Modernizing content

The least costly path from point A to B depends on where both A and B are located. Does this sound like a useful fact in this age of rising gas prices?

Now imagine that A is the set of concepts and skills initially in hand and that B is the set of skills needed to address current challenges. If either the starting tools (A) or the skills needed (B) change, the best path to gaining the latter may also change.

Does that mean that in a world where both A and B continuously change, educators might want to be always looking for new ways to bridge the gap? In order to overcome the inertia associated with a more familiar path, does it also mean that content modernizers had better specify for which values of A and B an alternate path is taylored?

Example: Students familiar with the meaning of bits and bytes in everyday life might benefit from introductions to probability that use powers of two so as to build on that familiarity, for instance by thinking of probability as 1/2^#bits. Does this mean that methods to teach use of probabilities today might be simplified with examples that 50 years ago would have made things worse and not better?