Writing and Publishing in the 21st Century

The real challenge of writing and publishing in the 21st century will be maintaining originality. With the storage of media images, sounds, musical phraseology ,etc. in publicly accessible databases, the problem of composing truly original work will depend upon one's ability to handle or have access to resources in each of the genres.

Producing and publishing educational resources will be significantly different from current textbooks. The metaphor will have changed. Rather than endeavouring to contain all the "knowledge" in the book, these new forms must concentrate upon providing a "wondering architecture," capable of leading the learner to the most current data and of mapping and formulating the learner's own view of the data based on systems that learn and modulate the patterns of the users own progress.

Most of all we will need to learn how to think for ourselves and how to navigate this cybernetic future. The following internal compass will become increasing important as our environment becomes polluted with ill conceived ideas, sketchy information and the pervasive dominance of cultural metaphors which serve the economic system, all packaged in the razzle dazzle of electronic, futuristic quasi-machine humans. While we are overwhelmed by the choice of 10000 television stations, we must retain our ability to discern beauty, quality and meaning...if our lives are to be worth living.

We need to conserve our disposition for wonder if we are to wander and wonder around in the world of the new media.

Current notions of success and achievement tend to promote the devaluation of wonder. Instead of encouraging wondering as an integral part of learning and living, we tend to view the act of questioning as a state of jeopardy where we feel fear and doubt. Wonder becomes an experience to avoid.

Preoccupation with the technical aspects of scientific advancement has led us to ignore what lies at the genesis of all science and invention, that is, a disposition for wonder. Science was born out of the awe that men and women have long felt for the world around them and their place in it. The disposition for wonder is that peculiar, disturbing, yet inspirational quality which children seem to be born with, and which some adults are able to retain.

Can you imagine not being able to wonder? Is it possible not to imagine? Yet, where, throughout our education systems, do we see the acceptance and encouragement of this incredible survival process - our ability to wonder and to perceive newness?

Imagination must be considered an integral essence of our ability to learn, for without imagination how could we imagine what we do not know? How could we imagine what it might be like to be another person? It would seem that without our ability to imagine, there can be no space for compassion and love, the basis of all our socialization and humanity. If we understand learning as the perception of newness, we can begin to re-kindle in our systems the creative intellect and inquiring mind, the connected way at the heart of our understanding that we value as mature human intellect.