So, I've been thinking a bit lately on technology's role in learning, or eLearning, if you will. My goal as CTO is to become the invisible man. Tech should serve users, not the other way around.

As is obvious from this website, I'm an opensource advocate and lately have been annoyed with how much 'stuff' old-school software vendors impose on the users of their products. If you really set down and think about the major barriers to innovation, you must consider the so-called 'investment' in 'the way it's always been done' near the top of the list. How many proprietary companies are actively trying to become invisible? Their corporate mission is precisely the opposite.

Several years ago, I got behind the opengroupware.org project in a big way. I thought that immature tech was the reason for the slow rate of adoption of new innovations in the groupware and collaboration space. The second year I presented opengroupware at LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco it became clear that tech was not the main issue. There were two major factors:

1. Decision makers' reluctance to try ANYTHING new.

2. Organizations' refusal to address the real costs of the 'way it's always been done'

Consider successful, innovative new tech projects like Drupal, Wikipadia or XMPP Messaging... old school 'document centric' thought cannot embrace the potential of new tech. Such models are really just digital analogs of paper. The reality of online collaboration has several 'paperless' aspects:

• Geographically distributed teams

• Electronic only from 'concept' to 'publication'

• Multiple editors - contributors

• Transparent versioning and tracking

• Integration with legacy directories and networks

• Multiple layers of access and permissions

Standalone document formats designed for standalone non-networked personal computers cannot respond to the needs of real collaboration. The paradigm shift has already occurred... in my mind it's just a frustrating matter of time for adopters to be made aware of the benefits of the new ways of knowledge managment.

In the 90's, when 10mb ethernet and pc's were the latest thing, organizations could understand the bits and pieces of the 'new' system as direct analogs of the existing ways business got done.

• Pen & Paper -> Typewriters -> Computers

• Filing cabinets -> Disc storage

• Telegraph -> Telephones -> Networking

• Parcel post ->Internet

• Paper letters ->Email

• Lock & key -> Simple authentication

Now, the next step is to move beyond the analog stage and embrace the potential implied by the emerging paradigm. Let go of the past and embrace the future. Our younger generation has no such baggage and look at the exciting space in which they exist intellectually and socially.

Now is the time to be prepared for the rush of changes as these 'new paradigm' workers hit the workforce. Can you identify their strengths and manage their weaknesses? Are you prepared to accomodate new ways of doing?

Are you ready?