Cognitive Age Illiteracy
Great post by Wayne Hodgins Living and Learning at the Beginning of the Cognitive Age? A few of the main points from his post:
I’ve often observed that for the past few thousand years, we as humans have focused on leveraging and augmenting our physical abilities—initially with basic tools such as the lever, the wheel, pulleys, screws, etc. and then on through machines, internal combustion engines, hydraulics, electricity and robots. All of these enable us to do things we either could physically not do ourselves or give us the ability to do them faster, easier, and at greater scale.
… the future (and some aspects of the present) is about putting more and more focus on leveraging and augmenting our cognitive capabilities. The most obvious example is computer technology that enables us to do things with our brains that we either could not do or now can do much faster, easier, and at greater scale.
… we are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, and that indeed the future is all about leveraging and augmenting our cognitive abilities.
This all aligns very well with the need for an increased focus on learning.
He asks for comments at the end. Wayne is someone I’ve known (and admired) for years. His observations are completely in line with what we are seeing.
In his post and in the NY Times op-ed column by David Brooks The Cognitive Age that he discusses, quite a bit of the focus is on international aspects. In a way, I’m less interested in international and more concerned that the vast majority of knowledge workers are facing an increasing gap between their current knowledge work skills and what is needed in the future.
To me, this represents a new kind of illiteracy. And it’s worse, because it’s not a conscious illiteracy. You feel like you can still do your job. But you are slowly falling behind and as time goes by it becomes harder to catch up because you lack the learning skills that are part of this new literacy.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 11th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
I found it interesting that you ended with workers lacking the “learning skills” needed for this new literacy. I would like to hear more on what people consider as learning skills in a wired world.
June 12th, 2008 at 7:55 am
I have to question your comment “I’m not interested in international”. The fact is that we are linked to the global workplace today, and we should be interested in international if we want to identify the gap between current and future work skills. Looking at work overseas will help us to identify trends.
When I worked in Costa Rica, the fax machine was widely used, whereas it was only in the beginning stages of being used in the US. I was not aware until I was in a new environment of what I was lacking (including new uses of established technology as we also used computer games and videos to teach English before it was being done in the US). I guess this would be the conscious illiteracy which becomes obvious when we look outside (our own communities, disciplines, organizations, culture).
June 12th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Tony–great article–thanks for sharing. I think it will be interesting to see how we will be able to leverage our cognitive skills, especially within an American society that still has a somewhat uneasy relationship with intelligence. Although we tend to run in circles that value learning and “being smart,” a significant number of Americans (might even be a majority) are very suspicious of “brains.” And in significant pockets of our culture, being smart is something people hide.
I believe that it’s true that we’ll need to figure out this puzzle, but I also think we can’t underestimate how much culture-change work will need to happen to even change the notion that we should be focusing on sharpening our cognitive abilities in order to be successful.
@Virginia–your experience points to one of the literacies that I think we do need to cultivate–”cultural competence.” As you point out, we need to be able to look outside ourselves into different communities, disciplines, organizations, etc. and consider what we might learn from their experiences. This also forces us to consider our own assumptions and models in ways that will certainly help us become better learners.
@Britt–For me, some of the “learning to learn” skills we need including being able to see patterns, identify and question assumptions and models and synthesize. I’m a big fan of Dan Pink’s Whole New Mind, as well as many of Stephen Downes’ ideas about the core competencies we need.
June 12th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
“You feel like you can still do your job. But you are slowly falling behind …”
What an excellent response to those either passively or actively avoiding these skills! Though standard, tried and true, or familiar techniques may still “work”, overall functionality and effectiveness wears away as surely as a sand dune in a storm.
Trick is to convince folks that the learning curve and organizational changes required are worth the effort and not as painful as they may fear. Perhaps a hidden concern is the decrease in central control as the workforce more actively communicates, collaborates and explores.
June 12th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Britt - we definitely are planning to discuss “learning skills in a wired world” - not sure I had those words - so that’s a nice way to encapsulate.
Virginia - What I meant was that there’s a lot of politics and fear mongering around a flat world. The NY Times article and to some degree Nick Carr’s piece have some of that in them. Discussing those aspects and turning this into - “if you don’t do this people from overseas will displace you” … You are absolutely correct that this is a global world and there are lots of issues related to that.
Michele - good point around “being smart” … one thing that I’ve found very interesting is how it seems that when I was in K-12 education, you wanted to hide if you were smart in order to be cool. Now, based on a very small sampling mind you, it seems to be more cool to be smart. Still, to Ken Allan’s point about a digital elite, good to remind ourselves. I often am guilty of saying should rather than can when discussing some of these new behaviors and skills.
Also - I actually think we can (easily) underestimate the amount of culture change, but we shouldn’t.
In fact, I need to point to Harold’s recent post about this very issue.
Bill - “trick is … worth the effort” - boy do I hear you on that … I’m struggling with this. I’m not convinced that the “loss of control” is going to be the angle to use - after all - a lot of what we discuss around this does lead to loss of certain types of control.
Great discussion!