We had today the Kick off of the first ICT LABS Master School in Stockholm and I addressed the students with these remarks that I like to share with you:

We live in a world that is full of promises, because it is changing a lot and in any change there lies opportunities.

>>> half time knowledge today is 5 years and getting shorter. In 5 years time what you know today will be of marginal value.

>>> You are likely to have 5 different jobs in your life and 4 of them have not yet been invented yet.

>>> Universities should teach for creating people able to change the world, since the world will be continuously changing and university should create the leaders of change, not the followers!

Three main forces are reshaping the world:

1. Technology: Moore’s law doubling every 18 months, meaning in the next 18 months we will see changes of the same magnitude of what happened in the last 50 years. You were not here 50 year ago but believe me, it was quite different! The equivalent of SMS was telex and it cost a thousands fold as much and took a day to be delivered.
   Moore’s law will hit physical barriers in 400 years from now… Nothing to worry about “now”! However, the real barrier to Moore’s law are in economics. It is costing more and more to go smaller and smaller on silicon. We are actually seeing today a slow down (a delay of 2 years in the shift to extreme ultraviolet light for etching wafer.
   At the same time we see a faster than Moore’s law evolution in genome sequencing, 2 times faster and accelerating. And make no mistake: this is the new ICT.
   The genome code is even better than Java: you have a library of applets that has been refined over 3 billion years of testing and experimentation…
   Hybrid of bio and silicon are already being used.
2. Economy: the cost of invention and innovation is going down. Transaction cost, that is how much it cost to involve different players on a value chain, is plummeting. This is what has enabled thousands, million of youngster to turn their creativity into biz.
   And we have just started. Economic forces in an open competitive market stimulate diversity, differentiation (as it happens in Nature). Don’t be misled by those who speak about convergence. It is all about creating new things that will be selected through the market sieve.
   This is your world. You don’t need enormous capital for doing great things. You need creativity, a sound understanding of technology and economics and the capability to exploit the ecosystem. And here is where the ICT LABS come to play, in supporting you, but they cannot do what only you can do.
3. Crises: there are big issues facing the world, and they go beyond religious clashes, cultural diversity, politics and even economic inequalities. I was at the STS Forum in Kyoto, just few days ago and the focus was on these big looming crises and the way to tackle them.
   The raising sea level will displace 1 billion people in the next 40 years. Along with that the geography of agricultural production will shift. Many of the most productive areas in the world ill be submerged. The warming of Siberia will make agriculture possible where now it is not, but at the same time it will disperse in the atmosphere trillion of tons of methane that is now frozen in the tundra, further increasing the world temperature and decreasing the absorption capabilities of CO2 by the oceans.
   The so called energy crises is real, but it is often misrepresented. Today we use less energy than what is available. However we are using it at different rate in different parts of the world. In Europe we use about 2.5 times the energy available in the whole Earth, were all people on Earth use as much as we do here. In the US they use 4.5 times as much, in the Arabian peninsula 16 times as much. Clearly there are other place in the world where people use much less energy.
   The world is spinning with US consuming, China producing and Germany developing the tools China uses for production. All the rest is ancillary in production and consumption.
   China this year will be using as much energy as US, but the pro-capita level is one sixth of the US. One Chinese uses one sixth of the energy of an American citizen. But this comparison is hiding the fact that a large portion of China energy use is for producing goods for the US citizen. The average Chinese uses one twentieth of the energy used by the average US citizen for himself and you know that energy use is a good way to gauge the well being of a population. We cannot expect Chinese, or any other person in the world, not to increase its hunger for energy.
   We have the technology for increasing energy availability (you cannot produce energy, just transform it so that it becomes easier to use and more affordable) but this does not solve the problem: the more you use energy, the more you dissipate. If we would have to provide all the people the amount of energy being used by the average US citizen the oceans will start to boil, as result of energy dissipation, and this is the second law of thermodynamics. You cannot work around it. And this is a thresholds we may reach within this century, assuming we are really working to increase quality of life everywhere and in particular where quality of life is today very low.
   Hence, the solution lies not in making more energy available but in needing less energy to sustain our quality of life. Nature uses less than one thousandths of the energy we use in a chip to do the same thing. As Richard Feynman said, there is plenty of space at the bottom.
   This is where biotech, bioengineering, nanotech, ICT have to work. And this is the challenge we have when we talk about Smart Energy, as well as Smart spaces, Digital Cities, Clouds, Security and all the areas we are addressing.

So if these are the challenges, or at least some of them, what can the solutions be?

Education is the first answer. Through better education we can hope for solution by harvesting the collective intelligence of human beings. But the feeling is that today’s education is not able to be up to the challenges.

At the STS a specific session focussed on University in the 21st century and there was the clear vision that they have to be different.
Today courses are moving on line. Coursera has attracted 1.6 million students in its classes from all over the world… Someone is even looking far into the future and imagine brains reaching seamless into the Internet with no need for studying thing: get a chip implanted, update it once in a while and all knowledge is within you!

It is still science fiction but the boundaries with science are getting blurred.

However, what is needed is action, people like you that can turn creativity into ideas and ideas into actions to change the world, and create economic wealth in the process.

There was a consensus at the STS that globalization, going abroad, mingling among students and among students and industry is key.

Universities have to become a mingling place, and as knowledge life time shortens we need to have continuous education, and therefore continuous mingling. Learn and create was also mentioned as the crucial role of student at university.

Learning, mingling, creating. Those are the key ingredients of the ICT Labs Master School. Leverage  on it and create your and our future.

The one laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative, http://laptop.org/en/, launched few years ago by Nicholas Negroponte is now in full deployment, last news being the acquisition of 400 laptop by Sri Lanka for elementary school children. When launched they aimed at a computer costing no more than 100$. The first produced cost over 150 and the new release to be delivered in January 2010 should cost 200$ (the dollar value slipped during these years).

Nicholas has now imagined a new laptop, a tablet one, having one big screen on one side and a smaller, eInk screen on the other side sharing the surface with a touch keyboard (see figure, though mind that it is just vapourware, so far). Its targeted cost is 75$.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/xo-3-concept-a-crazy-thin-tablet-olpc-for-just-75/

May be it will never happen (at that price target) but just the power of imagining it can fuel innovation by other.

This is what happened with the OLPC. The initiative did not succeed in delivering a 100$ computer but it managed to sell the idea of the need to have a computer per child il many developing countries, provided the software that children can use to learn and devised smart ways to deploy these computers and creating wireless access networks to access the big Internet. This is an amazing success, at least to me.

At the same time other companies took up the challenge of developing very cheap machine. An example is Cherrypal: they announced two weeks ago the availability of a no frill computer, called Cherrypal Africa, selling for 99$.

The laptop includes 256MB of RAM, a 2GB flash drive for data storage, a 7” color screen, integrated WiFi and Ethernet, one USB 2.0 and two USB 1.1 ports and built in speaker. Go ahead and buy one at:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=11535&m=43065

I am really impressed. It shows what imagination, technology and hard work can do.

I can easily envisage a world where every youngster can use a laptop and be connected through that with the knowledge of the world. Clearly this is just a first, small, step. What we are still missing is to learn how to teach all these children to use these devices to learn and use the knowledge at their fingertips.

The European Commission has released a study produced by several expert in the education field containing six future scenario for education. Fully private, partly private and partly public, fully public and so on. The sixth scenario is the most striking one: it foresees the disappearance of the educational system, replaced by services available on the Internet.

Now, a similar scenario has started to appear in the United States. Tuition in the USA is very expensive, several thousands dollars a year for college and university. Now, with on line courses a student can embark in a self tuition process for as little as 99$ a month. StraighterLine, http://www.straighterline.com/about/ , is a company offering for a flat rate of 99$ a month as many course as you feel like to take. Several people, who lost their jobs because of the crises, have taken this offer and most discovered that they worked very well. Through Internet one can access course materials, read text, watch video, listen to podcast, work on exercises and take exams. More than that, one could really learn.

It is also possible to become part of a group of similar students, collaborate in the group through instant messages and bulletin boards. There is the possibility to get help from on line tutors via email and if you can’t help and need a human voice there is also one on one support via Skype.

The nice thing about on line courses like those offered by StraighterLine is that you can move at your pace, as well as saving a lot of money. A four course package may be taken in two months (at a cost of 200$); an equivalent one taken from a University may cost anywhere in between 3,000 and 6,000 dollars and would take two three times more to complete.

It is just starting and so far is not creating problem at colleges and universities since the people who are turning to on line education offered by companies like StraighterLine are the one that need to update their education having lost a job or looking for more promising opportunities.

However, it is not difficult to predict that colleges and universities will start to feel the heat as more offering will be available, and industry will start to make no difference between education gained in a college or on line. The curse of free information is going to hit also the education sector.

Devices like eReader and a new way of producing information to provide self assessment will change the horizon; my bet is before the end of the next decade.

Take a look at this article presenting some real cases of people using on line courses and tell me if you also believe that we are on the brink of a new way of learning.

As we are going to reach the 9 billion mark by the middle of this century we are rapidly reaching the limit of resources we can use. Clean water supplies are over exploited and threatened by global warming. Tropical forests are rapidly being destroyed and many species are disappearing.

Marine fishing is collapsing under overexploitation. Growing acidification of the ocean is threatening the ecosystem on which we depend. Human activities are threatening our own existence. Science and technology have a role to play but cannot solve just by themselves the problems we are facing.

Progress is hampered by the idea that actions to protect the environment is detrimental to the economic progress. Japan is setting an example by targeting a 25% carbon dioxide reduction by 2020.  Scientists have to raise awareness on risks and steer political action.

These the main outcome of the Forum:

Rapid progress in improving energy efficiency and conservation and clean alternative energy development are essential. There is agreement that nuclear power is crucially important to decreasing carbon emissions. We should increase the implementation of fission power under strict conditions of nuclear safeguards, safety and security, including the management of waste streams. We must increase the capacity for producing nuclear fission power plants based on existing technologies while at the same time expand research into next generation systems. The development of nuclear fusion power should be pursued for the future.

The increased proliferation of nuclear proliferation has become a critical issue for the future of humankind. It is vital for us to address this threat and take decisive steps to prevent proliferation.

It is recognized that transportation is still highly dependent on fossil fuels and there is consensus that it is important to develop electric and fuel cell vehicles as soon as possible, provided that the power sources used reduce the carbon footprint without reducing the food supply.

Population growth, climate change and greater use and improvement of health care services will increase the cost burden to society. New systems of health provision based on technologies such as genomics and regenerative medicine represented by stem cells must be fully explored. It can be expected that the rate of progress in preventive medicine will be accelerated. Health service capacity in the developing countries must be strengthened.

There is the need to support agricultural research and extension, more resilient crops, better farming systems and more effective distribution systems to respond to the serious food supply crises caused by world’s increased population, demand for biofuels and climate change.

Clear water availability is one of the most pressing global issue we must deal with. Science and technology have played an important role in desalination, recycling and water purification but more research is needed. Management of water is inherently regional and local. Regional models based on better locally produced monitoring data can guide local action. Think globally, assess regionally act locally. Analytical models and monitoring systems must be improved.

There is general consensus that ICT is essential to improving human lives and promoting economic growth. The more pervasive use of ICT shall go hand in hand with the insurance of tackling the concerns over security, privacy and the use of personal data. Robotic, associated with IT, has the potential to be of great service to humankind.

It is noted the importance of fair and objective reporting by the media on the lights and shadows of science and technology with regard to public policy issues. It is important to stimulate continuing exchanges between scientists and the media.

Education is one of the key topic at the STS. Scientific education is lagging behind in many countries, the United States are losing grounds to China and India. A lack of scientific culture is felt as a major hurdle in solving the huge problems laying ahead, from health care to food supply. MIsguided attitude on GMOs is blocking an increase in productivity in many poor countries. Crops resting to draught, to insects are not planted because of opposition to GMOs in countries that have other form of food supply but that opposition hampers countries that desperately need them.

How can education meet the challenges ahead? Is formal and structued education the way to go or will it be supplemented, displaced by new individual forms of learning?

Is Facebook, YouTube going to replace the present education approach? Is the younger generation going to be so used to the Internet world that they will not consider, unless forced, to use today’s approaches to learning?

Is it possible to learn outside any scheme? Wouldn’t that create the problem of an education that is not sound? 

Will education move to an open environment enabling education ecosystems across countries boundaries?

There is common sense, non common sense and common nonsense. Unfortunately this latter common prevails. This was the opening statement of the Nobel Laureate Harold Kroto.
Wikipedia has revolutionised the access to scientific information, along with Google. But still we have people, and politicians are at the forefront, believing in creationism and conforming their policy to that.
We have to show that science is based on evidence, on truth that can be experimented with and disputed, it is not dogma. We need science and a scientific approach to get out of the ecological mess we are in right now.

The content available on the Web, the wealth of information just a click away is astounding. The problem, of course, is to separate the wheat from the chaff. But that should be the new goal for today’s and tomorrow teachers!

In Vail, Colorado USA, the local teaching community having to face an increase in students from 500 to 10,000 turned to the web and created the “Beyond Textbook” initiative, http://beyondtextbooks.org/.

Take a look. It is very interesting ‘cause it shows a direction for the future of education.

TO me, it also struck the cord of ecosystem. Indeed, it is easy to see how this initiatives is creating a powerful seed for an education ecosystem.

The content of the web gets connected through this initiatives by wires (links) that provide the support to education. This links can easily be flanked by others, can be specialised to fit specific learning needs and these can be provided by many players.

Of course the Vail teaching community has the control point since it is up to them to decide what a students has to learn to “pass the exam” but the way to learn what is required is open (although they are suggesting several paths) and can be provided by different parties that are not necessarily connected to the teachers.

Actually, each student can provide more information and also indicate better ways for learning. The system, by being open, lends itself to continuous improvement, both in content and in ways to digest the content.

The possibilities are limitless.

This is way beyond the idea of using Internet based content to save money on textbook (as Mr. Schwarzenegger has announced this summer: replace math and science textbook in high school with open source digital version to save hundreds of millions of dollars a year to California): it is about changing the education paradigm and in such a way that continuous improvement becomes possible.

This is the question put forward by Walter Bender, the former president of the 100$ lap top computer initiatives first dreamed by Nicholas Negroponte.

Indeed, Bender points out, we have many many old computers that are ready to be scrapped, no longer able to run the new gigantic Oss proposed by Apple and Microsoft.

Well, he said, why can’t we use those computers plugging in a simple 5$ USB pen loaded with Open Software programs?. The MIT is setting the pace by providing software specifically developed for kids, including a new interface, Sugar, especially designed to engage children helping them to read and express their creativity.

This news is relevant to us because it can be a seed for an ecosystem, inviting a myriad of players to develop applications and of course a few of these will be the children themselves.

The all area of education, if we look at it as an ecosystem, is particularly interesting since it already has million of players (the students and the teachers) and all it takes to become an ecosystem is a connectivity fabric. In this area Telecom Operators can play a very important role, but they need to change their attitude of being “connection providers” to become ecosystem players.

http://www.technologyreview.com/video/?vid=382