Hello folks, Nick Wong here. I’m a Psychology major doing a fifth year victory lap to complete the TS minor. I guess that means I’m no luddite, despite the fact that the closest I’ve ever come to owning a cell phone is when my mom gave me her old iPod about a year ago, which I now periodically take out in public and pretend to text on whenever I want to blend in.

I suppose my initial interest in the intersections of technology and society stems from an early affinity to social media (I’ve always felt my most effective communication mediums were the 2am MSN (R.I.P.) convo and the long form Facebook message (semi-R.I.P.)). However, my fascination with the subject has broadened to the point where I almost can’t think of anything at all without also considering how it relates to humanity’s use of technology.

Something I’d be particularly interested in exploring is the idea of the “death of knowledge” and how it might force educators to reconsider their role as well as that of the entire educational system. If you take active externalism as your guiding philosophy, and combine it with the growing ubiquity of mobile technologies, traditional academic values are being rendered obsolete. Our mobile devices are now extensions of our minds, and anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection can access virtually every scrap of human knowledge produced to date. Where, then, should our educational priorities be, if not with rote learning and specialized knowledge? How should the curriculum be modified to reflect these changing priorities, and what technologies will emerge or be appropriated from other domains for use in the classroom? I would argue (or perhaps just hope) that the arts will take on increased significance, so I’d like to see us explore how technologies related to music, art, writing, and other creative disciplines might affect how and what we learn in the future.