Education technology has a hundred-year track record of confident predictions that did not come true. Each generation of machines (film, radio, teaching machines, mainframe terminals, microcomputers, the web, MOOCs, tablets, and now large language models) was announced as the end of the classroom as people knew it. Each one ended up absorbed into schooling in a narrower and slower form than its promoters expected. This section traces that history from Pressey's testing machine to generative AI. It covers the capital cycles, the business models each era produced, and the patterns that recur. Practitioners who know this history can tell a structural shift from a hype cycle.
What the study covers
- 1Overview: why the history matters
- 2The eras
- 3Mechanics: how education technologies actually diffuse
- 4Key numbers
- 5Landmark companies and cases
- 6Pitfalls in reading the history
- 7How an expert thinks about it
Technical exhibits
Worked examples, checklists and case studies included with this study.
Timeline
Year-by-year timeline, 1913–2026, with the event, its significance and the section to read next
Hype Cycles and Lessons
Seven hype cycles compared on promise, mechanism, outcome and lesson; global VC funding series 2019–2025 with computed changes