nice article

[kandrathe]

There needs to be some other 'great thing' about it.....like the old fashioned respect. But how bring that back? I have a friend with a Ph.D who is teaching on high school.....he is the only one with that education on his (quite big) school, many don't even have a masters degree. Same goes for (example from Holland) this school that teaches to become an educator. Apparently more than half of the people doing this school (so these are people that want to go and become a teacher) could not to maths on a 7 grade (elementary school) level, the level of kids aged 10 to 11.

I work quite often with venture capitalists on new ventures, and with young businesses and entrepreneurs. You would be surprised at how often the topic of relevance is discussed. These are people who are interested in doing something productive and meaningful with their wealth rather than toss it into a trusty bank.

Are you familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of need?



Maslow's theory is that once you get beyond the concerns of job security people start looking for meaning in what they do and that for the normal human they have a predictable psychology based on the above hierarchy. It takes a leap of faith in humanity for many people to accept this idea, and we have all seen certain people who are extremely unethical in their behavior in life and on the job. It might be that there are quite a number of people who maybe don't fit this mold for one reason or another.

In Maslow's scheme, the final stage of psychological development comes when the individual feels assured that his physiological, security, affiliation and affection, self-respect, and recognition needs have been satisfied. As these become dormant, he becomes filled with a desire to realize all of his potential for being an effective, creative, mature human being. "What a man can be, he must be", is the way Maslow expresses it. -- Wikipedia

As a thought experiment, imagine a world where robots do ALL the meaningful work, that is, grow the food, make the food, make the clothing, make the housing, etc. And, the only thing available for us humans would be to keep ourselves entertained. Would it be necessary to pay ourselves for this busy work? Does it make any sense to think in terms of labor and management?

I believe we are seeing the beginnings of this type of transition into our modern society where the basics (bottom of Maslow's pyramid) are pretty much handled by a very small portion of the work force leaving the bulk of us to try to find a meaningful place in society. As more and more automation occurs, where machines, computers, and robotics replace humanity we may find fewer and fewer relevant careers. So, a socialist base is created to maintain the basics for all, and then in a twisted irony, we chafe at having to work at McDonalds, or Starbucks. When it was really our zeal and intelligence that made our jobs redundant in the first place. Look at how many people it took to make a Model A Ford, versus a modern automobile. Interestingly enough I began my career in the 80's writing educational software, and recently had the opportunity to work with many colleges and universities on educational software once again. Vast strides have been made to move the mechanics of many disciplines into software. For example, music. There now exists software that can listen to how you play a song and rate how technically well you played the notes and met the timing requirements. This means that a music teacher no longer needs to listen one on one with 60 students to review fundamentals. Once the student has met basic goals the teacher can they work with the student on musicality, and expression. This is a common theme here with technology. Computers can easily remove the drudgery and repetition from education leaving the nuances and creativity of thought to well attuned educators. How many educators are prepared to step beyond baby sitting, and teaching more than the fundamentals?

I know you are saying the intelligent thing for our societies would be to drive people to higher learning and enable them to think about tough problems. I think one reality is that IQ 100 is an average. That may mean that for a larger and larger portion of our populations, there is not a real meaningful use for them anymore. Although, again, as Occhi indicated, it might just be in how you define "useful" or "meaningful". So, we enjoy listening to music, watching movies, watching football, and hockey, and even though these people are not rocket scientists they are useful while they can entertain us.

So, then, the modern challenge for humanity is not to become bored to death.