In his 2011 study, which explores how ongoing advances in neuroscientific research continue to inform pedagogical theory, the biologist, biochemist and educational theorist James E. Zull remarks, ‘If we continue to count on education for development of the mind, we need to change education itself’:

Like an Olympic athlete who embarks on a regime of training and challenging self-discipline, the human brain (and the cognitive mind it accommodates) must likewise, so Zull suggests, be exercised and strengthened. Experiences and challenges fuel this strengthening process, allowing the brain and mind to develop to the peak of performance and endurance. Physiology, neuroscience, biology, all feed the synaptic expansion of the brain’s potential, making the learning experience – ‘education itself’ – the site of radical and revolutionary new pedagogical procedures.

As Zull’s comments highlight, however, a late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century problem with the adoption of new technologies, one that technology specifically ‘does not address’, is the dulling receptivity that it invites in individuals who focus solely on isolated, restrictively personalised virtual experiences. All pervasive in private and public social interaction, technology should be able to ‘address’ this problem. Unfortunately, there is limited financial incentive for devices designed for mass consumption to be made more experientially demanding. Ease of use rather than intellectual challenge holds the commercial key. Nevertheless, Zull’s comments suggest that, although technology might be the problem, it might also offer new and radical solutions.