DEAD TECH
Fall 2025
Exhibit Walk-through
Education and technology both promise us a better future. Combined, Educational Technology is particularly suited to visions of the future—and to the hubris that can come with this. Addressing present educational challenges, Ed Tech offers us technical solutions: more efficiency, more effectiveness, more reach, more results. More, more, more, faster and cheaper too. Even the well known hype-cycle in tech tends to presuppose that hype is just another driver of inevitable progress. Dream big.
DEAD TECH is an interactive exploration of six specific instances of ambitious educational technologies. These six instances were selected as notable examples of edtech that focused on presentation, surveillance, access, reach, design, and automatization. What did they promise? And just as importantly, what about the often ignored or hidden slide into disillusionment, before the hype-cycle ramps up the promises again? What does looking at cycles help us understand about the edtech promises of today?