Thanks to technology, the one thing we can count on is change

I was driving along a muddy road in the English countryside last fall in a brown jeep that was probably used by the English army several wars ago. It was raining, and the only way to get the windshield wipers to work was to reach out and use my hand. The gear shift seemed like something out of an Erector Set. And any second I expected to see Rommel's army—complete with tanks—pop out from behind the next hillside. Just then the archaeologist I was there to interview said something very interesting: “There are so many tests you can do these days. But before you begin digging, you have to raise the funds to pay for them all.” After all, he explained, unless you run the latest tests on whatever you uncover, your work will look shoddy to other scholars. And those tests require the latest technology as well as a slew of dedicated, trained specialists (lab technicians as well as math and software people) to run the machines. And, of course, all of that costs a lot of money.

I was reminded of that conversation when I was on the phone with a good friend, a research microbiologist who studies kidneys. His lab is mostly funded by grants. When he applies for one, he requests enough money to cover the cost of the best technology available. Typically, a grant lasts three to five years. So by the time one is well under way, there's usually an entirely new battery of tests and procedures waiting in the wings, leaving my friend with a tough choice: he can either stick to the specifications of the original grant (and say good-bye to doing cutting-edge research) or he can try to renegotiate the terms of the grant.

My friend and the archaeologist are both feeling the effects of Moore's Law. In 1965 Gordon Moore, who went on to cofound Intel, predicted that the power of computer chips would double every two years—and he was essentially right. That exponential acceleration in computer power means there will be a significant leap in our ability to analyze data before most of us have caught up to the last technological advances. This isn't a temporary phenomenon before things eventually settle down. No, it's the norm for computer development. The train never stops; it just keeps going forward, moving faster and faster.

How does Moore's Law relate to those of us who are concerned with K–12 education? It's pretty obvious for anyone who teaches science or writes about it. But Moore's Law alters the playing field for all of us. Take social studies, for instance, which fundamentally relies on chronology. Many of the advances that challenge the archaeologist to seek additional funding involve new (much more subtle and accurate) ways of deriving the dates and places of origin of the tiny bits of bone, seed, and stone that are dug up. These new technologies, in turn, significantly alter how we name, date, and understand the very stages of history that we teach our students. And since Moore's Law mandates that better machines and more sophisticated tests will continue to be created, the chronology that anchors the history we teach has gone from resembling a time line whose dates are as firm as a calendar's to a blur that refuses to stand still.

So friends, we have to be honest with ourselves. It's no longer good enough to simply teach young people how to locate information or to teach them a curriculum's content. Instead, we need to make sure our students have the intellectual tools to flourish in an environment that's constantly changing. Nowadays, we need to act less like baseball coaches who make sure their players understand a certain set of signs and more like hockey coaches who are orchestrating changes on the fly. Education = thinking + change. I find that formula thrilling—but whether we authors, educators, librarians, and parents love it or hate it, that's the reality of the world we live in. That's the legacy of Moore's Law.