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"the key building blocks are already in place for digital technologies to be as important and transformational to society and the economy as the steam engine. In short, we are at an infletion point-a point where the curve starts to bend a lot-because of computers. We are entering a second machine age."
-Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2014)
In The Second Machine Age, Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2014) write that we are "living in a time of astonishing progress with digital technologies," that "the transformations brought about by digital technology will be profoundly beneficial ones," but that "technological progress is going to leave behind some people, perhaps even a lot of people, as it races ahead." (pp. 9-11). The authors go on to explore how technological change is affecting most aspects of our society. In this vein, they note that even though education has historically been more resistant to technological change than other societal sectors, recent advances in distance education, specifically online learning, promise to radically disrupt traditional education (Christensen, Horn, & Johnson, 2008). The articles in this special issue have addressed one aspect of such disruption, technology transience, in the context of distance education.
Technology transience, as noted by Muilenburg and Berge in their article, "refers to the rapid proliferation of technology tools, the frequent update of such tools, and their evershortening lifespans" (p. 94). Amirault
reminds us that "technology" in this context refers to digital technology-computer and/or computer-driven hardware and software. This is important because it makes the technology in question subject to Moore's Law (Moore, 1965) which states that the amount of computing power one can buy for a set amount of money roughly doubles every year. Moore's prediction was bold at the time, and even Moore expected that his "law" would apply for no more than 10 years following his pronouncement. However, it has held from 1965 to the present. Every 10 years from 1965 until now, digital devices have generally become 500 times more powerful, making today's dig* ital devices over 31 trillion times as powerful as they were in 1965.
What does this increase in computations power imply for distance education? To begin with, it has made both online and mobile learning possible, and these two modalities have taken distance education...