I read with interest that Monsanto was making the pivot to becoming a big data platform. Looks like the markets are impressed. I suppose eventually at some point in our lives we’ll each have to make the pivot and become a big data platform. It’s a path we’re all walking, a personal-branding vision quest intent on finding where our deepest values and most valuable data points lie… It has been been a privilege to make that journey with you here on this blog for well over a decade.

That’s why I’m excited to announce that I’ll be soon be leaving my position as a learning technologist dedicated to open and public higher education. Now that Monsanto has made the leap into hyper-scale analytics, they are poised to be the next big player in [what used to be] ed tech. For more than a century Monsanto has been mastering the process of taking the essentially natural and social processes of food production passed down over countless generations, and used technology to take control of and assert proprietary and legally-binding ownership over them. They conquer planetary cycles and wield the power to inject DNA with termination technologies (or equivalent legalities), and use that magic to sell complementary products.

Higher Education has already demonstrated that it will swing wildly at the pitch. Bloated, self-satisfied, lazing on its back and flashing soft white underbelly. We are happy to allow private interests to commoditize and take ownership of teaching and scholarship, injecting proprietary rights and technology. Under our stewardship, the essentially natural and social acts of thinking and learning have been rendered into product controlled by a handful of shadowy international corporations. Admittedly, there are also a few downsides to this, but let’s not dwell on the negatives…

A GMO-Inspired Adaptive Learning Platform built on a Monsanto Biotech-as-a-Service Stack is the future. I can feel it. For the first time, those vapourware metaphors of an “ed tech ecosystem” make sense. And who is better positioned for integrating biometrics, electromagnetic radiation, and advances in neural implants?  If only I can get a meeting to pitch the visionaries at Monsanto, they’ll see that I am an Ed Tech Rock Star Ninja Thought Leader and give me a key role in putting it all together. Can anyone slide me the email addy of a Monsanto mover, or gimme a LinkedIn hookup?

This decision became a foregone conclusion when those Edupunks George and Tony offered up their assessments on the future of what I thought was my calling.

So long, suckers!