Why Does Technology Fail in the Education System?

This chapter examines the history of the integration of technology into education and tries to explain why this process has consistently fallen short over many decades. We claim that conflicting demands within the education system, compounded by the contradictions introduced by technology, are key factors that contribute to this failure. One mechanism aimed at reconciling these contradictions is “double talk” (saying one thing but doing another), which is frequently used by the education system during technology implementation. Our overarching conclusion is that the integration of any new technology in the future is likely to encounter similar resistance, and is therefore prone to failure.