Looking forward - thinking ahead

Taken from "Looking Backward" (1996) last chapter of the Accidental Theorist by Paul Krugman
The world as viewed in 2096 and Five great economic trends in the XXI century

1. Soaring resource prices (superrich will be, more often than not, prime land owners or those with access to mineral)
2. The environment as property (no more free air)
3. The rebirth of the big city (urban density favoring the kind of close, face-to-face interaction that turn out to be essential... the most effective mass-transit system yet devised: the elevator)
4. The devaluation of higher education (many of the jobs that require a college degree today have been eliminated, while many of the rest can, it turns out, be done quite well by an intelligent person whether or not she has studied world literature.... academic credentials will have hardly any monetary value... Harvard has become - as it was in the nineteenth century, more of a social institution than a scholarly one - aplace for the childrne of the wealthy to refine their social graces and make friends with others of the same class.)
5. The celebrity economy (although business gurus are proclaiming the predominance of creativity and innovation over mere routine production, in fact the growing ease with which information is transmitted and reproduced makes it even harder for creators to profit from their creations.... creations must make money indirectly... by promoting sales of something else....)

Krugman is without pity for the stereotyped but too common futuristic views of the coming of an "information economy", mainly producing intangibles, and where the good jobs would go to "symbolic analysts", who "would push icons around on computer screens".

As Krugmans puts it - quoting Marvin Minsky " what people vaguely call common sense is actually more intricate than most of the technical expertise we admire." And Krugman adds:  "it takes common sense to deal  with the physical world - which is why , even at the end of the XX century, there are still no robot plumbers."

Who then wants to think with me and prepare the future of education? You know how to find me :-)