At a glance, the article is quite alarmist: learners have a right to use smart drugs; teachers guilty of discrimination if they don’t ensure equal access to cognition enhancers; children holding all their digital profiles on memory sticks!  But that’s just at a first glance.

What is so interesting about the paper upon which this is based is that its content causes an emotional response from the reader – and the TES article does just the same.  This is because the possibilities offered by technological change can challenge the beliefs and values we hold about education.

The data and trends that this article builds from are about the possiblities of using smart drugs, of psyco-pharmaceuticals to enhance memory and performance etc.  But it isn’t the possibility of these trends developing that causes such a reaction in the reader, after all, we already have Ritalin, Modafinil as well as a whole host of banned drugs for performance atheletes.  The reaction comes from how these changes challenge or are challenged-by our views and beliefs about education.

The greatest strength of this article is that is sparks conversations and thought about possible futures – and it takes questions about the future of education into the wider educational community.  In a previous post I presented some benefits for thinking about the future and the TES article is a great example of point 3: bringing about preferable futures.  The paper highlights techno trends that are part of a possible, even a probable future – but the way in which we consider these technological possiblities and the ways in which we act now, go towards creating the preferable future that we want.  So – if the TES article caused a gut reaction or the socio-tech paper caused a moment of reflection – consider the paper some more, share your thoughts on millionfutures or by commenting here.

For me the sentence “['smart' drugs] are expected to be common in schools within 20 years” is the one that concerns me – because it takes away the agency that I/we have to influence the way in these drugs are used in education – indeed the agency we have over any of these possible futures (positively and negatively).

There were a number of really interesting conversations at the FAN club event about cosmetic psycho-pharmacology and I’ll leave you with a question that was raised and left open.  Where is the acceptable line between early morning coffee to help with concentration; vitamins to feel healthy; fish oils for learning, ritalin for specific learner groups, and the use of provigil and other ’smart drugs’?

The RSA is currently looking at two important sorts of futures in particular: cognition, and the role of the government. There are some great videos on their website featuring lectures and provocations about how developments may play out in the future in these areas. Yet for a provocative glimpse at the pace of continuity, the RSA’s Journal (Summer ‘08) has a great timeline created – as stimulus rather than prediction – by Richard Watson. Many thanks to the RSA for allowing me to reproduce it here:

RSA Journal Timeline

Spelling and free roads both disappear around 2020, whilst work-free weekends and free public services have gone by 2030. The disappearance of childhood, the family room and free public spaces all have stark consequences for the way we think about the world operating (and of course interesting discussions about definitions of all of them), yet blindness and deafness, physical pain and household chores may all die to thankful applause. ‘Death’ disappears by 2050 but evidentally Cher and Cliff Richard just before.

The timeline is presented ‘with tongue firmly in cheek’ – but an interesting pair of questions are in the preamble – ‘do you disagree with something becoming extinct or merely with the date of the extinction? Do you have any serious evidence for why this might be incorrect or is it just a gut feeling?’

It’s not solely about the quality of the evidence and information that possible futures are based upon (which is a shame considering the incredible challenge leads developing the evidence within BCH!) but about making explicit the values (and artefacts and practices etc) that we want to hold on to. BCH is doing this in many ways – Million Futures is beautiful start to questions of hopes and aspirations. Often preferable futures are based upon the continuation of the values and emotional connections that we currently have, so it is important to consider those things that we wish to hold on to – artefacts, beliefs and relationships – and more than considering them, it is important to make them explicit and actively ensure that they can play a role in the preferable future we’re working towards. If you’d like to share the things you’re hoping will remain – get in touch.

Richard’s book ‘Future Files: The 5 trends that will shape the next 50 years‘ is being launched at an RSA event on Tuesday 23 September. (Views on the timeline are welcomed by the RSA and of course as comments here too). If you can’t wait for that, the first chapter is available for download.

]]> http://blog.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/2008/07/25/28/feed/ 0 http://blog.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/2008/07/16/12/ http://blog.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/2008/07/16/12/#comments Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:44:08 +0000 Dan Sutch http://blog.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/?p=12 “…in the year 2025, things have calmed down a lot. There are still some people living the cities, but on the whole they aren’t nice places to be. The only way to make a reasonable living there now is by prostitution, drug-dealing, or protection rackets. Those who aren’t involved in these lucrative trades struggle to make ends meet. They pull the copper out of the walls and rip out sinks and pipework to swap for food on street corners.”

No, this isn’t a prediction made from the Beyond Current Horizons programme, but part of the scenario used within the Utopia Experiment (more details can be found here). The experiment was led by Dr Dylan Evans who first came to my attention at the Futurelab Innovations workshop on Emotion Technology – at the time Dylan was an Evolutionary Psychologist and Senior Lecturer in Intelligent Autonomous Systems at the University of the West of England.

I’ll return to some of the work being done at UWE, particularly because it deals with robotics, autonomous systems (such as gastrobots) and emotional relationships with technologies (especially in light of the recent publication of ‘Love and Sex with Robots‘ by David Levy), all of which have implications for the ways in which we think about technologies and the use of technologies in the future.

For this post though, a pointer specifically to the Utopia Experiment. There are many ways to investigate and consider possible futures, some of the more traditional are highlighted in the Futures Review but also of course there are many different science fiction programmes and books that showcase ways of thinking about futures. But this applied project takes a rich scenario and invites participants not to consider it – but to live it – in order to understand how relationships develop, new communuities form and different ways of acting in possible future worlds.

Dylan is writing up the experiment (hoping to publish sometime in 2009 amongst other research he’s undertaking at Cork Constraint Computation Centre) – and in the meantime is drawing some of his findings and thoughts together for an article for the Beyond Current Horizons website. In particular he’s writing about some of the difficulties faced when thinking about the future.

As with all findings, articles and papers that are published on the Beyond Current Horizons website, there will be a post, comment or link here – so sign up for the RSS feed to this blog if you want to be alerted to new additions to the website.