Contemporary
philosophy recognizes the increasing digitalization of our universe, and the
consequent and inevitable rise of the trans-human. It is the responsibility of our
post-secondary institutions to stand at the forefront of modern knowledge. And
yet they have not kept pace with the latest technological advances in digital
learning. It’s time for universities to step up to the plate and
enter the modern world.
Recent
years have seen qualitative advances in academic awareness. Sure, libraries and archives are increasingly
to be found on line. Students no longer require living teachers; in fact that
the old-fashioned ‘lecturer’ – standing behind a lectern and pontificating – has
become an anachronism. With interactive interface technologies, students are
provided with the opportunity to communicate with virtual instructors — that
is, to participate in a traditional Socratic dialogue -- on ‘skype’ or through
chat. Most understand that universities of the future will not require
attendance to ‘classes’ (now a somewhat antique term) — but instead, will be
accessible to everyone, online, 24 hours a day.
However,
we’re only halfway there.
The
focus in recent years has been on coming to terms with the demise of the
traditional notion of ‘professor.’ But the future requires a significant
re-imagining of the presently outmoded concept of ‘student.’ So what will the
universities of the future look like? In the past, students were assumed to be
living breathing human beings. It is become increasingly clear that -- in the
21st century -- students will be replaced by machines. To speak quite frankly,
post-secondary education will consist of computers teaching other computers.
This will
be a difficult notion for many to accept. Older academics may still feel
nostalgic for the dusty domain of textbooks and libraries, where grey haired
professors shook their heads, and stretched their gnarled fingers to ‘make a point’
with eager, breathing undergraduates. But those days are over. The future of
education will not only see the eradication of professors but the eradication
of students as well.
Think
about it.
Humans learn more slowly and less
efficiently than machines. It is quite simply old-fashioned to imagine that
humans can be entrusted with a commodity as priceless as knowledge. In addition, it’s important to remember that
in the future most of us will need more time to complete our arduous shopping and
purchasing tasks -- and also more time to consume the massive amounts of digital
entertainment that are available to us through various platforms such as itunes, Amazon and Netflix. We are online 24
hours a day anyway -- shopping, flirting, chatting, being entertained and
entertaining others -- and ‘de-stressing’ from our complex 21st century
lives. We routinely rely on computers to
store, analyze and distribute knowledge, anyway. Isn’t it time that computers, rather than
people, went to school?
There’s
no turning back. The time has come for universities replace students with
computers and be at the very forefront of digital innovation.
