The limit of 28K from ten years ago now appears laughable to most urban internet users, as broadband access allows downloads almost a hundred times faster. But from a certain perspective, from the point of view of most users, bandwidth is already unlimited, as they are able to share text, images and video with ease. Yet, this is changing, and the pace of this change will continue to accelerate.Īs administrators struggle against the demands video streaming and bit torrent networks place on backbones, it is hard to imagine saying that bandwidth will be unlimited. While access to the internet has increased greatly over the last decade, some schools continue to experience bandwidth shortages and most schools do not have enough computers for every student. While on the one hand, new technology allows schools and instructors to offer learning in new ways, educators nonetheless continue to face limitations imposed by technology, and sometimes the lack of technology. The development of new technology continues to have an impact on learning. This essay is not an attempt to vindicate the previous paper – time has done that – but to carry on in the same spirit, and to push that vision ten years deeper into the future. I look at each of the points I addressed in 1998, and with the benefit of ten year’s experience, recast and rewrite each prediction. In this essay I offer a renewal of those predictions. This gives me confidence in my understanding of those forces and trends that are moving education today. I have found, on rereading and reworking the essay, that though there may have been some movement in the margins, the overall thrust of the paper was essentially correct. In the ten years that have followed, this vision of the future has proven to be remarkably robust. “We want a plan,” said my managers, and so I outlined the future as I thought it would – and should – unfold. (Downes, 1998) At the time, I was working as a distance education and new media design specialist at Assiniboine Community College, and I wrote the essay to defend the work I was doing at the time.

In the summer of 1998, over two frantic weeks in July, I wrote an essay titled The Future of Online Learning. An MS-Word version of this essay is available at

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