Educating for an Abundant Future

Educating for an Abundant FuturePossibilities and dilemmasAccelerating Returns

Ray Kurzweil:

S-Curve

Rapid Development1980:

A processor with a speed of about 1 Mhz.

A maximum of 48 kilobytes of RAM

No hard drive (It used an audio cassette recorder to load programs)

Really primitive graphics-in the mid 1980s, it was stated in a popular computer magazine that it would never be possible to display photograph-quality pictures on a computer screen because the data and processing requirements were too high.

There was no modem, and no Internet to connect with, even if you had a modem.

The price was around $2638.00 (Source: oldcomputers.net.) Thats about $10,100 in 2014 money.

5Now!

A processor with a speed of 3.2 GHz.

6Gigabytes of RAM.

A 1 TB hard drive.

High-Definition quality graphics

Abilities unimagined in 1980: Social networking, movies on demand, access to educational resources, and access to information (albeit sometimes rather dubious information). The calculations about the rice story above were performed by the author on the Wolfram Alpha website, in seconds, for free.

The price is about $550. That would be about $130 in 1977 money. 6Exponential Development

Old Parable: Sage and the King

Halfway: Square 32=65,000kg of rice.

Square 64 (Final)=1.2 x 1015 kg of rice 7A Lot1.2 x 1015 kg of rice

Three Exponential TechnologiesGenetics (Biotechnology)Nanotechnology (Including 3-Dimensional Printing)Robotics (and Artificial Intelligence)Organ Printing

Genes as InformationReprogramming genes to correct for problemsNanotechnology may play a role hereNanotechnology may have other medical applications as wellRecently, scientists lengthened the telomeres (part of DNA that controls cell death) of lab mice, causing them to live longer.3D Printing

Robotics

Fast Food

Robots in Class!

Your TurnWhat are some possibilities that you see? How can these developments affect how you live?How might they affect what we teach?How might they affect what we teach?Can you think of potential ethical dilemmas?