"Better, Faster, Stronger"

I'm going to apologize in advance. I'm not going to talk about a Web 2.0 technology I could use in my classroom. Every sector of my being is exhausted, stretched to the limit, and beaten. I'm in a little bit of a wider ranging, philosophical mood tonight.

We have all this technology and yes, it's fantastic. We can do things we've never done, see places we've never seen, meet people we might have never met, and interact in ways we never thought we could interact. When we're using it constructively in our classrooms, we're giving students a tool to expand on and extend their cognitive capacities. They are engaging in topics and problem solving in new and meaningful ways. Fantastic. Three cheers for technology! Everything is, to borrow from a Daft Punk song currently sampled in a Kanye West song (how's that for Web 2.0?), "better, faster, stronger."

Is "better, faster, stronger" always a good thing? Is it something to which we should aspire?

An underlying assumption about wanting to do something faster is that however long it's currently taking is taking away time from something else a person could be doing. So we get things to go faster. Things move faster and we find ourselves with more free time to enjoy the things we didn't have time for before. What happens now? For many people, they start filling that free time with new things. Once they fill that time, they begin to fill harried again and look for ways to make stuff "faster." See the cycle? What are we filling that free time with? Better stuff? Is the stuff that has gotten faster better too? Do we just keep pushing ourselves until we give out?

I don't know if much of this is making any sense, but I needed a release this week. I know that there are holes you could drive a space shuttle through in my explanations and logic. This was kind of a dumping of thoughts. I may come back to this next week, when I will, with luck and divine intervention, be calmer, saner, and more well-rested. I might not. Probably not.

So thank you for your patience with me this evening. You've been a great help, whether you realize it or not.

Until next week...