Achieving Technological Literacy

Kevin Kelly — the co-founder of Wired magazine and author of the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy and What Technology Wants — decided to home-school his 13-year-old son … and wrote about the experience in The New York Times Magazine.

“One of the chief habits a student needs to acquire is technological literacy,” Kelly wrote. “Technology will change faster than we can teach it. My son studied the popular programming language C++ in his home-school year; that knowledge could be economically useless soon.

“The accelerating pace of technology means his eventual adult career does not exist yet,” he added. “Of course it won’t be taught in school. But technological smartness can be.”

The nine principles of technological literacy that Kelly taught his son are relevant for all of us — especially those of us who graduated from eighth grade more than twenty years ago. Here’s a sampling. (I urge you to read them all.)

• Technologies improve so fast you should postpone getting anything you need until the last second. Get comfortable with the fact that anything you buy is already obsolete.
• The proper response to a stupid technology is to make a better one, just as the proper response to a stupid idea is not to outlaw it but to replace it with a better idea.
• Nobody has any idea of what a new invention will really be good for. The crucial question is, what happens when everyone has one?
• The older the technology, the more likely it will continue to be useful.

Making the Most of Search Engine Marketing

New York-based Advertising Age recently released the 2008 edition of its Search Engine Marketing Fact Pack, an overview of the top search engines, keyword use and “everything else marketers need to know to connect with consumers.”

It’s filled with interesting data. For example, a recent survey of advertisers revealed that they were robbing Peter to pay Paul. When asking which budgets they were diverting to fund search marketing programs, “magazine advertising” was the number one answer, accounting for 32 percent of replies, followed by “website development” (22%) and “direct mail” (17%).

Also worth checking out in the Fact Pack are the industry-specific rankings of the top websites and search terms. Among the sectors addressed: business information, banking, stocks and shares, telecommunications and healthcare. … all valuable business intelligence for branding and marketing firms and public relations consultants.

Very High Tech: Sky-High Tech, to Be Exact

In his Personal Technology column in the Wall Street Journal, Walter Mossberg reports that inflight WiFi is on the way. A new system called Gogo will make it possible for any passenger with a WiFi-enabled laptop, PDA or cell phone to surf the Web, use email or IM texting and download files, including streaming audio and video, once the aircraft has reached 10,000 feet. A data-only system, Gogo will not enable phone calls and will block all services involving voice communications.

The new service — priced at $12.95 for flights of three hours or longer and $9.95 for shorter trips — is already available on a trial basis on select American Airlines flights between New York and Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami. It will shortly be available also on Virgin America.

It’s a mixed blessing, this new technology. We’re either going to be more connected and productive public relations professionals, or we’ll lose one of the last opportunities left to sit quietly for a few hours and just … think.