Jan 07 2008
“We are living in Exponential Times”
What did you do over the holiday?
I spent the last two days sitting in mandated professional development workshops. During the introductory rah-rah meeting with the entire district staff, the presenters showed us the Shift Happens video. We’ve all seen it already, haven’t we?
We have it linked on the blog here and have used it for UDL sessions in the past. You can perform a basic Internet search for Shift Happens or Did You Know and you’ll find it - no problem - there are probably 30 versions.
Anyways, the main presenter repeatedly repeated the statement from Shift, “We’re living in Exponential Times.”
What does that mean, exactly? Exponential Times.
Did she honestly know what she was saying by using the phrase, Exponential Times?
The Shift Happens video doesn’t do much for me.
Am I supposed to be frightened by all the data?
Alarmed?
Confused?
Am I supposed to question the U.S. world view, i.e. suddenly realizing that The United States is not at the center of the globe - similarly to the commentary in the video that England was once the most powerful nation in the world with the highest standard of living … in 1900.
Is the music supposed to stir a deep sense of eminent doom?
Well… That’s probably the only part of the video that I think about (mostly w/ amusement) -I think about the music. The music used in the Shift video is a score from an Academy Award Winning soundtrack from a film about a war of men, the death of a way of life, the peril of a continent, love that shouldn’t be, lovers slain and the last remaining members of an indigenous tribe: The Last of the Mohicans.
I wonder if the Shift creator used that particular piece of music because it is from that film and they wanted to emphasize a point or simply b/c it sounded good?
I do sort of get annoyed when people call it, Did You Know? Did they totally miss the bad pun?
I don’t know if I even think all of the stats and data are 100% accurate. I don’t know if it truly is that big of a deal to me. Yeah, so what - Shift Happens. Obviously.
And in the scope of technology, the video is already dated.
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