Digital Technology, Innovation, The Future is Here!
September 12, 2006: Phil Noble, Internet Technology Specialist and originator of the Palmetto Project, enthusiastically gave us a picture of past and present technology and challenged us to utilize it to make a better future. He quoted Bill Gates, who opined: “The internet is radically different and will change the world with equal intensity as did the printing press and the coming of the industrial age.”
In the past year, more computers were sold than TV’s; more laptops sold than desktops; more cell phones than landline phones. We all have a global world in our pockets. In technology the power of the hardware and software doubles every two years and the price is cut in half, and still the sales boom.
A U.S. company is currently manufacturing a laptop in China which will be sold to school children for $100, but the sales are going to Chile, Brazil, Nigeria, Egypt and Burma, the developing world. We can only imagine the impact this will have on the need for every American child to be literate, competitive, and educated for the new world, as Tom Freedman says in his new book, “The World is Flat”!
South Carolina, however, is in a quiet crisis, sort of like termites eating the house, which are a lot less noticeable than if the house is on fire. The state was on top in the Agricultural Age and in the Industrial Age, but today in the Digital Age the state is still in a time of slippage, which began after the Civil War. We badly need to improve in Education, Technology, and Innovation. Today we have the highest school dropout rate in the nation. We are 50th in state test scores, and 48% of the 19 to 24 year age group is unskilled to do the most basic of jobs. 60% of adults feel that their children will not do as well in their lifetime as they did. To solve the problems, Phil Noble suggests:
ACTION: We must believe that we can do it. Give every child a laptop and teach him/her how to use it; guarantee college for all; teach all to be good citizens.
TECHNOLOGY: With it we can provide more, and save money doing it.
Reported by Fred Sales, Keyway Committee