- Jul 2022
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In the deep past these setbacks were local. The overall experiment of civilization kept going, often by moving from an exhausted ecology to one with untapped potential. Human numbers were still quite small. At the height of the Roman Empire there are thought to have been only 200 million people on Earth. Compare that with the height of the British Empire a century ago, when there were two billion. And with today, when there are nearly eight. Clearly, things have moved very quickly since the Industrial Revolution took hold around the world. In A Short History of Progress, I suggested that worldwide civilization was our greatest experiment; and I asked whether this might also prove to be the greatest progress trap. That was 15 years ago.
Indeed, Wright is right to ask: Is our modern human civilization the greatest progress trap of all?
Exponential technological progress has shortened the time for dangerous levels of resource extraction and pollution loads to the extent that we face the potential of cascading global tipping points and enter a "hothouse earth" state: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1810141115
Were this to happen, there is no place on earth that would be immune.
In hindsight, the unfortunate but predictable trend is one of every increasing size of progress traps, and ever shorter time windows when serious impacts occur. Today, it appears we have reached the largest size progress trap possible on a finite planet.
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- Jul 2019
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Will Richardson highlights importance of learning and engagement based on pure passion of learning; without "waiting for a curriculum". Today's schools need to be re-envisioned in a way that fosters collaboration and real world/ problem-solving skills, and that steers away from test prep and replaces that with life-prep.
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- Feb 2019
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Will Richardson
Notes from video
-Students don't need to have official instruction to learn new information -interactions with online tools can help students to learn on their own and with the help of teachers can help them to learn even more information -"Sharing my work online has become a huge part of the way I learn. Those connections make it possible for me to gain a bigger audience, which means more feedback and more learning" -Teaching information can be facilitated in many different ways- incorporating technology can help students to better learn information than with just us teaching them. -Hard truth- formation of schools how they were established are not relevant in how students are learning today- schools have to be places for deep inquiry where they can solve big problems- create important work where they can collaborate with people around the world-LIFE PREP- getting our students ready for real life and helping them to solve future problems that may occur.
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