Examining the historical events through the Learning Technologies Timeline, from as early as 40,000 BCE up to 3922, I attempted to illustrate how technology, literacy, and education have interacted with each other throughout the history.  In this critical analysis of the timeline, I couldn't help, but kept asking myself whether a historical turning point exist in reality or we create a new meaning of technology and literacy in terms of our social visions and desires.  At this moment, I emphasize the significance of the latter concept, but cannot simply resist to certain observable patterns in the history of technological design and invention.  The primary features that I found in the analysis of the timeline are shown in below:

• Even though the Ancient timeline included a very few number of early technologies that were used in the Eastern countries, such as the first writing in China, the invention of paper, and Arabic numerals, most of the events strongly reflected the Western countries' process of technological development.  In fact, this timeline renders no information on how the transfer of the Western technologies have influenced and shaped Asian countries' own cultures, technologies, and social practices in literacy and education.  Before discussing, I think it is important to notice that the timeline is significantly based on the Western history. 

• The first motivation to invent most of new technologies resulted from humans' interactions with the Nature to expand their capabilities and knowledge, and to communicate with others in general.  For instance, we see such motivations in the invention of pencil, history of communication, blackboard chalk, the first photocopier based on xerography, the first true radio broadcast, electronic video, and etc.
• Another human motivation in the process of redesigning new technologies was strongly relevant to the limited natural resources and energy that humans could utilize.  Thus, people looked for efficiency with greater functionality of technology: for example, chemical wood pulp, electronic regeneration, Qwerty, and GNU/Linux.    Regarding this aspect, I think that in the Western history of technological development, such humans' search of efficiency in the Nature has moved toward challenges to humans' dominance (power) over the Nature for the realization of human freedom rather than toward the ecological balance in the Nature. 
• The third major force in the Western technological development was the community's demand of transferring a core of the culture to next generations.  Accordingly, this motivation entailed democratic needs of educating a mass of people in the community.  A large number of cases could be seen in this category: Ashurbanipal's royal library, John Dury's modern library, Plato, Netscape, and the first public release of SMIL, and etc.  However, I also think that this motivation could have encouraged the extension of a culture's dominance over others. 
• Categorizing humans' major motivations in technological development becomes more difficult as human needs and social activities in modern society become more diversified.  In recent few decades, technological inventions stem from not only economic factors but also political, military, educational, social, ethical, and artistic reasons: USSR Sputnik, the first photographic copy machine, the first video game, Logo, an early graphing calculator, Apple's Newton MessagePad, CD-ROM players for computers, and etc.

The major social values that have interacted throughout the recent Western history of technology and literacy development might be summarized in terms of quality, efficiency, and equal accessibility.  These values of quality, efficiency and social equality have conflicted for a long time in order for determining what kinds of technology and education should be built for the future society.

Whether these values are necessarily controversial or not is questionable because some innovations of technology could provide possibilities of coordinating conflicting social values until new problems appear: see PLATO instructional computing system in classrooms, Netscape, LEXIS, GNU/Linux, and the first public release of SMIL.

Technological advancement itself represents human beings' expansion of scientific knowledge and skills, but furthermore, it changes social profiles, practices as well as humans' understanding of knowledge, literacy, and society.  For instance, computer and information technology influenced educators' psychological understanding of teaching and learning, and the new conceptualization of education (a change from teacher-centered transmission of knowledge to learner-centered construction of knowledge) has made, and also will make changes in teaching practices: see Learning communities. 

Transportation, computer and communication technologies increased not only humans' interactions within community, but also enhanced the encounter of people in different cultures or socioeconomic status, genders, and students with various learning abilities.  Such changes in social profile raise new conflicts, issues, and human needs to be resolved: see Universal Translation Markup Language and Mandatory Accessibility. 

When I looked at the future technological events that the participants created, I could find the prevalence of virtual reality, human-like, intelligent computers, globalized communities, and integrated multimedia as the most common features in the prediction.  Herein, my question is whether these events were created in thoughts of what they wanted to have the most or what human beings were destined to have within a given social system.

I think that we should see where is our position or destiny with technology through critical and reflective thinking, but further should be able to project what is our true vision of innovation through imagination.  Social actions that we take for the design of new technology and educational practices should be based in our critical discussions and reflections on social visions and technology.