Teaser Image

A Horizon Report History

A Hack Education Project

Every year, when the NMC Horizon Report was published, I wondered how the predictions compare to previous years. It’s not so much that what the report places “on the horizon” are almost always wrong. (Predictions about the future almost always are.) It’s that without a nod to the history of these predictions, it’s hard to see the report as much more than an embrace of the narrative that “everything changes; procurement follows accordingly.”

This project was first conceived to liberate the Horizon Report data from PDFs (the future still seems to involve PDFs, dammit) and make the information machine-readable and visualize-able.

In December 2017, the New Media Consortium announced it would be suddenly (and immediately) closing its doors. Weird. No one saw that coming. But it seems as though the futurists and marketers will not let the Horizon Report die. (Pity.) There will be, it seems, still more Horizon Reports “on the horizon.”

For analysis about the Horizon Report, as well as updates to this project, visit this site's blog.

In the meantime, admire this nice chart I made of the history of the Horizon Report's predictions about the future of technology in higher education:

Click for full-size

Image credits: Bryan Mathers. Latest update: 16 August 2018