Lora responds to Dana Blankenhorn’s comments in Corante that the recent Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference gave too much attention to hardware – i.e., Tablet PCs – over software developments. She offers a useful summary that developments in hardware affect, if not effect, software developments.
I hope teachers don’t promote the second part of Blankenhorn’s theory that people (he says human nature) want comfort:
Intense competition makes for rapid evolution. Call this Dana’s First Law of Competition. Markets in India and China are intensely competitive. You can’t let your guard down for an instant. This is a very good thing.
Ok, his point makes sense, so far.
It’s not what human nature wants, of course. As people we want to relax, to enjoy our lives, to set the competition aside sometimes so we can, say, raise our families, get more education, or retire with dignity.
Yes, it’s PC to say relax, etc. And many people appear to relax.
Thank goodness not everyone avoids competition. I’m glad my parents, their friends, and my teachers didn’t relax. Instead, they showed my generation how to enjoy competition, how to raise our families in competitive settings, how to earn more schooling through self-initiated learning, and how to retire with dignity and smiles shared with others.
Now, Tablet PC hardware and software appear as useful tools for my grandchildren to learn for themselves ways individually to handle yet undefined global competition where their resources, rules of competition, and personal consequences seem inconsistent with relaxing. I hope teachers help them prepare adequately with state of the art tools.
I hope people do not elect to relax, go numb, play video games and miss perhaps some of the grandest adventures ever.