Monday, August 3, 2015

es150803 Paraphrasing Rifkin 

If I had told my UW colleagues 30 years ago, in 1985 when I walked away that, by 2015, one-third of the human race would be communicating with one another in huge global networks of hundreds of millions of people simply exchanging audio, video, and text on a device in the palm of their hands, and that the combined knowledge of the world would be accessible there, that any single individual could post a new idea, introduce a product, or pass a thought to a potential billion people simultaneously, and that the cost of doing so would be nearly free, they would have shaken your head in disbelief.

As it was, they would not speak to me, let alone listen. All the things I forecast, even as early as 1972, are now reality. This has come to pass, and with benefits that a teacher can continue teaching after he has passed away, and students, too, can live in the virtual, virtuous world of the teacher.

For example, Maury Pepin was a student of mine, and he passed in 2004, too young. Yet it happens that I have a print he made, and his family may still own a print I made and which Maury bought when he was a student at the UW. Maury, in my memory, was inclined to science and engineering, and helped me to add another element to my game, Emeralda.

See his page at http://www.printmakingworld.com/emeralda/ps/psserv/patronage/pepin.htm

The first paragraph above is my paraphrasing of Jeremy Rifkin's article in Huffington Post.

No comments:

Post a Comment