< PreviousA TALE OF TWO SOCIETIESE DUCATION IS an integral part of many species survival design, but human education requirements are different to those of almost all of our distant, biologically related animal cousins thanks in no small part to a divergence between the two that arguably began several millennia ago when someone invented the first monetary based trading system - the same system that today underscores, and arguably defines, our capitalist society and influences almost every aspect of our daily lives - including the purpose and role of our education system. SHOW ME THE MONEY Hierarchical, role based societies that acquire and share resources, such as the provision of care, food, and protection for the good of the group, as exhibited in everything from ant and bee colonies, to lions and Meercats, have existed almost since the emergence of complex life itself. And in this way, at a fundamental level at least, it can be said that human society isn’t too dissimilar to the societies we come across every day in nature. However, when you replace the benign, collaborative free sharing of resources with the concept of monetary based trade, as well as the concepts of wealth accumulation and creation, it not only changes the paradigm of the society, but also the paradigms and principles that underpin the education system itself, from what we teach and how we teach it to how education is embedded into the fabric of the society itself. The stark difference between these two societal systems, namely a monetary one and a non-monetary one, can be best demonstrated via a simple visualisation exercise that you can do now: Take a moment and imagine how you and your family would live your lives today if money had never been invented. My guess is that you’d live your life very differently from the way you do today, and that your behaviours and purpose in life will also have changed dramatically. In the absence of money I believe we can confidently say that while education would still play a dominant role in society and our individual development, it’s also fair to say that its priorities and role would change, and that as a consequence it would be a very different form of education system from the one we have today. GOING BACK TO BASICS 51311institute.comIn my opinion taking today’s education system back to basics and examining the needs it’s trying to fulfil means that today’s and tomorrow’s education systems have two main objectives. The first objective education is trying to fulfil is to prepare students for life as independent, fully functional adults, who fit in well with general society. The second objective, which as we get older becomes the more dominant objective, is to help students improve their long term earnings prospects so they can not just survive, but, as the saying goes, thrive and live well. And there’s the rub. As long as our lifestyles and well-being are tied to today’s capitalist need to earn money that we trade for goods and services, no matter how basic or benign those are, from water and food, to housing and protection, then our education systems will always need to be aligned with the principle of preparing people for life long employment, and today lifelong employment means, in many countries means working for 50 years or more. In a stable jobs environment, where jobs and careers, as they used to be centuries ago, were for life, it was arguably acceptable for the education systems of the time to evolve at a relatively slow pace. However, as we enter an age where the threat of job commoditisation and automation, both in the cognitive and manual workforces lurk around every corner, and where the pace of technological development is accelerating, we are now beginning to see professions, from call center agents and lawyers, to professional drivers and radiologists dead end faster than ever before. The Notes: “How do we prepare people for a future where the the jobs of the future are, to a large degree, unknown, and where the rate of manual and cognitive automation will continue to increase at an exponential rate?” 52311institute.comresult of which is that the so called “Industrial age” education system that we rely on today, and that has served us well in the past, is drastic need of an overhaul. 21ST CENTURY LUDDITES In the past as we’ve moved from one industrial revolution to another technology has helped both destroy jobs and create new ones. Take, for example, the farm workers of the mid 1850’s and early 1900’s. After the emergence of agricultural automation and mechanisation the percentage of the population employed in agriculture fell through the floor, from a peak of approximately 45 percent in the 1850’s to below 2 percent today. And as automation bites again, and as we see the emergence of fully autonomous farms, it could be argued that in a couple of decades time even this figure of 2 percent could appear high. In the past Luddites showed their dissatisfaction of their situation and disdain for new the new technologies that were replacing them by smashing the weaving looms that took their jobs, but today smashing the distributed computing platforms that harbour the artificial intelligences that will take many of our jobs won’t be as easy. As we head into another period of what some are describing as “tumultuous change,” where there will be more technological progress made in the next 20 years than there was in the previous 20,000, and where many of the world’s leaders believe that technological automation will, to quote the European Union’s official 2017 report, “affect every strata of our society,” I advocate that now is the time to drastically re-think our education systems, and create one that helps us all flourish, without worry, and prepares us for what’s ahead, whatever the future holds. PREPARING FOR THE FUZZY FUTURE As many of you will already know, or should be able to surmise, it’s much easier to predict what is going to happen in the near future than in the far future, and it’s also much easier to predict what will happen within a narrow range of topics, than in a broad range. When we’re dealing with the future of education, which let’s face it is in no small way linked to the future of jobs, tasks and work, whichever way you want to frame it, then we arguably have the Notes: 53311institute.comworst of both worlds because not only are we trying to predict what jobs will exist, and which ones will fade away in the next 20 to 50 years, but the sheer range we’re trying to cover, both the known and the unknown, is vast. When we’re trying to design a future proof education system, if one could ever truly exist, this ultimately means that, in my mind at least, we have just three options open to us. We can design an education system that is fit for a future we predict, the risk being that that future might or might not pan out as we expect, we can design it for an uncertain future, or we can design it for a hybrid of the two. In other words we try our best to predict the medium to long term future but build in enough contingency to help us manage the surprises that will inevitably pop up at one point or another. This latter approach is my preferred, and it will be the one that forms the basis of this Codex. We’re all seeing with our own eyes how quickly the future is arriving, and how fast things change, whether it’s thanks to the internet and the smartphones in our hands, which didn’t exist 20 years ago, that give us access to all the world’s information, and increasingly, expertise, or the emergence of self-driving cars and in-vivo gene editing that didn’t exist a scant 10 years ago. As well as a myriad of things besides. As a futurist I get a fantastic front row seat to all this action, and in addition to seeing the future arrive faster than many people anticipate I also see how the pace of technological development is accelerating exponentially - where science fact often makes science fiction look tame, and where the number of variables are increasing at an almost immeasurable rate every month. It’s also this same front row seat though that compels me to impress on you both the need for educational change and prompts me to play a role in stirring debate and action in search of a workable, fit for purpose solution. THE UNIVERSAL TRUTHS As we look into the future there are going to be a number of what I call “Universal Truths” that, as far as I can tell, will remain true throughout the 50 year time line of this Codex. Firstly, the amount of work, or more specifically, the number of tasks to be done, will increase exponentially, and Notes: 54311institute.comthe types of tasks will continue to be a mix of so called Routine and Non-Routine ones. Secondly, technology will both compliment human workers, and in certain situations replace them. Inevitably technology advances will mean that the number and type of tasks that can be fully automated will also increase exponentially and at an accelerating rate, with some experts saying that in time everything will be automated. Thirdly, as a result of all this, human workers will need to become increasingly adaptable and agile, and will need to become increasingly adept at jumping between different tasks and professions with minimal friction. Unsurprisingly, given our siloed career mentalities accomplishing this feat will arguably be the most difficult to accomplish and it will require changes in both our education system as well as how we support workers throughout their working lives - something that I’ll focus on in more detail later in this Codex. Notes: 55311institute.comTHE AGE OF LIMITLESS HUMANSI T’S AMAZING how few of us realise, I mean really realise and take it to heart, that in all of human history we are each by far the most powerful versions of ourselves that have ever lived. And we’re getting more powerful as our society and our technologies evolve. Despite this fact though none of us are taught how to leverage this almost “Limitless Potential” or “Power” at school or at home. For whatever reason learning about the power we have at our fingertips today and how it could benefit us as individuals and society is more often than not left to us to figure out with little to no support from our wider education communities. Not only is this a missed opportunity but it’s potentially one of societies greatest oversights and the greatest waste of human potential of all time. UNLEASH YOUR POWER At no point in human history has anyone - whether they were Kings or Queens, Emperors, or world leaders - ever had access to more knowledge, more powerful technology, or had the ability to change the world in timelines that can now be measured in minutes, hours, and days - not months, years, or decades. Notably at a speed and scale that were unimaginable just a few decades ago, let alone centuries or millennia. Today our digitally connected society gives us all fast and easy access to capital, knowledge, expertise, resources, and skills, and our increasingly powerful technologies let us ideate, create, and publish new concepts and products hundreds of times faster and thousands of times cheaper than was possible in the past - and that’s before we discuss the impact of Human-like Artificial Intelligence on our society. DISRUPT THE WORLD IN A DAY When you really think about the power each one of us wields today consider this ... If you produced and idea or a product in the morning, and if - a BIG if - you could execute perfectly you could have it in front of 4 Billion individuals and have changed the world order by the end of the day. That’s the power we all have. Ironically, we almost saw this happen when in 2019 Meta released their Libra Cryptocurrency which, had global regulators approved it, could have been used by over 2 Billion people by the end of the day ... You live in strange times. 57311institute.comIN OUR TECHNOLOGICAL ERA . . . THREE QUESTIONS NOONE’S EVER ASKED YOU :WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF : YOU HAD ACCESS TO ALL THE WORLD’S KNOWLEDGE ? AI + DATA + THE INTERNET = “ KNOWLEDGE ”Next >