“Digital technologies are setting down the new grooves of how people live, how we do business, how we do everything…” -Jaron Lanier Who Owns The Future
Our mental models are often deeply entrenched in the “old grooves” and it is very difficult to lay down new tracks, even as the world around us shifts and changes at an alarmingly new pace and rate.
We are finding that we have not been conditioned, and very often we were not built (our mental models) to easily accept this type (accelerated rate and pace) of change we are currently facing and the uncertain future we find ourselves hurtling towards. So we find ourselves recoiling a bit from these changes. And yet, no matter how much we try to insulate ourselves from these changes, we end up like an ostrich plunging its head in the sand, standing there open and vulnerable while its thinking and vision are closed off to what is occurring, in our systems, organizations, and society as a whole.
Lack of awareness, lack of understanding, lack of connection to these changes, to these shifts, keeps us grounded in the known, in our own mental models of what we know the world to be and what we think and “hope” it will continue to be. Inability to disrupt those mental models keeps us from “seeing” what is happening around us, from forecasting the present to the future, inevitably causing further disconnections in how we equip and prepare our students, our educators, our stakeholders, our systems, and our organizations for this very non-obvious future that is not just coming at us, but is already here.
We must not only be willing to disrupt our mental models, we have to begin to widen the way we think about the future and how these shifts will change our world, our society, the economy, and what work is and how we define and do work in the future. Inability to begin to forecast and consider these changes, as well as shifting our mental models about how the world our children will grow up and into will be very different than the world we grew up in, will limit us in effectively preparing our children and our students to move into and through this exponentially shifting and changing future in a positive and successful manner.
As our generation moves forward in creating a future that is more globalized, outsourced, automated, and artificially (AI) infused, it very well looks as if we are going to need to prepare our future generations with the thinking and problem-solving skillsets to solve many of the societal issues and problems that can and may erupt from these shifts and changes created today.
We can no longer be the ostrich in the sand, we have to begin to think differently so that we can provide our children and students the space to begin to consider the future that they will live in, and how to make it a better world for each and every one. As they will very likely be responsible for providing many of the solutions and solving many of the problems that are being created today, in present times.
We have to widen and disrupt our often linear mental models about the future, as if we are to effectively build up the problem-solving and inquiry skills, creative and innovative, as well as divergent and convergent thinking needed in our students, stakeholders, educators, and organizations to approach these shifts and changes more effectively and more ethically, for the betterment of all.
The world we walked out into in the past looked very different than the world our children and students will walk out into in the future. If we are unable to think different, we will not create the situations and opportunities for them to think different, to problem-solve in new, different and unique ways.
And if truth be told, we are not ready to do that yet. We just aren’t. In many ways, it isn’t even on our radar…
“People are gradually making themselves poorer than they need to be. We’re setting up a situation where better technology in the long term just means more unemployment, or an eventual socialist backlash. Instead, we should seek a future where more people will do well, without losing liberty, even as technology gets much, much better.” -Jaron Lanier Who Owns The Future
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