In his “lost novel,” Paris in the 20th Century, science fiction author Jules Verne predicted gasoline-powered automobiles, high-speed trains, calculators, the concept of the Internet, and several other technologies invented well after 1863. Verne believed strongly that humans could realize all such predictions: “Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real” (Verne, n.d., para. 1). As scientists in various fields may have taken their cues from Jules Verne, we too can get some ideas about the future of technology and education from science fiction.
Looking at some science fiction within the past 15 years, we will start with predictions that are less farreaching than those contained within Jules Verne’s works. For example, in 1993 a low-grade action movie called Demolition Man depicted a teacher in the year 2023 talking to distance learners who attended class via individual video monitors placed around an empty table. The students’ heads, as shown on the monitors, followed the instructor’s movements as he paced around the room. Most or all aspects of this scenario are already possible with today’s videoconferencing solutions, high bandwidth connectivity, and cameras that use infrared beams to automatically follow a moving subject. Three years ago, Florence Olsen (2003) depicted immersive videoconferencing solutions with virtual students beamed into another classroom hundreds of miles away. In some cases, perhaps, Moore’s Law—computerprocessing power, measured by the number of transistors on integrated circuits, doubling every 18 months— makes it more difficult to look too far into the future because the future arrives so much more quickly.
At the same time, when we read Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, we can see the potential to realize some of his predictions in less dramatic fashion. For example, when people first study sign language, they may dream about signing in full sentences, even though they cannot yet sign in the waking world. In this scenario, the brain contains the previously learned phrases in a mental “database” and stitches them together in new ways during the dream. Soon some instructional designer will put a comprehensive set of sign language video clips into an online database that will allow anyone to learn full sentences quickly by typing text and watching the dynamically generated compilation of the sign language equivalent. Additionally, education and technology have been combined to create tutoring software that learns what you know and steers you to specific lesson components that will fill your learning gaps. These “intelligent tutors” exist for math, accounting, physics, computer science, and other disciplines.
A final set of educational predictions in science fiction is too far out to tell if they are possible. In 1999, a film called The Matrix strongly contradicts William Butler Yeats, who said, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire” (Yeats, n.d., para. 1). In the film, the characters plug a cable into the back of their heads and go through “programs” that embed knowledge and skills directly into their brains. The lead character, Neo, becomes a martial arts expert in hours instead of years. Another character, Trinity, learns how to pilot a helicopter in seconds. In reality, humans have had little success linking computers to the brain. Recent developments, such as real-time brain control of a computer cursor (Hochber, Serruya, Friehs, Mukand, Saleh, Caplan, Branner, Chen, Penn & Donoghue, 2006), allow us to believe that some day Matrix-style education may be possible. By then, hopefully, we will have mastered how to teach higher level thinking skills, since this futuristic just-in-time learning presumably will let us skip over lower level skills.
