-
(Ian Goldin) Great, thank you: it's
wonderful to be with educators
-
who care about the intersection
of learning and technology,
-
because that's going to shape the future.
-
Whether we're able
to get this right or not
-
will determine whether we have
a glorious 21st century
-
or a period of unmitigated risks.
-
The walls are coming down everywhere and
it's difficult to not think about this,
-
being so close to it, here in Berlin,
-
25 years ago, these walls coming down.
-
But it's not just about physical walls
coming down,
-
it's about mental walls,
it's about financial walls,
-
it's about technological walls.
-
All the walls are coming down,
and it's that
-
which makes this the most exciting century
in the history of humanity.
-
It changes all of our lives
in surprising ways.
-
And it's certainly changed mine.
-
I was living in Paris
when this wall came down.
-
I didn't imagine that it would touch me
personally.
-
I thought it was about Eastern Europe,
about the Cold War, about something else.
-
But within 6 months, I would,
much to my surprise,
-
I was invited to have dinner with
President Mandela in Paris.
-
He wasn't president then,
he had just been released from prison.
-
But he was released
because the Cold War ended.
-
And the defining feature of this period
we live in, our lives,
-
is that what happens elsewhere will
dramatically affect us in new ways.
-
It's this change that results
from the walls coming down.
-
And it's this change that will shape
education going forward
-
and technological progress.
-
And of course, the other fundamental
period of -- in this time --
-
is technology, technology
which got off the ground
-
at the same time as the Berlin Wall
came down, over 25 years,
-
this exponential growth in
virtual connectivity.
-
And now we have a world of 5 billion
literate, educated people
-
whereas we had a world,
only 30 years ago,
-
of well less than a billion
connected people.
-
Four billion more literate
connected people in the world,
-
and this is the engine of change,
-
where the people in the slums of Mumbai,
Soweto, Sao Paulo,
-
or in apartments in Berlin,
-
they will contribute to change
in surprising new ways.
-
And they're coming together.
-
There is a release of individual genius.
-
If you believe in the random distribution
of exceptional capabilities, which I do,
-
there is just more people out there,
educated, connected, giving, learning.
-
But I also believe in collective genius,
-
the capabilities of people
coming together,
-
to form teams,
to learn from each other
-
through the methods that
we heard about this morning.
-
and in other ways.
-
So new cures for cancer being developed
on 24-hour cycles around the world.
-
My lab in Oxford, doing this with people
in Beijing and San Francisco and Palo Alto
-
and all over, in real time.
-
There is no sleep on innovation any more.
-
And that's the power, the engine,
which brings change.
-
So if you think you've seen
a lot of change
-
be ready for much more surprises.
-
This is the slowest time in history
you will know.
-
It's going to get faster,
the pace of change greater,
-
the surprises more intense.
-
It's always going to be
-
more and more difficult
to predict what's next.
-
Uncertainty will grow because
the pace of change is growing.
-
Because the walls have come down,
-
there are two billion more people
in the world since 1990.
-
And that's because ideas have traveled,
simple ideas,
-
like washing your hands prevents
contagious diseases;
-
really complicated ideas
like those embedded in vaccines
-
in new cures for cancer
and many other things.
-
Two billion more people coming together,
most of them now urbanized,
-
and even those that aren't
physically together,
-
virtually together.
-
A quite extraordinary moment
in human history,
-
one where we've come together
as a community,
-
like we were 150,000 years ago,
when we lived in villages together,
-
our ancestors in East Africa,
and then dispersed around the world
-
and now, reconnected.
-
And it's this reconnection, which
I believe, gives us the potential.
-
But do we learn from it?
-
And are we able to think of ourselves
in new ways,
-
because we're connecting in new ways?
-
Is this wall coming down changing the way
we are and we think?
-
Or do we still think like individualists
in our nation states,
-
pursuing our own self-interest
and those of our countries,
-
not realizing that now,
we are in a different game?
-
Now we're in a game in which
we have to cooperate,
-
where we have to think about others,
-
where our actions, for the first time,
spill over in dramatic new ways
-
and affect people
on the other side of the planet.
-
This pace of education means that
not only are we liberating ourselves,
-
but we're liberating people from
all sorts of past habits.
-
And this change is leading
to quick changes in social norms.
-
Acceptance of gay marriage
is one of those,
-
but there'll be many, many, many others.
-
And so, what we think about
as normal today
-
will seem very strange
in a few years' time:
-
this pace of change driven by education,
-
more doctorates being created
in China now
-
than in the rest of the world
put together every year,
-
more scientists alive today
-
than all the scientists
that ever lived in history,
-
more literate people alive today
-
than all the literate people
that ever lived in history.
-
This is the engine of change.
-
But it's not simply about
more and more progress.
-
It's not simply that we know
-
that this is going to get
better and better.
-
It's about what's next.
-
We don't know what the future holds.
-
We live in this extraordinary moment
of our lives
-
where we've seen exponential growth
in incomes: that's red.
-
And we seen this most rapid
increase in populations,
-
and income growth, even more rapid
than population growth, which is why
-
people have escaped poverty at a pace
that has never happened in history.
-
Despite the world's population increasing
by two billion over the last 25 years,
-
the number of desperately poor people
has gone down by about 300 million.
-
This has never happened before.
-
This is an incredible time, by far
the best time to be alive.
-
Just while you're here, your average
life expectancy should increase
-
by about 10 hours.
-
That's the pace of progress:
-
what you're learning,
and what's happening in the labs.
-
And it's that which makes me
incredibly optimistic.
-
This is the age of discovery,
this is the new Renaissance.
-
This is a period of creativity
and technological change
-
which hasn't been seen for 500 years.
-
This is from my stem cell lab
in the Oxford Martin School:
-
the lab technician's skin
turned into a heart cell.
-
And this is one of the
extraordinary things that's happening
-
that makes one so excited
about the future.
-
A future of rising life expectancy,
so children being born today
-
in Berlin or elsewhere in Europe,
will have life expectancies well over 100,
-
and not having to worry about the things
that I worry about,
-
like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and dementia.
-
But what skills are they learning today
that will help them shape this future,
-
prepare for it, and will still be relevant
in a hundred years time?
-
It's those skills that you have
the responsibility to help shape.
-
We can imagine this glorious future,
an extraordinary time in human history.
-
But we can also realize
-
that it could come very, very badly
at stuck.
-
I looked at the Renaissance
for inspiration
-
to try and understand how people
interpreted these choices.
-
That was a period of
creative exceptionalism,
-
scientific exceptionalism.
-
And we think today of the iconic figures,
the Michelangelos, the Da Vincis,
-
the Copernicuses,
-
discovering the earth went round the sun,
not the other way round,
-
fundamentally changing our understanding
of ourselves in the universe
-
in ways that will happen
in our lifetimes.
-
Fundamental changes
which lead to Humanism,
-
Enlightenment and many,
many other things,
-
spurred by technologies.
-
Then, it was the Gutenberg press.
-
Simple ideas travel very rapidly.
-
Until then only monks
could read and write,
-
in Latin, in their monasteries.
-
Less than half of 1% of the world
was literate.
-
There was nothing to read
-- and it was in Latin.
-
And then, this invention lead
to a whole new way of thinking.
-
Ideas traveled, people could learn
in their own languages,
-
and we had the Renaissance.
-
We also had the development
of nationalism
-
because people could identify.
-
and of course, massive
technological push-back.
-
The Bonfire of the Vanities,
the burning of books,
-
not far from here and across Europe.
-
Destruction of presses,
religious fundamentalism,
-
extremism,
religious wars for 150 years.
-
Now if you recall those curves I put up,
-
of the long trajectory of income growth
and population growth,
-
but the Renaissance did not figure.
-
It was a non-event,
it lead to no improvements
-
in people's welfare in Europe or beyond.
-
Are we different?
-
Can we embrace our technologies in ways
that lead to sustained progress?
-
And there are two things I worry about
in this respect.
-
First, while the walls have gone down
between societies,
-
within societies,
the walls are going up everywhere.
-
All countries are experiencing
rising inequality.
-
Why is this?
-
It's because the pace of progress
is so fast at the frontier
-
that this process of integration
-- some call it globalization --
-
has led to such rapid change
that if you aren't on the frontier,
-
if you don't have the skills,
the mobility, the attitude to change,
-
to adapt, to grab new things,
you're left further and further behind.
-
If you're in the wrong place,
with the wrong skills at the wrong time,
-
or you're too old,
you're left further and further behind.
-
And so we see in all societies
rising inequality.
-
And some people have been able to capture
the goods of globalization.
-
They've been able to park their money,
-
whether they are a corporation
in Bermuda or somewhere,
-
or an individual in Monaco
or Lichtenstein or Luxembourg.
-
And so governments are becoming
less and less able
-
to tax their citizens
and tax their corporates
-
and less able to fund education,
health, infrastructure,
-
and the other things we need.
-
And the second big problem
of this integration process
-
is: when things connect,
-
unfortunately,
not only good stuff connects.
-
Rarely, bad stuff connects too.
-
And so the question is how do we have
this complex, dense, intertwined system
-
without becoming overwhelmed by it?
-
Are we able to manage
our interdependencies
-
in ways that will be sustained
and benefit us,
-
or will they overwhelm us?
-
And this is both the intended
consequences which lead
-
to unintended bads.
-
Our intended consequence of using
more antibiotics around the world
-
leading to antibiotic resistance.
-
Or as our energy growth grows
around the world
-
because people are escaping poverty,
leading to climate change.
-
Or as our resource use increases
because people are consuming more food,
-
leading to resource depletion.
-
And the unintended consequences,
banks which spread around the globe
-
becoming centers of cascading risk
and financial crisis.
-
Airports spreading pandemics, what I call
the butterfly defect of globalization.
-
The spreading of risk is not a new idea.
-
We think in England that a rat coming
off a ship in Liverpool
-
might have killed half the British
population in the Black Death.
-
Early globalization leading
to systemic risk.
-
But what's new is the pace
and scale of the change.
-
So the swine flu that starts
in Mexico City
-
in 160 countries in thirty days.
-
And the emerging infections group
in the Oxford Martin School
-
has modeled spread of this
with airline traffic
-
and shown it exactly replicates.
-
So the super-spreaders of the good
of globalization
-
like JFK, Heathrow, Frankfurt,
and other great airports
-
become the super-spreaders of the bads,
in this case, pandemics.
-
And in the cybersphere, of course,
we see this dramatically,
-
that anything can be instantaneously
elsewhere, be it good or be it bad.
-
In finance, we've seen a dramatic
indication of this,
-
this collapsing system starting
from a subprime crisis in the US
-
leading to 100 million people laid off
in work from work around the world.
-
So what happens somewhere
dramatically affecting people
-
on the other side of the world
in the same way that my life
-
was shaped, but sometimes
with disastrous consequences.
-
And what the financial system also teaches
us is the rising power of individuals.
-
These new technologies give individuals
simply unprecedented powers.
-
Barings Bank had existed for 200 years.
-
It had withstood the most amazing
technological, political, and other changes,
-
and one young man, Nick Leeson,
having some fun, a bit of trading,
-
managed to bring it down.
-
And the same thing almost happened
in Société Générale with Jérôme Kerviel,
-
JP Morgan, UBS, and many others.
-
We see that these individuals
now have power in new ways.
-
And of course, individuals can also,
in new ways, develop biopathogens
-
using a DNA sequencing which
is going down exponentially in price,
-
a single individual now
can build something,
-
using a technology like a drone
to distribute it,
-
and kill perhaps tens, if not hundreds,
of millions of people.
-
This new capability, this new power
of individuals has changed
-
so that nation states are becoming
less and less powerful
-
relative to the power of individuals.
-
And there are seven billion of us
growing to nine billion
-
over the next 35 years.
-
Within the cybersphere,
we see this dramatically,
-
how small groups can cause mayhem,
-
steal all our records,
open our bank accounts,
-
they'll be opening our front door locks,
-
controlling our vehicle-to-vehicle
communication, etc.
-
Understanding how we build systems
which liberate us,
-
and yet we do not become slaves
or vulnerable to, is the central question.
-
Can we create interdependent systems
where we are in control,
-
and what does that mean?
-
And that education process requires
a new understanding of responsibility.
-
As these technologies pervade
intoour bodies, on our bodies
-
and everything we do,
-
it becomes more and more important.
-
Trust, integrity, judgment,
-
these old things become
more and more important.
-
The financial crisis was characterized
by a number of remarkable things.
-
Over 250,000 extremely well-paid
people in the central banks of the world
-
in the IMF and other institutions
with this enormous amount of data
-
do not see it coming.
-
Too much data, too little integrity.
-
And as machines begin to take our jobs
-
-- and one of my groups in the Oxford
Martin School has said that 47% of US jobs
-
will be lost to machine intelligence
over the next 20 years --
-
people will increasingly see
machine intelligence as a threat
-
not only to their bank accounts
and other systems,
-
but to their jobs and to their careers.
-
And so, how do we create education
systems where we are not vulnerable
-
to automation taking our jobs?
-
And the answer is, we need to do things
which are not automatable.
-
What does that mean?
-
It means creativity, dexterity,
empathy, judgment
-
and that's what will keep us
different from machines
-
for at least the next 50 years.
-
So, creating an environment where
machines complement our abilities,
-
help us, do many of the things
-
that are really, in many ways,
inhumane for people to be doing,
-
dangerous and others;
-
help us be more effective,
but don't supplant us.
-
Being in Germany, we're reminded always
-
that it's not that technologies exist
that people decide to adopt them.
-
It's society's attitude.
-
Germany has banned nuclear power,
It has banned GMOs.
-
Many other places
embrace these technologies.
-
It's what we feel about these technologies
that matters.
-
It's how we feel we can control them,
whether we feel that we're on top,
-
which will shape the way
that societies adopt them.
-
And so, in education, it seems
absolutely vital that we understand them.
-
People need to understand
what genetic modification is.
-
People need to understand
what DNA sequencing is.
-
People need to understand these new,
extremely powerful technologies,
-
which will change the way we are
and the choices we face going forward.
-
There will be societal choices:
do we want to create superhumans, or not?
-
And if others do it,
what is our attitude to that?
-
These are choices that we will face,
let alone the next generation.
-
So this handshake,
this understanding of technology,
-
the literacy becomes
more and more important,
-
as well as the interconnectivity.
-
As we will become wealthier,
as we will become more connected,
-
the spillovers of our choices
get stronger and stronger.
-
And we see this in many, many areas.
We see --
-
-- sorry, I just want to go back to the
slide before with the video, if I may --
-
(people arguing animatedly around
a big tuna in Japanese, then clapping)
-
(Goldin) This is the tuna market in Tokyo.
-
This tuna was sold for about 1.5 million Euro.
-
This the market's response to the scarcity
of a natural resource.
-
The price goes up, the tuna don't know
how much they're worth, of course.
-
They don't reproduce more
when they're worth more.
-
Hi-tech fishermen go and chase
the remaining tuna
-
and you get extinction.
-
And the same thing, of course, with rhino
and any natural resource.
-
Natural resources don't understand
markets.
-
they are irrelevant to them.
-
and so, as we go forward and we have
a market system which determines choice,
-
on the one hand,
-
and more and more people
with more wealth
-
are claiming resources
through this system.
-
But on the other hand, we have
the supply of natural resources,
-
determined in totally different ways,
-
we have a very serious problem
of extinction.
-
Governments are not
very smart at this either.
-
Thinking short term,
they extract resource,
-
often for the good of their people,
-
but collectively, in the long term,
a disaster.
-
This is the Aral Sea.
-
Peop-- countries, six countries
doing the right thing,
-
drawing water to feed their people.
-
Collectively, a disaster.
-
The examples of success
-- and the Mediterranean is one --
-
where citizens, scientists, politicians,
civil society movements
-
came together and saved this.
-
And with climate change, of course,
we have this dramatic problem.
-
What's happening in Paris this week
is of huge significance
-
to the future of the planet.
-
But it's not enough;
we need to do much more.
-
And we need to do it in a way
that allows people around the world
-
to benefit from the things that we have.
-
We've created 90% of the problem
in the rich countries
-
but 80%, already 70% of the flows, (check)
growing to 80 over the next 15 years,
-
will be coming from emerging markets.
-
So how do we let the rest of the world
clime the energy curve,
-
while ensuring we keep global warming
to below 2 degrees?
-
These collective decisions, increasingly,
will shape the way that the planet moves.
-
Who's going to do this?
-
This set of institutions is totally unfit
for purpose.
-
It was built in a different era,
with different power structures.
-
It is unable to meet
the challenges of our time,
-
and in some areas, like cyber
there is no institution at all.
-
Small changes,
largely rearranging the furniture.
-
(laughter)
-
(Goldin) So I think of us as nations,
like in a cabin within a big ocean liner,
-
each in our little cabin, drifting
with no captain, on Planet Earth's deck.
-
Again, part of this is the result
of extroardinarily positive changes.
-
We're no longer in a world
where twelve white men, smoking cigars,
-
could sit in their room and decide
the earth's future,
-
as they did after the Second World War.
-
New power balances mean we have
to have a transition in power.
-
But we're in this dangerous time
where the old powers no longer rule
-
and the new powers have not been able
to step up to the plate.
-
So it's a time of transition, it's a time
where the big institutions,
-
the best of them like the IMF,
have proved themselves
-
totally unfit for purpose.
-
It requires citizens, it requires
thinking in new ways
-
to overcome this problem.
-
Thinking which overcomes short-termism,
-
be it in business or
be it in our own decisions.
-
We need to think long,
because we're here for the long term
-
and the kids of today will be here
for at least the next century.
-
How we do this and how we realize
that our own decisions, increasingly,
-
are entangled with others'
is of course the critical question.
-
What we see in the politics
is a reversal.
-
People feel the future is scary,
uncertain.
-
They feel that openness and connectivity
makes them more vulnerable,
-
and they're right.
-
And so, we see this political revulsion
with extremism growing
-
in all countries, but certainly in Europe
and in the US.
-
People wanting to return to an age
which they romanticize as being better:
-
protectionist, nationalist, xenophobic.
-
It's profoundly misguided.
-
In order to ensure that
we can manage this world,
-
we need to be more connected, not less.
-
We need to ensure that we're able
to come together, but be protected;
-
resilient, thinking together, and insuring
that through our decisions
-
we not only protect our own futures
-
but protect those of others
and the planet.
-
Thank you.
(Applause)
-
If we can do all that, we can rock on
to a happy old age.
-
(Moderator) Ian, (laughs)
thank you very much indeed.
-
There's a lot of comments here, but
there is one theme that is emerging.
-
Let me just give you this one comment
from Anastasia Brewer (check), I think it was?
-
It's just nipped out as --
-
I want to pick up actually, really,
on what David said right at the beginning
-
about "Don't be afraid,
don't be in denial"
-
and this need for change,
and what you said about
-
the new normal will feel very strange
in a few years' time,
-
because Jeff Kortenbosch
makes this comment:
-
"A key skill set should be about
adapting to rapid change,
-
"to learn, unlearn and relearn."
-
And the debate tonight is going to be
about 21st century skills
-
are not being taught in schools
and should be.
-
Now, much of the work in the Martin School
is about behavior
-
and about understanding
how the brain works
-
and adaptability and the fears of
the second (check) generation
-
to be able to adapt to this new shift,
-
which is accelerating probably even faster
than most realize.
-
How optimistic can we be that actually,
our human capacity can cope with this?
-
(Goldin) Yes, this is
the most difficult question.
-
My sense is that the world is moving
at a revolutionary speed
-
and we and our institutions are
evolutionary very slow adapters.
-
My hope is that this concentration
of knowledge which is being unleashed
-
through the new connectivity and literacy
will allow us to leapfrog.
-
And we do see that,
and we see signs of this in so many ways.
-
So there's all sorts of exciting things,
-
like the things we heard about
earlier today,
-
that are happening.
-
The big question, and I think it's going
to be partly a question that's resolved
-
in Paris this week, is can we learn
to cooperate on these big challenges.
-
Are we able to give up
some independence and sovereignty
-
as individuals or as countries,
-
to ensure that collectively,
we'll all have a bigger future.
-
Are we able take longer term--
(Moderator) What about the .... (check)
-
and the ability and -- we've only got
about 3 minutes to run now --
-
but what about the ability
of the human being
-
to cope with this enormity, particularly
to adapt to the speed
-
that the next generation,
-
through the education process,
will be expecting?
-
(Goldin) Humans can do anything.
-
In my college at Oxford Balliol, we had
a third of the college giving their lives
-
in the First World War,
-
and about 20% of the college giving
their lives in the Second World War
-
to defend ideals of freedom.
-
People are prepared to make the most
extraordinary sacrifices,
-
to change their lives fundamentally,
-
if they believe that
it's the right thing to do.
-
(Moderator) Can they do it?
(Goldin) Yes, they can.
-
We've done it before, we can do it again:
I'm absolutely convinced.
-
(Applause)
-
(Moderator) But again, I'm picking up and
trying to bring together
-
a number of themes here, but that --
what David said right at the beginning:
-
"Don't be afraid, don't be in denial."
-
That is achievable, is it, that kind of
reversal with this scale of change,
-
and the shift,
the acceleration taking place?
-
(Goldin) Yes. I think one has to
open one's eyes
-
before one can see
what's happening around.
-
And this pace of change is really
what it's about.
-
Are we able to appreciate
-
this extraordinary moment in history
we're in?
-
This age of discovery, are we able
to recognize it for what it is,
-
and seize the opportunities
that come with it?
-
(Moderator) Yes, I'm going to stop there.
I'm afraid you - because you ran too much,
-
25 minutes, so the 30 minutes is up, so
I have to stop you at that point
-
because some people have begun to leave,
there's coffee and everything else
-
and a very tight schedule.
-
Remember, this is going to be part of
a big debate later tonight
-
and also, let me underscore that
everyone here can talk more about it.
-
And indeed, David Price is signing
his book,
-
"How will we work, live and learn
in the future?" at 13:05,
-
and that's in Potsdam 3,
-
and "Information doesn't want to be free",
Cory is going to be speaking about that
-
on copyright in the digital age, as well,
at 12 o'clock.
-
So, plenty: we've really burdened you
with an enormous number of concepts.
-
And David, can I tell you as well,
-
there are large numbers of people
who sent messages, admiring your battle
-
and how you've won your battle on health.
-
Can I thank you all very much indeed,
and also for contributing
-
some important comments and questions
from the floor.
-
It's coffee time.
(Applause)
-
[Recordings of this session will be
uploaded to www.online-educa.com] 28:31
Claude Almansi
Wow! Thanks a bunch, Mariana!
Claude Almansi
Again: thanks a lot, Cathy.
Best,
Claude
Mariana Arias
You're welcome, Claude. It's a great video. :)