A boy in Singapore. A coach in Trichy. A competition in Ulan Bator.A friend in Los Angeles. Ignited by interest. Powered by people.Empowered by digital.

– Living Digital 2040, Future of Work, Education and Healthcare

If you are more of a math person, learn about art, music, and literature. If you are more artistic, musical, or literary, learn some math and science!

– Learning How to Learn, A Guide for Kids and Teens

What would you like to learn that is not currently taught in school? Some version of this question was posed to both a ten-year-old and an older student. The ten-year-old had to respond verbally in a stimulus-based oral conversation and the other student had to craft his response in the form of a three-point reflective essay.

The ten-year-old spoke about how he very much preferred to learn from television programmes instead of books. His response was well-thought-out and thought provoking at the same time.

He said in books he has to wait for a long time for the plot to move and gave the example of dialogue. When a character says something in dialogue, he has to also read, ‘he said’ at the end before being able to read the reply. When characters on television speak though, they just do it. He describes this as time efficient. To cite another example to support his point on efficiency, he described how once when he could not wait to get to the end of a book, he checked whether the film version was available on Netflix. When he did find it, he began to watch from where he had left off and was able to get to the end faster.

He added that when he reads, he is not able to imagine the scenes like he sees them on television and indeed he did get carried away as he began transcribing an entire action movie from memory.

The other student said he would like to learn Go which he came across online when he was researching chess because “it is fun and entertaining”. To him, ‘fun and entertaining’ meant “strategic thinking and patience”. According to him, “what makes this game interesting is its possibilities” for which there “is no way to memorise all”. He added that Go “keeps people alert”.

Interestingly, these very same themes and examples that the students gave, came up in a report, Living Digital 2040, which was written by experts from the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities of the Singapore University of Technology and Design in consultation with a wide spectrum of stakeholders.

The report envisions how work, education and healthcare might look like in 2040 based on current technological trends and to this end, provides various scenarios which could take form by then.

The report is brimming with insights and explanations. We will take a brief look at some of these.

The chapter on work gives a very detailed analysis on exactly what might be automated, succinctly encapsulated in the form of a Task Transition Framework. It shares the insight that it is tasks which would be automated and not jobs. TASK is also used as an acronym which stands for Technologies, Abilities, Skills and Knowledge. It offers hope and direction for the future by encouraging individuals to master TASK for tasks. This recommendation is based on the premise that the same tasks would be relevant across professions and sectors.

The chapter on education begins with the observation that while technology may be able to augment the learning experience in profound ways, it will not be able to “resolve on its own: what the purpose of education should be in a city”. It wonders aloud who this decision should lie with.

It asks if education should be “fun” or “functional” and concludes with the suggestion that in 2040, school would be “(fun)ctional”.

The system could be fun for students in two ways. One, they could be allowed to pursue seriously only what they were interested in by connecting them to experts globally. This would be possible for a wide range of interests because of the internet. Two, the mode of delivery for curriculum could be entertainment such as movies. It says this is becoming more feasible because more and more movies are based on real science and how things actually work in real life.

It cautions though that if fun was made the overarching or primary consideration in curriculum design, hirers would wonder if their employees were sufficiently grounded in the basics and why they were so easily bored. It asks what might happen if the work they had to eventually perform was not in the least as fun as what students had been used to for years.

Even so it settles on the (fun)ctional version of school because the authors are of the view that innovation will become the keystone of everything we do in both our work and personal lives. They explain that innovation is only possible through persistence and persistence is only possible if those involved find it fun.

Regardless of the eventual outcome in 2040, the report makes clear that it will be strategic to begin the journey of acquiring TASK from a young age. Acquisition of TASK for tasks will itself require a different type of TASK.

Students will need to know how to learn especially if they are pursuing interests informally. One way to do this is to read, Learning How to Learn. The book is written for students, parents and teachers.

It explains how we learn and offers easy to implement practices which students can use at once, to supercharge their learning. Some examples of these include, why sometimes we have to take a break from something to master it, why hand writing notes is much more effective for learning and why talking to a rubber duck will help a learner gain clarity. According to the book, this technique is used even by computer programmers to help them figure out which parts of a code to change.

Students now are very familiar with multiple digital modalities. It is very possible for them to develop expertise on a wide variety of interests by learning how to learn. Technology is in this respect a great enabler. At the same time, there are concerns, as Living Digital 2040, notes, about what impact relying on technology will have on our brain functionality. The authors recommend researching the impact of human-computer interaction over the long term.

A Korean master retired because he lost to AlphaGo. It must be no fun playing against a machine.

The Brain Dojo