Software Is Eating the World. What's Expanding It?

You know how Marc Andreessen made that comment about software eating the world?

Flat World CEO Chris Etesse and I had a provocative conversation one afternoon about it.

“Education is expanding it,” Chris said.

Software has been eating the world for a while, it’s just happening much more visibly and much faster now. The same is true for education, which has always been the means by which humans gain knowledge and make discoveries that help us see beyond the limitations of our individual circumstances. Finally, we have a powerful yet cost effective means to educate more people in ways we never could have imagined in the past. We need to seize it. The future of the world depends on it.

We talk so much about technology that we sometimes forget about the imagination required to bring it to life. I proposed a series of essays to Chris, to cut through the chaos and highlight core areas that will definitely be part of the future of education. Flat World generously supported the work, which turned into Expanding The World: The Future of Education.

The project explores some of the questions people ask me a lot: Are my kids playing too much Minecraft? And: Is grit more important than talent? I asked Joe Tankersley, a Disney Imagineer for 19 years, about how to captivate an audience instead of just holding them captive. 2015 Teacher of the Year, who obtained her masters in an online program, reveals some of the myths associated with this new frontier.

We are all educators now, and we are all students. The walls of the global classroom have expanded to the size of a planet, and now include everyone with an internet connection. Measurement techniques have expanded with the advent of algorithms, enabling an unprecedented new ability to customize education and liberate students from seat time and, maybe eventually, from standardized tests.

As education expands the world and creates new possibilities, educators are overwhelmed by the options available to them. The new mindset demands a lot of educators. Technology alone isn’t enough, and without great educators and well designed environments, it can actually hurt. Imagination and technology are required in equal measure to expand the world and connect us so we can increasingly learn new things collaboratively. With every problem solved, a new one is created. We need people to keep learning, and keep teaching, and make a lifelong habit of it.

For two years, I have watched Flat World grow and develop sharp focus in a chaotic environment, driven by the fact that students don’t have time to wait. If the future is going to take shape the way we imagine, then education has to serve that reality and the people who will collaboratively create it. Flat World is an authentic pioneer in this effort. 

PS. The image above shows the readership of Expanding The World the second day after launch. People from 50 countries visited the site, and it was such a thrill to see a map with their locations, since the project is about Expanding The World through technology and imagination! I would love to know where you're from, if you see this post. Please let me know in comments. 

Rita J King is the EVP for Business Development at Science House. She advises leaders on the development of collaborative culture by making organizational culture visible so it can be measured and transformed. She is a senior advisor to The Culture Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, and a Fellow at the Salzburg Global Forum. She is a Weizmann Advocate for Curiosity. She writes about the future for Fast Company and invents story architecture, characters and novel technologies for film and TV as a futurist for the Science and Entertainment Exchange. Follow @RitaJKing on Twitter.