moment, and I think even someone called Shakespeare said something about success and the tide of events.
Convicts were used to populate Australia initially. Why not send send convicted spammers as a start?
its not drilling its screwing
I am not a programmer (in fact a 78 year old ex-sailor), but I do waste my time doing puzzles like those on jigzone. It seems to me in my ignorance, that it may be possible to have a Captcha like a puzzle that has two or more pieces that can be simply put together with a mouse. Does that sound stupid?
How long before someone hijacks one of these UAVs?
It is well known that chinese cows point sideways.
How do you fix education? Very easy; get children and young people to make their own educational movies. It has been shown in studies that children learn best from each other, next from self-learning, next from parents, and lastly from schools. I have run many such proejcts with children, and in particular Special Needs children, some who were regarded as unteachable, yet had good results. My government sponsored (Millenium Award) site is the outcome of this at www.makemovies.co.uk.
I have a genetic defect which my daughter has inherited. A specialist stated it might affect my daughter to the point where she might not want children herself (she was three at the time). Now in her late twenties she has a degree in philosophy, runs her own rock group, recorded several CDs. Organises charity events, and won several prizes in art. I look forward to having some defective grandchildren.
The internet is far from making us stupid. I almost never read now but I use the web to get lessons on new computer programs, music, and various hobbies and studies. I use it constantly for communication with people I would have lost touch with. I write regularly to various authorities by email who I would not bother to write to by post. I check my health and ailments all the time. I trace friends and relatives. My life is full due to Google. My friends who are computer illiterate live increasingly isolated lives. . The Internet is the best thing that ever happened to civilisation, it has created the global village http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/bas9401.html predicted in the 1960s by Marshall McLuhan. Reading based on words (as against reading images) is inefficient and will eventually disappear. The generation gap is due to young people abandoning reading and writing in favour of imagery. I am 77.
Make it into the new Alcatraz, and then make a movie of how someone escapes.
The argument about child porn and images commonly reports how the images incite offences against children. The facts commonly left out is that a significantly high number of paedophiles were themselves abused as children, and quite commonly come from single-parent families - usually without fathers. Anyone interested in this side of the discussion might look up PAS (parental alienation syndrome)which is becoming more common. This is not in any way a defence or justification, just a point that requires consdieration.
If wind farms actually do produce enough energy then I see politicians cashing in on it and forcing everyone to ear hats with propellers on top. But they could be a good thing as you would need to run to generate enough electricity to operate your computer that you are wearing built into your clothes. Running will keep you fit and a visor will enable you to operate your machine while running. A built in navigatiion system will stop you bumping into things. Fat people will obviously not run fast and become computer illiterate, but will compensate by having more clothing therefore bigger computers which will take over their lives. When it happens remember you read it here first.
As the oldest person on slashdot (probably) the idea of having everying tagged so you can find it is a brilliant idea. I have to put numbers on drawers and make lists of where everything is. I have to put down my glasses and say loudly to myself "Glasses on top of the microwave". Why do I put them on top of the microwave? because that's the sort of thing you do when you are old, vague, confused, and read slashdot because you can't find anything useless to look at on TV even if you could find the control. Bear in mind that a very large proportion of old people live alone. Good luck to the person who suggested tags on everything -whatever his name was (of was it a her). Now...where did I put the cat, it was here a minute ago.
It is likely that the researches have mistakenly assumed that women say what they actually believe.
The biggest advance in education will be the time when pornography is taught as a curriculum subject so that children learn what it is about and how to relate to it. Those of us familiar with the 'Third World' situation know that children in those areas learn to cope with death, starvation, deprivation, disease, tyranny, ignorance, and a life devoid of hope. Most survive. Our children (in the West) will survive the awareness of pornography, which will come whatever is done to block it by whoever has a vested interest in doing so.
Shakespear is boring; much of his work is trivial, and most of it plagiarised. His genius lay not in his works as such but the way he used language; the rhythm of his phrasing; making nouns into adjectives; bending grammatical constructs; using imaginative analogies; and creating characters well suited to their parts. To suggest that there is no Video game comparable to a Shakespear work is untrue. My first computer game was 'Rocket Lander' played on a teletext machine in the late 1960s, you typed in coordinates and waited for a printout to see the effect. It took geniuses to create the screens, solve the Hidden line problems, and all that eventually created the 'Computer game'. In effect such games turned audiences into performers. In fact the development of computer games is by far the most important development in history. They are the spin-off from a world that is fast changing from verbal to visual communication. Written language is on the way out. Shakesspear cannot be read in English by someone who doesn't read English, but computer games can be played in any 'language'. If there is ever to be world peace then a common language is required. That will come from the essense of computer games. The effects and possible solutions to global warming, asteroid impacts,and god-given disasters will be shown by computer simulation that has been developed by those whose profits come in some way from computer games.
Is Space exploration worht the cost? Yes because it keeps Sci-Fi writers in business. Is inventing a way to make pretty designs on textiles worth inventing? yes because it led to computers being created. Is wine drinking good for science? yest because it lead to making wine glasses and eventually to laboratory ware (the Japanese were late comers to science due to drinking saki out of bowls). Is animation a the most important discovery of the 20th century? Yes because it led to single-frame cameras (CCTV/crime prevention)digital imaging in every sphere you can think of. Is the Iraq war worthwhile? Yes because it empowered the government to set up surveillance systems on crime, safety, etc that would not otherwise have been acceptable. It also proved beyond doubt that our reliance on oil in well overdue and that alternative systems have to be sought in a hurry, and the answer to global warming will be a result of the war. Does it matter that by the time the war in Iraq and Afghanistan end they will have killed something like 500.000 by the time they are settled? Not particularly, as that is far less than die in a week from disease and starvation. In fact more people are killed from snakes in India every year than are killed by guns in the USA.
The easiest way to learn is by Positive Transference, which is by incorporating what you want to learn into what you already know. If you want to learn French and like music, then listen and sing french songs as against studying french grammar.
Could be used to waterproof people. The man in the Ion-mask would make a good sci-fi series.
Knowledge does not in any way limit innovation. If you have the knowledge to solve a problem then you don't need to innovate. The real problem is that innovation is destructive and replaces something that someone has an interest in, and there is a resistance to it. When computers were shown to be able to do creative work as in computer graphics, it was the computer people who backed it because it was seen as a way of selling computers. Very few artists backed it because it threatened them. I know because in the 1960s I ran conferences on it, and they were full of computer salesmen who couldn't tell a work of art from a roll of toilet paper, but they could see the applications. On the other hand those working in the arts (with a few exceptions)made arguments against computers. Another aspect that has been studied is how 'success' leads to failure. Someone gets a good idea and forms a company. They then employ and administrator to run the company. The company grows. The admin department grows, but employs other admin people who know about running companies but not about the customers needs. At some point the admin people see their job as being essential but the customers needs as secondary. The companies income goes towards the admin needs, and the company loses its innovative skills. This leaves the market open to a new innovator, and the sequence starts again. A third aspect is that innovators invent because they like inventing. Most of them do not have a need for their own inventions. In fact, once they have an idea the biggest problem is convincing others that the idea is needed at all. Anyone who has seen TV programmes on budding entrepreneurs will know what stupid ideas are presented for funding. Also anyone working in advertising knows that selling totally useless things is an industry and well established in the fashion, medical, and eletrical gizmo worlds. A visit to your local charity show will show how many people spend their lives designing/producing/selling/ articles that serve no purpose other than filling cupboards and drawers. Useless Christmas presents are a tradition (is there a recorded instance of anyone getting a really useful present at this time?). True innovators who see a 'real' need (not a percieved one) are few and far between. And the need they see is usually obvious and not actually noticed by others. If your children watch too much TV there will be some brilliant person who will make a TV that checks on the children and regulates their watching time. A not so brilliant person will simply give the children something more interesting to do that watching TV. An innovation that suffers from the perception that not watching TV is a deprivation.
My five predictions for the next ten years. House prices in the UK will soar so young people will end up living in vans which will be fully equipped with communications but not have dishwashers, washing machines, and other energy/time wasting devices. In fact the gadget era is close to over already. Like the Golden Age of Greece which had slaves, no work saving inventions were made during that era (in spite of the steam engine and computer being invented during that time). We will reach a stage where we have all the information we need, and we will need less as people will not need to gather it any more, it will be done automatically. Marriages will break down, and less will take place. One in three children will lose contact with one or other parent, but mainly the father as women become more empowered in the workplace. Charity shops will not exist as people will not buy so much trash as they will have nowhere to put it. Oddly enough religions and related beliefs will expand as more information becomes available showing that the world will eventually come to an end and we will all end up as photons zipping around in space. Scientists will learn how to measure happiness, goodwill, kindness, care, and sympathy. These attributes will start to replace money, power, and material wealth as a measure of success. Most people in the western world will be employed in some form of research, the bulk of which will have little impact on daily life. The decreased use of oil will see oil producing countries go through great political and religious changes as they have to adopt new economic models. As most machines will become highly reliable, or cheap enough to be easily replaceable then choices will be limited. Only a few types of car, phone, etc will exist as they will all perform the same. Pornography, which currently takes up about 65% of browsing, will grow. It will be added to by robots. It will no longer be seen as a vice but and essential part of living, and will be a major contributor to the decline of the population,and will be part of normal education. The decrease in population and increase in everlasting goods will result in about 5% of the population being able to supply all the food, transport, housing, and energy requirements of the population. This will leave most people the choice of doing nothing most of the day other than social pursuits, or spend time studying hobbies of their choice. This in turn will create 'tribes' of people will common interests such as sports, music, arts, etc, who have little to do with each other, and will create their own languages and culture. The decrease in production generally will alleviate global warming. Also, High street shops will disappear apart from a few convenience stores. The space taken up by shops will not be replaced by housing but by various services like the Citizens Advice Bureau which will cater for personal problems needing human intervention. With increased medical breakthroughs people will live longer, and older people will be the norm. This will result in less crime and more political stability, though politics itself will large be a cosmetic excercise. Writing as a means of communication will start to disappear and communication becomes mainly audio-visual. Computer games will be largely bio-feedback machines. The law will be drastically changed as various lie-detecting mchines become automatic and be allowed in courts. Genetics will largely predict our probability of illness and capabililities. This in turn will effect our life style. Money will disappear except for special forms such as coins with chips in that are used for machine operation. The mobile phone, Ipod etc will all be incorporated into a headset or spectacles, and people will walk around largely oblivious to what is going on around them. Criminals will be allowed to take the choice of being scientific guinea pigs instead of sentences. The first cities will be made under the sea, and the discovery will be made that those livingunder the sea never suffer from obesity due to the fact
Teaching is now as much about searching as it is about instilling enthusiasm about a subject. Having worked as a lecturer in animation for some years I set up several projects in getting children to use technology for making their own teaching movies. This is at www.MakeMovies.co.uk In the linked blog (www.MakeMovies.co.uk/blog/index.html)there are thousands of links to animation sites offering lessons on just about anything you can think of. The best use I found for technology was teaching children to find the information they needed themselves, and to make their own teaching projects with the help of other children. The teacher becomes a resource for when they need help.