Editorial: Special Issue - New Communication Technologies

Abstract

We are about to be swept away on a journey we can scarcely imagine. Looking back in forty years time we will hardly remember that in 1983 this is the way we were. The changes to our entire social and economic organization promise to be so profound that most predictions about the shape of our future based on the present are almost fanciful. Advances in computer/communications technology and their application in virtually every aspect of life are beginning to transform our society. Educators have become accustomed to reading about how computers will im• prove education. Article after article par• rots the same phrases. Now is the time for educators to begin to deal with the truly powerful and disconcerting image of an education system transformed by the new communication technologies. It is ironic, I find, that educational technologists have not played a greater role to date in the experimentation with and introduction of the new media in education. Cir• cumstances beyond the classroom will en• sure that, unlike television, the role of computers and telecommunications will not be marginalized. The forces of the market place-to improve productivity and quality-will have a profound effect on the delivery, as well as the content, of education.