Education 2.0 & 3.0

Society is changing in this era of global digital networks. Messages get around the world in minutes. As a result we are more connected to our fellow humans. We talk with people in every part of the world. Young people identify with other young people. Global social movements can quickly appear, and also disappear. Markets and institutions are being replaced by platforms in banking, lodging, transportation, and a growing number of fields.

The platform economy is also a rental economy, where little is owned and the platform capitalists control the rules [Just ask someone who has had their identity taken on Facebook]. As a result of this connectivity, people can identify with those like themselves. Seb Paquet called this “ridiculously easy group-forming”. However, the tendency to tribalism can be strong, and many of us are not prepared for this ‘change in the human condition’. The reversal of the positive aspects of a globally connected world is seeing everything as binary and dealing with complexity like a reality television show. This seems to be the tendency for many people, aided by the (still) market-oriented mass media. The possibility of Canada’s public broadcaster CBC to eliminate advertising may be a step in the right direction to counter this potential McLuhnesque reversal.

Via Edumorfosis, Ivon Prefontaine, PhD