The Knowledge Economy is Broken (Part 1 of 3)

This is the first blog in a series of three that I'm publishing this week on the topic of the collective acceleration of technology and knowledge overload, how it's affecting our society, and what to do about it. My hope is that we'll stop talking about exponential technological growth and the disruption of everything long enough to acknowledge the fact that there may be some resulting side effects.

I have an idea. Let's pretend finding information is the same as learning, and then give everyone access to all the information in the world and let them wade through it and teach themselves.

You need to learn something? Here's your laptop, here's your smart phone--go get it. So far so good, right? All the information in the world is at your fingertips: MOOCs, Q&A, videos, and other stuff. Just take your time, you'll eventually figure it out.

Oh wait--um, forget that last part, because I have another idea. Let's disrupt every sector simultaneously, connect everyone in every city and speed up our environment to the point where we're in a constant state of flux and adaptation. Yeah, so whatever it is you need to know, you kind of need to learn it right now.

See, if you don't learn it right away, you won't be able to get ahead because it's likely to change soon--and while you're at it, first you need to get up to speed on the things you thought you knew that have already changed before you can make whatever you're currently learning work.

Of course, you'll need to have this stuff down by tomorrow. You do want to be competitive, don't you? I mean, with the whole world connected now, there are a lot of other folks that people can pay to do whatever it is you do. In fact, in a few years, I'm pretty sure your skills are on the list of those being replaced by robots, like accounting and all that other outdated stuff.

Any of this sound familiar yet?

Look everybody, here's the point. No one gets more excited than me about solving problems by redefining everything in sight, but if we're going to continue solving all of our problems by speeding up processes with technology, we need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room: adaptation.

Newsflash: No matter how much we speed up everything in our environment, our brains still remain human and still learn at the same rate.

We continue to live and act as if nothing's changed, yet everything has. More to the point, everything is constantly changing, but at an accelerated pace that we as humans weren't built for. As a result, we are all in an increasing state of constant flux and adaptation.

Does that sound crazy? Ok, let me ask you this: Do you feel like you have enough hours in the day to learn everything you need to know? Is it getting harder to filter out and process all of the information being thrown at you? Just wait. Technology is growing exponentially, and I've never heard of any technology yet being used to make things slower.

Here's my prediction for better or worse:

As a result of the acceleration of technology, our ability to adapt to constant change will become the most important survival skill of the 21st century.

Stay tuned for Part 2 - Adaptation: The One Essential Survival Skill.

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