Schools are one of the principal barriers to the growth of not only this new industry, but the whole world economy. Replacing the bureaucratic empire of educational institutions with a high-tech commercial industry will pull the cork out of the knowledge-age bottleneck … The institution of contemporary, “public” education is a 19th-century innovation designed as a worker-factory for an industrial economy. Both have as much utility in today’s modern economy of advanced information technology as the Conestoga wagon or blacksmith shop.
Predictor: Perelman, Lewis J.
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article he wrote for Wired magazine, Lewis J. Perelman addresses the future of education in an age of digital networks in the form of an open letter to the nation’s information industry executives. He writes:”We all know that the world economy is going through what some call a ‘second industrial revolution,’ as knowledge-based businesses replace production-based businesses at the core of economic activity. In the trenches of this revolution, a host of companies are scrambling to capture the high ground of the new multimedia, telecomputing mega-industry that is springing up from the digital integration of many diverse enterprises … Schools are one of the principal barriers to the growth of not only this new industry, but the whole world economy. Replacing the bureaucratic empire of educational institutions with a high-tech commercial industry will pull the cork out of the knowledge-age bottleneck – opening up an annual market worth $450 billion in the U.S. alone. Recent campaign rhetoric aside, the real threat posed to our economy by education, schools and colleges is not inadequacy but excess: too much schooling at too high a cost. The conventional ‘technology’ of the classroom is a thousand-year-old invention initially adopted to discipline an esoteric cadre of acetic monks. The institution of contemporary, ‘public’ education is a 19th-century innovation designed as a worker-factory for an industrial economy. Both have as much utility in today’s modern economy of advanced information technology as the Conestoga wagon or blacksmith shop.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: E-learning
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: School’s Out: The Hyperlearning Revolution Will Replace Public Education
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/hyperlearning_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Stotler, Larry