Discovering Digital Humanity

Technology changes everything. Technology changes nothing. There is no denying that we’re experiencing an unprecedented rate of technological change. This change has resulted in everything moving faster and in a more distributed fashion. Societies, organizations and individuals are struggling to find new equilibria. The missing element is how we fit into the picture. Breathless pronouncements of how technology will change the world focus too much on the technology and not enough on how humans can develop skillsets to help them navigate rapid changes in communication and computation. What we discover time and time again is that there’s really nothing new under the sun. Humans will use technology to fight, to love, to create, and to explore. Discovering Digital Humanity is designed to be a practical guide for organizations, teachers, leaders, and learners to think and rethink how they are using digital tools to achieve positive and profitable outcomes.

Instead of being bewildered by the vast array of choices that seem to confront us, this book focuses on practical, doable strategies for achieving our personal and professional goals. Its sections are each designed to address a different aspect of our relationship with technology: what the digital world means; creating human-centered technology, how digital thinking changes our stories, and explorations of real-world attempts to construct technology systems that augment human creativity and innovation.