Serendipity35

Edge.org's annual question for 2009 is WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING? What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?

There are answers from 151 big thinkers online. I only recognized about a half dozen names and those are the ones I looked at first.

The idea that will change the game of knowledge is the realization that it is more important to understand events, objects, and processes in their relationship with each other than in their singular structure. Western science has achieved wonders with its analytic focus, but it is now time to take synthesis seriously.

Physicist Lisa Randall (who wrote Warped Passages) says that "Coordinated and Expanded Computational Power Will Change Science."  Medical doctor Dean Ornish writes that "Genes Are Not Our Fate."

The one that really caught my attention was the answer from Chris Anderson. He founded Future Publishing which runs about 100 magazines (Imagine Media, Business 2.0 etc.), but left eight years ago to concentrate on his non-profit, The Sapling Foundation which now owns the TED Conference (TED = Technology Entertainment Design). He is now the Curator of the TED Conference.If you have never looked at the video of speakers they offer, you should subscribe to their podcast, find them in YouTube, or head right over to their site after you finish reading this post!

Anderson's answer is titled "A WEB-EMPOWERED REVOLUTION IN TEACHING" (excerpted below - emphasis mine)

What if the average human were able to contribute more than consume? To add more than subtract? Think of the world as if each person drives a balance sheet. On the negative side are the resources they consume without replacing, on the positive side are the contributions they make to the planet in the form of the resources they produce, the lasting artifacts-of-value they build, and the ideas and technologies that might create a better future for their family, their community and for the planet as a whole. Our whole future hangs on whether the sum of those balance sheets can turn positive.

What might make that possible? One key reason for hope is that so far we have barely scraped the surface of human potential. Throughout history, the vast majority of humans have not been the people they could have been... an unknown but vast number of those grinding out a living today have the potential to be world-changers... if only we could find a way of unlocking that potential.

And what does he think might unlock that potential?

Knowledge and inspiration. If you learn of ideas that could transform your life, and you feel the inspiration necessary to act on that knowledge, there's a real chance your life will indeed be transformed. There are many scary things about today's world. But one that is truly thrilling is that the means of spreading both knowledge and inspiration have never been greater.

Here is, for me, the most interesting thing he says is about what we can do as teachers today that we could not do even five years ago.

Five years ago, an amazing teacher or professor with the ability to truly catalyze the lives of his or her students could realistically hope to impact maybe 100 people each year. Today that same teacher can have their words spread on video to millions of eager students. There are already numerous examples of powerful talks that have spread virally to massive Internet audiences.

It's Web 2.0 taken to Teacher 2.0 and it's possible partly because of the cheap and easily available technology.

Driving this unexpected phenomenon is the fact that the physical cost of distributing a recorded talk or lecture anywhere in the world via the internet has fallen effectively to zero. This has happened with breathtaking speed and its implications are not yet widely understood. But it is surely capable of transforming global education. For one thing, the realization that today's best teachers can become global celebrities is going to boost the caliber of those who teach.

Teachers as celebrities? He even goes as far as to say

For the first time in many years it's possible to imagine ambitious, brilliant 18-year-olds putting 'teacher' at the top of their career choice list. Indeed the very definition of "great teacher" will expand, as numerous others outside the profession with the ability to communicate important ideas find a new incentive to make that talent available to the world. Additionally every existing teacher can greatly amplify their own abilities by inviting into their classroom, on video, the world's greatest scientists, visionaries and tutors. (Can a teacher inspire over video? Absolutely. We hear jaw-dropping stories of this every day.)

A few TED Talks to try:

• Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
• Dan Gilbert: Exploring the frontiers of happiness
• Steven Pinker: Chalking it up to the blank slate