“The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.” JFK Inaugural Address January 20, 1961
“Technology is giving life the potential to flourish like never before – or to self-destruct.”
Max Tegmark, President of the Future of Life Institute at MIT, from his book Life 3.0.
Introduction: We are Living at the Hinge of History
There has never been a more important or exciting time to be alive. Sir Martin Rees, the former President of the Royal Society of Science, a post previously held by Issac Newton, explained in his book Our Final Century, that we are living at the most important time in the history of the universe! If that statement were true in 2003, imagine the importance of that statement today.
Indeed, no one should have any doubt that our world will be fundamentally transformed in ways we cannot imagine over the next 25 years. Imagine you are in the year 1900, and someone came up to you and said that humans would learn to fly, walk on the moon, and split the atom, creating a weapon of such power that it could destroy all life on the planet.
Can anyone tell us what the next 25 years will bring? The clear answer is no, and the reason is simple: the pace of technological change continues to accelerate at an exponential rate, if not a double exponential rate.
Industry participants tell us that AI compute now doubles every six months, which, if sustained, will lead to a million-fold increase in AI compute over the next decade, and this is before Quantum Computing adds its 725 trillion Big Bangs into the mix: Buckle Your Seatbelts
The futurists tell us that, given today’s pace of change, we will live the equivalent of 20,000 years of change in our lifetimes. They expect that in the 2030s, humans will merge with machines, thereby bringing an end to disease, poverty, hunger, and the need to work, as AI and billions of robots will do everything for us. They predict that machine intelligence will account for 99% of all global intelligence within a decade.
Are you, your family, and your community ready for a million-fold increase in AI compute, or for computers that can do calculations that it would take today’s top supercomputers 725 trillion Big Bangs to compute? Are you and your family ready for the equivalent of 20,000 years of change in the next 25 years?
The obvious answer is no. No one is prepared for this rate of change. Our global society is woefully unprepared for the Technology Tsunami approaching, partly because the AI revolution, predicted for 75 years, has arrived 25 years ahead of schedule.
What does that mean for those of us alive today?
It means we need to radically transform the way we govern, educate, and do business across the globe and in your community. We need to urgently find ways to bring our local communities and humanity together to align and use the Technology Tsunami hurdling our way for the good of all of humanity.
We need to urgently secure control of the double-edged sword that is AI. The industry participants tell us that there is a 80% to 85% probability that AI will usher in a post-scarcity, solved ,Utopian world, and a 15% to 20% probability that it will take over and get rid of us.
No one should have any doubt that the next decades will be the most consequential in human history and that the decisions we make in the coming years will determine the fate of humanity for millennia, as well as the fate of trillions of human beings yet to be born.
The fundamental question every educator, parent, public servant, and human being should be asking themselves is ‘How do I prepare myself, my children, and my community for AI and the Technology Tsunami hurdling my way?’
Our response is simple. First, we need to understand the opportunities and challenges coming our way, and then we need to begin to design global and local community solutions.
In terms of understanding the world around us today, we have written our first online book that provides you with an opportunity to hear directly from the principal industry participants as to how they see AI transforming our world: https://joecarvin.com/our-book/
We have also begun to design global solutions with a focus on K12 educators and students. While global solutions are very much needed, it seems far more likely to us that if people are going to take the time to build a world of Sustainable Super Abundance, it makes much more sense for them to start in their local community, building communities of Sustainable Super Abundance from the ground up.
We therefore suggest that communities make every effort to come together and utilize dramatic advances in technology to create their own community of Sustainable Super Abundance. We recommend that communities unite as never before and agree clear set of goals for the year 2050, building pathways to achieve those goals by incorporating AI and Stellar Technologies in a way that takes into account your community’s unique strengths.
K12 School Districts Should Lead on Creating the Pathways to Future Ready Success
We believe that K12 schools can and should play an important, even leading role in determining how the whole of your community prepares for the Technology Tsubami coming our way for a number of reasons.
First and foremost, because preparing youth for individual and societal success is the central mission of every school district in the world as John Dewey made clear as far back as 1934, “The purpose of education has always been to everyone, in essence, the same—to give the young the things they need in order to develop in an orderly, sequential way into members of society…
Any education is, in its forms and methods, an outgrowth of the needs of the society in which it exists.” —John Dewey, “Individual Psychology and Education,” The Philosopher, 12, 1934
https://files.ascd.org/staticfiles/ascd/pdf/journals/ed_update/eu201207_infographic.pdf
While the needs of today’s world have changed dramatically, the mission for K12 educators remains the same – prepare today’s youth for the needs of our global society.
Second, there is no other entity in most communities whose stated mission is so forward-looking that their success depends on their ability to prepare new entrants for the world in 2038.
Third, in many communities around the world the greatest local community expenditure goes to local schools. For example, in New York State two out of every three property tax dollars goes to the schools. That means every community is making an extremely important investment in its community via the schools.
Fourth, as we will explore more fully below, we are living in an upside down world where global youth know how to use the most powerful tool in the world more effectively than adults.
Fifth, many communities rally around their schools which often serve as a source of community pride.
Sixth, there is a precedent with the Community Schools Model for schools to serve as community connectors for multiple reasons.
We Live in an Upside Down World
Not only is it important to understand that no one can really predict where our global society will be in 2040 in terms of jobs and social structure, it is also important to understand that we are living in an upside-down world where, for the first time in history, global youth know how to use the most powerful tool on the planet Earth – technology – better than their elders.
Whereas adults struggle to keep up with the pace of technological change, global youth take this pace of change in stride, viewing it as the natural order of things. I can’t tell you how many elementary school classrooms we have visited, where the students end up showing their teachers how to use the latest technological tools.
However, it is also important to understand that those of us who are older have one distinct advantage that will die with us, and that is we are the last generation to grow up in a world without cell phones and technology at our fingertips. For better or worse, we grew up in a more human-centered world.
We therefore believe that now more than ever, intergenerational collaboration will be crucial to ensuring collective and positive impact from emerging technologies.
The Clarkstown Model is a Great Solution for an Upside-Down World
We have been very fortunate to work with the Clarkstown school district over the last 3 years and help them implement their future-ready programs, where they strive to prepare their students for the
unprecedented opportunities and challenges of the 21st Century by working with K12 educators to help their students build Global Competence, Financial Readiness, and Tech/AI awareness.
As part of their future-ready commitment, the Clarkstown team has invested considerable time and effort in introducing AI into their schools. They have quickly become a leader in delivering
Artificial Intelligence (AI) education to their students.
Their students became so strong that Superintendent Marc Baiocco and Director of Instructional Technology and STEM, Jen Mazza, decided to offer this human resource to both local businesses and local government to lend a hand in an externship program they created. They successfully launched this program, which we are calling The Clarkstown Model, this past summer. You can click on this video to learn more about their program:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_4mIIXHQE0wiSvV4gwBmsagMaRRKfGAf/view?usp=sharing
It seems clear to us that the Clarkstown model provides an inspiring example of how a future-ready school district can contribute to its community, offering a win-win for students, local businesses, and local government. We believe that high school youth and educators should increasingly be viewed as a vital community resource and as exemplars of the kind of intergenerational cooperation that is very much needed in today’s world. Moreover, in a world where lifelong learning is essential to success, school districts should be viewed as a critical community resource for adult learning as well.
Creating a More Robust Future Ready Community Schools Movement
The Community School Movement has a long history here in the US and has started to expand overseas as well. The traditional Community School strategy transforms schools into vital neighborhood hubs, integrating academics with health, social services, family engagement, and creating a culture of caring and belonging. This movement has grown globally as a response to poverty, inequality, and shifting educational priorities, and it is seen as a pathway to educational equity and whole-child development.
The roots of community schooling can be traced to the early 1900s, influenced by thinkers like John Dewey and activists such as Jane Addams, who envisioned schools as “social centers” for civic, social, and educational services. The movement received another boost in 1997 when the Coalition of Community Schools was founded with an equity-focused strategy:
The Coalition for Community Schools
While community schools could theoretically benefit all communities, their current implementation patterns reflect their origins as an equity-focused strategy designed to address the systemic disadvantages facing students in underserved communities. We believe that the fundamental transformation of our world taking place as a result of the AI revolution arriving two decades ahead of schedule requires an urgent, full-on community response from every community across the world.
Our vision is mega-clear, those individuals, entities, or communities that know how to use AI for their benefit and amplify their strengths will succeed, and those that do not will be left behind. We are therefore urging every community across the world to come together and collaborate in an unprecedented way to build solutions and pathways to become communities of Sustainable Super Abundance.
We believe an enhanced Future Ready Community School Model can serve as an important catalyst to generate the kinds of community-wide conversations that are needed to prepare for the future for a number of reasons.
The Future Ready Community Schools Model Can Drive Pathways to Future Ready Success
A robust community-school strategy identifies both the needs and assets of a community to bring about systemic change. Central to the work of community schools is building an ecosystem with an infrastructure that supports the goals of both the school and the community.
With a robust Future Ready Community School strategy, communities can grow from the inside out, starting with their youth. A school district that reflects the ethos and goals of its community and builds on and continues to develop that ethos and those goals is the key to 21st-century success, so long as the challenges and opportunities are made clear.
The Community-wide Convo Should Generate & Identify Future Ready Needs & Ideas
If you want to prepare your students for 21st-century success, you need to provide for and invest in that success. Schools will need to provide your students with classes and educators designed to prepare them for that success. Clearly, starting with a vision for 2050 and offering skills and classes that achieve the needed skills is critical to the success of our students and our community.
From a OneWorld perspective, we believe Global Competence, Financial Readiness, Tech/AI
awareness are critical to individual success in the 21st Century, as well as new forms of engaged, respectful citizenship.
In a 21st-century world, entrepreneurship will be critical to student success. Should setting up a social enterprise or for-profit enterprise, using a combination of PBL/Service Learning/Design Thinking, be a prerequisite for graduation? To be clear, students will learn as much from setting up an enterprise that fails as they will from one that is successful.
New York State is Encouraging These Kinds of Conversations
New York State just completed a comprehensive, thorough, far-ranging evaluation of its educational programs. One of the surprising conclusions to come out of the New York State Blue Ribbon Commission report (BRC) states that one of the best predictors of life success is Optional Coursework, as can be seen on Page 11 of the report: New York State Blue Ribbon Commission on Graduation Measures
The commission evaluated various educational components, including Optional Coursework, Math Curriculum, College Prep Programs, Additional Experiences, Non-academic Skills, and Required Curriculum, in relation to achieving six identified success factors. The findings revealed that the Required Curriculum was the least effective, contributing only to college enrollment, while the Optional Coursework emerged as the most effective, positively influencing all five of the other categories.
The reason seems clear: as mentioned above the big risk in education today is that we are preparing students for a world that no longer exists. As Peter Diamandis makes clear in this spectacular video, we not only need to prepare our youth for where the world is today, but we also need to prepare global youth for where the world will be 10 years from today.
Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jndZviHWE28&t=159s
The Model Provides Students with Invaluable Real-World Experience
Not only will the community benefit from developing a capable, future-ready, youthful human resource along the lines of Clarkstown, the students will also gain invaluable real-world experience.
Indeed, the more they are connected to real world, project based learning (PBL) the more everyone will benefit.
A Clear Plan Will Maximize and Enhance Community Spend on Schools
In New York State, two out of every three dollars of Property Taxes go to schools. Clearly, the biggest expenditure of any community in New York state goes to its community’s schools. How well are today’s expenditures preparing your community of Sustainable Super Abundance now available to us by 2050 if not sooner?
Successful 21st-century educators need to work back from their 2050 goals and determine the skills needed to help students and their community successfully compete in our 21st-century world. Strong collaboration across generations is the best way to ensure success for your community in the 21st Century.
A Robust Community-wide Conversation on AI will be Needed
We have no doubt that one’s capacity to use AI to amplify one’s productivity will be the critical success factor over the next 25 years. That goes for individuals, schools, municipalities, businesses, and not-for-profits.
Any school district or community that hopes to attain 21st-century success will need a clear, robust AI strategy. AI convos and meetings should be as common as a trip to the deli.
Clarkstown Superintendent Baiocco often paraphrases Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, saying that AI won’t take away jobs, but people skilled in AI will replace those who aren’t. We wholeheartedly agree with this statement, which you can see here:
A Robust Community-wide Conversation on the Future of Education Will be Needed
No industry will be more fundamentally transformed over the next 25 years than the education industry. Communities that learn to leverage technology for enhanced instruction will help their communities, educators, and students become real winners, while those that do not will be left behind.
As per the discussion in the previous section, we do not expect AI to replace teachers; we expect that properly used AI will help teachers do what they love, and that is, facilitate learning in unprecedented ways.
For underserved school districts in particular, technology can be the big equalizer. We also expect that the industrial age system will not last another 25 years. Increasingly, students will learn at their own pace, guided by educators who get to teach once again.
A Robust Community-wide Conversation on the Future of Energy Will be Needed
If we are going to really think globally and act locally, we as a community really need to think about how we are going to source, use, and save energy.
There is a new book out that is a must-read for anyone interested in sustainability and climate change and that book is Stellar: A World Beyond Limts and How to Get There, by Tony Seba and James Arbib.
They explain that energy is the lifeblood of modern civilization. They suggest that dramatic advances in three technologies – solar, wind and batteries (SWB) – create the possibility of a “stellar” energy system that, once built, requires no ongoing inputs and produces no toxic outputs.
They recommend that local communities work hard to become stellar communities. Clearly, communities that are serious-minded about creating a world of Sustainable Super Abundance by 2050 need to take a serious look at the potential for creating the stellar world described by Seba and Arbib.
We can think of no better science project led by Community Schools 2050 than one that seeks to understand how its community receives and uses energy, as well as examines the possibility of implementing a Stellar Energy system.
The Lack of Visibility Relative to the Future Requires New Forms of Intergenerational Collaboration
We have long held that educators (and parents) are being challenged as never before, as they are being asked to prepare K-12 youth for a world that no one understands, for jobs that do not yet exist.
Our educational and parenting tasks have been made more difficult as the pace of change continues to accelerate, which shows no signs of letting up: Buckle Your Seatbelts
Indeed, we would argue that the accelerating pace of change has created an unprecedented set of affairs that our global society needs to address for a number of reasons.
First, as Yuval Noah Harari, the global thought leader and author of Sapiens and Homo
Deus explains, for the first time in human history, adults are no longer a good guide to the future.
Not because they are not dedicated to the well-being of their children, but rather, because no one has ever experienced a pace of change like the one we are experiencing today.
In the first 40 seconds of this video, Harari highlights the need for improved intergenerational collaboration in his new book, Unstoppable, for kids, so that they may understand the world around them, particularly at this crucial time in human history, where “…for the first time, adults are not really good guides for the future of these kids.
We have no idea what the world will look like when today’s children grow up. Nobody knows what the economy or the job market or what society will look like in 10 or 20 years.”
In this interview with Stephen Colbert, Harari explains once again that no one understands what the world will look like in ten to twenty years, and, therefore, nobody today has any idea what to
teach young people who will still be relevant in twenty years.