Future Directions
GASEOUS SPECULATION UNDERWAY
As ambient intelligence in development tools matures, cross-project intelligence will become increasingly powerful, especially as the entities building the tools become more aware of what the tools are capable of ... there will be HARSH reactions as the capitalist system realizes that it cannot begin to depreciate or write off capital fast enough ... in a LEARNING age, there's no value in yesterday's textbooks or any other calcified process that slows down education. There will be dislocations, winners/losers in the shift away from a tangible, capital economy to one that is driven by more ephemeral and not just knowledge-driven but driven to gather new intelligence and learn faster.
The best we have seen in today's innovation will not be innovative enough -- like the pony express competing with telegraph to deliver news pouches faster to certain clients; then the telegraph and nore expensive telephone and wire-services losing out to wireless and radio communications where monopolies are tougher to defend; then even wireless and broadcast media being overtaken by better, faster, cheaper, more distributed knowledge/information. If there's one thing that we have learned, it's that the speed of innovation is always increasing, in part because information technologies get applied to the engineering, research and development activities driving innovation.
Next Sub-Chapter ... Conclusion ... What have we learned about learning?