Blog About Speaker: Erik Hanberg

The gears in my head started to spin when Erik Hanberg stated: "If it’s not on the internet...It didn't happen." I think about that statement in my personal life, and I now understand what he meant. Even in a smaller context, if I am considering trying a new restaurant and that restaurant is not online in some capacity I probably won’t go to it. If someone brings up an event and I can’t find it online, I may not believe the information they are giving me to be accurate or true. In line with the example Erik Hanberg gave, if a person is asked on a date and they cannot locate the person's profile on Facebook, they may not go on that date. It does seem like things do not exist unless they exist online, even a person. The reality of his comment about something not happening unless it's online spoke true to me. I had not realized it consciously before, but when it's not online, it's hard to trust the information.  

The concept that Erik brought up about the teaching of research skills can be considered a higher priority than the teaching of knowledge in a book, was also interesting for me to think about. The answers to any question that we have is right here at the end of our fingertips. I think this reality will reshape the way subjects are taught to the future generations. When I worked as a tutor at TCC, I noticed that very few of the students I tutored had higher than a beginning level of ability to seek out information through credible research mediums. I think this will change. In the future, I think, schools will focus on how to find the information and less on what the information is. Eventually, by the time a student graduates, they will know how to build websites from scratch, write code, and research information electronically. They will know less about when something happened in history, or how to spell, and everything about a computer. I’m not saying that I disagree with where the future is heading, it’s just interesting to ponder.

Erik Hanberg’s talk was informative and enlightening. I am interested in reading some of his books, especially because he published them himself. An amazing feature of this incredible thing we call the internet.