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Fit for the future
The key to success in the footloose world is learning, write Heather McGowan and Chris Shipley
For centuries, we have prepared citizens to work in linear fashion. Identify needed skills, create a training programme or post-secondary curriculums, transfer knowledge to potential workers, and – voilà – a workforce is ready to meet an identified market need. This model worked well when change came slowly. Businesses could forecast future needs reasonably accurately, and students could train to fill those needs with assurance that a good job would reward focused academic preparation. No more. The rate of change is simply too swift. Where once an economic paradigm shift could be absorbed over multiple generations – consider the shift from agriculture to manufacturing work – we can now expect to absorb multiple shifts
FRIEDMAN THEORY
Three simultaneous interconnected climate changes
T ECH NO LO G Y Moore’s Law Exponential Change
M A RKE T
Interconnected to Interdependent
CL I M ATE Later to Now
RE -S HA PIN G My Focus
Work/Learn
Geopolitics
Community
PO L IT IC S RE S IL IE N C E A N D PRO PULS IO N
Dialogue Q4 2018
Ethics
in a single lifetime. We have arrived at the Age of Accelerations, as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s theory has it. The Age of Accelerations comprises three exponential growth and change trends: technology (Moore’s Law), the market (interdependent global markets), and the climate (climate change, biodiversity loss, population growth). Technology is measured by the relentless march of Moore’s Law, which has delivered computing power at low enough cost that now anything mentally routine or predictable – perhaps half of all work – can be replaced by technology. The market has moved from being connected, to hyper-connected, to interdependent – forcing failures and successes to be absorbed by all. Climate change not only drives shifts in energy markets (driving down the cost of solar to compete with cheap coal, for example), but also changes in human migration, as super storms, drought, and other conditions drive people from their homelands to seek safety and economic advantage elsewhere. Friedman argues that these three interlocking accelerations are redefining geopolitics, politics, community, ethics and –perhaps most of all – learning and work. Change runs blindingly fast up an exponential curve, demanding that we think differently about work and learning. That single dose of education stockpiled in our twenties will barely last into our thirties (see Marcelino Elosua interview, page 50). And that 40-year career arc is stretching to 50 or more years, as we live longer, healthier, and more engaged lives. Where we once jumped on the career ladder and climbed to retirement, workers now navigate a complex maze of ever-changing possibilities. Traversing this maze will require