We Are Missing the Boat
We are putting our student's well-being at risk by not fully grasping the impact exponential change is having on the world of work. We would not be unique--others, including Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, writing in The Second Machine Age, suggest that failures to recognize exponential functions at work are multiple throughout human history.
“The root of our problem is not that we’re in a Great Recession or a Great Stagnation, but rather that we are in the early throes of a Great Restructuring. Our technologies are racing ahead, but our skills and organizations are lagging behind.”
What is increasingly clear (see this from the Independent in the UK) is that accelerating developments in technology will render extinct ever more jobs--many of which are good-paying, middle class jobs in the administrative and service sectors.The social and political implications of exponential job extinction and mass unemployment are frightening, to be sure, but the principal take-away is that our students need to be prepared for a world that we can scarcely imagine. Avoiding a dystopian future means preparing more students to create, innovate, invent and adapt than ever before. Anything else just isn't worth the money.