Metafocus: Education in the Imagination Age

Are you ready for the Imagination Age? Are you preparingyour learners for the Imagination Age?

“We live in a world that’s still filled with barriers and limits. … Butat the same time, the economic and technological shifts around us have createdan entirely new class of ruckus makers and have given people the freedom tostand up and acknowledge that it’s their turn.

“Now, more than ever, more of us have the freedom to care, the freedomto connect, the freedom to choose, the freedom to initiate, the freedom to dowhat matters.”—Seth Godin, Whatto Do When It’s Your Turn (and It’s Always Your Turn)

Robots eat jobs

Many people have said robots and artificial intelligence(AI) will soon take all our jobs. This process has already started. Robotsand AI excel at physical and mental repetitive tasks as well as compiling,analyzing, and using large amounts of data. If that describes your job, startpreparing your resume—the Imagination Age is at the door.

For example, Tesla recently announced the first self-driving fully electric semitruck that will startproduction in 2019. As this and other similar trucks hit the market, America’s2.8 million truck drivers will begin to lose their jobs. Eventually, all truckswill be self-driving. If and when all cars become self-driving too, taxidrivers, Uber and Lyft drivers, bus drivers, and delivery drivers will alsolose their jobs.

It’s not just blue-collar jobs at risk. AI can alreadydiagnose certain cancers and diseases better than human doctors, and robots canperform certain surgeries and procedures better. Lawyers, financial analysts,teachers, you name it—we’re all facing powerfully capable electroniccompetition.

It’s not just robots and AI we need to worry about. Virtual,augmented, and mixed realities (aka expandedreality, or XR for short) are transforming the nature of work too. AsRobert Scoble and Shel Israel wrote in TheFourth Transformation: How Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence ChangeEverything, “[w]hatever type of organization you belong to, your customersand competitors are growing increasingly interested in [XR]. The life of yourbusiness may depend on it soon.” (See the bibliographic information at the endof this column.)

In fact, the World Economic Forum’s 2017 Future of Jobs Report predicted that “65% of children entering primary schooltoday will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that that don’tyet exist.” Sadly, many schools don’t even teach the technologies that willdominate the 21^st century.

Every one of us now faces a choice: Adapt or get leftbehind.

Welcome to the Imagination Age

The good news is that AI and robots won’t take all our jobs,at least not for a long time. The jobs that will be left for humans arecreative and/or technical in nature, such as designers, writers, artists,inventors, scientists, data scientists, and programmers. These are tasks thatrequire creativity, problem solving, and a level of intelligence that AI won’tlikely reach for decades. Therefore, learning how to create (art, games,projects, software, tribes, businesses) with cutting-edge technology is both a necessity and an enormous opportunity.

For example, there’s already huge demand for AI and XR developers and an extreme dearth of supply. Asa result, talented developers are earning seven- and eight-figure salaries,while new graduates of computer science departments are earningmid-six-figures. This imbalance will get worse for many years before it gets betterbecause the demand is increasing exponentially—one whole industry afteranother—while the supply is increasing linearly, limited by the throughput of ahandful of coding boot camps and the relatively small computer sciencedepartments at universities.

If you’ve read my previous columns, you’ve repeatedly heard that some of the most important technologiesto master in the coming years include XR, AI, robotics, 3-D printing, theblockchain, and the Internet of Things. Together, these specific technologiesempower us to solve problems, connect, and create like never before. In orderto use the technologies effectively, however, we must adopt a new and evolving growth mindset and rethink how we learn andteach.

The new literacies

In his book Robot-Proof:Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Joseph E. Aoundescribes what he calls “the new literacies.” Universities absolutely mustteach these new literacies to adequately prepare students for the rapidlychanging job markets. The new literacies include technological literacy, dataliteracy, and human literacy.

Technological literacy means proficiency in mathematics,coding, and engineering. Digital natives (i.e., people young enough to havegrown up with computers, the internet, smartphones, etc.) may know how to usecountless apps and devices, but not how to make them. Coding in particular isquickly becoming a critical skill set for job seekers and aspiringentrepreneurs. Data literacy entails the capacity to compile, analyze,understand, and utilize the nearly infinite streams of data being createdtoday. Increasingly, this requires the raw computing power of artificialintelligence. Human literacy allows us to communicate, engage, and connect withone another—again, often with the help of powerful technologies such as XR andAI. This necessitates understanding of the humanities, art, design, diversity,and deep empathy.

Together, these new literacies enable creation. Aoun writes:

“Creation will be at the base of economicactivity and also much of what human beings do in the future. Intelligentmachines may liberate millions from routine labor, but there will remain agreat deal of work for us to accomplish. Great undertakings like curingdisease, healing the environment, and ending poverty will demand all the humantalent that the world can muster.”

He goes on to say:

“A robot-proof model of highereducation is not concerned solely with topping up students’ minds withhigh-octane facts. Rather, it refits their mental engines, calibrating themwith a creative mindset and the mental elasticity to invent, discover, orotherwise produce something society deems valuable. This could be anything atall—a scientific proof, a hip-hop recording, a new workout regimen, a web comic,a cure for cancer. Whatever the creation, it must in some manner be originalenough to evade the label of ‘routine’ and hence the threat of automation.Instead of training laborers, a robot-proof education trains creators.”

In other words, we’re approaching a true technologicalrenaissance, albeit with a bit of prodding. We’re being forced to thinkcreatively—but, wait a minute, we’re finally free to think creatively! We haveto learn more and faster than ever before—but, wait a minute, we get to learnmore and faster than ever before! We may lose our repetitive jobs to robots andAIs—but, wait a minute, we’re no longer pigeonholed in our repetitive,soul-crushing jobs! Instead, we can now get to work on society’s most dauntingproblems, combining seemingly unrelated ideas gleaned from disparate fieldsinto novel solutions, using devices straight out of Star Trek. We can now create in style, employing gesamtkunstwerk artistic principles to create whole new worlds and discover whole new ways of thinking, communicating,and being. With these three literacies, it becomes easier than ever before forstudents and educators alike to choose to learn new technologies such as XR andAI; create art, projects, and ventures that were impossible even five years ago;and change the world in profound ways.

Sine qua non

Eventually, it will no longer be a choice. Everyone will need to embrace the newliteracies in order to survive and thrive in the 21^st century.Individuals who learn to create with the technologies like XR and AI willthrive; those who don’t will struggle. Schools that teach these technologieswill thrive and prepare students for success; those that don’t will becomeobsolete. Businesses that employ these technologies will thrive and create morejobs; those that don’t will disappear. Becoming fluent in new technologiesgives us the freedom to live and create original works of art.

Additional resources

Must-read books

Aoun, Joseph E. Robot-Proof:Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Cambridge, MA: TheMIT Press, 2017.

Godin, Seth. Linchpin:Are You Indispensable? New York, NY: Portfolio, 2010.

Godin, Seth. What toDo When It’s Your Turn (and It’s Always Your Turn). The Domino Project,2014.

Kelly, Kevin. WhatTechnology Wants. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2011.

Scoble, Robert, and Shel Israel. The Fourth Transformation: How Augmented Reality and ArtificialIntelligence Change Everything. Patrick Brewster Press, 2017.

Tegmark, Max. Life3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. New York, NY:Alfred A. Knopf, 2017.

Reports by Deloitte about how AI and other new technologies aredisrupting business

Sallomi, Paul, Bob Dalton, and DavidSchatsky. “Artificial Intelligence Goes Mainstream.” 29 July 2015.

Schatsky, David, Craig Muraskin, and Ragu Gurumurthy. “Cognitive technologies: The real opportunities for business.” 26 January 2015.

Schwartz, Jeff, Laurence Collins, Heather Stockton, DarrylWagner, and Brett Walsh. 2017 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends:Rewriting the rules for the digital age. 

White, Mark, Tom Nassim, Jeff Carbeck, and Asif Dhar. Tech Trends 2017: The kinetic enterprise.

Articles with resources for learning AI and VR

Desmond, John P. “AI Trends Weekly Brief: Education for AI.” AI Trends. 9 November 2017.

Unity. “Tutorials.”

Unity. “Virtual Reality.”

Articles about the Imagination Age

Bidshahri, Raya. “How Technology Is Leading Us Into the Imagination Age.” SingularityHub.19 November 2017.

Hansen, Drew. “Imagination: What You Need To Thrive In The Future Economy.” Forbes. 6 August 2012.