Reading Jessica's eloquent summing-up, I find myself answering in the voice of Dan. In a way, the rise of server-farms and cloud computing is, in MM terms, a metaphor for changes-in-mind among digitual users. Gradually, heavy IT users realized they could affordto be in the server business anymore -- or that it didn't make sense. So they outsourced storage.
Jessica says that's what's happening in education too. Students are not longer understood as storers of information but as adept getters of what is stored.
Dan would say: the problem with that is that, with no wisdom, with no core of cultural literacy, we're less likely to know what it is that we're getting and why we wanted it in the first place. Unless it's take-out.
Lisa says one of the real tests will come when an entirely digital generation reaches adulthood. Will they lose the "invented gene of deep reading?"
As Jess and McLuhan say, people become instant. That engages their passions, possibly at the expense of wisdom.
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