From “Galvanizing Your Campus to Go Mobile”
Tim Flood, Stanford Mobile Program. ELI Educause Webinar May 26, 2011.
http://www.educause.edu/Resources/SpotlightonMobileComputingGoin/229415
“Some of you even after having given mobile technology a great deal of thought may be doubting its importance at this time on your campus.
So if I say anything of value today in getting you to understand WHY it is important in higher education to become involved with mobile technology, I hope it is captured here. It has to do with what mobile technology truly is.
Great mobile technology is the quality of present-at-hand, a term I borrow from the German philosopher Martin Heidegger.
- I mean it is a tool that is available at hand and effortless to use.
- The ideal mobile experience merges man and his tool, the machine.
- The ideal mobile tool is a simple thing I use in the world, in my everyday living.
- The ideal mobile tool is both toy and tool, a joy and an essential.
There are times when I personally use my smart phone or tablet without awareness. This is because the tool is so present-at-hand that it does not require thought, like the hammer in the picture, since I encounter it mostly at an intuitive level. When we carry such a tool with us, it is ready (or present-at-hand) to provide information which is what we humans need to function in our Information Age.
Any institution of learning that does not itself use and deploy the predominant tools of its age undermines its very relevance to the communities it serves. And that’s why mobile is so important to all of us.”