mercredi 23 mai 2018

L'éducation du futur associera science et art.


Should We Have a Futurist Mindset?
It is time to We should start with education and our approach to education if our future generation is to develop a futuristic mindset. 

by Dr. Ruwantissa Abeyratne
For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future…John F. Kennedy
( May 9, 2018, Montreal, Sri Lanka Guardian) It is incontrovertible that global winds of massive technological changes coupled with economic shifts are sweeping us toward a revolutionary way of considering our future.  Julie Friedman Steele, Chairperson on the Board of the World Future Society says: “Our current global story line isn’t working.  With accelerating technological growth and access to collective knowledge revolutionizing every day life, the zero-sum game of capitalism is unsustainable. With automated labour force on the horizon, and the looming existential threats of artificial intelligence (AI), nuclear weapons, and climate change, there is too much at stake to prolong the status quo”.    Friedman warns of the unfathomable bounds of AI and the incomprehensible dimensions it will reach in the future and calls for us to be futuristic citizens with a futuristic mindset.  In this context, it must be noted that, although AI is essentially a process of machine learning with data and algorithms which enables it to do better than humans in such areas as medical diagnosis and even legal research, there are constraints that impel us to be cautiously optimistic about this technology.
Garry Kasparov, one-time world chess champion who matched his wits   with IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue (and beat it before losing a rematch), adds to the concept of the futuristic mindset by saying “humans will still set the goals and establish the priorities.  We must ensure that our agnostic machines represent the best of our human morality”.  There is no dissonance between what Friedman says and what Kasparov states.  On the contrary, they complement each other well with the inexorable conclusion that this is an era where we must get our left brain to coordinate with the right brain and enable them to work in consonance to meet the future of the exponential march of technology with the values we place on our rules of conduct.
The left brain controls our powers of analysis and our ability to make logical conclusions.  The right side of the brain makes us innovative, creative and ethical.  This is indeed what our futuristic mindset should be – a combination and harmonious blending of the two.  In his book How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci, author Michael J. Gelb hails Da Vinci as the greatest genius of all time (which this author does not doubt) and ascribes Da Vinci’s genius to the fact that he employed both sides of his brain equally, bringing to bear the question as to whether Da Vinci was a scientist interested in art or an artist interested in science.  The conclusion is that he was both.  This enabled Da Vinci to excel in being an artist, scientist, architect, inventor, engineer, cook and musician, all in one. The seven steps identified by Gelb that characterised Da Vinci’s mindset was Curiosita (insatiable curiosity); Demostrazione (demonstrability of competence and testing knowledge with experience); sensazione (sharpening the senses consistently); sfumato (being comfortable with ambiguity); arte/scienza (balance science and art, logic & imagination); corporalita (develop poise: the balance of body & mind): and connessione (maintain a big picture perspective).
There are megatrends facing us portending immense pressure on our world.  This  is even more reason that we should have a futurist mindset that is balanced between the sciences and art with an infusion of our moral values.  These megatrends, which are: the economic shift from the West to the East; rapid urbanization; demographic changes; innovative technology; and climate change, all call for what Kasparov calls our “new tools” when he says: “if we succeed, our new tools will make us smarter, enabling us to better understand our world, and ourselves”.
Here’s my take.  We should start with education and our approach to education if our future generation is to develop a futuristic mindset.  In other words, we must enable our children to think like Da Vinci (not with the specific intent of creating a world of super geniuses, although that would not hurt), particularly in the context of arte/scienza (balance science and art, logic & imagination).  Elizabeth H. Blackburn, President of the Salk Institute in La Jolla California and Nobel Laureate says: “let science be our guidepost” and she is absolutely right.  However, one must heed the tremendous contribution of the humanities if we are to control AI according to human values and achieve the balance of Da Vinci’s arte/scienza. Only a talent-based education system that replaces an examination-based education system could achieve this balance.
Fareed Zakaria, in his book In Defence of a Liberal Education says that the education he received enabled him to achieve three things: “1) it teaches you to write, 2) to think, and 3) to learn”.  Zakaria writes of the value of a liberal education in developing the individual life of the mind and ourselves as human beings.  After all, as someone once said, morality is the harmonious blending of the elements of freedom and compulsion.  While we must have the compulsion to make science our guidepost, we must have the freedom of thinking that enable us to set values for ourselves when using science and technology.  It is not certain at all that AI could one day be infused with the categorical imperative of Immanuel Kant or the meth; muditha and karuna of the teachings of the enlightened one.  The futuristic mindset should devise a way that robots can be a tool towards a better world that could enhance our lifestyles while at the same time enabling us to retain our human values.   As Zakaria says in one of his essays: “This dismissal of broad-based learning, however, comes from a fundamental misreading of the facts — and puts America on a dangerously narrow path for the future. The United States has led the world in economic dynamism, innovation and entrepreneurship thanks to exactly the kind of teaching we are now told to defenestrate. A broad general education helps foster critical thinking and creativity. Exposure to a variety of fields produces synergy and cross fertilization. Yes, science and technology are crucial components of this education, but so are English and philosophy”.
So let us begin to think like Da Vinci and be aware of what Erich Fromm said: “the danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots”.

The author is a Senior Associate at Aviation Strategies International.

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