It’s P.Q. and C.Q. as Much as I.Q. By Thomas L. Friedman. New York Times, January 29, 2013.
Start-Ups: The True Engines of Job Growth. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, January 30, 2013.
Thomas Friedman, lifelong learning, & “curiosity quotient.” By Marti. Telling Secrets, January 30, 2013.
Friedman:
What do
I mean by the Great Inflection? I mean something very big happened in the last
decade. The world went from connected to hyperconnected in a way that is
impacting every job, industry and school, but was largely disguised by
post-9/11 and the Great Recession. In 2004, I wrote a book, called “The World
Is Flat,” about how the world was getting digitally connected so more people
could compete, connect and collaborate from anywhere. When I wrote that book,
Facebook, Twitter, cloud computing, LinkedIn, 4G wireless, ultra-high-speed
bandwidth, big data, Skype, system-on-a-chip (SOC) circuits, iPhones, iPods,
iPads and cellphone apps didn’t exist, or were in their infancy.
Today,
not only do all these things exist, but, in combination, they’ve taken us from
connected to hyperconnected. Now, notes Craig Mundie, one of Microsoft’s top
technologists, not just elites, but virtually everyone everywhere has, or will
have soon, access to a hand-held computer/cellphone, which can be activated by
voice or touch, connected via the cloud to infinite applications and storage,
so they can work, invent, entertain, collaborate and learn for less money than
ever before. Alas, though, every boss now also has cheaper, easier, faster
access to more above-average software, automation, robotics, cheap labor and
cheap genius than ever before. That means the old average is over. Everyone who
wants a job now must demonstrate how they can add value better than the new
alternatives.
When
the world gets this hyperconnected, adds Mundie, the speed with which every job
and industry changes also goes into hypermode. “In the old days,” he said, “it
was assumed that your educational foundation would last your whole lifetime.
That is no longer true.” Because of the way every industry — from health care
to manufacturing to education — is now being transformed by cheap, fast,
connected computing power, the skill required for every decent job is rising as
is the necessity of lifelong learning. More and more things you know and tools
you use “are being made obsolete faster,” added Mundie. It’s as if every aspect
of our lives is now being driven by Moore’s Law. This is exacerbating our
unemployment problem.
In
their terrific book, “Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution Is
Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming
Employment and the Economy,” Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology note that for the last two centuries it
happened that productivity, median income and employment all tracked each other
nicely. “So most economists have had this feeling that if you just boost
productivity, the pie grows, and, in the long run, everything else takes care
of itself,” explained Brynjolfsson in an interview. “But there is no economic
law that says technological progress has to benefit everyone. It’s entirely
possible for the pie to get bigger and some people to get a smaller slice.”
Indeed, when the digital revolution gets so cheap, fast, connected and
ubiquitous you see this in three ways, Brynjolfsson added: those with more
education start to earn much more than those without it, those with the capital
to buy and operate machines earn much more than those who can just offer their
labor, and those with superstar skills, who can reach global markets, earn much
more than those with just slightly less talent.
Put it
all together, he added, and you can understand, why the Great Recession took
the biggest bite out of employment but is not the only thing affecting job loss
today: why we have record productivity, wealth and innovation, yet median
incomes are falling, inequality is rising and high unemployment remains
persistent.
How to
adapt? It will require more individual initiative. We know that it will be
vital to have more of the “right” education than less, that you will need to
develop skills that are complementary to technology rather than ones that can
be easily replaced by it and that we need everyone to be innovating new
products and services to employ the people who are being liberated from routine
work by automation and software. The winners won’t just be those with more I.Q.
It will also be those with more P.Q. (passion quotient) and C.Q. (curiosity
quotient) to leverage all the new digital tools to not just find a job, but to
invent one or reinvent one, and to not just learn but to relearn for a
lifetime. Government can and must help, but the president needs to explain that
this won’t just be an era of “Yes We
Can.” It will also be an era of “Yes You
Can” and “Yes You Must.”
