We've often heard that we can't predict what the future will be like in 5 years, let alone 20. Now, this is pretty scary. Because if we don't know what it is coming, how do we plan for it? Or do we even bother to plan for it? Should we just wait and adapt to whatever comes our way? Shall we just accept that whatever comes our way is our destiny and we just have to suck it up, accept it and wait for the next change ... and then we do it all over again. The late Allan Watts described this beautifully and so do take the time to listen to his thoughts in this 2 minute clip. So, it's important to live in the now. And while the now is important, it is equally important to use the now to fashion the future that we want. To be an active participant in the process of delivering the future and what we want the future to be. Rather than passively sit back and wait for the future to be delivered to us. By doing so, we will be always in the now and will constantly be participating in delivering the future. We won't wake up one day and think that we've ended up in a place that is different from the one that we thought we were heading towards. We live in "exponential" times. At least, that's what the good people at Singularity University would have you believe. It so happens that I agree with with them. Before SU began in 2008, Ray Kurzweil already had a long history of predicting technology developments based on observations more or less around the so-called "Moore's Law". If you understand an exponential function and how it behaves, then you will appreciate that over a long period of time it takes the shape of a linear function. Once it reaches it's tipping point it blows out completely. As an example here is my version of the exponential growth of information over the past few hundred years. The horizontal axis shows years (starts at 1600) and the vertical axis the "quantity" of information available to us (in arbitrary units). The point is that the total amount of information is doubling every few years. [My graph shows this at 5 yearly intervals, though the current rate is every 12 months and as the Internet of Things starts to gain momentum this will become every 12 hours according to IBM research.] And you can see where we are the point of the curve. The tipping point. For the past 500 years we have been in a linear space. And if you (like many) think we are overwhelmed by data now - bad news. It's going to be exponentially worse very soon! Now consider that its not just information growing like this. It's technology, it's energy, it's crime, it's nano technology, it's biotechnology, it's medicine, it's health, it's community, it's science, it's space, it's vehicles, it's food ... in fact, it's most of what we know - and a whole lot that we don't know! Consider that all of these "silos" of development are in fact rapidly converging - and that this in turn will fuel further development. We are at an unprecedented time in the life of this planet and that should give us tremendous hope for our future. We should be able to address health, disease, wealth, water, land, food issues (and more) in our life time. If we choose to. Dave Roberts (from SU) made the observation at the closing session of the recent SingularityU NZ Summit that the world has always had inequity for a variety of reasons. He pointed to what he called the four aspects of a "stable system" that unless broken, sees the system perpetuate. Those 4 aspects are:
If we want to change the "system" then the fulcrum of change is the "bystander". By changing that silent majority (bystanders) we can affect significant change. To make his point, Dave showed the following video (or bits of it). It is an 8 minute video from the Kruger National Park in South Africa (taken over 9 years ago). It features as main characters: lions, crocodiles and buffalo. Don't be put off by the first part of the video - it looks as though things are going to be bad for the victim for quite a while. Then something quite amazing happens. So the silent majority can make a difference - and at the end you see buffalo chasing lions! To me the point here is that if we really want to make the changes to the various systems that have governed politics, education, finance, banking, health, crime, leisure, poverty, and the like, then the buffalo need to make the stand. Because if the will really is there, then certainly the technology is there to help and enable the change. The key to making the connections here is to really understand the nature of exponential. It means dramatic, unparalleled change. We think linearly. We think that the tools we have today are the tools we'll use in the future. Where on earth did we get that idea from? As the gentleman from the oil rich country below says - the tools that we will have for tomorrow will be radically different from the ones we use today. Over the next few posts I'll be exploring in more depth some of the developments that are changing the world and making our life as an educator ever so more important. Not that it has not been important in the past. It's just that our role is now much more important and the tools that we have at our disposal have never been so powerful. I was lucky to be at the SingularityU NZ Summit last week. I look forward to sharing with you more of the dynamic content from the conference along with my thoughts as to how we can shape our education system here for the future, while living in the now.
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This blogThe information presented here is simply to share my thoughts and provoke thought. If it also provokes action, so much the better. Archives
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