NBICS and Education 2030

The Choice is Yours biweekly column by Gregor Wolbring

August 30^th 2007

http://politicsofhealth.org/wol/2007-08-30.htm

The Millennium Project evaluated recently what education could be - and what tools education might use in the year 2030. The purpose of this study was “to provide a global picture of potential futures of education and learning that will be used as an input to the new Vision of Korea for 2030 report to the Ministry of Education”. The results of this global assessment were published in the 2007 State of the Future.

The Millennium Project designed a Real Time Delphi Questionnaire. It identified through a literature search 19 possible future components of education and asked 213 experts identified by the different nodes of the Millennium project to evaluate these components and to give further comments about what the identified future components of education might entail. Some of the references related to these 19 components can be found here.

The 19 possible future components of education evaluated were:

1. National programs for improving collective intelligence

2. Just-in-time knowledge and learning

3. Individualized education

4. Use of simulations

5. Continuous evaluation of individual learning processes designed to prevent people from growing unstable and/or becoming mentally ill.

6. Improved individual nutrition

7. Genetically increased intelligence

8. Use of global on-line simulations as a primary social science research tool

9. Use of public communications to reinforce pursuit of knowledge

10. Portable artificial intelligence devices

11. Complete mapping of human synapses to discover how learning occurs and thereby develop strategies for improvement of learning

12. Means for keeping adult brains healthier for longer periods

13. Chemistry for brain enhancement

14. Web 17.0

15. Integrated life-long learning systems

16. Programs aimed at eliminating prejudice and hate

17. E-Teaching

18. Smarter than human computers

19. Artificial microbes enhancing intelligence

Fig 1 (in the education stand alone study) (Fig 23 in the PDF here) gives the result of the evaluation by the experts using a Real Time Delphi method.

Figure 1: Likelihood of Education Possibilities––year 2030

Note: the full report is not available online but can be ordered .

The report provides a 60 page evaluation of the 19 components identified using the following questions: What might make this happen? What are some positive consequences? What prevents this from happening? What are some negative consequences?

The Choice is yours:

Education of the future faces many challenges some of which I covered in an earlier column . Which of the 19 components will be employed in the education of the future I can not say, however any of the 19 components, if employed in the future, would impact the landscape of education deliverance, the meaning of education and the design of education tools, and each of them would impact in various ways students, teachers, education institutions and education related decision makers. NBICS is an enabler of at least 16 of the 19 components. Each of the 19 components entail unique challenges which include ethical, social, economic, legal, cultural and political ones. It is essential everyone gets involved in the discourse around the future of education. People in the discourse so far link science and technology mostly to education deliverance. However many of the components modify the learning person only. Some impact both the student and the deliverance of education. The artificial hippocampus for example could enable the electronic uploading of lectures into the brain of the learner. This would have many implications for the learner and content deliverer and for education institutions.

Whatever one might think of the 19 components I think it’s important to develop foresight scenarios and to deal with science and technology advances in a proactive manner. Many more foresight exercises have to be funded. Foresight exercises are an essential tool for understanding possible emerging realities and for ensuring that the strategies for dealing with them are benefiting everybody, and do not exacerbate existing problems or create new ones.

However, foresight exercises have to be performed not just by governments (see for example here) academics, the military (see here) and corporations (see here) but also by NGO’s and others. People with disabilities, for example, are so engulfed in daily struggles they do not have the capacity - people and money-wise - to perform foresight work, to learn about issues before they are front page or to develop pre-emptive strategies for influencing the consequences of emerging sciences and technologies when they are in the early stages of development. It is important that people with disabilities be involved in such studies because developments in science and technology will have an impact on their daily struggle and their achievements such as the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities.

In addition to the need to find ways to enable a culture of foresight exercises performed by marginalized populations, there are other issues.

A much greater diversity of people must be involved in any given foresight exercise. Researchers will have to move away from the limited diversity of input exhibited by most foresight exercises today. Involving marginalized populations on an ongoing basis is an important aspect of the need for a ‘diversification of stakeholders.’ It is not an easy task. Involving people with disabilities, indigenous people and other marginalized populations is not a short term invitation issue but a long term capacity building process (see the section ‘Practical issues in engaging the community of disabled people in my Scoping document on Nanotechnology and disabled people for the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University).

The Choice is yours

Please contact the author for any information desired at gwolbrin@ucalgary.ca
© Gregor Wolbring, All Rights Reserved, 2007. Please contact the author for permission to reprint. More columns can be found at innovationwatch.

Gregor Wolbring is a biochemist, bioethicist, disability/vari-ability/ability studies scholar, and health policy and science and technology governance researcher at the University of Calgary. He is a member of the Center for Nanotechnology and Society at Arizona State University; Part Time Professor at Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, Canada; Member CAC/ISO - Canadian Advisory Committees for the International Organization for Standardization section TC229 Nanotechnologies; Member of the editorial team for the Nanotechnology for Development portal of the Development Gateway Foundation; Chair of the Bioethics Taskforce of Disabled People's International; and former Member of the Executive of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO (2003-2007 maximum terms served). He publishes the Bioethics, Culture and Disability website and authors a weblog on NBICS and its social implications.