KnowledgeWorks Forecast 5.0 does more than simply imagine the future
THE HECHINGER REPORT | People like predicting the future. And people like reading predictions about the future. But there’s rarely any accountability and many, many predictions fail to come true. (See the Quartz article linked below for a few examples.)
KnowledgeWorks, an education-focused nonprofit, has a team of people dedicated to thinking about the future of education, and every three years since 2006 they have released a comprehensive forecast about what to expect 10 years out. They are careful to clarify that these forecasts are not meant to be read as “predictions,” but rather “insights about the wide range of possibilities for what might happen in the future,” as Jason Swanson wrote at the end of 2015, kicking off a blog series looking back at how much of their first forecast became a reality. (…)
The forecast identifies five key drivers of change for the next 10 years: automation; technologies that affect our brain functioning; toxic narratives about success and achievement; changing community landscapes (because of economic and climate factors) and the work of “civic superpowers,” be the individuals, nonprofits or volunteer organizations, that are stepping in to fill gaps in traditional governance.