In his opening keynote, EDUCAUSE president and CEO John O’Brien, takes the theme of this year’s conference, “where the past and the present meet,” quite literally. Reflecting on history and our tendency to ignore it in our forward-looking work, he invites us to consider the “history of the future” of higher education technology. He explores engaging “paleofuture” artifacts–for example 19th century predictions of what technology would be like in the year 2000–and argues that there is much to learn from these glimpses into the history of the future.