Good piece, Matt Head. The same thought process prompted a seismic shift in my teaching practice (I also work with teachers and educators).

Recently I’ve found the same issue — not focusing on the ‘audience’, whether they are learners or consumers (in the case of my friend’s failed French fry shop) — pervades schools and businesses alike.

But to your last point — having a tool and prohibiting its use — I’ve set challenges and asked questions where teachers have covertly Googled up the answer.

“I’ve finished!” they tell me proudly while everyone else is gradually processing the problem.

“I’m proud of you,” I tell them (and it’s true). They found all the information they needed. BUT they didn’t even really look at it. It’s just there, sitting passively on their hidden iPhone screen. “As you’ve finished so quickly, now I’d like you to…” I begin, as I set them a much harder task to use the information in a way that both forces them to process it, and reuse it in a cognitively engaging way.

Again, this isn’t a problem just for education. At a recent gallery opening here (in Saigon) the centrepiece of this art and technology group show was an app controlled car that dragged a pen across a huge canvas. The result? A disastrous mish-mash of lines (that I wrote about here).

It seems we’re still both wowed by tech, while implementing it in the wrong way. What do you think Matt?