The Hames Report

The Tyranny of Clockworks

For the past 25 years (at least) I have been trying to make sense of one paramount issue. How is it possible that Homo sapiens, possibly the smartest species to have inhabited this planet, is consciously hastening its own extinction by managing its affairs in ways that are not at all conducive to sustaining life? A matter bothering me more than any other, is whether we are sufficiently wise to survive our own ingenuity and hubris. This question is manifestly relevant today with the advent of artificial general intelligence.

Technologies, particularly the technology of knowledge, bias reasoning in preference of perceiving the world a certain way. A blackboard, for instance, encourages erasure, continual modification, flexible thinking. Pen and paper require neatness, attention to syntax, orderly thinking. Online hypertext inspires discontinuity, non-linear, collective, exploratory thinking. Thus, the way we construct our thinking space is also the way we orchestrate ideas. The problem is that over time we come to believe our particular model represents the way the world itself is organized. Patently that is not the case.

Essentially, each paradigm shift in technology has changed what we mean by knowing. In effect our culture is just a vast thinking space, an architectural semiology of symbols and idiosyncratic structures. And, just as our culture moved from the printed word to the electronic text, and then from text to speech, so are we shifting from tiered social orders (of empires, sovereign states and corporations) to a dynamic network culture (of communities and social movements) layered on each other.

Such shifts challenge even the most well-worn of truths and alters, quite significantly, any embedded conventions and traits of thought that produce for us a sense of reality.

A paradigm shift of this reality-altering kind occurred at Cambridge University in 1792. A tutor by the name of William Farish suggested that student papers be graded. This novel proposal - that a numerical value be assigned to the expression of human thought - was a leap forward in our acceptance of numerical measurement as an authenticator of knowledge, and of our formulating a mathematical impression of reality.

A simple idea changed the entire experience of learning and meaning. By instituting fierce competition among students, through the provision of sharply differentiated symbols of attainment, grading provided what was assumed to be an unprejudiced measure of human performance. It created the illusion that accurate estimations could be made of worthiness. In Michel Foucault’s words, the human being became a calculable person.

This concept quickly caught on, for if a number could be assigned to the quality of a thought, then it could equally be given to other qualities - such as mercy, love, hate, beauty, creativity, personality, intelligence, and even sanity.

This notion of appraisal still permeates our thinking today. Just try to imagine a world in which there are no clocks, no timetables, no accountants - most of us would find it quite impossible to do our work without resorting to mathematical calculation of some kind. We have been thoroughly indoctrinated into a mode of numerical patterning (of counting, measuring and calculating) in order to perceive the world this way - in effect a facsimile of the real world. That does not mean the real world exists precisely as we perceive it to be in that representative state.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that, so long as we realize that our ontological awareness of what is real is being shaped, and our choice of imperatives significantly predetermined, by such ingrained preferences. Nor should we assume the absence of (and deficiencies in) other, peculiar, unfashionable, or even contrasting yet equally valid, ways of comprehending the world. The rich wisdom traditions of first nations, for example, provide a distinctive appreciation of reality that differ significantly from the mainstream.

Secreted within every technology is an ideological bias - a predilection to construct meaning as one thing, rather than another. We are easily seduced by such ideological biases. But that is not all. Those who become adept in the use of a new technology quickly become part of an elite information monopoly, accumulating power and influence in such a way that they are then granted authority, status and prestige by those lacking in such competence.

For well over 500 years, for example, teachers and academics have been part of such a monopoly created by the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. Before that it was the clergy who were the only people in society who spoke Latin and could therefore translate the word of God to the unenlightened. Today, given our ability to instantly communicate with anyone, anywhere, for whatever purpose, the trajectory is towards decentralization and the disintegration of such dominance. The same fate awaits all "status" companies and professions - from lawyers to medical practitioners. Sooner or later, when the technology shifts, the knowledge monopoly crumbles.

Industrial society in the West spawned its own self-referential ideology as it developed. Modernism became a "totalitarian technocracy", purging alternatives to itself. This was accomplished, not by rendering alternatives illegal, immoral or unpopular, but simply by making them "invisible" and therefore mostly irrelevant. In the process of fashioning modernism, new meaning was ascribed to old concepts as diverse as religion, culture and progress, so that our previous definitions still made sense within the new context. And we devised additional instruments - among them management, bureaucracy and production.

Innovations like these spread rapidly through industrial society, cementing the latest ideology in place. Based implicitly on the appropriation of notions of calculability and the authority of the written word - which inevitably led to devices such as accounting mechanisms, inventory control, and productivity norms - the new techniques became the bedrock for so-called "scientific management" systems.

Although there was nothing particularly scientific about them, the modern corporation was created by adopting these principles. The economist W. H. Galbraith maintained that, perhaps even more than machinery, massive and complex business organizations are the tangible manifestations of advanced technology.

Like any other technology, though, management has progressively tended to operate independently of the system it was designed to serve. The technology of management is comprised of rational protocols, reductionist controls, and precise regulations and routines aimed at achieving clarity and efficiency, while standardizing behaviours and dampening down unwanted perturbations in the system of industrial manufacturing. In that role it has become sanctified, fixed, ruling out any possibility of more appropriate alternatives taking its place. In terms of societal progress this is a huge problem.

Only now, poised in a liminal moment in history when the depleted frameworks of modernism are breaking down, and the new have yet to be created, are we gradually discovering  that our identity is not fixed, but fluid and transitional. We have become multiple - a community of mind as Gregory Bateson suggested. Chaos and complexity theories assert that the world is both unknowable and un­predictable. All we can do is engage in moments of transient meaning-making. In this bewildering and unfamiliar context, the prevailing "science" of conventional management endures as a zombie-like irrelevance.

And so our cultural memory adjusts, at times painfully, to post-modernism - a world shimmering with new possibilities, confusing and exhilarating. Everything in this new world is infused with new meanings. There is no central authority, as yet no keeper of wisdom or knowledge - only fiduciaries of particular ephemeral points of view.

Now the art is to find suitable models for a new society and then trust sufficiently in these models to supplant the old ones. This is far easier said than done. Management has become deeply implanted in our consciousness as the prime means for effectively coordinating and directing the institution of work and governance. We have come to regard management as an unquestionable imperative. Indeed, it has become so analogous with getting things done that it is difficult enough to make changes to the institution of management, let alone devising alternative methods for achieving our purposes. Worse still, it has managed to wheedle itself into our collective mind as a valid substitute for leadership.

Indeed management has become an "invisible technology" working sub­versively but convincingly to insinuate itself into our cultural mindset as a substitute for leadership. And yet, distressing though it might be to imagine, it is entirely possible for business, and almost any other institution, to operate once again without a highly technocratic management structure or managerial elite. In fact, it is inevitable that such sociocratic democratized governance will ultimately prevail.

My central hypothesis is that modernist management - as a "technospheric solu­tion" to running contemporary enterprises and government agencies - is obsolete. Almost any attempt by a professional management elite to manage as it has done in the past now risks serious damage to their organization as a whole. Besides it is unnecessary. This hypothesis is based on two revolutionary principles resulting from close observation of the pathology of many different types of organization:

Principle 1: Observing the laws of complex adaptive systems, such as economies and ecosystems, teaches us that organizations may consciously need to adopt comparable processes to those found in nature in order to survive in the long term. Within this context, strategic development becomes nothing less than the creation of new social ecologies.

Principle 2: Noting the results of recent research, much of which is held under wraps, it is apparent that the greater proportion of an organiza­tion’s financial and operational performance (especially in long-surviving companies) appears to result not from any formal plans, vision, or management control system, but from informal actions, habits, instinct, conversations, and personal-cultural agendas enacted routinely by every member of the enter­prise.

The Machine That Made Too Much

The Machine That Made Too Much

From about 2000 BC until the dawn of the 18^th century the quality of life for most people remained pretty much the same. Discounting artistic and cultural endeavors, about four millennia passed during which time we did not learn to do anything that was really new. Before that we had already figured out fire, language, cattle, the wheel, the plough and the sail. We had banks and governments, and mathematics and religion.

And then, in 1712, something radically new eventually did happen. A British engineer by the name of Thomas Newcomen built the first functional steam engine. The die was cast. Over the ensuing centuries this machine delivered plenty, much of it probably pointless, and unfailingly targeted on those who already had too much, rather than those who could have benefitted from the plethora of goods flowing out of the factories. Meanwhile fossil fuels, mass manufacturing, and more recently the imprudent capitalist notion of planned obsolescence, helped create all that we consider normal and obvious about our modern profligate world - from electricity, steel and public transport to global brands, shopping mania, and instant information. Suddenly a quantum leap in the standard of living was attainable within decades rather than millennia.

But the dawn of the industrial age also coincided with the genesis of an idea from which we are now finding it increasingly difficult to detach. Unrelenting economic growth. The impulse for growth is possibly innately human - the urge to procreate and proliferate an effective way of protecting the community against various perils, such as an attack from neighbouring tribes. Historically, numbers mattered.

Co-opting the notion of infinite growth as key to the expansion of industrial production in a finite world was always going to be problematic - at least without any kind of monitoring. Warning signs that continuous growth might not be such a great idea, became evident in the early years of the 20th century. Smog-enveloped cities, soil erosion, vanishing species, and poisoned rivers exposed the sinister face of industrial expansionism. Most of us did not connect these dots. War was a distraction and increasing prosperity was all that really mattered.

Nor did we listen. In 1972 a group of research scientists at MIT released a paper entitled Limits to Growth. A series of computer forecasts clearly indicated that unbridled economic growth and development must ultimately exhaust the planet’s finite resource base.

Consequences gradually became evident that were certainly never intended. Nor were any attempts made to rectify them. On the contrary, while corporate media ignored the most dire scenarios and the general public remained mostly oblivious to such warnings, groups with vested interests and deep pockets hastily commissioned their own research to challenge the MIT findings.

The West found itself locked-in to a “growth is good” mindset. We keenly exported this dogma to the developing world. Affluence was spreading. Except that a profound change had occurred. Once again, in spite of ominous warning signs, nobody really noticed that we were not getting any happier, that widespread corruption and malpractice corroded our trust in politics and big business, and that stress-related illnesses were skyrocketing. Nor, paradoxically, were we getting any wealthier overall, apart from a decade of rapid growth towards the latter part of the 20th century when mercantilism gave way to free trade. Today, even though productivity is growing rapidly in many countries, incomes per capita are falling – even for those with university degrees. So just what is going on?

It is useful to remember what Thomas Newcomen was doing when he helped launch the industrial era. He was burning coal to pump water out of a coal mine. This revolution, you see, was dependent upon the mining and burning of fossil fuels. Before coal, economic production was constrained by the need to produce food (for humans and farm animals) and timber (for building, heating and fuelling some industrial processes). In other words, the energy available for use depended on how much you could grow.

But fossil energies depend upon how much had grown centuries before - all those billions of tons of ancient biomass squashed by the weight of time until they had turned into strata and pools and seams of hydrocarbons.

Valuable and irreplaceable. The major oil companies report that they cannot find enough new wells most years to offset depletion in the old ones. Rumours circulate that the giant Saudi fields are dwindling faster than expected and, of course, this is reflected in the cost of oil. Each new year brings us closer to the bottom of the barrel – yet the demand from "developing" countries like China continues to soar. And in spite of all the talk concerning peak oil it is likely we will decide to leave the era of oil long before it leaves us.

Oil, though, is not the complete story. Given current rates of economic development the average Chinese citizen will be about as wealthy as those in the West by 2025 - five years sooner than expected given recent problems in the US and European economies. If they then consume meat, milk, and eggs at the rate we do, they will consume 160 million tons of wheat each year - more than half of the world's entire 2020 wheat harvest. They will get through 99 million barrels of oil a day, around 2 million more barrels than the entire world consumes now. They will use more steel than all the West combined, double the world's production of paper, and drive 1.1 billion cars - just a few million cars less than the current world total.

That is just China. By 2030, India’s population will be larger. Its economy is growing almost as fast as China’s now and its boom is likely to last much longer given its more youthful population. Then there is the rest of the world…

Trying to meet that kind of demand will stress the earth past several planetary limits in an almost endless number of ways. Let us take just one. When Thomas Newcomen fired up his pump on that morning in 1712, the atmosphere contained 275 parts per million of carbon dioxide. We have now exceeded 410 parts per million, a level higher than the earth has seen for many millions of years. And global heating has barely begun.

Obviously the machine has produced too much. We are at breaking point. But what if we find it just too difficult to break the habits of generations and insist on continuing with the paradigm of uninhibited economic expansion? It seems unthinkable that the entire world should aim for an economy structured like Japan, Germany or the US. But there are no easy solutions to that dilemma.

Many argue that this predicament is not as critical as we might imagine. Any number of economists will argue that no particular commodity matters all that much because when we run short of something it pays for someone to develop a substitute. In general this has proven true in our industrial past. Of course it is far from certain that the same precept can be applied to coal, oil, and natural gas. This time, there might be no easy replacement.

But I think these arguments actually miss a more fundamental point. The core problem is not the physical nature of industrial production. New materials, automation, and additive manufacturing, will allow us to produce goods much more efficiently, with far less energy consumed, and almost no waste. Innovations of a similar kind are also seen in agriculture where vertical farms, using far less water and land, can produce much higher yields than conventional farming.

Rather, it is the emotional expectations we set regarding the quality of life we crave, to which we believe we are entitled, and to which we will go to such lengths to achieve, that conceals the actual problem. Our compulsion to buy more and more stuff, in order to impress those we do not know, and probably would not like even if we did, on the basis that being cool, or fashionable, or wealthy, is the only true measure of our worth as individuals, is the real issue.

We have fabricated a world of self-absorption and intensifying narcissism. This is a world in which being noticed and appreciated by our peers is more important than ever before. It is a world of distorting mirrors, puffery, and enhanced selfies, where the glossy veneer, however crudely photoshopped, shows others who we aspire to become.

This schizophrenic state of mind, expressing the tension between everyday reality and an alternate fiction, has been manipulated and nurtured within an immersive environment of unremitting messaging. Aimed at our psychological vulnerability, and the need to belong, we are gently smothered in messages consistently crafted to imply we will not be happy, or as well-off as other people, until our cravings have been satiated. In this way the herd performances of the whole society have been contrived to submit to the requirements of the machine in its quest for unrelenting economic growth.

It is as though we are all riding on a giant Ferris wheel, a cycle of desire and consumption, that is accelerating but with nobody left on the ground to apply the brakes. In that regard we are dealing with three interwoven elements:

1. Corporate incitement of a culture of excess, driven by the need for profits, where the constant demand for more and more stuff means supply will always lag behind our needs.
2. If there is any hesitation in demand, advisers are on hand to devise strategies, like planned obsolescence, that reinstate the demand side, often with increased momentum.
3. An inability to escape the psychological pressure for novelty, access, and possession of the latest gadgets or fashions, is now presenting as a mental health issue equivalent to gambling - although in this instance it is the whole society that feels the pain.

The remedy seemingly best suited to this problem - I am uncertain whether this is the only solution - is the standardization of principles taken from industrial ecology - closed loop systems popularly known today as the "circular" or "shared" economy. Here the notion is to explicitly shape attitudes where we attract kudos, and a strong sense of satisfaction, for (i) resisting purchasing new stuff whenever possible; (ii) reducing the amount of harmful, wasteful, and non-recyclable manufactures; (iii) reusing whatever goods we can so as to minimize waste; (iv) finding ways to repurpose some items; and (v) recycling as much as we can.

Such a provocative interruption to current and accelerating levels of production would be bound to unsettle the world of business, and threaten long-held axioms. Exercised on the fringes of society, such behaviours are relatively unremarkable and tend to go unnoticed.

But at scale, retaliation will be invited. I imagine many economists protesting, fearing that any threat to their ideology of growth would lead to civilization toppling. Industrialists will panic, blaming us for sabotaging progress or taking us back to the dark ages. Campaigns aimed at shaming us, and showing us the error of our ways, will be devised by marketing companies and aired around the clock.

Or perhaps not. It is extraordinary how so many conversations I have with a broad variety of ordinary people from different walks of life, return to an expression of anguish over our current predicament. I have so many wonderful friends working in energy companies who are struggling with the complex problems inherent in the transition from oil to renewable energy. Like me they have children and grandchildren and fear for their future if we fail to find adequate solutions to energy storage and the many barriers preventing renewables achieving effectiveness parity with fossil fuels. I regularly talk to executives in construction who lament the damage cement and concrete do to human health, others in snacks and beverages who are genuinely concerned about the sugar and salt in their products. Pilots and airline executives I know are praying for a rapid take-up in hydrogen as an aviation fuel. Most bankers I know are eager to serve society better and do not knowingly set out to deceive us. None of these are evil people, although a good number of them might be asleep at the wheel.

Acceptance and appreciation are wonderful feelings. None of us like to feel ostracized or shunned for the work we do, the products we help make, or the corporation for whom we work. I truly believe that each one of us does the best we can with the hand we are dealt, sometimes against great odds. In the end we are all members of a single human family, doing our utmost to fathom out what is happening to us, and what we can do better.

Perhaps finding acceptable ways of escaping the cycle of desire and consumption that has trapped us in a machine whose primary flaw was to make too much is the most significant step we can take along the path towards a more sustainable future.

Kings of Carrion

The Fate of Two Entangled Empires

Scenes being beamed around the world today, of police officers apparently opening the barricades to allow right-wing supporters of President Donald Trump to storm the Capitol, incited by their champion in a lengthy speech, is as disturbing as the riot itself was utterly predictable.

Donald Trump has a fanatical support base, armed and cocky foot soldiers who will not refrain from further extreme action. Nor for that matter will Trump remain silent, unless slain or incarcerated. It is that passionate loyalty to authoritarian diktat that has already led President-elect Biden to choose a different Secret Service team in order to feel secure. Extreme right-wing lunacy is everywhere it seems.

Incredibly, in a nation where many more firearms are owned than there are people, and more people are jailed than in any other country on the planet - in 2008 the US had around 24.7% of the world's 9.8 million prisoners - only one person died during a riot violent enough to temporarily derail a constitutional process. This is unparalleled in the history of the US but, I suspect, only a taste of what is still to come.

If the tensions and anger that boiled over in Washington DC were inevitable, it began long before Trump made his gaudy entrance through the rear door of the theatre of republicanism. It might still end in civil war.

More violence over the coming months is probably unavoidable. Civil disobedience is likely to be ramped up. Nor will the ferment simply vanish, as some hope, because an ageing Democrat sits in the Oval Office. The media will see to that. Meanwhile deep-seated mechanisms of state-endorsed espionage, killing, and covert meddling in the affairs of any sovereign nation deemed aloof or hostile to US interests, will continue unabated.

Corrupt beyond measure, pretentiously powerful, yet unenlightened on a scale that defies comprehension, the US can no longer help itself. And now that schizophrenic butcher is turning inwards as America, the self-styled land of the free, implodes. The US is in need of sedation - though not through the opioids it so recklessly consumes.

I am reminded of some lines by the English war poet Wilfred Owen: All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true poet must be truthful. 

A mentality of brutality and bullying has been fostered by successive US governments over many years. But since the attack on the World Trade Center, twenty years ago, a paranoia has also descended on this once proud beacon of democratic ideals. Those in power have tried unsuccessfully to deny an unpalatable truth: America is no longer exceptional - if it ever was. And in spite of weasel words from erstwhile suitors in the arenas of international trade and diplomacy, it is impossible to disguise the antipathy a majority of the global populace now feels towards America.

The US today is pitied as much as it is feared. But consolation is scorned - as is advice, however well-intentioned. The deluded self-image of a glorious empire staggers on, zombie-like, in the corridors of power. Donald Trump, or at least his embodiment as Commander-in Chief, was predestined. Much in the manner of Greek tragedy it was inevitable that an injured soul, reflecting a divided, damaged and narcissistic society, with a Washington-based brain sadly in need of a lobotomy, would appear and begin to inflict self-harm on the nation - a personality disorder extremely difficult to treat.

For decades, across the scars of war from Korea and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, the mob-mind of America has been finely-tuned, conditioned to endorse and unleash unthinkable cruelty on others. Now that impulse, similar to neuroses exhibited by the most ruthless of serial killers, is bitterly turning in on itself.

More than any other event in the past 50 years, America is seeing itself as many others see them. It will take a few years, but future generations will look back on 2021 as the year the American experiment unravelled.

Meanwhile, half way around the world in Hong Kong, mostly hidden from public view, dozens of former lawmakers and opposition activists were arrested, and their assets frozen, for the crime of subverting state power - part of the national security laws that were imposed by Beijing last year.

Like the situation in the US this is unlikely to end peacefully. Police are continuing with their investigations. More people will be arrested within the coming weeks. Multiple Hong Kong pro-democracy candidates have already been barred from standing in the upcoming legislative elections, although it is probable the government will postpone the polls until 2022 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an uncanny likeness to the accusations of widespread election fraud in the US, the top representatives from Beijing in Hong Kong have accused opposition groups, aided by unnamed external forces, of attempting to paralyze the Hong Kong government by threatening the fairness of the electoral system and the Legislative Council elections.

As in the US, context is all-important if we are to understand what is really happening. Since Xi Jinping assumed power in 2013 he has set a course that seeks to cement his position in the annals of the Communist Party. His recent actions are reminiscent of Chairman Mao - encouraging a personality cult and centralizing institutional power through measures designed to enforce party discipline, increase censorship, and tighten mass surveillance.

After several years spent working closely with the West, playing the game according to the West's rules in terms of commerce, while continuing the work of his predecessors to eliminate the worst of poverty through the establishment of a creative middle class, Xi is now showing a different face to the world.

Under cover of the pandemic, and the unravelling of democracy in America, he has found an opportunity to enact a far more assertive foreign policy, while still pursuing what one might call Chinese-style globalization - exemplified by the recent investment deal with the EU, and the mercantilist Belt & Road initiative that is already embedding China's economic influence across much of Asia, Africa, and in far-flung countries that are no longer keen to continue genuflecting to US supremacy.

But the signs of Xi's real intentions, and his growing confidence, are also intimated by the escalation of new military bases in the South China Sea, along with Beijing's new rhetoric regarding both Hong Kong and Taiwan. With patience fast evaporating, China has been quick to assert its control over Hong Kong and now looks to constrain Taiwan with renewed vigour and reintegration by stealth.

And so, along with all the recent history of sabre-rattling, my interest was particularly sparked when Kelly Craft, the US Ambassador to the UN, reported her outrage at the arrests, and that the Chinese Communist Party should seek to silence and undermine Hong Kong's autonomy and long-term commitment to the freedom of its people.

Ah. Freedom. The rhetoric used so casually by those who would control everything if they had their own way. There can be no denying that from the perspective of many in the West, China seems determined to destroy the remaining remnants of Hong Kong's autonomy and rule of law inherited from the British. But is that really the case? And is China really any worse than the US in terms of election fraud and centralized control?

The question is intentionally provocative of course. But the truth is difficult to uncover. It is blurred, partly concealed by the extent to which we are all increasingly under the spell of propaganda emanating from within two highly distinct worldviews.

Although we are fed a constant diet of fear-based misinformation and disinformation, pointing to qualitative differences between China and the US, what strikes me more are the startling similarities between the two empires - one in decline, the other rising.

The Chinese social credit system, whereby citizens are surveilled and their access to resources determined according to their public behaviour and compliance, is looked upon with dismay in nations like Australia, Britain and the US for example, in spite of overwhelming approval from Chinese citizens. But the advent of transaction systems using AI and non-fiat digital currencies, along with a move to more intrusive forms of surveillance capitalism, means most Western nations, including the US, are moving in a similar direction - even if the goals in the West are more materialistic than social.

Another intriguing factor is the current trade war between the US and China and where that might be heading. Few people appreciate that the wealth enjoyed by the West originally derived from centuries of mercantilism - not free trade. Indeed free trade only became attractive to countries like France, Germany, Britain and the US, when they were sufficiently advantaged that they could compete freely in the knowledge they would win every time.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West was able to pursue an aggressive free market policy around the world, virtually unimpeded. But by the time China joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001 a perfect storm was brewing that would eventually destroy Western hegemony.

Simply stated, China’s ascension to the WTO allowed Western companies to trade with China on a scale that had hitherto been impossible. As restrictions lifted, the West effectively exchanged its comparative advantage in a wide range of manufactures and services, built up over a century of accumulated intellectual know-how, for little more than a decade of unparalleled economic growth that was fundamentally destructive to its own economies.

Meanwhile, futile wars against Islamic countries distracted the attention of politicians and the general public to such an extent that they did not even notice what was going on in terms of their economic and trading relationships with the Chinese dragon.

Today China pursues the same mercantilist practices that brought wealth to the West. Although this amounts to an asymmetric trade war, it is totally within China's right and it makes perfect sense for the Chinese government to pursue this policy on behalf of its population. But history shows us that in any such battle between one country enacting mercantilist policies and another country enacting an open market or free trade policy, the mercantilist country will always win.

The crisis of confidence, and intensifying brittleness, suffered in the West over the past two decades is in stark contrast to the rising economic, political and military conviction of a resurgent China. The centralization of authority, the deepening state infiltration of society, the creation of a virtual wall of regulations that more tightly control the flow of ideas, culture and capital into and out of the country, along with the liberal projection of Chinese power abroad, represents a growing sureness, and a reassertion of China's legitimate bid for equal standing within the international community - at least in terms of criteria previously agreed as the norm by bodies like the United Nations.

China and the US are inextricably joined at the hip, especially in terms of innovation, trade, finance, and power. But a deep irony pervades this interface. While one appears to be facing a moral and physical decline, the other is on a meteoric rise.

It is far too early to predict the outcome from this conflict between two world-systems. Failing empires often display disturbingly similar features. Assuming a continuation of the woes being experienced by the US we should prepare ourselves for that nation to lash out unpredictably in more and more desperate attempts to restore internal order and international pride.

But if the US today is an enigma, then China is an even more of a mystery. History has shown us the rage and force of the crowd when the people suffer misfortune or awake to a reality that is not to their advantage. Although it might seem preposterous today, it is entirely feasible that China's rampaging totalitarianism will backfire, resulting in a pushback by citizens against such extreme authority. After all it happened in 1911 and again in 1949. It can happen again.

I am reminded of a popular English nursery rhyme: Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreed to have a battle. For Tweedledum said Tweedledee had spoiled his nice new rattle. Just then flew down a monstrous crow, as black as a tar-barrel, which frightened both the heroes so, they quite forgot their quarrel.

If Tweedledum and Tweedledee are indeed drawn into war in their wrangle for global hegemony, I wonder in what form the monstrous crow might manifest…

Science, Litigation, & the Subversion of Knowledge

The year 2020 will certainly be remembered by those of us who lived through this extraordinary moment in human history. If it was not the rampant respiratory virus itself, it was the intermittent lockdowns that brought everything to a halt. If it was not the lockdowns it was the abrupt border closures, the isolation, and the curfews. International travel stalled as the economy stuttered to a standstill. And if it was not any of that, it was the avalanche of opinions and conspiracy theories scrambling to alert us to what was supposedly going on.

Albert Einstein famously said, and I believe the citation to be accurate, that unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. In 2020 we were subject to a daily litany of fallacies and half-truths uttered on the steps of town halls around the world - ostensibly from those elected to lead though, in many cases, dummies mouthing advice sought from unelected ventriloquists who presumed to know precisely what to do in these unprecedented circumstances.

Subsequently a jumble of conflicting, mostly draconian, measures foisted arbitrarily on a naive and bewildered populace, betrayed an extraordinary lack of foresight and preparation.

If these events were not sufficiently alarming we also witnessed outbreaks of panic, science being twisted to fit the sanctioned narrative, billionaires sitting back and profiting just by doing nothing, and autocratic governments using the virus as a smokescreen in barely disguised opportunistic efforts to curtail civil liberties.

And amidst all the lingering confusion, the collective shock and pain of loss, the heroic actions of first responders, emergency workers and frontline healthcare professionals, and solitary deaths inflicted upon the elderly and infirm, one horrific feature stood out. State-authorized propaganda was left in the dust in comparison with the dread, false assertions, and mischief perpetrated by a few self-serving conspiracy theorists, including far-right anti-vaccination activists whose intentions ranged from seeding doubts about the efficacy of vaccines in the minds of the community, to self-deification as the sole arbiters of the truth.

At a time when humanity is just coming to terms with evidence of global warming, and starting to ramp up the urgency of what needs to be done; setting aside the theatre of the absurd starring Boris Johnson and the Brexit blunder, Donald Trump's extravagant efforts to mimic King Canute, and Scott Morrison's gaffes in Australia's relationship with the Chinese dragon; this conduct was shamefully craven.

Conspiracy theories not withstanding, the five factors that most concern me in all of the current chaos and potential for collapse all lack effective remedial strategies:

1. The erosion of trust, much of it valid, in our most venerable institutions - particularly the legal, public health, and justice systems - at a time when their veracity is urgently needed.
2. The misappropriation of science to reinforce official narratives - often used as a shield against any untoward criticism of officials, their conduct, or more peremptory policies.
3. The reckless role adopted by sections of the media, that only serves to generate panic and outrage on the back of disinformation, misinformation and, at times, sheer fantasy.
4. The next pandemic, already on the horizon in the train of COVID-19, comprising a wave of mental health and domestic violence issues triggered by the decision taken to quarantine and separate whole societies and individuals from one another.
5. The fissures that have opened up in society by this pandemic, illustrating the brittleness in so many of the complex, life-critical systems, upon which we all depend each day.

Pandemics are not random events. Nor is it that we have just been unlucky. Like every other mass infectious outbreak, SARS-CoV-2 has its own unique properties. And, like every other pandemic, we can expect it to afflict us most through our inherent vulnerabilities - explicitly in terms of our relations with nature, different species, and each other.

It is possible that COVID-19 - not the virus so much as our reactions to it - will continue to impact our emotional and social wellbeing for years to come. So what pre-emptive actions can be taken now to avoid unwanted consequences in the future? There are two obvious requirements:

1. Better preparation for potentially catastrophic events at all levels of our globalized society. This could include simulation-based strategy gaming, wide-ranging scenario risk analysis, planning for socio-economic continuity and stability, and predetermined agreements for staged emergency measures to be put in place everywhere, concurrently and instantly.
2. Coordinated action based on scientific evidence and evolving real-time intelligence. This might also include developing the capacity of citizens, via all social and corporate media channels, to distinguish between evidence-based facts and highly improbable fictions.

The first of these is really just a management issue, a practice that should happen automatically, without the need to plead a special cause. There have probably been as many plagues as wars in our history. Yet we always seem unprepared when wars and pestilence occur.

Councils and state legislatures are responsible for the wellbeing and security of citizens residing in their jurisdictions. Though not so evident, there is an implicit acknowledgement that regional forums and global institutions like the United Nations are there to protect people and to keep the peace. National governments pledge to do so at every election. After all, along with maintaining order, that is their primary role in a modern society.  

But extensive cross-border cooperation is the only way promises such as these can be kept within the context of crises impacting the international community. To suggest this needs more attention is an understatement.

Citizens should start demanding that crisis planning be incorporated into the praxis of every state legislature. Indeed it should become a fundamental declaration of their willingness and ability to govern and they should be held accountable for it. Simply winning a political vanity contest held every few years is no substitute for relevant expertise and effective action. But because sovereign nations have been designed to compete with each other, such efforts are mostly spent on playing war games and working out new ways to kill each other.

But I will not dwell on those issues here. It is the second of these factors I find most fascinating, given that it impinges on so many societal norms concerning our ability to trust and communicate knowledge accurately. Epidemics are as central to understanding human evolution, as powerful forces of radical societal change, as are revolutions and wars. The bubonic plague known as the Black Death, for example, which caused the deaths of an estimated 20 million people, one-third of Europe’s population, foreshadowed the end of the medieval period and the start of a new era.

How will COVID-19 shape human ingenuity and innovation over the coming decades I wonder? How prepared are we as a society for future microbial challenges and the social ruin that could accompany such events? How can we deal with society-wide anomic breakdowns in the normative order that afflicted social institutions most recently?

These questions are made even more problematic by a range of culturally-explicit ways we have acquired to explain the appearance, spread and causes of epidemics. Although we no longer attribute the source of disease outbreaks to the devil, or perfidious Jews, we still tend to place the blame on rogue elements and responsible parties - including poisons planted and distributed by enemy agents, laboratory accidents, filth and poverty, and various animal carriers such as rodents, bats, sheep and cattle.

Thus it came as no surprise when President Trump constantly referred to the "Chinese virus" in his efforts to personify the threat and deflect any criticism surrounding his handling of the pandemic. Although the use of the term “Chinese” in this context was particularly concerning, given that it correlates the infection with an ethnicity, Trump insisted he was simply being accurate locating the source of the virus in Wuhan. Mike Pompeo used the same argument for defending his use of the term "Wuhan virus".

Characterization of this nature, however, is metaphorical. Its purpose is to help elucidate an abstract or unfamiliar idea by using language that is well-known and embodied. In spite of their denials to the contrary, this was a conscious tactic to shape political and cultural perceptions to their advantage. By associating the virus with China, Trump knowingly played to the cognitive bias of his devotees against foreigners, immigrants and their fear of contagion from outsiders.

In much the same vein a few dissenting practitioners from the scientific fringe, most with an axe to grind, insisted that either the virus was the result of an experiment gone wrong, or that it escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Among a range of entertaining anecdotes from others with little or no medical knowledge, it has been suggested that:

• The coronavirus was brought to China by US athletes participating in the Military World Games - an event held in Wuhan last year.
• Dr Anthony Fauci, the public face of the US coronavirus response team, is either a secret member of the "deep state" group plotting to undermine the President, or the beneficiary of a multimillion dollar scam involving his links to Big Pharma.
• It is actually 5G networks that are to blame - even though it is biologically impossible for viruses to spread using the electromagnetic spectrum.
• That COVID is part of a sinister scheme masterminded by Bill Gates to vaccinate the entire population as an experiment in mass mind control.
• That the virus does not actually exist and it is simply a rehearsal on the part of the elite for crushing humanity still further into servitude.

Needless to say, there is no evidence to support any of these allegations - just as there is no proof to support the notion that an inter-dimensional race of shape-shifting reptilians hijacked the Earth, and are manipulating global events to keep humans in a constant state of fear and trepidation.

They do, however, make for good story-telling, and provide ample material for weaving plausible myths - pitting an ingenuous public against supposed higher forms of authority and intelligence.

We should also remember that previous epidemics have almost always given rise to outbursts of strong religious and contrarian beliefs, scapegoating, and hysteria - any one of which needs to be present in order for large numbers of people to be fooled by such improbable fictions.

As the COVID-19 crisis worsens, we are also facing a pandemic of disinformation. Like the viruses they resemble, the plots and sub-plots in conspiracy theories constantly mutate. Today, several variants can be in circulation at any one time, spreading more rapidly online than SARS-CoV-2 does in the physical world - amplified and accelerated by social media. 

Often assembled from incoherent and contradictory bits and pieces of information they appear to be logically consistent and at least partially credible. False narratives advance as these fragments are recited and reinterpreted - often by embellishing key elements, misjudging correlation with causation, reinterpreting randomness, and making illogical cognitive leaps driven by speculation and suspicion, inherent anxiety, and a mistrust of authority.

For a few sceptics these stories can be entertaining. Unhappily rumours and gossip thrive in the atmosphere of low trust and low confidence so customary today. Although they can be a coping mechanism for dealing with uncertainty, and a comfort for some in explaining unlikely events, they pose a danger to the community as a whole: casting doubts in the minds of the most vulnerable and powerless, obscuring truths at a time when scientific evidence struggles to be heard, least of all understood, eroding still further our trust in authority, decreasing any likeliness of engaging in politics or reducing our carbon footprint, and all the time infesting social media so utterly that it becomes virtually impossible to distinguish facts from fictions without embarking upon a forensic analysis of the data.

There are additional threats from these fancies we would do well to heed. The self-sealing nature of most conspiracy theories means they are generally immune to evidence rebutting the theory. In this manner any testimony purporting to disprove the narrative, or any one of its key elements, is interpreted as further proof for the conspiracy. As geopolitical tensions multiply, democracy stops working, and collaborative actions vital for the security of Homo sapiens are impeded, this trait is used in intentionally-constructed narratives weaponized for political or strategic gain. Still others are employed as rhetorical tools to avoid inconvenient conclusions - like the evidence of global heating or the massive loss of biodiversity we are witnessing, for example.

So many issues bordering on the misuse and suppression of knowledge are disturbing given our tendency to call into doubt and dismiss innovations, particularly in the realms of medical science, that could benefit humanity. Vaccines are a case in point. The overwhelming scientific consensus is that vaccines are one of the safest, and most effective, ways of eliminating infectious diseases. Though not without shortcomings, the elimination of smallpox, and the curbing of diseases like polio, measles, and tetanus, have had a staggering impact on reducing the burden of infectious diseases worldwide.

There is still a vocal minority who are wary of vaccines, and oppose their use, accusing them of causing autism and encephalitis for example. Most commonly confusing correlation with cause, the charges of medical malpractice and subsequent litigation have had a devastating effect on scientific research and patient welfare while swelling the numbers of  the anti-vaxxer and anti-abortion movements, and their decisions, based upon little more than misinformation and "junk" science.

A spermicide used in many barrier contraceptives causes birth defects. Environmental pollutants cause chemically induced AIDS. Ineptitude by obstetricians is a leading cause of cerebral palsy. The whooping cough and MMR vaccines cause brain damage. All of these have been the topic of claims and lawsuits. And all are false.

Particularly frustrating is that more serious criticism of vaccines and new drugs has emerged, not from the popular press or quasi-documentaries, but from respected journals and in the archives of jurisprudence. One amazing case was a successful $l million award to a clairvoyant who, with expert testimony supporting her, claimed that a CAT scan had removed her psychic powers.

In 1998, Andrew Wakefield, a medical practitioner, suggested a possible link between the MMR vaccine and autism in children. The Lancet, a respected scientific journal, published his research, eventually withdrawing the article in 2004 after an investigation found major flaws in his study. A later inquiry found him guilty of deliberate fraud and led to the withdrawal of his medical license.

By then the damage had been done. Today the threat of litigation in countries like the UK, the US and Australia, is deterring large sections of the medical profession from prescribing certain drugs, and even screening for certain kinds of cancer, for example, while influencing parental attitudes regarding vaccination and what drugs doctors should or should not prescribe.

By use of selective or misleading evidence, often fomented by the press, lawsuits can help drive us away from making the best decisions in medicine - decisions that have the potential to help the majority yet rarely harm the individual - especially when epidemiology and statistics determine with such precision which associations are real and whether they are pivotal factors or not.

From the supposed risks of cervical cancer screening, to the links between the whooping cough vaccine and brain damage, just one example should suffice to show how society has established a system of judging the efficacy of medical care in the courts, and that this does not serve us well.

Debendox was an anti-nausea drug given to pregnant women in early pregnancy. Numerous tests failed to establish any links between Debendox and the occurrence of birth defects, but this did not deter either the courts or the media from declaring otherwise.

Evidence suggesting causality by Dr. William McBride, an Australian obstetrician who was used extensively by lawyers in the US and Australia as an expert witness, was found to be fraudulent. Primary researchers failed to come forward as expert witnesses. Lay juries were unable to weigh the evidence and underrated the value of epidemiological research. In the end story telling and emotive entreaties, in a world designed by men for men, held more sway than scientific evidence and any discomfort felt by pregnant women. Male politicians argued to ban the drug while smart male lawyers persuaded juries in favour of the plaintiffs. The presentation of thorough scientific evidence against Debendox being a teratogen, on the other hand, influenced them not one iota.

As a result women stopped taking Debendox. The costs of litigation were not being met by falling sales of the drug and eventually, in spite of no evidence of teratogenicity, Marion Merrill Dow stopped making the drug. In 1983 it was taken off the market. Today there is no effective and safe drug for use in pregnancy nausea. Women are too frightened to take anything else. Instead they just suffer or go into hospital for intravenous fluid replacement. No drug company is ever likely to make or market another drug of that nature given the Debendox fiasco.

Eventually most of the court cases were thrown out on appeal. Meanwhile the litigation spawned a huge number of research studies, each one confirming the efficacy of the drug. Today the safety of Debendox has been proved conclusively and somewhat unnecessarily over and over again. It is one of the best researched drugs in relation to pregnancy outcomes. But it is not able to be used as it is no longer available.

Debendox was removed from the market purely for economic reasons, not because it was a risk to birth abnormalities. But opinionated judges and ill-informed juries now tell doctors how to practise and what drugs to prescribe rather than rely on validated scientific research.

There is no evidence that increasing litigation has resulted in better obstetric care, fewer cases of brain damage following vaccines, fewer birth defects or better and cheaper screening programs to prevent cancer. Indeed litigation has had the reverse effect. Medical interventions and their associated costs have spiralled as a result of lawsuits, while useful and safe drugs and vaccines have been unfairly blamed for disasters.

In terms of the current outbreak there is already some indication that SARS-CoV-2 will not just go away, even allowing for extensive inoculation of the population with the new generation of mRFN vaccines. Successive waves could mean that this virus, or a mutation of it, could become endemic and an increasing threat to humans. If that is the case we will need to attend to the underlying flaws that have allowed specific microbes to invade the ecological niches we have so diligently prepared for them, with far greater urgency.

Meanwhile, genuine anti-vaxxers, along with shady entrepreneurs looking to make a quick buck, are now busy flooding social media with posts about how to “politely decline” a COVID-19 vaccine. This is part of a widespread disinformation campaign about the development and the effects of new vaccines officially approved for emergency use. These posts are shared by people who falsely believe governments and health agencies will mandate the taking these vaccines, a claim that has already been discredited given that such tactics backfired in the past.

Contagion does not happen accidentally. Viruses only flourish in particular conditions. The world we have crafted - a world in which 8 billion people, the majority of whom live in densely-packed and overcrowded cities - has generated a perfect environment for the release and spread of zoonotic diseases. Moreover, the land clearing and urbanization we have overseen during the past century has led to the widespread devastation of animal habitats, altering the relationship of humans to the natural world. Especially pertinent in this regard is our increased contact with bats, which are the repository of countless viruses capable of crossing the species barrier and infecting humans.

If we are to avoid future pandemics, and of falling into the trap of subverting knowledge or being duped by propaganda and untenable conspiracy theories aimed at stirring public furor for one or more reasons, we must take informed action.

Given the ease with which we can travel the world these days, preparatory disciplines of a much higher order are required, and this will mean scaling up cooperation across borders. By taking a small proportion of the budget currently spent on arms and the invention of new weapons, and allocating this to commons-owned scientific research initiatives aimed at improving world health, we could possibly eliminate most diseases of zoonotic origin.

There is also an urgent need to review the relationship of our species to nature - particularly how we treat (and mistreat) other species in the pursuit for more and more food. Thankfully there are technologies already in production that will allow us to grow, or manufacture, sufficient quantities of nutritious food to feed the world. Using far less land and water than industrialized agriculture, regenerative farming methods will have a restorative impact on the soils, oceans and forests we have brought to the edge of disaster. In combination with rewilding, reforestation, permaculture, and related initiatives, we should be able to slow the loss of species and achieve a better balance with the natural world by the turn of the next century.

There is also a need to apply learning in ways that improves critical thinking, along with our ability to distinguish fact from fiction. Undoubtedly this is getting harder with the introduction of digital deep fakes, and a capricious relationship to information where individuals assume their personal opinions to be just as valid as the insights from experts. In that regard, though science is just one epistemology from which to view reality, it remains the best way we have for making sense of our reality and the role Homo sapiens can play in terms of life on this planet.

Accordingly we must trust the rigour of the scientific method, and the laws of physics, accepting that there are elements in this world over which we have little or no control. The responsibility we do share, however, is to put ignorance, greed and selfishness to one side. By working together we can steward the environment we invent and build, over which we do have control, in ways that are ecologically regenerative, socially desirable, ethically defensible, systemically convincing, and that ultimately benefit all life on Earth.Science

Serious Play

A Deeper Look at Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Innovation and entrepreneurship have become the new ‘in’ things. Fads par excellence. Some suggest they may be the prime source of future competitive advantage in business and, as a consequence, an imperative no organization can possibly afford to ignore.

I tend to agree - but with caveats. The need for innovation applies equally to the public sector and to civic society as a whole. Particularly the innovation of 2nd and 3rd order civilizational design.

There is little doubt that in certain fields the ability to innovate, thereby generating a continuous stream of new value-adding products, can be the difference between prosperity and irrelevance. Think computer software, fashion and pharmaceuticals, for example. Then again, the human global condition also obliges us to find alternative solutions to many of the problems our inventive minds continue to construct. Quickly too. Consider global warming, water and food security, poverty, autonomous weapons, terrorism…. 

But do we have the solution for you! Touted around universities, research laboratories, hospitals, farms, city halls, schools, corporations and government agencies, innovation is now the universally-acclaimed panacea. We cannot fail.

In reality the contemporary emphasis on innovation has been spawned by an irresolvable tension between the commoditization of desire [post-industrial society’s fixation on and craving for novelty] and the concurrent need to curb such rampant materialism [because of the critical impact of the afore-mentioned issues on our civilization.] 

This tension is intensified and made even more complicated by the fact that the burgeoning middle class in the world’s emerging economies are now beginning to demand, and can afford, a quality of life most citizens in post-industrial nations have enjoyed for some considerable time. In all conscience it is difficult to deny them their right to this.

Purely on this basis it is logical to suppose that these tensions will continue to deteriorate at least until global population numbers level out, some time after 2060 if you believe the latest, state-of-the-art, demographic modelling. The global population is set to hit eight billion people within the next two years. So we can safely assume that across-the-board innovation will be essential to peaceful global prosperity and societal advancement for at least the next 40 years. 

But what is really meant by the term innovation? Typically defined as a process of discovery linking the re-assembly of knowledge (or the creation of novel ideas) with the capturing of their social and/or commercial value, innovation can range from continuous improvement - of products, processes and services - to the invention of entirely new models, markets, systems, philosophies, ways of seeing and even states of being. Think augmented reality and online avatars! 

The latter type, popularly known as strategic or radical innovation, often rejects conventional notions, of competition or established hierarchies, for example, in order to redefine conceptual models. New truths, possibilities, spaces and roles arise from this process. As a consequence strategic innovation is often disruptive:  overturning sacrosanct rules, long established habits and reshaping contextual conditions previously thought to be constant. 

The idea of radical innovation is immensely attractive to that breed of multinational corporation intent on dominating a particular market, as well as larger equity firms and venture capitalists of course. Why? Smart game-changer strategies and keystone plays can render competitors almost entirely irrelevant, thereby guaranteeing rapid returns on investment. Which CEO, Board Chair, or venture capitalist would not want this wish granted? 

Naturally, financial risks are correspondingly higher than those implied by continuous improvement efforts. But then the ROI for strategic innovation, by which I mean return on imagination of course, can be a quantum greater, assuming one has the courage to purposefully disturb the status quo. Just look at Richard Branson’s Virgin brand fashioned out of sheer British eccentricity, personal audacity, and a determination to craft a unique customer experience across a range of offers.

Then there is the potential accompanying such limelight: strategic innovation often elevates individuals and even entire corporations to positions of universal prominence. Public accolades linking professional success with social advancement cannot be easily dismissed in such a brand-resonant, media-savvy, celebrity-saturated world. Just look at Ashton Kutcher and anti-sex trafficking, Lily Allen and Syrian refugees, Leonardo Di Caprio and the environment, Bill Gates and Alzheimer's disease, and Taylor Swift and sexual harassment, for example.

All of which sounds so easy. Just go out there and innovate. Be creative. Use your imagination guys! Well? What are you waiting for?

Naturally the textbooks are stuffed full of well-meaning advice, though most concentrate on tools and processes while ignoring most other critical intangibles. As a result we are well schooled in the knowledge that trust emboldens collaborative practice - but are unsure how to nurture this. We recognize the role played by uninhibited ingenuity - but lack the confidence to put forward novel ideas. We appreciate the incredible power of globally distributed networks but still keep information to ourselves. We accept the notion that rules and regulations stifle creativity – but insist on adhering to archaic management protocols. And we ‘get’ the power of teamwork – but still insist on rewarding individual performance.

What then are the secrets of investing in innovation? What does it take for creativity to be routine? What are the innovation drivers that make companies as diverse as AXA, Apple, Atlassian, Microsoft, Sony, Alibaba, Modelez, China Construction Bank, Accor, Santander, Amazon and Alphabet so successful? And, by the way, how is it that the People’s Party in Brazil could engage citizens in bold experiments of participative democracy at a time when post-industrial nations, formerly recognized for their egalitarian governance systems, seemed hell bent on eroding hard-won rights and, in some cases, installing repressive regimes? 

Clearly the real world is not nearly so neat and ordered as academics and consultants would have us believe. In spite of all the attention, one need only peruse the avalanche of web sites, conferences, wikis, blogs, books, articles and academic papers devoted to the subject, innovation as a literacy and embedded capabilities remains as elusive as the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for most organizations and governments. Moreover, most innovation is still aimed at improving existing products, processes and services, yet these rarely deliver the kind of exceptional value captured after their initial launch. 

From our experience, recently affirmed by the Boston Consulting Group’s analysis of the world’s most seriously innovative corporations, there are four underlying causes for this state of affairs. They are (a) contextual conditions, (b) state of mind, (c) business praxis and (d) organisational design.

Contextual Conditions:

Contemporary business was long ago ambushed by its own success. It now finds itself cocooned within circumstances brought about by the rapidly converging processes of technology-enabled globalism. 

Globalism is without precedent. It has catapulted us into a pulsating world of transactions and exchanges where geography is immaterial, a world typified by the need to manage relationships rather than objects. Indeed the things that matter today are diffuse networks, product co-design, open source learning, collaboration, the exponential speed at which new knowledge is created (and old knowledge is made obsolete), democratization of standard business practices and society’s seemingly unquenchable thirst for novelty. 

The challenge of innovating in this milieu, where a maelstrom of globally distributed information, talent and capital constantly changes, engulfing us in overwhelming variety and choice, presents extraordinary challenges for any single enterprise. Especially so as government regulators, in fear of becoming less and less relevant, burden innovators with a barrage of well-meaning legal hurdles and compliance costs, thereby adding to the uncertainty. 

We did not anticipate this condition, nor were we prepared for its consequences. It has unsettled traditional patterns of human production and consumption causing intense social and environmental stress. So sudden was its genesis, so colossal its impact, that we are even now trying to take stock; still attempting to learn how best to understand and respond to its constantly shifting complexities.

In this context collaboration, not competition, is of the essence. It is incumbent upon each enterprise to collaborate with others, creating and capturing value wherever it can, exploring opportunities wherever they exist, connecting ideas, technologies and people in order to thrive from change. This is what contemporary innovation is about. 

State Of Mind: 

After 300 years, the industrial economic paradigm is worn out. The World Wide Web, coupled with the convergence of digital and genomic code, virtual and augmented reality, and enabling tools like biotechnology, molecular engineering and robotics, have all diminished its legitimacy. Furthermore it fails the most classic of tests: it is quite simply unable to resolve the critical issues of our time. 

Paradoxically, in the world of commerce and governance at least, industrial economism remains the most commonly used and unchallenged framework for explaining events like the financial crisis of 2008, even when such explanations do not equate favourably with observed reality. 

It is almost impossible to liberate strategic innovation within the dominant industrial paradigm – and this at a time when whole-of-system innovation is most needed. Why? Because the language and praxis of industrial economism is set in past experiences rather than in future potential. Innovation contrived within this context invariably tends to focus on discrete projects aimed at growth or increased revenue rather than on revitalizing an entire enterprise or industry or conceiving entirely new markets and other possibilities.

Fortunately a parallel universe is emerging in the minds of many entrepreneurs as we make the shift from industrial economism to a more regenerative, humanitarian-aware, planetary ecologism. Wired-in to new knowledge, systemically sensitive and cooperatively inclined, innovators in this space see peer-to-peer connections everywhere they look as well as openings for engaging collaboration on a vast and unprecedented scale. 

Business Praxis: 

Most corporations claim to use innovation as a driver of change. Three elements characterizing conventional business practice clearly impede such efforts: 

1. Without doubt creative ideas are the seeds of innovation. Great ideas can surface by accident or by design. But while it is true innovation rarely emerges from barren ground, it requires far more than just having a creative or entrepreneurial organisational culture. While a conducive social ecology is vital for innovation to take root, creativity alone is insufficient. Innovation is a disciplined practice, a systematic process whereby great ideas are turned into real value. This is one of the most misunderstood factors of innovation. Getting teams of executives to wait for inspiration to come up with good ideas is one thing. Extracting value from these ideas is quite another. 
2. We still lack a sophisticated language for thinking and talking about strategic innovation. Most business language remains steeped in conventions and thinking habits that refer back to the industrial age. More often than not it is couched in the zero-sum language of growth, profits and competition. Meanwhile the processes of innovation have been democratized and are increasingly decentralized. Collaborative networks of open design and coordinated interaction are shaping new relationships and alliances between government, business and civic society. In this context using obsolete language from a bygone era is simply confusing.
3. Modest objectives rarely result in breakthrough endeavours. A common problem of many entrepreneurial initiatives, especially start-up ventures, is that aspirations are set too low and possibilities defined too narrowly, if at all. More often than not the implicit aim amounts to no more than extracting greater value from existing product lines or market offers. Strategic foresight is too often ignored, thereby eliminating many counterintuitive possibilities. The lack of robust strategic intelligence, especially from customers, also limits what can be achieved.

Organisational Design: 

Ironically we have not yet found a way of configuring large enterprises to take advantage of the extraordinary opportunities offered by globalism. Most corporations are dinosaurs awaiting their extinction. Because of this many businesses remain paralyzed, distrustful, responding to shifting realities by mimicking competitors or by resorting to habits that served well in the past but that make little sense today.

Traditionally we designed our organizations for efficiency – not speed and certainly not innovation. In fact focusing on efficiency repeatedly ingrains practices and protocols that actively stifle creativity and hinder innovation.

Unsurprisingly the most innovative organizations know this. They constantly refashion boundaries, rethink roles, reinvent systems and revitalize processes, in effect redesigning their organizations for speed and adaptiveness. As a result, corporate research and design laboratories collaborate with customers and suppliers, share software code with programmers and tap into networks of scientists and entrepreneurs in order to find the best ideas. 

This kind of cooperative innovation, where the processes of innovation are democratized, is no longer a fringe activity but essential to remaining competitive in a globalized world.

 

The Absurd Illusion of Optimism

It really only struck me a few days ago how devoid of hope our predicament actually is. I was having a late breakfast, scanning the online pages of the Straits Times, Melbourne Age, and Washington Post. I had just spent 20 minutes on a live cross to a breakfast show on New Zealand television speaking about the political and commercial agendas that are being rolled out under the smokescreen of COVID-19. I was also provoked into reflecting on other events that signify a deterioration in the conditions needed for humanity's enduring moral advancement.

Among the questions I have come to accept as routine was the inevitable one: Richard are you optimistic about the future? And, as usual, my answer to that kind of question was: It depends on whether you are referring to the future of the planet, or the future of our civilization.  

I am not sure whether I turned to the online journals as light relief or as a futile attempt to find some real news. In any case I found almost every article, editorial, and advertisement reinforced normalcy. My deepest concerns about the future were not being contradicted - just reframed as a part of a pattern that would not ruffle feathers, cause excessive anxiety, or spread theories that contradicted the official narrative - unless outrage was intended.

This is a crucial element in many of the existential threats we are facing. Our narratives are enmeshed within a cocoon of coziness requiring business-as-usual to prevail and to remain unchallenged.

We do not take kindly to imposed change. The thought of extinction is ridiculed or dismissed as inconceivable in spite of the fact that history teaches us otherwise. Change of any kind inevitably sets off warning bells. It signifies loss, inviting dread and resistance. The thought of calling a temporary halt to economic growth in order that people a world away might benefit from a slightly higher quality of life is simply incomprehensible to most of us who live and work within the confines of a predatory economic paradigm.

Preferring to hide in ignorance or history, where answers were invariably found to the issues of the day (even though many of them were shortsighted, unwise, and barbaric) we continue to patch up the present as best we can, absorbed by repetitive and delusional routines from which we take comfort, including a lot of pointless work, and all the while encouraged by a belief that life will improve, technology will remain a panacea, and that a "new normal" is bound to be found.

Commentators tell us to remain optimistic, ignoring the massive failure of imagination and emotional gridlock from which we suffer. My own critics constantly tell me not to harp on the bad news, or to be so negative. This will only repel your audience. People need to hear good news, they insist, concerned about my state of mind if I continue to delve into the shadowy side of human nature.

But what if business-as-usual, and even good news, which is there if we know where to look, just gets in the way of hearing a truth we need to hear. What if our nostalgia for normalcy is impeding the decisive actions we must take concerning the really intolerably bad news?

The truth that hardly anyone dares utter is an unthinkable and unlivable reality. Our society is in a state of collapse - precipitated by a predatory disregard for nature. This is probably most evident in the abusive and divisive ways we treat each other. We are one species. Almost everything we cherish is at risk. Yet still we seem unable and unwilling to escape the urge for self-destruction.

It is possible there is no way out of the mess we have made of the environment. Although there is a plethora of solutions available, particularly in terms of regenerative agriculture and drawing down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but we are not deploying them at the scale and speed necessary to avoid catastrophe. Advised to prepare for the worst by many leading scientists, we are not even up to that task.

In these circumstances it is difficult to refrain from deriding others, attacking their motives, drawing attention to their many shortcomings, and calling out their banality, incompetence, ideological leanings, or lack of courage for the situation in which we now find ourselves. But hate and derision are a part of the problem. Attacking others might fill us with a false sense of self-importance. But it is pretentious and will ultimately make matters far worse.

We need all our energy to focus on how to get out of this mess. Censuring incumbent leaders for lacking the wisdom we ourselves could not muster if we were in their shoes is misguided and akin to the vituperative murmurings of a madman. Individuals are not to blame. Like us they are trapped in a prison of our collective invention. It is called capitalism. It is fuelled by growth. And it is killing us.

If we are to step back and look objectively at the causes for our contemporary predicament we can identify systemic flaws embedded within our shared worldview. Looking for validation to scientists like Richard Dawkins and his selfish gene proposition, some claim that these so-called flaws, like the impulse to compete, for example, are just human nature. My response is invariably the same: if we find it impossible to modify those qualities, even if they do happen to be integral aspects of what it means to be human, which is highly questionable, then we have already signed the death warrant for our species. In that case our fate will, and deserves to be, extinction.

Right now, making this point on the evening television news would invite outrage - stirring up apprehension in those who cannot bring themselves to face such an outlandish proposition. It would be irresponsible. In any case, the media’s propensity to coat everything with honey, glossing over anything that smacks of an existential nature, would result in such a topic being normalized for mass consumption – by being placed amidst excerpts from the latest Marvel movie or yet another faux celebrity scandal.

Although some of the drivers of human behaviour etched into our shared worldview could constructively evolve into others, love and cooperation replacing hate and division perhaps, it is not simply these factors that are at fault, but the overarching narratives we use to design systems that then reinforce those values. Currently the most insidious of these is materialism - explicitly the addictive cycle of desire and consumption to which we submit daily.

In 1945 the planet felt empty. Only 2 billion humans inhabited Earth. In the space of 75 years the population burgeoned to 7.8 billion people – all seeking a better quality of life under the auspices of free market capitalism. Unimaginable stress was put on systems essential for our mutual well-being and prosperity. Not designed to cope with such numbers they began to fail. Back then we barely noticed, distracted by our newly-acquired wealth and seduced by the power that wealth brings.

Unaware of potential consequences we were urged to follow the credo of economic growth. And we did – buying new goods and seeking novelty as though our lives depended on it. Our compulsion became pervasive. We threw away stuff with causal nonchalance as easy credit and inbuilt obsolescence conspired to replace the old with the new. Materialism spread to become a global faith.

Even as the materialist indoctrination took hold things started to go wrong. And when they did we got angry. Aided and abetted by the corporate media’s ability to generate indignation and outrage we found an easy target for our rage. We blamed others. Perhaps they did not look like us. Possibly they prayed to different gods, or just spoke an unfamiliar language. But the insidious nature of loathing quickly became socially corrosive. Fear turned to apprehension in the minds of individuals. Anxiety and depression quickly followed. Eager to hide this mental fragility we resorted to Prozac, junk food, sugary drinks, opioids and alcohol, along with more financial debt. We tried everything. Nothing made us happy. Suicide rates continued to climb.

The illusion is perpetuated today through the manipulative tactics of the marketing industry. Our apprehension, discontent, envy and anxiety can be cured, we are told, just by consuming more and more stuff. Wealth will make us happy again. Far happier than before. The reality is that increased spending has led to increased pressure on the systems that are now in a state of collapse. Meanwhile we continue to blame others for this predicament of our own making.

Thus, the cycle of desire and consumption is now an incurable addiction. It intoxicates the human mind, deceiving us into believing that materialism is a solution. It is the problem and there is no solution in sight. It is also the reason we cannot blame individuals for our plight. That course gets us nowhere and exacerbates the cycle, making our exit even more difficult.

There are other equally destructive cycles that follow a similar course. Unending conflict and war leading to the further fracturing of humanity. An obsession with unrestrained economic growth resulting in environmental destruction. The tacit pact that allows wealth to translate into power and that eventually leads to a few individuals owning most of the world’s wealth.

None of these cycles are sustainable. They can all be traced back to an overarching narrative of self-righteousness and hubris that animates them. It is this narrative that must change. We can do the easy stuff now. We can connect the dots between events and outcomes. We can experiment and prototype a range of alternatives. We can, with great effort and persistence, put aside prejudices, stepping into different design ontologies to craft systems that work effectively for village farmers in the developing world as well as shareholders in our wealthiest nations.

But in order for these new systems to endure they will need to be generative and restorative. That is impossible if we are unable to step into new epistemologies of understanding and to reframe what it means to be human. For that to happen humans need to take a giant leap of consciousness: to see ourselves for who we are in order to see the world differently. Creating a generation with a generative collective consciousness is the next step in human evolution. But as I keep pointing out, and being shouted down, such a leap of consciousness depends upon human nature changing its most fundamental impulses.

This is the greatest challenge of our time. At this point anything else is a distraction. I am told repeatedly that it cannot be done. That human nature is what it is...

But please do not ask me to inspire hope or to be an optimist every time I get up to speak or write an article. Do not plead with me to look on the bright side or to ignore science. I prefer to face the truth – even if that truth is an intensely heavy burden. That said, I still believe we will eventually come to our senses. I do have faith in the young generation. And I do believe we will be wise enough to survive our own success. But not tomorrow. Pain and catastrophe will come before we feel compelled to act.

The Vice Chancellor's Challenge

Universities have endured for centuries. Why should they need to change today?

This was the question put to me just last month by the Vice Chancellor [Research] of one of Asia’s top-ranking business schools. After drawing in my breath sharply, in a credible simulation of bewilderment, my very blunt answer was an impulsive precis of just two propositions:

1. The context for how we share our lives together on this planet has plunged inexorably into a state of profound uncertainty, mostly from the exponential rate of transformational change globally in terms of economics, geopolitics, and converging technologies.

When our most fundamental beliefs, relationships and technologies shift to such an extent, knowledge monopolies crumble. Everyone goes back to zero as a new paradigm, with new possibilities, emerges. Thus....

2. Between now and 2030 we will be in a position to (re)design humans and the human experience in ways that were never previously possible. Established institutions, even the most venerable, must adapt or perish.

The First Riposte - Context

A decade of turbulence that is going to disrupt almost everything we do on this planet is imminent. Commoditized innovation, arising from the convergence of new scientific discoveries, digitalization, and an unbridled cycle of covetousness and consumption on one hand, and potentially catastrophic impacts emanating from the same sources on the other, are propelling us towards an unstoppable societal transition. This will be a transition of such magnitude that we will need to redesign the entire material basis of our civilization, or possibly perish as a consequence of our unwillingness to do that.

What is more the rate of change, of both human advancement and degradation of the planet, for these are the real issues at stake, appears to be accelerating exponentially. Unlike previous human transitions, where many decades were needed to embed new patterns of production, this one will take a decade to change most of what we do and how we do it.

Meanwhile, issues like global heating, food, water and energy security, the threat of a new arms race, the automation of work, and new epidemics that are rarely mentioned in the press, like the alarming incidence of autoimmune diseases and diabetes, impart further impetus for societal change on an unparalleled scale.

We are living in a space between two worlds. In terms of the global economy we are engaged in the multi-faceted shift from a smokestack industreality, symbolized by an Anglo-Saxon legacy of both beneficial and pernicious behaviours, to an interwoven ecoreality - typified by pluriversal instantaneity, or the ability to interact with almost anyone, anywhere, for any purpose. The main features of this transformation over the next decade, as distinct from the flow of continuous disruption from various sources, will be a rapid decarbonization of the means of production, and the clear supremacy of advanced autonomous technologies in all aspects of our lives.

Apart from the shock of the new, which must never be underestimated, most extrinsic change is likely to be beneficial - particularly in fields like medicine (e.g. gene editing and telemedicine), energy and transport (e.g. solar and hydrogen), construction (e.g. 3D printing of buildings) and information (e.g. decentralized apps), for example.

But there are a few, fairly ingrained activities, where psychological adjustment to a new social metabolism will be much more difficult. In particular, there are two pernicious cycles, hidden in full view if we care to open our eyes, that are destructive to human health and social well-being. The fact that we have become compliant consumers of both is unsettling:

1. The economy must morph so as to resolve its dysfunctional inadequacies, a global population fast approaching eight billion, and the capture of all kinds of labour by intelligent machines. Manufacturers are struggling to find new ways to ramp up the cycle of desire and consumption, on which we are dependent - mostly via targeted propaganda and data-driven marketing. Growth, economic and demographic, the cradle of their success, and the means for their endurance, is humanity's coffin. We know that continued growth is impossible - although most liberal economists will no doubt disagree. Nevertheless, as the need to reduce our social metabolism gains greater credence, we will need to negotiate a balance between societies where growth has led to overindulgence and obesity, resulting in a rise in diabetes and cardiovascular disease, for example, and those where the increased growth of essential goods like nutritious food and clean water, for example, can help to avoid malnutrition, poverty and homelessness.
2. Levels of discontent and anxiety are increasing as a direct result of this cycle of desire and consumption. As a consequence the state is resorting to new ways of manufacturing both gratification and consent. Some are choosing to do this in a heavy handed manner. But if political agendas become more authoritarian, the state is obliged to defend its legitimacy by spending more on the military, police, and prisons, and less on social programs and infrastructure. This leads to greater disquiet, citizen outrage, and mass civil disobedience which, in turn, is followed by predictable responses from officialdom - an escalation in the use of force and of instruments of suppression. As a cycle of public anger and state control begins to take root, the cycle of desire and consumption becomes a palliative for citizens in anguish for a future they do not want but in which they feel increasingly trapped.

Few people care to make the connections between these two viruses. However there are now signs of a growing awareness that they are inherently detrimental to our sanity and wellbeing. Although there are as yet few signs of a much needed collective leap of consciousness, more people are inclined to view our species as a single human family, inhabiting a fragile planet, whose very life force is being suffocated by the profligate procedures we ordained, and to which we now submit.

So it is that capitalism, at war with itself, has stalled, while state politicians, hovering on the brink of irrelevancy, strut the global stage as if evolution depended entirely upon their banal presence. Ordinary people, meanwhile, know that something is seriously wrong, even if they cannot quite put their finger on what that might be. Which is why so much anxiety and despair hangs in the air.

The failure of capitalism to remain non-predacious, and the fiasco of governments doing nothing more than continuously patching up the present, means we could be facing a ruinous few years before these matters can be resolved.

Some nations, ranging from the US to Venezuela, Ethiopia, and possibly Hong Kong, are already teetering on the brink of civil war. Others, like the Ukraine and possibly even Thailand could follow. Meanwhile powerful, resourceful, business elites are seizing upon the ambiguity and hesitation to help shape a world in which we are little more than serfs to their whims. Appropriating the in-vogue language of social impacts, sustainability, and conscious capitalism, this will be a world in which a few non-elected oligarchs own and control almost every aspect of who we are, what we do, and how we do it. If they get their way!

Of course situations involving large numbers of people are never that straightforward. Revolutions and most massive changes in our world occur through unforeseen twists of fate rather than any pre-meditated evil scheming. To suggest otherwise is to fall headlong into the trap of seeing conspiracy theories everywhere we look. Tiny factors, too, that in different circumstances would be marginalia to the main game, can often take us by surprise, causing us to review underlying assumptions and confusing any sense of coherent development.

Public responses to increasingly authoritarian edicts are also capricious - depending on whether they are interpreted as threats, or possibly an assault on an individual's right to decide such things, which is overwhelmingly the case in modern societies, or seen as welcome advances in the provision of a better quality of life for more citizens.

In both cases breakthroughs in cognitive brain science, genomic drugs that amplify human intelligence, and neurological enhancements, could well alter how we learn to respond to new realities - especially as the ability to continuously adapt has become critical for everyone on the planet, including business and, by implication, institutions of learning. So, after that rant on the range of possible futures we are facing, let me return to the Vice Chancellor's question.

The Second Riposte - Challenges

1. The Situation Now

Since the invention of the modern university, in or around the 12th century, institutions of higher education have invariably responded to fundamental changes in society. The forces for change, however, have always emerged from outside, not from within, the halls of the academy. To some extent, the idea of the university, and more recently the entire higher education sector, was simply another way of engaging with the world.

Down through the ages, the dominance of certain disciplines, at first theology, then classics and the humanities, followed by science, and more recently the STEM suite,  shadowed changing social needs. The transition we are facing today is something of a misnomer. It is more of a revolution in fact. For whereas past changes resulted in a shift of focus, the key issues confronting the higher education sector today will most likely result in a profound change of direction.

Today it is possible to learn almost anything online, mostly for free - even some of the most advanced practical skills. We no longer need colleges of higher education to be able to learn. Expertise and talent will always be in demand for those wanting a decent job in an automated world, just as they are today. But there are better ways of proving aptitude than sitting in a lecture theatre for four years, often at considerable cost, and coming away with credentials confirming only that you have heard the same data as your peers, and have reached a similar level of comprehension.

Even so, this idea that a university education is no longer needed is a difficult concept to grasp at a time when a college degree is mandatory for most executive positions and, on average, brings an additional $30,000 in salary each year than a high school education. So the proposition flies in the face of convention. But not common sense.

Unified national systems in the higher education sectors of many countries encourage universities to behave as if they are still living in the 19^th century - distinctive for their sameness and copycat policies. Yet in so many recent reports purporting to examine the health of this sector over the years, employers have expressed their dissatisfaction with graduates claiming they are not imaginative or inventive, find it almost impossible to construct counter arguments to any Cartesian proposition, are uncomfortable when sharing ideas, and are not good at bringing critical thinking to group endeavours.

They remember facts. But what use is that when facts become obsolete so swiftly and invention and discovery have become far more important? Innovation often comes from reassembling knowledge in novel ways. In the internet age, marshalling facts is no longer sufficient to constitute learning. It is what you can do with this information that counts.

That is why the humanities are more relevant than ever. Philosophy, literature and history illuminate how to interpret information, and how to argue a point of view - the kind of skills so essential for innovation and entrepreneurship. Sound engineering and musical composition alter the plasticity of the brain to think in multiple dimensions. Similarly, the ability to visualize and to make sense of complex patterns, are critical aspects of design, quite apart from being able to appreciate the complex web of life.

Learning is no longer a commodity, but an individually-tailored enterprise in itself. It is this reality that is making the standard model of a university education less applicable. Speeding up that factor is competition, both from established and new competitors, less public funding, increasing tensions to manage between teaching and research, as well as academics and administrators, slowness to adapt due to inertia in the system, and an increase in demand for university places coupled with fewer staff to cope with the teaching load. All of these indicate a model struggling to maintain functionality.

If companies are so lethargic and maladaptive they go bankrupt. To all intents and purposes, if colleges and universities refuse to examine how they will need to operate in a world where enabling technologies of all kinds respond to systemic complexity with little or no input from humans, they too will quickly become redundant.

I think this is already appreciated and increasingly felt. In many respects, the higher education sector is like any other industry facing an existential threat. Grief gives way to denial that it could be happening at all, then a sense of unfairness generating anger, dejection, followed by rounds of futile bargaining aimed at preventing the inevitable, before acceptance finally restores some sense of dignity.

Frankly some universities have already lost the plot - the impact from COVID-19 could be the final straw for some others. Higher loads of bureaucratic trivia have stimulated a brain-drain that is unstoppable in some countries. In others, austerity measures have led to depleted resources and a further exodus of talent. Given these circumstances one might have imagined that it would be wiser and more pragmatic for incumbents to position the sector for change. Not many universities, however, appear to comprehend precisely what they are up against.

Most articles and scholarly theses I have seen regarding the future of universities gloss over, or miss entirely, the obvious point. If our future world has no need for learning as it is currently constructed, then institutions of higher education cannot continue in the role they play today if they are to survive. This is an existential problem. But, like all existential problems, there are solutions - not all of acceptable of course.

2. The Situation Next

Ultimately, especially with the advent of 5G technology, online and remote learning is about to change just about everything. The internet democratized education. Access is available anywhere. Costs are tumbling. Place and time are no longer important. The only resistance is cultural opposition to learning online instead of on campus. Much of the resistance comes from the intransigence of tenured educators. So then we must ask: What should the university become? 

Choices To Be Made

Education will never look the same as it did even 20 years ago. The kind of learning we need today just does not sink in when we compartmentalize it and cut it up into small bites. Now it has to be a continuous and compelling engagement with life.

The global information economy puts a premium on intellectual capital, increasing the pressure to remain at the forefront of knowledge creation and commercialization. This has very little to do with teaching. It is perfectly reasonable that, should the university endure, conventional teachers and teaching will not continue to be its primary function and focus. On the other hand it does require life-long learning with a corresponding rise in collaborative inquiry, the capacity for deep research, and ongoing professional development.

Mission-critical alliances with industry partners will assume greater significance. So, too, the design of learning experiences. And as knowledge becomes decentralized, and new forms of peer-to-peer networks emerge, colleges may welcome invitations to assume the role of informed brokers in large-scale, globally distributed systems, where inquiry and research are the principal drivers.

Alternatively, the financial survival of educational institutions, plus the growing need for continuous, lifelong learning, might lead to some becoming more like societies or clubs that extend membership over a lifetime. Think about it. Higher learning is the only business today that has a ceremony for firing its well-paying customers. Colleges spend thousands of dollars recruiting students and then, after three, four or five years, these same colleges make students dress up in a gown, march them across a platform in full public view, and then ritually sack them with a standing ovation!

Now imagine programs allowing members to explore diverse themes and activities that remain relevant over the course of a lifetime. Match that with a college that sees the value of its customers as extending far beyond the years they might have spent on a campus and voila!  Instead of firing people after a few years, such a program would shift its emphasis away from graduation to lifelong learning through membership of the institution.

Students would remain members as long as they undertook activities, or acted as mentors to other members, whether those activities were conducted online or in different physical locations. The imperative would be to keep members over the life cycle of their careers – and even into post-retirement. Learning becomes a continuous experience curated by the college.

Professional Advancement

Corporations are also customers of the higher education sector. Because of the kinds of changes that are transforming business and government agencies today, they are already demanding levels of executive development that are far more engaging and address pertinent issues.

They want programs that change individuals as much as individuals that change their enterprise. Everyday issues and dramas now become the material for learning in real time. In this context staff become consultants and mentors to each other. And now that technology allows us to extend learning into the period after people graduate we can also tap into communities of interest and continue the dialogue created previously.

I well remember, some time ago now, Levi Strauss telling its managers they needed to be different – a new kind of manager, responsible for ensuring that learning happened and that experimentation was radical. But their training continued to occur inside the same old windowless hotel rooms. Naturally, attendance dropped off. Until, that is, the company shifted its business model to become a brand management organization.

Training sessions shifted to novel environments like art galleries, nightclubs, and other venues that were right in the center of the consumer marketplace. Organizers gave cameras to Levi Strauss managers, instructing them to find examples of brand equity being built or destroyed, to talk to customers about their products, and to bring all of that information back to the group. The CEO was clear in his message: If we are going to be customer-focused we have to do it in a customer-focused way, he insisted.

The learning environment in Levi Strauss changed dramatically to messaging, strategic direction, brand identity, and the culture of the enterprise. The same must be true of tomorrow's colleges. 

For most modern educational institutions to survive the 2020s they will need to move from the industrial age “event” to a model that helps their clients to become members of a learning network. A network that is not constrained by time or discipline, and that keeps them engaged over the course of their lifetime. 

But however a college chooses to adapt in order to remain viable, the need for a raft of new strategies that align with these and other real world trends will be critical. Only then will they be in a position to reframe their purpose in alignment with the most profound civilizational transition in our history.

We saw it with gun powder, the printing press, the steam engine, and now the internet. When a life-changing new technology is invented, knowledge monopolies crumble. Everyone goes back to zero. Arrogance (we are too big to fail) as well as nescience (we didn't see that coming) can complicate that risk, often playing a crucial role in writing off entire industries, with new ones, better fit for purpose, more proficient, nimble and smarter, quickly replacing them. Higher education will need to focus its attention on remaining strategically aligned, sensitive to the most subtle changes, if it is to avoid the ignominy of not even having an industry left to lead in tomorrow's world.

The immediate challenge faced by all institutions in the higher education sector will be choosing whether to remain discrete, self-governing entities, opting to form specialist hubs in vast learning networks spanning the globe, or create something entirely unique. In every context, though, those involved will need to become something other than mere transmitters of knowledge. In order to facilitate learning they will need to develop new skills – especially in terms of flexibility, relationship facilitation, creativity and communications. They will also need to become highly skilled at partnering with technology. The biggest stumbling block in that regard is not in the learning, but in how those trained as teachers apply their skills effectively.

Another critical challenge stems from a need to manage the wide variety of alliances and partnerships implied by such learning networks, the kind of relations inherent in the linking of venture capitalists with technical providers, for example. Managing the interaction between the content expert, the packaging expert and the distributor will be a key to success as it requires an administrative system that can work effectively for all concerned.

Back To The Future

Universities, while constantly crying poor are, without doubt, among the most asset-rich, powerful, and politically connected institutions in the public sector of many countries. That does not mean they are immune from changes occurring in society. Quite the opposite in fact.

In the long-term the higher education sector will be forced to restructure, and one of the most significant drivers in that respect will come from the experiments in curricula and pedagogy already being conducted by organizations like Avenues: The World School in New York, and Verso International School in Bangkok, for example. Unique in both conception and design, Verso is at the cutting edge of school design and will no doubt inspire a new generation of schools where learning to be agile, creative and adaptive provides the basis for highly customized educational experiences.

When revolutions like this happen it is wise to go back to first principles. In the old industreality, content was king. In the connected economy, there is a realization that context is everything.

As we work with new interactive technologies, and individually enhanced intelligence, learning will continue its journey of transformation - particularly from knowledge as matter to knowing as experience. Distinctiveness, rather than conformity, will emerge naturally. Collaboration and inquiry will delineate its fresh modus operandi. Finally, a willingness to relinquish autonomy, by virtuous investment into the emerging learning ecosystems, will signal the most altruistic act of all in order to remain relevant.

Today's constant access to the digital world inspires learning to occur impulsively and invisibly as theory melds with praxis. That is a big shift from the days when educators packaged materials and then funneled these into the heads of learners sitting passively in classrooms and lecture theatres. I remember it only too well.

The problem with that system was that, while students learned a whole raft of facts and lots of theory, they ended up with very little sense of themselves as doing what they were learning about – or being different people in the process. In other words there was a chasm between personal identity and personal knowledge.

The trouble with the future system is it raises the question yet again, Whither the University? Does that answer your question Vice Chancellor?

 

You Never Can Tell

My Mother's Wisdom & Other Sagas

My mother was relatively uneducated. This is not a judgement but just a fact. She left school at the age of eleven to go into domestic service. But she was shrewd, not on any account to be underestimated. She would come out with the quaintest of pronouncements. One favourite turn of phrase, after listening to the nightly news on the wireless, was: There. What did I say. You never can tell. I suspect I took on that oft-repeated statement as something of a challenge when shaping my current career as a futurist. We will always live with the unknown and, quite probably, the unknowable. But some things you just know will happen. Not always, but sometimes, you just can tell.

Take the current pandemic, for example. It has been on my radar for some years. We saw it coming. Not necessarily this year of course - only supremely confident fools would predict precisely when such entangled patterns were likely to converge into a material event of any consequence. There is too much ambiguity and volatility to risk taking on such a burden.

But the blend of globalization, an increasingly nomadic population of around 7.8 billion, and modern disease vectors, were always going to create conditions in which viruses can flourish. It many respects the current pandemic is a foreseeable consequence of the world we have created - shaped by our sense of exceptionalism and the notion that we are somehow separate from, and superior to, other species.

What I do find alarming is the unwarranted finger-pointing when we have all been spooked by events. SARS-CoV-2 is not a new virus. We have known about it for some considerable time. A SARS-coronavirus detection technology was patented in the US in November 2003. Scientists have been warning us of a global pandemic on this scale for many years. Yet we find ourselves totally unprepared - socially, emotionally, economically, and politically.

In some respects what we are now living through is a false crisis. In Australia the annual flu epidemic will kill far more people than COVID-19. Do not misunderstand me. I am not treating this pandemic casually, or retreating from an acceptance that large numbers of people are dying. This is certainly a crisis for the elderly, especially those with weak immune systems, and with pre-existing respiratory and cardiac conditions. But not for most people.

Or at least - it didn't need to be! We are held captive in a particular narrative - a story shaped by rates of infection, morbidity rates, and the total number of deaths. This dominant narrative, in which we are now trapped, the way governments have chosen to tell the story, generating anxiety and fear even if that was not their intention, and the draconian regimes they now feel obliged to impose, without a shred of evidence they know what they are doing, was always disconcertingly reckless.

Regrettably these tactics also closely resemble the criteria listed in the Biderman Chart of Coercion, a tool designed to validate and explain the coercive methods of stress manipulation and mind control used by organizations like the CIA to torture prisoners of war - methods that go along way to shed light on domestic abuse too. In both instances, physical control is hardly ever achieved without cooperation from the victim. The most effective way to gain that kind of cooperation is through subversive manipulation of the mind and feelings of the victim, who then becomes a psychological, as well as a physical, captor.

I am not implying that government officials are deliberately using tactics like social isolation, mask wearing, mental exhaustion, and the threat of fines for non-compliance with the law, as an excuse for ramping up the nascent totalitarian tendencies to be seen in many present-day democracies. But I am stating that the emotional and psychological consequences will be severe - most likely leaving a stain on the way we decide to treat each other in the future.

Officials have decided to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut and society has become totally compliant in the face of such directives. A different understanding of available scientific data might have led to alternative responses. For example, if we had targeted those most likely to contract the disease, and safeguarded them in the ways we are now using to protect the entire community, we could have avoided potentially devastating social and economic penalties in the years ahead.

Even now we could be heading for a global depression similar to that experienced during the 1930's. The conditions today are very different of course. That does not mean we should not be concerned.

Many countries were already in the grip of a high street retail recession before the pandemic. Current reactions to the virus are making matters far worse than they need be. Unemployment is going to skyrocket as further automation kicks in. Numerous businesses will lack sufficient resources to recover from the downturn in commercial activity. Public healthcare systems will be pushed to the limit. While for vulnerable people already living on the edge, the rounds of enforced restrictions, self-quarantine and social isolation will cause more mental health issues. Cases of domestic violence, too, are set to soar.

So a global economic downturn well into the first half of 2021 is almost unavoidable. Much depends now on how we weather our exit from the storm. By that I am not referring to the number of infections, so much as the havoc and uncertainty the virus, along with the various treatments we are racing to discover, will continue to cause.

Not all is doom and gloom of course. There are changes in the air that could benefit all of us. We can expect a clean-out of the economy together with far greater financial prudence. At the same time we are seeing clearly how capital markets must be in service to the public interest - not the other way around. Perhaps COVID-19 will accelerate the trend to place societal health and wellbeing ahead of corporate profits and individual affluence. One outcome of that might be the ability just to lead simpler, happier, more fulfilling lives.

A far more intriguing factor is also beginning to surface. It concerns the overall quality of life. When people see the result of their activities up close it becomes exceedingly difficult to tell them to go back into their box -  to persuade them to resume a life less desirable. Catching a glimpse of the fish returning to clear waters in the canals of Venice is already provoking local council discussions about how this situation can be preserved without damaging the local economy. Likewise, the citizens of Wuhan are breathing fresh air, seeing blue skies and unfiltered sunshine, for the first time in perhaps a decade.

A return to the old smokestack industries cannot be assumed with public feelings running so high. The shift to renewable energy will happen faster now. On a more practical level we are certainly going to see a huge increase in the numbers of people wanting to work from home rather than making the daily commute into the city - and all the transportation, environmental and health hazards associated with that practice. Some large companies known to me have already decided not to renew leases on many of their large, currently empty, city premises.

That decision, of course, has the potential to totally shift our planning priorities regarding the city centre with its myriad centralized activities and attractions. Outer-suburban and regional living could assume far greater prominence - attracting unprecedented investment in regional and country centres, and leaving the industrial image of city-as-machine to be reinvented.

Tools enabling us to work from home are readily available. Myths concerning the need for city-based cathedrals of commerce, and the social activities they deliver, have been laid to rest as more and more businesses discover they can do without them. Rules and routines we thought indispensable have been shown to be arbitrary. We also have proof at last that working from home can be far more productive, especially for women who do most of the unpaid caring and domestic work in our society and are not financially rewarded for that.

For a while we can expect to see the occasional surge from some people wanting to return to work in the city office. But that urge will quickly wane as neighbourhood co-working spaces are built, issues concerning centralized training, employee monitoring, and socialization are resolved, and online platforms become more sophisticated with the use of virtual and augmented reality not too far off.

As we recover our senses, and life begins to return to something approaching an enhanced normality, we will see a shift to greener, cleaner means of production, as well as a far deeper appreciation of nature as an integral part of how we manage the economy, rather than as something external and separate from it.

One final thought. This pandemic is not unprecedented. The H1N1 pandemic of 1918 (the so-called  Spanish flu) infected around 500 million people, a quarter of the population, and killed anywhere between 17 million to 50 million. Some estimates put it as high as 100 million. But even the deadliest of pandemics give us a chance to hit the ontological reset button and to set our civilization on a different course. Incidentally, that is not what is meant when organizations like the World Economic Forum use that or similar terms.

The Black Death in 14th century Europe eventually led to the realization that if more people could read and write the loss of life could have been far less. The notion of universal literacy was arguably the single most important factor to usher in the Industrial Revolution centuries later. Spanish flu, too, allowed us to see the wisdom of having a social welfare safety net in place for the most vulnerable people in the community.

So all plagues bring gifts in their wake - if we are open to seeing them. Today's pandemic is inviting us to reconfigure and reframe the relationships we have - not only with each other, but also with life-critical systems like agriculture, for example, as the spectre of factory farming with its mechanization, widespread use of chemicals and drugs, and market concentration, is put under the microscope.  

From time to time most futurists cast their glance away from the spotlight and into the shadows to see what exists on the periphery of our awareness. It is my belief that the great pestilence we have been promised in the future is just as likely to come from unfamiliar pathogens locked away for centuries under Tibetan glaciers and released by the melting ice caused by a heating climate.

That could happen at any time now. And that outbreak will be unprecedented. But let's not wait until then to find out, exclaiming in feigned surprise: There! What did I say. You never can tell...

Strategies of Deception

The righteous quest of misrepresenting reality

Concurrently, I found myself contemplating the catchphrase, Don't Be Evil, a motto firmly entrenched in Google's corporate code of conduct, rather like a zombie refusing to die, while watching spellbound the US Senate's grilling of Amy Coney Barrett, Donald Trump's fiercely conservative pick to succeed Ruth Bader Ginsburg for the Supreme Court.

Making implausible denials, deflecting criticism, and offering answers to questions that had not been asked and that convey nothing of any substance, Coney Barrett was hailed unflappable by the very media she later accused of caricaturing her catholic faith as she faced an 11-hour inspection over her views on abortion, health care and the peaceful transfer of power after the November election.

The judge's views on the forthcoming election, in particular, are crucial. Judging by her past record when, just three years out of law school, she was part of the legal team that stole the 2000 election for George W. Bush, Trump has selected the ideal person to assist not just his own personal efforts to stay in office, but to advance the theocratic, repressive, and regressive agenda of the modern Republican party. Should the ballot go down to the wire, ending up in the Supreme Court, there is no doubt Coney Barrett will vote according to her libertarian values.

This is the reason many Democrats are so concerned about her appointment, rather than the more moral issue of why the admittance of predetermined judgements might actually be a flaw in the workings of what is ostensibly the highest legal authority in the land of cowboys and guns.

That should not come as a big surprise. Amy Coney Barrett is only human after all. Most of us consistently allow our ingrained prejudices to bubble to the surface in the way we act, justifying our behaviours if we are pressed through a particular choice of language.

Language is the primary mechanism we have for making sense of what we see happening all around us - our reality - and then communicating that to others. The most common way we deny an inconvenient truth is to refuse to use the words that express it as such. Climate change deniers, for example, routinely resort to obfuscation. Another tactic, commonly used in media interviews, is to state an opinion, then repeat it often enough in the hope that eventually it is accepted as the truth. We can achieve the same goal by staying silent, resorting to euphemism, twisting the facts - or just plain lying.

Although we become outraged when we discover blatant lies have been told, especially if those lies are from people we trust, or they directly impact our sense of wellbeing, silence and euphemism can be just as harmful.

In some contexts, certain types of thinking or ideas can be deemed offensive, polarizing and unleashing anger among those too easily persuaded by emotive jargon, unfamiliar idioms, or a lack of civility. For example, it is impossible to conduct a sensible discussion on abortion in a nunnery. In Thailand it is dangerous to openly challenge or to criticise the monarchy. In the West we routinely refer to sustainable development at a time in history when society as a whole is essentially non-sustainable. Likewise developing nations are, more often than not, actually destitute nations. I well remember the trial by fire I suffered when first meeting with a union official, very much my senior, who had no respect for me or the advice I was giving my client for dealing with the forced redundancy of 20 per cent of his workforce. The air was blue with expletives as I sat back in my chair, shocked by the sudden onslaught, suffering a stream of abuse and unable to get a word in edgeways.

Euphemisms, on the other hand, can be insidious. For example, US politicians of both persuasions regularly talk about "collateral damage" instead of innocent deaths. They insist that "all options are on the table" when it comes to dealing with what is perceived to be a "rogue" state - Iran. Presumably that includes a pre-emptive nuclear strike, although the actual term nuclear war is studiously avoided. Even terms such as "justice" and "human rights" have to be redefined when spoken by those intent on extraditing Julian Assange for revealing the evils of US military hegemony.

Lying or manipulating evidence tends to betray a naivety bordering on the absurd. Yet we are so easily deceived. In the late 1990’s, for example, concerns arose over large tobacco companies setting out to falsify science. Phony experiments were conducted that "proved" nicotine was harmless and non-addictive, while expert witnesses were paid handsomely to testify under oath to these lies.

The lies fabricated to persuade the American people that war in Vietnam was a strategic imperative, or that the invasion of Iraq was undertaken to prevent Sadaam Hussein from using "weapons of mass destruction" were not taken seriously by anyone other than the dissemblers, who then started to believe their own falsehoods, and that section of society who were duped into supposing their government would never knowingly deceive them.

These days cynical efforts are still being used by the mining industry to persuade a gullible public that coal and gas are the keys to future clean energy, when they know full well that mining, drilling and burning fossil fuels are major contributors to global warming - as well as a range of contributory issues such as land degradation, water pollution, acidification of the oceans, and toxic airborne particulates.

These are all forms of propaganda - used to cast doubt on the verity of a situation in ways that range from subtle innuendo to barefaced dishonesty.

The peak of duplicity comes from those we trust to care for our wellbeing. Increasingly it seems, individuals responsible for representing others - executives in terms of corporate shareholders and politicians in terms of the electorate - happily resort to propaganda, especially when a favorable spin on events is desired by those whose interests are best served by manipulating and distorting the truth. Indeed, we live in a society where PR professionals have become superbly skilled at convincing the public of half-truths, and the media so professionally adept at seeding disinformation that almost nothing is as it seems. It matters little whether we live in a totalitarian or a democratic state: the motive, intentions and results are the same. These strategies of deception are devised to implant doubt in the collective consciousness and to knowingly mislead.

Four contemporary institutions routinely use strategies of deception. Three of these are powerful, interrelated entities, particularly in the ways they overtly seek to sustain each other. I am of course referring to government - the instrument that makes decisions and enacts laws - often, it must be said, based upon ill-advised, or partial interpretations of the truth; business corporations - whose prime concern, even as we transition into an age of mutual accountability, is in growing wealth for their shareholders; and corporate media -  comprising owners, editors and journalists who weave and shape the fictions the rest of us hear and believe.

The motives of all three have become fused in myopic self-interest. Governments want to stay in power, often dispensing with the truth and overlooking fraud in order to do so. In the case of business it is to become more profitable, year on year, all the while lobbying their local representatives in government to endorse policy outcomes that best meet their dedicated needs. Meanwhile, journalists now go to any lengths to control and shape the dominant narratives in society, blatantly treating fiction as fact if necessary.

All three distract public attention away from significant issues, which then results in a lack of informed debate. This subsequently leads to a dumbing-down of society to the extent that the capability to see beyond dystopia is lost. A crisis of imagination ensues. We see this so transparently today where a continuous recycling of used futures has become a substitute for genuine leadership.

In every case, too, the intention is simple: to conceal, confuse, manipulate, and cast doubt in the minds of those who are mere witnesses to history and who have no immediate way of voicing their disapproval or outrage, other than civil disobedience and public protest.

And that is the cue for introducing our fourth institution - a more amorphous, shadowy force that has stepped into the leadership vacuum, though not to the extent that would be noticed by the average person. Lacking any overt palpability, it nevertheless includes and transcends all three established entities, charming its way into society as an additional and important layer of proficiency, for the sole purpose of using its wealth and influence to determine the direction society will take.

I am referring to the plutocratic billionaire class. This of course is not a unified entity by any stretch of the imagination. It arose not from any secret collusion, malicious or otherwise, nor from any devilish scheme to take over the world, but from the intentional design of a capitalist architecture totally reliant on socio-economic stratification for its prime impulse, and whose staying power can be traced back to 1944, the creation of the Bretton Woods Agreement, and the unleashing of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Almost by default, the plutocracy, those industries it has within its grasp, together with a cadre of affiliated non-government organizations, such as the World Economic Forum, has become ringmaster of the global economic circus. It determines, often in a dilettante and aleatory fashion, how the wealth we create will be spent, what laws can be dispensed with or replaced, primarily to corral resources while sustaining production and demand, and how the international order can improvise a defense in response to any event or dynamic threatening its dominion.

Because of its vacillating and emergent nature it is often characterized as the deep state, or a secret cabinet of illuminati. This is not particularly helpful as it leads to wild conspiracy theories about "big brother" without necessarily adding to our comprehension of what is really going on in the wings. Naming such a force in this way detracts from understanding its incredible potency while ascribing a legitimacy to it that is tenuous. I am sure the Jedi Master Yoda would disparage such labels as pure falsification.

In more than one sense the so-called trade war between the US and China, as well as the supplementary alpha-male side-show between two narcissistic combatants in Presidents Trump and Xi, is actually a collision between this force - designed and consummated by and within the old Western empires - and the unlikely axiomatic appeal of a distinctly sinic-motivated paradigm seen, by perhaps 70 per cent of the world, as a more fit-for-purpose model for the 21st century.

Of course this force is not just a club for individuals but wealthy multinational enterprises and entire industries. We have seen during the current COVID-19 panic how rapidly large pharmaceutical and vaccination companies, along with their backers in various regulatory networks, such as the World Health Organization and Center for Disease Control, have successfully shaped the official narrative explaining this disease, which was then adopted and used universally to quarantine healthy people and lockdown the economy.

Incidentally, the amorphous "they" we should be holding to account are not the various state and national politicians who so promptly fell into line, but the non-elected force of which I speak.  

Strategies of deception have been devastatingly successful for the greater part of at least two centuries. Within the past decade, though, they have become all-pervasive. Evading the truth and speaking falsehoods is now routine. Opinions and sentiments, informed by nothing other than self-righteous recklessness and hot air, collide and fracture in a froth of deceit, corrupting any sense of coherence and stability. The 4.78 billion people who own mobile phones today, around 61 per cent of the population, have become playthings in a game controlled and played by ruthlessly self-serving monopolies.

As a consequence, the ability to challenge any orthodoxy, including the authority of the state, by taking collective action in ways which were admittedly inconceivable just a few years ago, are now rapidly fading. The internet has become just another medium for algorithmically-curated propaganda.

But three questions intrigue me...

Firstly, are those with power and influence, whether in formal positions or hiding behind the veil of the plutocracy, really so powerful if they feel the need to resort to false pretexts in order to persuade the public of the desirability of a particular course of action? Surely it is fear, vulnerability and ignorance that most often generates the need for deception? Enduring strength, we know, arises from engagement and dialogue.

My second question relates to the bewildering choices made by governments everywhere to subsidize certain industries, or pursue particular policies, at great cost to the public purse, when being transparent about such subsidies and the damage they cause would almost certainly receive the endorsement of a grateful electorate and enable more intelligent choices to be made.

For example ethanol manufactured from plant material is a good green fuel additive. The US government subsidizes domestic production of ethanol and penalizes imports. But what the public is not told is that they are footing the tax bill - estimated at somewhere between $5.5 billion and $7.3 billion a year - and that corn-based ethanol, the sort produced in the US, requires almost as much energy to produce as it releases when it burns! How stupid is that? If the US government stopped taxing good ethanol - the kind made from sugar cane - and stopped subsidizing bad ethanol the world would be greener and the American taxpayer would be better off.

Thirdly, how might the locus of power shift even further and faster with the advent of peer-to-peer and regenerative technologies – the future organizing principles for almost everything? I have no answers to that one... Yet.

Kindling of the Flame

What we already believe prevents us from knowing any differently. Yet knowing differently is the only way to design the future we need.

I have loitered around the sidelines of academia pretty much all my life. Occasionally I was seduced into its alluring orbit only to beat a hasty retreat as I realized, over and over, how unaffected by its own product - that is learning - educational officialdom can be.

While the concrete tower has replaced ivory, educational establishments mostly try to resist acquiring data of any kind which implies the need for structural change of the institution itself. By that I mean data that challenges how and why things are done. Explicit use of that data to effect internal transformation, in alignment with alternative external conditions is, as a general rule, deemed to be rash, or unwarranted. Which is why for the most part it is avoided or ignored.

Conservatism of this kind is not always a bad thing. Pedagogical continuity, for example, can help preserve exotic languages, wisdom traditions and inheritable knowledge that might otherwise be discarded.

The question of what education is for changes from one era to another. Is it to facilitate the development of a moral compass that can guide an individual through life, or perhaps to generate a society capable of thinking new thoughts and doing new things, rather than just repeating what other generations have done? Is it to teach us compassion, or to show us how to recognize and love beauty? To impart the power of critical thinking? Or is it simply the soul of society as it passes from one generation to the next, as the English poet G. K. Chesterton would have us believe? There is no correct answer.

Most people would probably respond positively to all of these, and more besides. Varying views will very much depend on the social context. At first schools and schooling aimed to impart basic literacies, such as reading, writing, and arithmetic. Some time later it evolved into a means for the development of minds, mostly within an explicit moral framework.

Almost by stealth, having an education became the crucial factor, alongside parenting, for participating in the community: a medium for transitioning young people into adulthood and inducting them into society as valued citizens. Then, in the middle of the 20th century, following two unsettling world wars, the demand for new goods sparked a sharp rise in industrial production, generating a need for more skilled workers.

In response to this trend of rising affluence, the education industry split into two discrete functions. Vocational learning, geared to those in pursuit of a trade, became the realm of the technical colleges, while universities turned their attention to research and careers in professions such as the law, medicine and science. In both cases, the knowledge needed to get a job on graduation became the motivation for attracting institutional funding. As a consequence, courses in the humanities, the arts and philosophy took a hit, relegated to the fringe of perceived utility.

But then technological wizardry arrived on the scene in the form of computers. The nature of digital innovation applied to the automation of manual and routine tasks pulled the rug from under most assumptions regarding work, inventory management, sales forecasting, and enterprise planning - confounding conventions to the extent that the most common question for school leavers today concerns not what work they will choose to do, but what they will do if work is not available.

Thus the question of what education is for remains unanswered but remains pertinent in a world beset by a range of existential problems requiring a solution. Can we find sensible answers by studying education and learning from within the emerging context of needs relative to the human condition? If so, what should education be for in a post-COVID-19 world?

A feature of the current pandemic is the way apparently impregnable institutions – banks, universities, airports, sovereign nations – have been shaken to their core. The disease, but particularly the universal panic it has engendered, signifies not merely a temporary pause from which we can return to normal, but an omen, a fragility we had not fully appreciated, especially in terms of globalized infrastructures and supply chains, and our total reliance on digital networks.

It is worth noting that previous pandemics have exposed fault lines in society, which then ushered in substantial socio-economic changes. It was only after the Black Death that the ruling elite realized the world would be much safer if every citizen could read and write. Likewise the counter-intuitive concept of a welfare safety net for the under-privileged or unemployed was introduced following the Spanish Flu of 1918. It is highly probable that a post-COVID-19 world will lead to equally transformative changes. If so, they will inevitably impact education.

So in a post-COVID-19 world how should we evolve the formalized world of learning? Are schools and colleges really needed now? If so what role could they play, if any, in shaping a healthier, adaptive, and empathic society? And how should this be different to the role it played in the past?

Most of my children were homeschooled, for no other reason than we were constantly on the move and it seemed like the most effective way to achieve some kind of continuity in the face of such a peripatetic existence. At various times in my career I have been a tutor, a lecturer, the Dean of School, and a professor – working with diverse attitudes, ranging from the radical to the mainstream. I have also advised a variety of institutions in several countries vis-a-vis curriculum design, pedagogy, branding and governance. So I am au fait with the major issues confronting education now and in the future.

To those outside of the industry, teaching might appear to be an easy way to earn a living, given the lengthy vacations and relatively small number of hours actually spent with, or in front of, students. That is an illusion. Teaching is one of the most demanding professions there is. Yet we place muted value on the contribution learning plays in shaping the future of our society.  

Because of that, together with the tsunami of exponential change that is sweeping away centuries of defunct praxis today, we stand to miss the opportunity of stepping into new epistemologies, or of approaching human evolution from alternative design ontologies. Both are essential today as we stare the real possibility of extinction in the face.

That might be considered a melodramatic statement. But at no time during my various encounters in the industry has anyone asked me to seriously consider what education is for. In fact there is much confusion and heated disagreement regarding that deceptively simple contextual issue.

In order to comprehend the profound nature of this matter, and its importance to us in the coming decade, it is instructive to examine the issues from within the dynamic of an expanded now. I should also make it clear that I am setting aside, purely for pragmatic reasons, significant learning traditions that germinated in other cultures, and at other times, by focusing my attention purely on modern Western praxis.

Even from within this narrow frame of reference it is clear that the fundamental rationale for learning shifts, sometimes considerably, according to the prevailing societal narrative. In turn, the educational product responds almost intuitively by reinforcing explicit tenets relative to the society’s perceived needs and stage of development. This interconnected dynamic is vital for any deep understanding of the role learning can play in creating an abundant future for the next generation.

There are three interconnected socio-economic systems that warrant our attention at a fundamental level of coordinating logic: work and the workplace, tertiary education, and schooling. The thread of pragmatism connecting these reveals a number of underlying design criteria shaping the purpose of education.

Possibly since the genesis of the industrial revolution, and at least since the early years of the 20^th century, the espoused purpose of education has been most commonly expressed as the way individuals can acquire sufficient knowledge and skills to compete with others in getting a job. Work in our modern society, after all, is both the motive and the means whereby individuals are able to trade their labour or time for money - which can then be used to purchase goods and services in what I now refer to as a never-ending cycle of desire and consumption. For this system to function we must believe that (i) work is an integral part of being human, (ii) it is good for us, in a moral sense as well as in terms of mental health and wellbeing, and (iii) trust in an endless supply of work to be done.

These hypotheses have been central in directing the attention of educators on preparing students exclusively for the world of work in the here and now - resulting in the specific structural, pedagogical, and curricula demarcations that separate specialist technical and instrumental training from higher education.

As the push for economic growth developed, and science, engineering and technology became more and more vital to producing the goods and services needed in a globalized world, a further fracturing occurred. Institutions in the higher education sector began to allocate their resources to teaching and scholarship, vocational training, executive and outreach programs, or advanced research - with relationships and funding tied to those choices. Less utilitarian programs, in the arts, classics and humanities for example, became inconsequential in the public mind.

Schools and schooling, meanwhile, became the one-size-fits-all device for attenuating any sign of imagination and individual creativity, while reinforcing the established order, so as to certify an abundant supply of disciplined, compliant individuals, into the trades and armed forces, or fields like the law and medicine, which demanded further study.

This explains why we are facing an existential paradox in education today. Particularly relevant is the fact that our central hypotheses are no longer valid. Work, especially when so much of it is unnecessary, pointless, or can be done much better by a machine, cannot possibly be the motivating force it once was. For some individuals, identity and purpose are tied up with the love of family and friends, and being free to enjoy activities other than work. For many others it is tied to having the security of a job. So, once again, we are left with the same question: what is education for today, and does it necessarily need to replicate the top-down, one-size-fits-all model of the past?

With the advent of machine intelligence, drones, virtual and augmented reality, 5G and autonomous vehicles, we are witnessing a massive exodus of routine tasks from humans to machines. A more forensic inquiry of underlying patterns reveals a future in which full automation and robots dominate the traditional workplace while human recruits will be based on potential rathe than experience.

Even white collar professions will not be immune as the work available for humans shifts from the mechanical and the routine to roles requiring care, creativity, critical thinking and compassion - or what I was calling the "C" society 25 years ago!

At this stage it is impossible to know precisely how many jobs will be lost to AI, or new jobs created as a result. An educated guess is that at least 60 percent of today’s office and factory work will be done by machines over the coming decade, leaving many of us with the dual problem of what to do with our time, and how to earn money if that remains the sole means of purchasing goods and services. This is going to be a massive headache for governments as we grapple with levels of unemployment, and a subsequent lack of social cohesion, that are unprecedented in the modern era.

These problems will massively disrupt a higher education sector already struggling to retain relevance. Today, many academics have become little more than itinerant workers and their students customers facing years of indebtedness. Lower entry requirements, pay cuts for teachers or job losses, and high fees for an education that disappears like candy floss before you swallow it, is leaving many institutions fighting for survival.

Nor is the current pandemic doing them any favours. With courses increasingly online, and students working remotely from home, even Cambridge University, the ultimate in physical branding with its ancient colleges and manicured lawns, is having to pivot to a different reality. Content has become irrelevant. Credentials are all that matters now. 

If so much upheaval is dislocating established norms in both the workplace and higher education, the role of schools and the nature of schooling must inevitably respond.

The days of teachers passing on information to students who sit passively in classrooms has long gone. The most informed schools have already embraced pedagogical shifts. From discipline-based subjects taught in 45 minute compartments, to phenomenon-based exploration of topics that actually matter to the next generation – topics such as climate change, food security, robotics and cooperative ventures, for example – the learning landscape is utterly different now from what it was just a decade ago. The need for basic skills has shifted too. Who needs to be able to write, or speak another language, when almost every interface is voice-activated and translation is instantly available?

While I have few doubts that more traditional schools and schooling will continue to exist for the time being, their importance will diminish along with their physical infrastructure. The COVID-19 pandemic has given us rare opportunities to experience life differently. We have tried home-schooling with varying forms of remote learning and are appreciating the benefits that expanded parental relationships can bring. We have avoided the daily commute to the office, and see few reasons to return to the daily commute to school.

If schools are to have any relevance in this future they will need to adapt quickly, and keep on adapting. In other words they will need to develop an inbuilt capacity for regeneration. Children will still need to learn skills, but these will mostly be to do with life-long learning, curiosity, creativity, designing, imagining and making. They will also need to socialize and cooperate in order to solve wicked problems together in a world is hurtling headlong into a variety of crises.

In this environment we could see a complete reconceptualization of schools along with the elimination of schooling as instruction. Virtual spaces will soon replace conventional classrooms. Corporations, charities, industries, and community enterprises will begin to offer on-the-job mentoring and internships. It is even possible, when kids grasp the fact that the most successful entrepreneurs either did not attend university, or dropped out prior to completing their degree, that a university education will become immaterial, or a more leisurely activity to be undertaken later in life.

It could extend much further of course, given the impacts from hundreds of converging, increasingly democratized, technologies that will possibly trigger cultural, industrial and societal disruption on a scale, and at a pace, the world has never before experienced, millions of entrepreneurs and investors are waking up to alternatives previously thought unachievable, or more likely to remain in the domain of science fiction.

Although costs are still prohibitive, regulators are freaking out, and insurance companies cannot fathom out how insurance works in this new world, mechanisms to extend life, 4D printing of human organs, re-engineering DNA to prevent disease, in vivo gene editing, self-assembling microstructures, breathable insulin, real-time democratized diagnostics, inhalable vaccines and breakthroughs in neuroscience all signify we are on the edge of a massive paradigm shift in terms of the human experience and life expectancy.

As new socio-economic theories embed, as they will need to, work may become optional rather than a necessity, or geared to increased care of the elderly and infirm, as well as stewardship of the urban and natural environments. Today's learning institutions could react by renouncing the tasks of induction and instruction, pivoting instead to become the intergenerational connective tissue for unlocking new knowledge, in partnership with other organizations and groups, while also opening up the opportunity to become sanctuaries of regenerative praxis - attentive particularly on conserving expertise and appreciation of those wisdom traditions considered most vital for the next stage of human evolution. These moves could place "learning" institutions once again at the forefront of societal development, instead of limiting their role to front-end education while ultimately facing the fate of irrelevance.

The wealthy have the money, relationships, networks and influence to take advantage of the numerous internships, private tutoring, online courses, concierge services, and travel experiences, already for sale but not yet marketed within the context of learning. The best education they could give their children is not by way of traditional schooling. At some stage they will wake up to this opportunity.

The flaws in our society exposed by the current pandemic also suggest that the education industry may well realize a new role – the emotional, cognitive and collective development of society as a whole. If that is the case, we will undoubtedly see the education system turn from its focus on individual career trajectories, which is fast becoming redundant anyway, returning to the shaping of cultures and communities more relevant for the new realities. When that happens it will not be a shock.

The wild card could well be the voices of the unheeded and the dispossessed joining us in fresh dialogues of possibility. When we find value in willingly offering a free education to the under-privileged, bringing them together in multicultural communities, facilitating their exploration of real-world problems from entirely new perspectives, and turning their discoveries into action, we will have found what education is really for. A wiser evolution of the human family and its reimagined presence on this Earth.