IT Insights Blog — Education

I enjoy the tomfoolery of Gary Larson, creator of The Far Side, a single-panel cartoon series that used to be the liveliest thing in newsprint. His sense of humor is kind of warped, and I guess that says something about mine as well. One all-time favorite is Larson’s conception of a “dinosaur conference,” where a stegosaurus is at the lectern and he says, “The picture’s pretty bleak gentlemen.The world’s climates are changing, the mammals are taking over, and we all have a brain about the size of a walnut.”

On Monday July 4, the United States of America celebrates its 240^th birthday. To the older nations of the world (yeah we’re looking at you, Japan), this may not seem like much of an accomplishment, but 240 years is still 240 years. Americans owe much of our prolonged national existence to the nation’s first-rate national security efforts. National security threats have arisen in many forms over America’s lifetime, but the latest looming danger presents itself online. National security is now heavily reliant on cybersecurity.

Tradition has been a driving force in human society for as long as mankind has been around. People, it seems, have a natural affinity for doing things over and over again. You could view it as a survival instinct: Certainly the organisms, people included, that tend to thrive on our Mother Earth are the ones that discover successful behaviors and repeat them. On the other hand, some behaviors don't appear to confer any survival advantage or evolutionary benefit at all, but we slavishly reenact them anyway, year after year. (Perhaps this explains how we got eight seasons of Castle, for example, even though only the first two or three were any good.)

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity speak at the commencement services of a local college. The graduating class consisted of a wide variety of individuals, some young, some old and many with a great deal of experience — there was even a 69-year-old grandmother who worked full-time and took night classes. I was amazed at the diversity and tenacity of the graduates.

Updates and advancements abound in the realm of technology. A recent Business Insider article quoted Alphabet (Google) executive chairman Eric Schmidt saying there are six new technologies that will change the world. The list included fake meat (meat, that is, essentially grown as a vegetable from lab-engineered plants), 3D-printed buildings, virtual reality, smartphones in the medical world, self-driving cars, and machine learning in education. These advancements in technology prove the need for advancement in IT education and certification. As an IT certified professional, you might ask yourself, “How am I going keep pace with these advancements?” Well, Cisco is providing a way to stay ahead of the curve through course updates.