{"id":4993,"date":"2013-02-23T14:55:46","date_gmt":"2013-02-23T20:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=4993"},"modified":"2013-02-24T14:42:14","modified_gmt":"2013-02-24T20:42:14","slug":"some-technologies-surely-have-an-education-role-but-they-are-often-in-my-view-an-answer-in-search-of-a-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=4993","title":{"rendered":"“Some technologies surely have an education role, but they are often, in my view, an answer in search of a question”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was recently asked by a graduate student\/author about this quote: “Some technologies surely have an education role, but they are often, in my view, an answer in search of a question.”<\/em> (Jim Zellmer). I used this sentence in a weekly newsletter from my schoolinfosystem.org<\/a> blog.<\/p>\n

Pondering this question, I thought it might be useful to revisit the history of these words, at least in my experience.<\/p>\n

I have used variants of this statement since co-founding an internet software firm in 1995. I referred to certain technologies, particularly during the dot-com era<\/a> as “answers in search of questions”. <\/p>\n

It is certainly possible that I heard this statement somewhere along the way. Perhaps others have used different words. <\/p>\n

I attended a conference in the late 1990’s which featured entrepreneur Sam Zell<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Zell took questions after his talk. <\/p>\n

A dot.com founder chastised him and firms like his “Equity Group” for not adopting their “innovative services”. Zell quickly shut them up by referring to most such products as “intellectual masturbation<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

I continue to believe that variations around “answers in search of a question” is a far better choice than Zell’s limited audience, but effective version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was recently asked by a graduate student\/author about this quote: “Some technologies surely have an education role, but they are often, in my view, an answer in search of a question.” (Jim Zellmer). I used this sentence in a weekly newsletter from my schoolinfosystem.org blog. Pondering this question, I thought it might be useful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4993"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4993"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5000,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4993\/revisions\/5000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}