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How can Microsoft keep growing if the
market for office software and electronic devices is saturated with cheaper but
yet high-quality programs and devices (e.g. from China or India)? The severe competition
brings profit margins to almost zero.
The cloud business is still growing, but it also shows signs of saturation.
The answer is simple – do not look for new
market areas, look for new market regions,
where technologies that are abundant in developed countries are still in
greatly underdeveloped state.
Africa! The place where Bill Gates already
has set his foot.
Yes, there is a problem with Africa -
Africa is poor. Not many people can afford a computer or a tablet.
Hence, give them something they can afford, something cheap, or even
free. But what can be used like a computer or a tablet.
You got it!
A phone!
There are very cheap smartphones. Cellular
infrastructure already exists and in a state of a fast development (a good area
for an investment). What is needed is an ability to use a smartphone as a
computer. For that, make a phone to be a
remote terminal for connecting with a computer. Naturally, that requires
development of interconnected cloud centers. And cheap but effective software
(e.g. a lighter version of an existing remote desktop).
That will be a solid investment in the future
infrastructure that will keep clients within its framework.
Forever.
If you do it right, you can even revive a
Windows phone (or a Fire phone, for that matter, if Jeff Bezos would be (a)
fast enough to make the first move, and (b) had left any business interest
beyond his idea-fix, i.e. leaving this planet for good).
The business project I just described
illustrates the difference between “simple” and “easy”.
People often don’t see the difference
between these two terms. But it is huge.
“Simple” means “the strategy to solve a
problem and achieve a goal is clear”.
The solution may have many steps, it may require a large volume of recourses,
but it does not require a complex analysis for establishing what to do, and how
to do it. The vast majority of actions are based on the existing experience,
and require mostly just a certain modification of the previous experience to tune it up for the
current situation. But the execution of the steps may not be “easy” because it
may require a large amount of work of different type: organization, cooperation,
coordination, etc.
“Simple” is opposite to “complex”, and
“easy” is opposite to “hard”.
“Simple” and “easy” do not belong to the
same axis. “Simple” and “complex” represent two opposite extremes of one axis
that describes a parameter called “complexity”.
“Hard” and “easy” represent two opposite
extremes of one axis that describes a parameter called “difficulty” (or “effort”).
A problem can be simple to figure out how
to solve it, but hard to execute the solution.
For example, development of a settlement
on the Moon is a simple problem that is hard to solve. The development of a
settlement on the floor of the ocean is a hard problem. Harder than a Moon
mission. But still it is a simple problem. Scientists and engineers know - in
principle - how to build complicated systems that can sustain pressure
difference of one atmosphere (on the Moon), or even several atmospheres (in the
ocean).
A complex problem is such that requires
special mental activities leading to designing a possible strategy for solving
that problem, because this particular problem or a similar one has not ever
been solved before. “Complex” means “needs a lot of figuring out”.
Terms “simple” and “complex” or “complicated”
are the terms that describe the type of mental work required to solve a problem
and achieve a goal. “Simple” is based mostly on retrieving and repeating.
“Complex” requires designing a solution to a problem (by figuring things out).
“Easy” or “hard” describe the amount of work
and effort, the number of steps and actions, the volume of resources required
to solve a problem.
Of course, there are gray areas where
“hard” and “complex” overlap. And some problems that in principle are simple
still may need a lot of figuring out on lower more detailed levels.
The point is that humans may be involved
into two very different practices (sometimes at the same time):
· A practice when activities are based mostly on retrieving from a memory (a.k.a. Google)
an already existing strategy and then reenacting
steps that has been used before for achieving a similar goal in a similar
situation.
· A practice that as a major activity requires
initiating and conducting a process of designing
a strategy that can be (hopefully) used to achieve a goal.
In order to be able to participate in
these different practices, i.e. to enact activities required by these different
practices, people must be immersed into different educational practices.
In simple words: an ability to participate in a specific human practice is defined by
the education one receives.
Unfortunately, in the U.S. vast numbers of
people, including politicians, parents and educators, simply have no idea what
education is, what is it about, why it's important, and how to make mass
education sufficient and efficient.
People who run different organizations or
projects related to education very often have a very primitive view on
education.
The vast majority of people, including
general public, educators, administrators, businessmen and politicians confuse
“I learned” with “I heard”. They don't know the difference between education
and enlightenment.
For them “you are learning” means “you are
listening/watching/reading”, and “you
learned something” means “you have received some information you have not had
in your memory before”. How can that new information be used - that doesn't
matter.
But what is the purpose of information if
one cannot use it for anything?
Presenting new information to people is
not education, it is enlightenment.
Being enlightened may feel good, but
unless that enlightenment alters in any way existing activities, helps solve a
new problem, helps achieve a new goal, or helps with achieving an old goal but
in a better (more efficient, faster) way – those feelings are irrelevant.
Education must result in a new ability, a
new skill. An educated person is a person who can perform new skills and
demonstrate new abilities, skills and abilities the person did not have before
the education happened. “I learned” means “I can demonstrate how I do something
I could not do before”.
An educated person is more than just and erudite with
an encyclopedia in his/her memory, more than just a knowledgeable person who
can quickly retrieve from a memory various facts (people call this person
“smart” and that is also a wrong term: What does it mean to be
"smart?"). An educated person is more than someone who knows how to do things. An educated
person is someone who can do things.
Remember when I wrote: “vast numbers of
people have no idea what education is, what is it about, why it's important,
and how to make mass education sufficient and efficient”?
There I used a tool writers call
“exaggeration”.
Of course, there are people who write
about education and say that education is not just about memorizing facts, it
is about becoming a competent person. That is why those people invented a new
term “a competency” to describe the learning goals and outcomes of education.
Educated people are people who have specific competencies, who are competent in
a specific professional areas.
But when we ask – how do we know if
someone is competent?; how do we know if someone possesses required
competencies? The answer inevitably goes down to asking a person “what do you
know?”, and “what can you do?”. “Asking” means “testing”, “assessing”, “measuring”.
That’s why it’s clear that any competency is just a set, a combination of
specific knowledge and skills.
In theory, everyone immediately agrees
that educated people – as the result of an educational practice – should be
knowledgeable and skillful. But in
reality, the vast majority of educational institutions focus much more on
enlightening students than on developing a specific skill set. And this is a serious
issue of the contemporary education.
Proponents of “knowledge economy” point at
another serious issue; they stress that one of such skill sets that should be
required for every graduate is to be composed of skills that allow graduates to
manage knowledge, i.e. to manage information flaw; graduates need to be able to
search for an information required for achieving a goal, and then to use that
information for achieving a goal.
My distinction between “simple” and “easy”
points at another, the third one, and the most serious issue of the
contemporary education.
Even if all graduates will possess skills
required to manage knowledge, they will be at risk of being replaced by
“knowledge machines” (e.g. think Google AI that can do a search for an answer to any specific question).
Even though the knowledge economy has not
yet taken over the large part of the largest economies, it has already become obsolete.
At least, ideologically.
Existing vast data bases eliminate the
need for very knowledgeable people, because anyone who can type in a question
can find an answer to practically anything. And with the rise of AI, relatively
soon the bulk of knowledge management will be done without human interaction
(this side of the future is discussed in other posts, starting from The Road To World
Domination Lies Through Mass Education; Part I).
A practice when activities are based
mostly on retrieving from a memory
(a.k.a. Google) an already existing strategy will be transferred over to AI. A
practice required reenacting steps
that has been used before for achieving a similar goal in a similar situation
will be transferred over to robots.
Any
practice that is based on a search and application of existing patterns (mechanical
and mental) eventually will be
transferred over to machines.
The only human practice that will remain
human will be a practice that as a major activity requires initiating and
conducting a process of designing a problem-solving
strategy.
Hence, the goal of all educational
institutions will be (and already should be) helping students developing skills
required for designing a problem-solving
strategy required for achieving a specific goal or set of goals.
In a design
economy all graduates will have to be designers (in their professional
fields).
To achieve this level of education students have to go through specifically
designed training.
Training people helping them to develop a
set of specific professional skills (make them competent in a specific
professional area) essentially is not much different from training circus
animals do tricks; show, explain, repeat.
Training people how to design solutions to
problems they have never solved before is very much different from training
circus animals do tricks.
The way educators teach today will never
help students to develop an ability to design solutions to problems they have
never previously solved. For every individual, the process of learning evolves
through three main stages: at first it is based mostly on receiving and
processing information; then education requires practicing in using that
information for achieving specific goals. This leads to the formation of
specific professional competencies. But how to make the next step, how to
transition to the third stage?
The answer is simple and it is based on
one of the laws of TeachOlogy (“Fundamental Laws of
TeachOlogy”).
People do not learn by watching, they
learn by doing.
People only learn by participating in a
practice they have to learn.
To learn something, one needs to be
immersed in a practice one is learning.
Learning is not about how intelligent one
is. Place a baby Einstein in jungles and let him be raised by monkeys. He will
become the smartest monkey in the jungle. But he will remain a monkey.
To learn how to talk one needs to talk. To
learn how to swim one needs to swim.
To learn how to design a solution to
problems one has never solved before one has to be designing solutions to
problems one has never solved before.
Teaching as a human practice that has been
evolving for hundreds of thousands of years. The first type of teaching was a
face-to-face demonstration of specific operations a master would show to a
student - how to operate with given things, objects and then student would be
practicing with operating those objects, and the master would be guiding, correcting
student’s actions. This type of teaching is very well known and a still is broadly
spread everywhere around the world – it’s called coaching, or a master class.
The invention of writing, and then printing allowed masters to describe all
their experience and detach that description from their personality. Books
could represent knowledge, like names and pictures of things use for specific
operations, the description of the steps in such operations leading to
achieving specific goals. Such texts would be basically a collection of a
recipes for specific actions in activities. Using words and diagrams would
allow students to learn some skills without a face-to-face interaction with a
master. Books allowed to significantly scale up the process of knowledge transfer.
That has led to a significant increase in the speed of human progress.
One of the functions of education as a
human practice is to establish sustainable transfer of knowledge from previous
generations to a current generation. One of the main reasons for inventing
education was simply to keep people from reinventing the wheel.
Let's say that everyone in the world is
the absolute genius, but at the same time, every person is absolutely
illiterate, meaning knows nothing. Since they all are geniuses, theoretically
they could reinvent all the human knowledge. But that would take way too much
time.
Over the period of decades, hundreds or
even thousands of years, education practitioners streamlined the process of transmitting knowledge; made it much more efficient than the process of
reinventing that knowledge again. And now, the vast majority of educators spend
the vast majority of time on making students to memorize facts and practice
specific skills. Proponents of knowledge economy want teachers to focus their
effort on training students how to manage information (e.g. how to search, organize,
classify information).
But for the future economy, for a design
economy, that is far from sufficient.
Since an ability for designing a process that will lead to achieving a specific goal will
be becoming much more important than an ability to retrieve knowledge or to demonstrating
a specific skill, educators must change the way they teach. And for that, teacher professional development field must also be transformed; at the minimum, it has to set aside significant amount of time for a teacher to practice in Professional Designing.
Learning has to lead to development of a
strong ability for designing solutions to new problems.
As for any ability, the development of an ability
for designing solutions to new problems has to start early. Sport coaches know
that for many people starting late is too late (that is why many parents bring
kids to a tennis court, or a swimming pool at a very early age).
This is because any human practice involves
specific organs in a human body, and every human practice inevitably result in
the use and development of those organs.
When one starts running, his/her legs get
stronger, lungs get larger, a hart gets stronger. And, in turn, this allows one
runs faster. There is a feedback circle between using body organs for some activity and developing those organs during that activity.
This shows another extremely important
role of a learning process, i.e. to expand abilities of people via developing
abilities of organs involved in those activities.
In part, learning expands an ability to
learn.
Learning is happening in a brain (among
other organs). Learning is affecting a brain, its structure. Essentially,
learning is changing states of existing neural elements and connections, and
making new neural connections between existing elements (more on that is in "Three Lessons From Neurology To Science Teachers", and "What Does a Teacher Need To Know About a Brain?").
A brain is a physiological basis of learning (like legs are physiological basis of running);
it acts like a muscle, it evolves like a muscle, it improves like a muscle, it
can be damaged like a muscle, it ages like a muscle.
The process of learning affects how brain
functions, affects its structure.
Different learning exercises, different learning
activities advance a brain in a way, similar to how different physical
exercises advance physical state of a human body, affect different organs of a
body.
This role of learning is absolutely
crucial for the development of a design ability.
At an early age, during the first fifteen to
twenty years, child development goes naturally fast; all organs in a body,
including a brain, can be easily formed and developed. With an age muscles,
bones, and brain become stiffer and stiffer. Developing all organs, including a
brain, becomes harder and harder; most efforts go into keeping organs in a good
shape, preventing organs from regression, degradation.
A mental activity of designing a solution
to a problem one has never solved before, and representing that solution in
textual and/or symbolic form, inevitably involves manipulating with a variety
of mental objects, including creating and assessing various possibilities for future
actions. That activity simple cannot be conducted in a brain, by a brain that
is incapable of manipulating with several mental objects at the same time.
When after a third statement a student forgets what was the first one, this student will not be able to design a complicated train of thoughts.
Another important professional ability - multi-tasking - is also based on the highly developed brain structure. Multi-tasking is merely an ability to switch between different mental tasks. When a brain is processing information related to one task, the regions in a brain devoted to another tasks remain idle. When needed, one can make a switch, make another region idle. But that is possible ONLY when a brain has such a capability. If switching to another task erases information about the previous task it only leads to a growing number of incomplete tasks.
And the ability to become a moral person is also available only to people with a developed brain. In order to follow "The Golden Rule" one needs - at the minimum - to be able to place himself/herself in someone else's shoes. That requires imagination. Imagination requires developed brain. In general, imagination is the most important mental ability of all. No type of designing is possible without imagination. Unfortunately, mass education not just ignores development of imagination, it stifles it. And watching TV shows, movies, or paling video games do NOT help ID (imagination development). The best three practices for ID are (1) reading, (2) writing (or story telling), (3) games required role playing (e.g. a theater).
When after a third statement a student forgets what was the first one, this student will not be able to design a complicated train of thoughts.
Another important professional ability - multi-tasking - is also based on the highly developed brain structure. Multi-tasking is merely an ability to switch between different mental tasks. When a brain is processing information related to one task, the regions in a brain devoted to another tasks remain idle. When needed, one can make a switch, make another region idle. But that is possible ONLY when a brain has such a capability. If switching to another task erases information about the previous task it only leads to a growing number of incomplete tasks.
And the ability to become a moral person is also available only to people with a developed brain. In order to follow "The Golden Rule" one needs - at the minimum - to be able to place himself/herself in someone else's shoes. That requires imagination. Imagination requires developed brain. In general, imagination is the most important mental ability of all. No type of designing is possible without imagination. Unfortunately, mass education not just ignores development of imagination, it stifles it. And watching TV shows, movies, or paling video games do NOT help ID (imagination development). The best three practices for ID are (1) reading, (2) writing (or story telling), (3) games required role playing (e.g. a theater).
Every healthy person, if starts learning early, can learn how to juggle with two or three balls. Learning that at an old age is much harder, and for some people even impossible.
Every healthy person, if starts learning
early, can learn how to juggle with many mental objects. Learning that at an
old age is much harder, and for some people even impossible.
The 9th Law of TeachOlgy
states: “If the only exercise students had been doing for 12 years is squats,
they will not be good at push-ups and pull-ups. Do not expect from students an
ability to think if all the had to do for 12 years was memorizing facts and
rules.”
That is why schools must start teaching
students how to design solutions to new problems at a very early age. If it’s
late, it is too late.
Education for the future must begin today.
Nowadays only elite schools can offer
the type of education required for succeeding in design economy.
In regular schools the main learning practice
is memorization, and because of that a brain does not get to develop structures
required for ability to design solutions to new problems (on the TOP of required
knowledge and skills, not instead of those).
In elite schools, children may be involved
in many different activities, including learning how to play a music instrument,
participating in a school theater, joining a fencing team, etc.
The more different activities – the better
for a brain development. It’s no coincidence than many famous physicists also
plaid some music instrument.
The race for economic prosperity will be
won by a country with the best system of mass education. And that system must teach
students important facts and skills, but also should help them develop an
ability for designing solutions to new problems.
As I mentioned in The Road To World
Domination Lies Through Mass Education; Part I, the central figure of such
education system is to be a good teacher; i.e. a teacher who himself/herself
possess the knowledge of important/required facts and skills, but also has a
developed ability for designing solutions to new problems.
P.S.
By the way: the obsession of our Earthy billionaires
with a space exploration only proves again the fact that they always focus their
attention only on simple problems, at least simple in principle. Because they
all have a very primate view on education (“Learned” = “Heard”), they just
cannot envision the complexity of the education system. If they could, they
would share some of their attention to at least one of the projects critical
for reforming education.
This is also a proof of the
fact that “rich” does not necessary mean “smart”. As Bill Maher said once: “People have to get over
this idea that because the guy is rich he’s that smart”.
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