Two conversations

There are two conversations taking place in learning. I’ve noticed that I have to keep stopping to check which one I’m hearing.

It’s quite easy to see why. If you were to ask ‘what’s going on with photography these days?’ one response might reference the demise of Kodak – the 133-yr old company that invented the handheld camera – whilst another might reference the extraordinary way in which photography has now become integrated into our everyday lives – courtesy of digital cameras, smartphones and facebook. We might even say photography has become ‘democratised’.

You could have a similar conversation about music: it’s been a bad time for the music industry, but a great time for producing, sharing and listening to music. Even I have music apps. And then there’s journalism.

It’s a familiar theme of course. Jaron Lanier does a great job of describing it in his book ‘Who Owns the Future?’: disruptive technologies remove the artificial dams created in the flow of capital, by transforming physical resources into digital resources.

And, as has been visible for some years now, the same applies to learning. If learning is ‘trapped’ in books, in people, in buildings then an industry can grow around the controlled flow of learning. We called this industry ‘education’. But once it becomes digital it all falls apart – the predictable outcome is a great time for learning, a terrible time for education.

And so, when people ask about ‘the future of learning’ I have to stop and check which conversation they are looking to have. On the one hand there are bleak prospects for the industry and a lot of worried professionals wondering what the future has in store. On the other hand people are integrating learning into every aspect of their lives in to an unprecedented degree.

Even now there are people trying to create dams – admittedly much shallower ones – to stem the flow of capital from the industry. One dam that people are talking about is the ‘MOOC’ (massively open online course). The idea behind them is that whilst knowledge is now ‘democratised’, certification is not. A certificate still has value by virtue of the authority issuing it - and if the process of learning cannot be monetised, perhaps the process of issuing certificates still can.

This is fairly smart – it’s what iTunes has done for music: people can still download music for free, but Apple have priced music at the point at which the experience of legitimacy is marginally better than the illegitimate experience (anyone transferring MP3s via iTunes will know what I mean. But for how long – given that sales of Android devices already outstrip those of Apple devices?)

 Soon, though, what little money there is to be made in ‘education’ will be made by identifying those who know things and connecting them with those who don’t. The money is in the small service, not the big course. Who is on that trajectory today? Maybe LinkedIN.

We can also learn something from the movie industry. When movies were released on VHS, people predicted the end of the cinema. But instead people paid ever higher prices to go. People will still pay a premium for the ‘experience’ – for the experience of gathering with fellows to witness the great occasion. Perhaps to take a photo & share it online. But three years’ worth of this would be an extraordinary indulgence.

And what of certification? How long will that last? Not very long, I imagine. Today, the vast majority of degree qualifications do not relate directly to areas of employment. As the half-life of knowledge reduces, and the job role disintegrates into frothy tasks, what will matter is the freelancer’s portfolio. And who will judge this portfolio? The university – or the employer? As an employer what am I to make of a three-tier certificate gained after three years of study in an unrelated field, when I can review a candidate’s accomplishments at arbitrary levels of detail? Today, the central question is ‘can you show me what you have done?’ followed by ‘and how did you go about doing it?’.

I find the underlying cultural mechanics fascinating. It’s fractal: Deleuze & Guattari use the term ‘body without organs’ to describe primordial chaos – the smooth undifferentiated space from which all striated, organised space arises. But restricting chaos generates a kind of surplus energy – a surplus which builds until the restrictions can no longer hold, and give way to the next iteration. The solution is always the same: smaller restrictions better approximate smooth space – rather like ever-improving  screen resolutions approximate reality. Larger, pixelated systems give way.  And so for a time we will be able to charge small amounts for small things – masterclasses, blogs, e-books, views, tasks, apps, recommendations.

I suppose this may sound a little bleak - but if you had been Kodak ten years ago - knowing what we know today - what would you have done?