protean

I stumbled across this term in an academic paper recently, it was the first time I'd seen this term used in the context of digital technology; and it was love at first trip.

The title of the paper was 'What knowledge is of most worth: Teacher Knowledge for 21st Century Learning" by Kristen Kereluik, Punya Mishra, Chris Fahnoe & Laura Terry.

Here's the quote:

The methods and techniques of acquiring, representing and manipulating knowledge, have been changed by the introduction of digital technologies, in almost all disciplines (whether mathematics or music, astronomy or archeology). It is clear that the education of the next generation of citizens needs to change to keep up with these developments. Finally, most of the progress in the recent past has been in areas that cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries, caused in large measure by the protean nature of digital technologies. From bio-technologists to computational political scientists, from experts in data-mining who seek patterns in user behavior on the web to programmer-artists who create scientific simulations to represent complex multi- dimensional phenomena, the world of the future depends on people who have deep knowledge of more than one discipline and the ability to see connections between these disciplines. Thus, cross- disciplinary knowledge and the ability to synthesize information are ultimately different in the 21st century than in the past, and an ever expanding amount of information necessitates the ability to synthesize information and derive meaning. (p.13)

Here's Google's definition:

For better or for worse thats me in a nutshell. Protean.

Of course such a magnificent term was no longer available for this web logger, but a deft numeral substitute soon fixed that—and gave it the little n0d to techn0l0gy I was looking for at the same time.

So there you have it—my web blog—may someone read of it other than me.