We live in a rapidly changing world.
The technological advancements that we witness are unprecedented and challenge our understanding of society, work, economics, and life at its very foundation.
It's hard to predict the future precisely, yet there are clear dynamics giving us an idea of what the future may look like.
There are three changes interesting to observe: media, code, and artificial intelligence.
In media, anyone today can create content easily and cheaply. It has never been more accessible. With this, the way humanity consumes information has shifted from trusting institutions to get information and be entertained to consuming directly from other people. We have this societal filter of what content should be distributed through measuring engagement. Despite this not being the best predictor for usefulness, the dynamic is clear: anyone can create media and get it seen by millions of people.
In code, the barriers to build useful products have never been lower. The rise of the web as we know it today makes it easy for any 14-year-old kid to build what they dream of in a couple of weeks. And with large language models by your side, learning the skills to build things gets easier.
In AI, perhaps the biggest tectonic shift the world will see over the coming years, we observe that many tasks that used to require humans will be increasingly augmented by intelligent systems, allowing an economy to be productive while reducing the amount of human labour required to do so.
Combining all these dynamics, one may question the idea of jobs and consequently life as we know it today.
As mentioned, predicting the future is impossible, but I have a strong conviction on what I think our world will look like:
Our world is shifting away from the conventional model of jobs in organisations to individuals making careers by following their passions.
And we see this precedent already today. There have never been so many people doing what they truly love and making a career out of it. Filmmakers on YouTube. Musicians on TikTok. Software engineers building side projects.
With this shift, our education and understanding need to evolve as well. If the purpose of education is to make young individuals fit for a successful life in our world and society, it needs to embody this change at its very heart.
The question is: who will make that change happen?