Future think

I've posted here previously that I have a love/hate relationship with the author/columnist Thomas Friedman.  I think he's a brilliant guy but sometimes his writings don't resonate much with me.  He can be insufferable or think he's the smartest guy in the room.  But sometimes I read his stuff and think, "wow, this is so right".  Such is the case this week with his column in the NYT called "It's the P.Q. and C.Q. As much as I.Q".    I'm tempted to just copy the whole thing for your reading pleasure, but I think it's more fun if you go there on your own.

But here are a few teasers.  This column is all about the speed of change, the need to rapidly embrace it, and personal responsibility.  It's also about how all of these things will drive my Grandkids to be smarter, more flexible, and more inquisitive if they want to succeed.

Here is what he says about the speed of change,

In 2004, I wrote a book, called “The World Is Flat,” about how the world was getting digitally connected so more people could compete, connect and collaborate from anywhere. When I wrote that book, Facebook, Twitter, cloud computing, LinkedIn, 4G wireless, ultra-high-speed bandwidth, big data, Skype, system-on-a-chip (SOC) circuits, iPhones, iPods, iPads and cellphone apps didn’t exist, or were in their infancy.

Think about that.  That was 8 years ago.  What will we (I hope I'm still around!) see in 2020.  All this technology that results in a hyper connected world has practical impacts on all aspects of our lives.  This is one of those impacts,

When the world gets this hyperconnected, adds Mundie, the speed with which every job and industry changes also goes into hypermode. “In the old days,” he said, “it was assumed that your educational foundation would last your whole lifetime. That is no longer true.” Because of the way every industry — from health care to manufacturing to education — is now being transformed by cheap, fast, connected computing power, the skill required for every decent job is rising as is the necessity of lifelong learning.

And there is this,

In their terrific book, “Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution Is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy,” Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology note that for the last two centuries it happened that productivity, median income and employment all tracked each other nicely. “So most economists have had this feeling that if you just boost productivity, the pie grows, and, in the long run, everything else takes care of itself,” explained Brynjolfsson in an interview. “But there is no economic law that says technological progress has to benefit everyone. It’s entirely possible for the pie to get bigger and some people to get a smaller slice.” Indeed, when the digital revolution gets so cheap, fast, connected and ubiquitous you see this in three ways, Brynjolfsson added: those with more education start to earn much more than those without it, those with the capital to buy and operate machines earn much more than those who can just offer their labor, and those with superstar skills, who can reach global markets, earn much more than those with just slightly less talent.

So the upshot is that you will not only need education, but you need continuous education.  You  will not only need to be curious, you'll need to be continually curious.  And innovative.  And take chances.  And on and on.  Technology will make our lives easier in many ways, but it will bring new challenges, new pressures...and new opportunities.

It will require more individual initiative. We know that it will be vital to have more of the “right” education than less, that you will need to develop skills that are complementary to technology rather than ones that can be easily replaced by it and that we need everyone to be innovating new products and services to employ the people who are being liberated from routine work by automation and software. The winners won’t just be those with more I.Q. It will also be those with more P.Q. (passion quotient) and C.Q. (curiosity quotient) to leverage all the new digital tools to not just find a job, but to invent one or reinvent one, and to not just learn but to relearn for a lifetime.

So my Grandkids are going to have a challenge.  They can't just sit back.  They can't just get the right education and figure that the jobs will come.  Technology will force the world to speed up.  It will mean that to be successful, you must be plugged in.  They can't just sit back.  It turns out that, if he's right,  technology may be our savior from the Nanny state.  As Friedman says,

Government can and must help, but the president needs to explain that this won’t just be an era of “Yes WeCan.” It will also be an era of “Yes You Can” and “Yes You Must.”