Lately I have been reading a fascinating book called ‘Open’ by David Price OBE (interviewed recently on the DWYL blog here). It’s all about ‘how we will live, work and learn in the future’ and looks at how the world is changing faster than governments and big corporations are prepared for or want to believe. It shows how the middle man is being removed from so many traditional equations, and how people power has come alive since the advent of Twitter and other platforms which allow instant global communication, often for free so accessible to nearly everyone.
Some of it is scary – just contemplating the rate of change of technology in the past few years and what that means for our children literally makes your mind boggle – but most of it is inspiring and full of hope. ‘Open’ tells the story of a future which is anybody’s and everybody’s; a future where we openly share our gifts, knowledge and expertise for the greater good, and receive so much more in return. It demonstrates how this is already happening with so many huge educational institutes like the Open University, many Ivy League colleges and huge online learning sites such as Coursera, but also how we have just scratched the surface of where things are going in the future.
