A turbo-powered tech challenge
OPINION: The technological changes we are seeing in the world are unprecedented.
Never has technology been more powerful, more available or cheaper than it is today, and we are just at the beginning.
The projected growth of technology in the next two years is purported to be as much as we have seen in the whole of history. This will have a greater impact on the way we live and work than any of us can imagine.
Concurrent with this is an ongoing concern about the impact of continuing skills shortages on business, which chief executives in New Zealand and globally see as a major concern.
Both issues mean it is vital to reassess the way we educate people and the content of our education.
It is critical that, as we build an increasingly complex economy in Christchurch and the Canterbury region, we have students being prepared in an optimal way to participate in the economy.
Employers are looking for young New Zealanders who are able to relate well to others, are motivated and reliable, resilient and enterprising, literate and numerate, and are informed decision makers, while at the same time being critical and creative thinkers.
These attributes are going to be increasingly important as we consider the dynamic future that awaits young people.
Education, particularly at a secondary school level, is not just about allowing them to make immediate choices that confront them at the end of school.
It is also about ensuring young people are equipped to consider their career paths throughout life.
Those paths will markedly be influenced by changes in the workplace driven by technology.
It is legitimate to ask whether our education system will have the ability to keep pace with the changes confronting us.
There are already robots that are perfectly capable of doing background legal research for complex court cases.
There are robots that are much more accurate in their pathological diagnosis than human beings.
We are seeing the beginnings right here in this city of autonomous electric vehicles, with one being trialled at Christchurch International Airport.
Some predict that within eight years a simple cellphone will be as powerful as the human brain.
The collection, interpretation, and use of data is increasing exponentially to the extent that already some of us are becoming concerned about who is collecting it and what they are using it for.
I can recall that in the 1970s when computer technology was just starting to ramp up, some of us thought the requirement for employees would materially drop over time as computers took over.
That did not happen, but slowly and surely, workplace dynamics changed and there are many things that cellphones and computers are doing now that used to be done manually by large numbers of people.
In future work will be different. Employees will have strong literacy, language, and numeracy skills and they will increasingly need communication and computer skills, as well as the ability to think creatively and critically.
Tomorrow’s employees will need to be able to think across traditional disciplines, make connections, and solve problems.
Already division of labour is increasingly in teams, rather than in hierarchy of command. The old model of educated managers supervising the less educated workforce has gone.
So as we face our future, we need to be putting much more emphasis on educating our young people in new ways to embrace what is ahead of us.
That is a significant challenge for us all.
Some predict that within eight years a simple cellphone will be as powerful as the human brain.