Edublog Award nominee Karl Fisch of The Fischbowl (a staff development blog produced by the teachers of Arapahoe High School) has a couple of really interesting presentations on his site. One that caught my eye was What If.

What If examines how each new technology--starting with the slate and continuing through paper, ink, calculators, computers, etc.--has been resisted by educators through the years.  What particularly strikes me here is the inevitability of new technologies, as well as the pace of the change. You'll notice that changes in the beginning of the presentation are separated by a hundred years. By the end of the 1990's, we're talking about new technology issues arising every year or two. And the changes march onward, so that it's not a matter of "if," but "when" new technologies will be adopted. We may quibble about the versions (Beta vs. VHS anyone?), but in the end, the change still happens.

What does this have to do with nonprofits? Well, I think that we, too, can be very resistant to new ideas and thinking about technology. What If  helps us re-examine those beliefs and embrace the inevitability of change. Whatever we may think of Web 2.0, some versions of this will be with us for a long time and at some point we'll look back and laugh at the idea that we were going to be able to resist.

(Thanks to Tony Karrer for the link)