When the Horizon Collapses — Exponential Technological change and what an exceptional new mindset for Education can be.
Have we entered an eternal twilight where, before each new technological day sets, another is already rising? And if so, what does this mean for society and the role of learning?
25 years after the invention of the internet, it is fair to say that ‘surfing the web’ is now a well understood thing. Approximately 4.2 billion people are ‘online’ and society as a whole has adjusted to what having near-constant access to every piece of information ever written means.
Except it hasn’t. While ‘using a web browser’ has now mostly joined last century’s dialling telephones and typing on keyboards as a standard skill, there is a wider challenge that comes with moving from the limited points of view available in the print-only era, to 2018’s situation of billions of pages of ideas spread across almost infinite topics. Added to the angst this can cause is the fact that not only can most of humanity access so much information (which doubles now every two years according to EMC *1), but it can also publish and add to it via blogs, comments and social media.
As has happened in previous eras however, the sheer cultural shock of these developments will hopefully be sorted out over time. Imagine for instance living in say 3000 B.C. as societies worldwide adjusted to growing food rather than hunting it — a switch that meant basic survival could for the first time consume less than basically 100% of a group’s energies. I mean how did those societies cope with suddenly having maybe 2 to 5 hours a day of spare time?
Except the agricultural revolution took thousands of years (10,000 and 2000 B.C.) to slowly spread around the world, meaning there was plenty of time to adjust. The Industrial revolution of around 1750–1850 also brought well-documented massive change to societies such as urbanisation and the technology that allowed for two world wars. There may still be some tribal groups who have not been impacted by this era, but by and large across 100 years, nations of the world acclimatised to what, for example, steam and later electric power meant for their lives.
In comparison then, twenty-five years of the internet is a very short time for the world to have adjusted. We are collectively probably doing very well. Except since the internet, we’ve also seen a few additional waves come faster and faster. Mass smartphone adoption (that means the internet, cameras and digital versions of most things are in our pocket) has happened in about 10 years; social media and what it means for privacy in a little less. One sign of these developments not having been adjusted to yet is the current (2018) debates around ‘fake news’ and manipulation of elections via social media posts. (Not to mention the impact of mobile phones on mental health and social cohesion). These are huge and very important issues and the fact that massive data breaches and polarising political outcomes have now brought these to the forefront of most people’s minds is a sign historically that global society is at least aware and can now begin to process such new cultural and social norms.
Then along comes AI. While Artificial Intelligence is limited to ‘narrow’ use cases for now (phone assistants, highway autopilot functions), ‘general’ AI that can combine functions and operate at a human level of thinking is reportedly very near at a time when we haven’t finished adjusting to the previous big waves of tech yet. Voice assistants have spread to a majority of digital devices in less than 5 years — and as the numbers I use in this piece decrease, you can begin to discern the point it is raising — this constant squeezing of time available for society to adjust has reached an event horizon predicted by futurists such as Alvin Toffler (in Future Shock) where the arrival and dissemination of technology happens at a speed that is indistinguishable from ‘now’.
One of the innovations which the Industrial Revolution is acknowledged to have brought (as a response to the speed of change of that era) was the mass education system. This system has proved a method of aiding and supporting the social and economic changes generated by that time. At the beginning, the goal was to occupy the majority of the population for 6–12 years with memorising everything needed for life in modern society. Except the sum total of what might be needed to survive and thrive through modern life has picked up a few extra things since 1850. Right now there are educators planning how to teach about ‘fake news’ and online privacy on top of the two hundred years plus of other topics that fill up the curriculum. ‘Crowded’ is the term perhaps most often used politely to describe where this process is up to. Certainly humans are relentlessly capable of adapting and assimilating as history has shown — however it is no wonder that as the time to adoption of society-shaking new technologies shrinks, many are turning to AI and its capacity to augment human abilities as being one solution.
So what to do? Clearly as apps now write their own code, and developments like quantum computing, bio-tech and space colonisation advance towards reality, a mindset change for Education at least is needed. So here is what this student of history, scifi, theatre and learning proposes: Instead of trying to cram in everything a student needs to be future-ready into 10–16 years — let’s change focus:
Education should be about giving learners the skills to invent their own solutions and futures no matter what tomorrow holds.
This idea represents a shift from the teacher and curriculum focused mass-schooling that the world has always known. Instead of the system having all the answers and transmitting that to learners, this shift puts the responsibility for learning onto learners. Imagine if everyone was their own teacher? Except we already are. The buck has always ultimately stopped with ourselves, and the life choices we make after schooling, as well as during the 17 or so hours of each day when not in formal school. The challenge for Education then is how to transform and acknowledge this while still being there for students in all the other ways they need. How this might happen will form the basis of the next post…
*1 https://www.emc.com/leadership/digital-universe/2014iview/executive-summary.htm
