“Where we’re going… we won’t need wheels”.
When Back of the Future’s Doc character histrionically concluded the first movie with the now-famous words, “Where we’re going, we won’t need wheels,” the audience experienced a shared optimism for the future, a wonder at the creative potential of people, and a reassurance that we can continue to work together as a society.
And as the audience navigated the diverse worlds of each of those three films, the core values that made the story helpful and encouraging revolved around individual choice, the value of family, and the benefits of a stable society. This is contrary to the wondrous new technologies in the 2nd film and the rudimentary machines in the 3rd film. Although technology, like other disruptions (climate change, disease) may expedite societal change, the fundamental attributes of a functioning society continue to remain subsumed by the nature of our being.
For my future essay, I am interested in how our society may change less than we think it will. On the surface, indeed, changes may occur, but the underpinnings will remain unchanged. Selwyn (2019) explains that exploring the future is a values-driven venture, therefore, as writers, we will need to acknowledge our personality traits, how those traits may impact our view on the world, and how those traits may differ from others. This way, we can better inform ourselves and maximally contribute to the greater and shared discussions of ‘where we wish to go.’
Therefore, the question I seek to learn more about through this writing assignment is how can we support people in positions of influence, albeit it teachers, parents, mentors, use technology as a tool, and not a crutch for the purposes of sharing our most important lessons.
Over the past week, I’ve learned about Inayatullah’s CLA theory, about how monetary policy during Covid-19 has solidified neoliberalist economic policy.
More to come!
Hi Ben,
I see the start of a potential paper here, but as you can see from Karen’s question already, it’s not quite clear what kind of future you’l be describing. It sounds like your essay will be guided by a motivation to support certain groups of people to use technology effectively. But, the alignment with the assignment isn’t quite clear yet. That’s ok for this stage of the process, that’s why we’re writing these posts, so I wanted to flag this for you. Remember hat i’m asking you to visualize 2030. One way that I see this developing, for example, is an essay that describes a future in which the supports you identify are ominpresent (i.e. im drawing from this to flesh out the supports: “how can we support people in positions of influence, albeit it teachers, parents, mentors, use technology as a tool, and not a crutch for the purposes of sharing our most important lessons.”)
Ben
What is actually the topic of your paper?