Technological Aids to the Efficient Assessment of Prior Learning - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 320

medical professional's life. This again means that
multidisciplinary teams will research, devise and
implement new systems to provide diagnostic or
therapeutic medical care. Consequently, techni-
cians should be educated to operate the new
equipment, physicians should know how to use it
wisely, and patients should be able to understand
how it affects them.
The consequences of the information society
described for these two professions, apply widely.
What is more, and this represents the second
trend, is that it seems that the pace at which new
knowledge is required increases. The pace at which
existing knowledge becomes obsolete quickens.
To some extent, the increased number of people
who are involved in researching new technolo-
gies plays a part in this. However, the increase of
obsolete knowledge seems to be mostly driven
by the speed with which computer chips become
faster: every 18 months their speed has doubled
(Barnes, 2005; based on Moore's law (Moore,
1965). Faster chips are able to perform more cal-
culations and thus take more complex decisions.
Innovations that for some time were imaginable
but not realisable, all of a sudden become feasible
with the advent a new generation of chips. At the
same pace at which computer chips increase their
speed, the artefacts that use them can become more
complex. The computers from the 80s were simply
not fast enough to do in real time the calculations
that a motor management system needs to adjust
the fuel mixture that it injects into the engine to
the changing demands that are made on the en-
gine. Similarly, processing images consisting of
several millions of pixels each 32 bits deep has
been beyond the capacity of computer chips but
for the most recent generations. The increased
computing speed requires an update of knowl-
edge about existing artefacts, roughly at the same
pace. Parenthetically, the problem of knowledge
obsolescence is especially grave for those whose
job it is to maintain artefacts, those with a lower
vocational education. As artefacts change, their

knowledge may become fully obsolete and in
need of complete replacement.
Regarding the third trend, society at large
changes through the introduction of technol-
ogy. Not only does set our changing society sets
demands for more and deeper knowledge at an
ever increasing speed, technology changes the
very fabric of our society. It is a mistake to view
technology from a functional perspective only, as
aids that behave according to our commands and
wishes, optional, as something one can choose
to use or ignore. Technologies have a tendency
to affect society beyond their intended usage.
Technology changes our culture, as always it has
and always will, where culture is understood to
be the complex whole of knowledge, skills, be-
liefs, laws, values, habits, and preferences of the
people that make up some society. The arrival of
the steam engine dramatically changed society,
as did the introduction of electricity and as now
does the advent of the computer (Thurow, 1999;
Steyaert & De Haan, 2001). Although some elect
to try and avoid sharing the blessings of modern
artefacts, for instance the Amish in North America
(Kraybill & Olshan, 1994), for most people this is
not an option. Indeed, many in so-called develop-
ing countries actively strive to attain the level of
development that the information society affords.
For this majority, the impact of technology tran-
scends the instrumental functionality for which
it was designed. For them, technology mediates
between the human being and its environment
and in doing so reveals latent, unintended uses of
technology (Borgmann, 1984; Hickman, 1990).
However, this kind of ease in dealing with technol-
ogy, at the purely instrumental level but certainly
at a supra-instrumental level, requires that people
are sufficiently educated. And again, as artefacts
become more complex and more numerous, educa-
tion needs to respond to a digital divide between
those who are conversant with technology and
use it to enrich their lives and those who have no
clue about it and are consequently left behind.