This is probably my favorite quote of all time. It is the opening lines of a brilliant Chinese book entitled The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It was written about six hundred years ago, but chronicles the Three Kingdoms period in China, around the 2nd and 3rd century B.C. It is a highly recommended read and the characters linger with you forever. It is still required reading in most Asian schools, including Korea and Japan.
The opening lines of the book are wonderful and draw a major parallel to most anything, including the current age we live in.
The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.
Things that are whole, must divide. And those that are divided, must form again. That is creation/destruction/recreation at its finest. It is one of the most profound statements I have ever heard and entirely symbiotic with nature.
My name is Michael Sean Gallagher. I am a Lecturer in Digital Education at the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh. I am Co-Founder and Director of Panoply Digital, a consultancy dedicated to ICT and mobile for development (M4D); we have worked with USAID, GSMA, UN Habitat, Cambridge University and more on education and development projects. I was a researcher on the Near Futures Teaching project, a project that explores how teaching at The University of Edinburgh unfold over the coming decades, as technology, social trends, patterns of mobility, new methods and new media continue to shift what it means to be at university. Previously, I was the Research Associate on the NERC, ESRC, and AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund sponsored GCRF Research for Emergency Aftershock Forecasting (REAR) project. I was an Assistant Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (한국외국어대학교) in Seoul, Korea. I have also completed a doctorate at University College London (formerly the independent Institute of Education, University of London) on mobile learning in the humanities in Korea.
