Technology futurologist Jonathan Margolis at Learning Technologies 2011

In an entertaining and thought-provoking keynote at Learning Technologies 2011, journalist and author, Jonathan Margolis will question how well we can ever predict the future course of technology, and will weigh up who is best placed to assess its direction. Is it the experts who know the field intimately, or the outsiders who can see the bigger picture? Margolis will consider how technology will look in three, five and ten years' time, and questions which voices should we listen to.

Jonathan will compare the visions of the future that we all had in past decades with the reality of how futures work out in the real world. He will look back at some of the hilariously wrong predictions in the past of how we would be living today and also assesses how some uncannily accurate futurologists actually got things (almost) right.

"Where will learning technology be in ten years' time? Perhaps only a fool would say. After all, ten years ago, who could have predicted mobile technologies, readily available broadband access and rampant social media?" points out Margolis. "Even if someone does manage a correct prediction, though, can we ever precisely say what the impact of technology will be? Often new technologies have unintended and usually unpredictable consequences."

Never afraid to stick his neck out, Jonathan will also make some predictions of his own about just where future learning technologies might be heading.

The Learning Technologies 2011 conference takes place on 26-27 January 2011 at London Olympia 2. Learning Technologies conference programme and bookings.

About Jonathan Margolis, Journalist and Author 

Jonathan Margolis was the first journalist writing in mainstream newspapers on consumer technology, starting in 1985. He is currently a contributing editor of the FT's How To Spend It magazine and writes or The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, BA's Business Life magazine and Saga. He was the author of a 2001 book on futurology, A Brief History of Tomorrow.

Jonathan Margolis has established a national and international reputation for writing and speaking in an informed and extremely witty, accessible style and has been reporting in the mainstream press on technology for longer than anyone else in the UK.

He is also a successful author of biographies (John Cleese, Billy Connolly and others) and, more recently, popular science books, including a history of futurology.