It used to be that a university degree certified that you had enough knowledge to last a lifetime. An occasional book and on-the-job training would fill in the gaps and keep you up-to-date. Now the new normal requires continuous lifelong learning, including regular updating in your knowledge of things you may never have studied, particularly literacy of technology and the humanities. Fortunately, you can obtain all this knowledge in small chunks from a variety of providers — online, face-to-face, or blended learning formats. Here’s why these have become the new normal in lifelong learning. Technology literacy This model is required because technology is making the world increasing efficient, complex, and prone to sudden change. Whatever […]

Economist Willian Foster Lloyd described the notion of “commons” in 1833 in reference to the open pastures being damaged by self-interested herdsmen. Biologist Garreth Hardin used the term in 1968 to describe how population growth spoils our shared atmosphere, oceans and rivers. It is the over-utilization of the commons that inevitably leads to the tragedy, causing unhappiness, conflicts and ultimately extinction. Western society in the 21st century is clearly built on the notion of the commons – the very human right to be part of a prosperous culture that values intelligence, tolerance, peaceful lives, and progress. This commons makes up the foundation of our nations, as much as the air and the oceans, and it […]

Almost daily, advances in STEM subjects capture our admiration and awe for what humanity can accomplish. Higg’s “God particle” is finally discovered; a microchip the size of a finger nail can contain several billion transistors and other electronics; architects can design buildings one-half mile high; one-atom thick “graphene,” the thinnest yet strongest material ever discovered, paves the way for bionic devices connected directly to neurons; entirely new organisms with DNA sequences created on a computer are used to produce food. These accomplishments and the associated “politico-academic” rhetoric about education and research around the globe give us the impression that the future of the world is dependent on the progress of everything STEM.   But it […]