Ed3 Weekly #37: The Highs, Lows, and the In Between
Hello web3 and education frens,
Welcome to all my new subscribers from this past week. If you haven’t subscribed yet, click here, or use the button below to join over 100+ others learning about the intersection of web3 and education.
There’s a lot of innovation happening at a really rapid pace right now. I’ve yet to see a clear consensus on what all of this innovation will mean for education. There seem to be two camps emerging though. The “not in my house” approach and the “if it’s new it must be good.”
These two extremes are helpful to A/B your own ideas about education. How much faith do you put in our legacy systems? How prepared are we to incorporate these technologies?
Everett Rogers covered this in his book Diffusion of Innovations. In it, he proposes his “Innovation-Adoption Curve.” At the crux of this model is not the people who innovate, but the evolutions of the innovations themself.
With this in mind, a lot of the debate about whether or not individual teachers will embrace AI-driven chatbots, immersive learning, or crypto-based economies is misguided. It is the products that will have to innovate, not the teachers.
The resources this week reflect some of the ways that these products are (or aren’t evolving). Here’s what you can check out this week:
🏛 An article in the New York Times asks if Plato would approve of chatGPT
🌐 Big announcement from CES that the metaverse and web3 get their own space at the annual conference
🇮🇳 The Economic Times covers the future of web3 and cryptocurrencies in India
👎 Bad news for the metaverse in 2022 according to The Ringer
Plato Versus ChatGPT
Illustration by The New York Times; photographs by kyoshino and Khuruchon Chanthanyakorn, via Getty Images
There can never be enough chatGPT talk. This opinion piece in the New York Times offers an interesting perspective though. What would Plato think about AI chatbots?
As educators, we are faced with a real-time threat to our legacy models of delivering instruction. Some are freaking out, some are embracing, and others are getting caught in the headlights. I can’t emphasize how important it is that we educate ourselves on the power of these technologies and that we familiarise ourselves with different perspectives.
The biggest disservice we can do to young people is to not have an answer as to what our relationship with this technology will be. This article is a good primer on what this technology means in the broader framework of learning and information.
Web3 Is Moving On Up!
CES 2023 is happening next week. GETTY IMAGES
Sometimes there are little things that signal a shift in markets. This announcement that there will be a dedicated space to gaming, the Metaverse, and Web3 in Central Hall at CES 2023 is one of those things.
As Cathy Hackl outlines in her article there will also be a partner track entitled Digital Hollywood: Hollywood Streaming and the Metaverse. When Cathy speaks I listen. And if she says this is a big deal for the metaverse and web3 then it surely is.
Web3 in India
Image from the Economic Times
Emerging markets have been sneaking under the radar during the recent crypto expansion of the last five years. According to the September release of the 2022 Global Crypto Adoption Index Top 20 by Chainanalysis, 7 of the top 10 countries listed are in emerging markets.
This article from the Economic Times outlines why India (ranked fourth) is a place to watch. India is quickly emerging as a world economic power, in 2022 “India became the world's fifth-largest economy, overtaking the UK and is now behind only the US, China, Japan and Germany.” India will be an interesting place to watch considering its collective technological knowledge mixed with its adoption of cryptocurrency and blockchain.
The Metaverse’s Tough 2022
Getty Images/Ringer illustration
For all the exciting news about the metaverse’s arrival this past year and into 2023 there are still a number of distracted. This article in the Ringer is pretty clear in its position that the metaverse was a big nothing burger for 2022.
Unfortunately, a lot of this analysis is the lumping together of the reduction in the value of tech stocks and cryptocurrency, layoffs at Meta, and the clunkiness of the early hardware. These are all signs that the metaverse isn’t totally “here” today, but not even tomorrow. But I think it misses the larger point that innovations in technology are moving in this direction.
The Ringer is another pop-culture barometer. And much like most legacy media, they seem to put the metaverse in the “talk to me when it works” camp. I get it. It’s a valid point. This is a good read to get a feel for what a lot of mainstream technologists are feeling at the moment when it comes to the promise of the metaverse.