A New Way of Thinking about Technology: An Interview with Futurists Joel Barker and Scott Erickson

Editor-in-chief James Morrison interviews Joel Barker and Scott Erickson, co-authors of the book "Five Regions of the Future: A New Way to Think about Technology". In their book, the authors propose an ecological model that classifies technology according to different clusters or regions, each of which entails its own perspective of technology and how such technology should be utilized. Their five regions model thus shifts the focus away from defining technology in terms of its origins and towards defining it in terms of values, purposes, and results. In proposing this model, Barker and Erickson seek to help the general public take part in discussions about technology and its implications. They discuss the relevance of this model for such discussions in the field of education, arguing that this new lexicon will help enable schools to pass on knowledge of technology more easily and help shape future applications of technology in society at large.