Tony Driscoll – with nicely
trimmed beard and liking jeans – takes the stage and starts with a bit of
personal history, and how teaching was in his generational history. Full slide deck can be found below (fab drawings to support the message)
Why the
future does not need us’ was an article that changed Tony’s life. He realized then
that he was a techno positivist, but what would happen when something does not
turn out positively, what really goes on in this intersection with technology.
What will the technological effect be for current children, and what can we do in
order to make them ready for the future.
Time is
always part of the derivative for the rate of change, and distance and jerk. We
know what velocity is, acceleration, but we do not know what jerk is (acceleration
over time). Technology is currently jerking humanity around. So, the humans
built a tech neural system that absorbs humans and defines how we interact and
are connected. We – the humans – need to process more now than ever before, and
our minds can no longer keep on top of this. The speed of life is increased,
where wave upon wave of disruption by tech is coming and humans are not equipped
for this. We have an inability to see catastrophy coming. For kids of today the
tech disruptiveness will be even higher than in our lifetime, or the lifetime
of our grandparents.
Business
value progression and structural lag: so companies are catching up to create
value in the market space. If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the
rate of change on the inside the end is near – Jack Welch. The average age of
companies is now 18 years, and it is decreasing.
Leveraging technology
to achieve active and instant reactions.
Tony’s fear
is that he and his sons is flying into a jerk hole.
Scenario’s:
Positive scenario:
technology does not have a conscious, it just accelerates human fulfillment,
the fly wheel of tech synchronise to open new frontiers for everybody. Empowerment
for everyone, and all humans can live a happy life. But hope is not a strategy.
Enslaved
scenario: tech limits the fulfillment in human identity. We reduce human dreams
to fit the current form of the tech options. Always go to the always on answer
box: google. At highest level it dums us down to IT laborers so we are back to
a digital enslaving scenario.
Enmeshed
scenario: post-human: implants, living longer, downloading emotions into a
virtual environment to live longer or forever. But question is will this life
be fulfilled, and are we willing to give up our unique human identity.
Worst
scenario: extinguished: tech accelerates to a point where humans are no longer
here. Tech is the next evolution.
But how can
we prepare our kids for either the enslaved or the enmeshed trajectory.
Learning
from experience: a story about a lost colony is shared with humor (uses superposition
of old and new society) and at the end a question, resulting in the message: we
need to unlearn and we must change learning.
We need to
train people to figure it out (generative learning), collaborative learning,
authentic learning, doing and learning, virtual ecologies, learner centered…
quoting Jay Cross: optimizing our networks (internet and human).
[Inge, he
uses a personal storyline to bring across a message that can be delivered in a
multitude of options]
