MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES AND THE FUTURE OF GLOBAL EDUCATION

Optimism for the future lies on the diminishing "cost" of the production and dissemination of knowledge. This must be differentiated from the "price". The cost reductions are based on the increased power of technology and the expansion of the possibilities of human thought due to digital technologies and telecommunications. The fact that the price is not being reduced and is sometimes in fact going up in spite of the cost reductions is a political/economic problem that must be resolved. This is not easy as the prices are all too often subject to control by monopolies or global consortia or even artificially kept high by governments. It is a sad fact that even as average incomes are rising due to productivity gains, the median incomes are dropping. This is having a particularly negative effect on developing countries, but is also apparent in much of the developed world. The major technological trends supporting the view that "equal" or "free" education is becoming possible are those involving the new mobile devices: digital divergence - the growth in popularity of dedicated wireless devices for transmitting information; combined with digital convergence - the growth of all purpose devices where the cell phone is no longer just for speaking, but also for text messaging, photography, radio, even digital TV, web browsing, etc. So, the possibility is there to vastly increase access to learning, but that does not mean that this will happen automatically. There are many obstacles. These aspects have been critically examined in this paper.