The age of instant communications
Homes to be centres of learning, work & entertainment. This will transform our schools, businesses, shopping centres, offices, cities and our concept of work.
A world without economic borders
Robert B. Reich, President Clinton's first Secretary of Labour at the start of The Work of Nations - preparing ourselves for the twenty first century: "We are living through a transformation that will rearrange the politics and economies of the coming century. There will be no national products or technologies, no national corporations, no national industries. There will no longer be national economies, at least as we have come to understand that concept. All that will remain rooted within national borders are the people who comprise a nation. Each nation's primary assets will be its citizens' skills."
Four leaps to a one-world economy
Continued leadership of America, turning high-tech research into
ground-breaking products. Growth of Silicon Valley from partnership between
business and universities. About half of Silicon Valley's revenue comes from
companies seeded by Stanford University.
Rebirth of Europe as a single economic entity.
Rise of 'Tiger economies', including Taiwan, Ireland, Finland &
Singapore, and pockets such as Bangalore, Tel Aviv and Kyoto.
Resurgence of China. Rapid economic growth. 51 million Chinese outside
borders with two trillion dollars of assets and a strong desire for educational
achievement. Promotion of Internet through TV set-top boxes (Chinese set to be
most common language on Internet). Through the Internet the Chinese could
out-learn other societies - "With interactive multimedia systems, management in developing countries
can bypass the industrial revolution." (Stan Shih, CEO, Acer).
Internet commerce and learning
People can trade and learn instantly through the Internet. This will affect both business and education by providing service and information on demand.
The new service society
!950s: 65% blue collar workers, now 13% and falling. We now manufacture with information rather than people, with computers & robots instead of workers. Manufacturing is being combined with service, customising products to individual consumers.
The marriage of big and small
Organisational structures are changing. To stay successful, giant corporations have been "split into dozens of small project teams, each self-acting and self-managing, cutting through the old specialisation, the old business pyramid-style hierarchies, the old army style management" (Dryden & Vos p.63). In retailing, franchising has grown steadily, representing a link between a large central organisation and small franchises. Internet allows small businesses to sell niche products to a global market (costs of entry are high and sales far from guaranteed).
The new age of leisure
Charles Handy (Age of Unreason) reckons he worked for around 47 hours per week in the 1950s, making 100,000 hours in a lifetime. Now the lifetime figure is more likely to be 50,000 hours. People will have more time for leisure & tourism (put these together and you get: the theme park).
The changing shape of work
Soon a minority of working-age adults will be employed in fulltime permanent work by traditional-style companies. These will be highly-trained people, not starting work until mid-20s after graduate and post-graduate studies (a friend recently completed an MBA at New York University and owed $90,000 at the end! This is almost the only way to get a 'good job', in his case at Microsoft). These will be the 'core', the rest will be made up of: project groups, part-time & seasonal workers, and self-employed or family groups. "By the year 2020 the largest employer in the developed world will be 'self'." (Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital)
Women in leadership
Of 22m jobs created in America in 80s, two thirds taken by women. Number of women in all types and levels of employment is rising throughout the world. "In the workplace the new technology is gender-blind." (John Naisbitt, Megatrends Asia).
"For me there are no modern-day heroes in the business world. I have met no captains of industry who made my blood surge. I have met no corporate executive who values labour and who exhibits a sense of joy, magic or theatre. In the 15 years I have been involved in the world of business it has taught me nothing. There is so much ignorance in top management and boards of directors: all the big companies seem to be led by accountants and lawyers and become moribund carbon-copy versions of each other. If there is excitement and adventure in their lives, it is contained in the figures on the profit and loss sheet. What an indictment!" (Anita Roddick, Body and Soul)
Your amazing brain rediscovered
Tony Buzan: staggered by what he wasn't taught, about how the brain works. Has produced books since on how to use the brain, chief technique of 'mind mapping'.
Cultural nationalism
Increased globalisation leads to increased assertion of distinctiveness & identity. As Europe comes together the Germans will become more German, etc.
The growing underclass
Education is way out of this. In America's ten largest cities, the number of jobs requiring less than a high-school education has dropped by half since 1970. Two thirds of new jobs created in America since 1989 have been professional and managerial. Unemployed young men tend to commit more violent crimes and not to take on the responsibilities of parenthood. The evidence suggests that the best restraint on such behaviour is a two-parent home. The 'information age' will mean the end of employment for many people, which "will force every nation to rethink the role of human beings in the social process" (Jeremy Rifkin, The End of Work). This requires a revolution in learning, for what use is the old-style school-work model?
The active aging of the population
Increasing life expectancy is creating a resource for education.
The new do-it-yourself boom
Industrial age led to confusion of structures with reality. Giant corporations provided standardised mass-produced products to millions of people, so giant organisations arose to "deliver" health and education. So we come to confuse education with schooling, something which someone else provides for you. New do-it-yourself attitude involves people taking control of their own lives.
In education change is slow to come.
"One function of schooling should be to prepare students for the real world. They need to have a sense of what will be expected of them, how they will be challenged, and what they are capable of doing. The assumption is that, by and large, schooling as we know it meets those goals. The reality is that it does not. On the contrary, it fosters illusions and obscures the real challenges. In particular, it fails to deal with the impact of electronic media.
Take a close look at American teenagers. For a moment, let time run backwards to deprive teenagers of gadgets that are in some way dependent on electricity... How well do you think our teenagers would cope? How would their lives be different? And what about our own?
One of the only places operating largely as it did more than 50 years ago would be the local school." (Renate Nummela and Geoffrey Caine, Making Connections: teaching and the human brain).
More and more learning will become self-learning: self-directed and self-fulfilling.
Cooperative enterprise
Participative management and decision-making. Create environments where people can nourish personal and educational growth.
"Every company will become an 'education company' or it will fail." (Don Tapscott, Blueprint to the Digital Economy)
The triumph of the individual
For around 200 years, national governments and then giant corporations have dominated almost every aspect of society. First the corporations and then governments sought ways to influence people, to satisfy their dreams and desires with their products. They adopted techniques from psychology to persuade people that their products would lead to a life of fulfillment and happiness. The people, however, struck back, their self-awareness grew and now technology has liberated them further from the grip of the giant organisation.
Politicians have adopted the same techniques used by the corporations to persuade the public that they can supply the drive and initiative to meet their desire for wealth, health, education, a clean environment, etc. Fulfilling the promises, however, has been more difficult and the public have become disillusioned, both with individuals and the political process itself.
The message for corporations and politicians alike is that people have become more able to run their own lives and technology is playing an increasing part in that freedom.
"Now the individual consumer is king - and queen- with the right and ability to choose from the best products and services around the world. This will also involve each one of us in taking the responsibility for choosing our own education - and in selecting the very best educational systems from around the world: a change with revolutionary potential." (G. Dryden & J.Vos, The Learning Revolution, p83)
Adapted from Dryden & Vos