Education 2050: intelligent governance and the edusphere

• In Event: Education 2Q50: artificial intelligence (AI), catastrophic climate change, or wonderland?

Proposal

To consider How an understanding of the future might inform the way we view education today, this paper draws inspiration from Lewis Mumford’s (1970) claim that: “the literature of utopias, when further supplemented by science-fiction, presents a cross-section of the ‘coming’ world” (211). The insight is adapted to explore the future of education governance and learning with regard to patterns established in science-fiction and techno-utopian literature. In turn, it recognizes that these visions are crafted upon deeper foundations; namely, the lingering impact of the discovery of transcendence on the Western imagination. These metaphysical longings are explored in the construction of an enchanted imaginary taking shape under Education 2050; the edusphere. The edusphere is constructed using: (i) a relevant sample of utopian and science-fiction literature; (ii) exploration and elaboration of the ‘metaphysical longings’ underpinning the literature, and their symbolic representations; (iii) UNESCO’s sci-fi spirit; (iv) stated plans to utilize new technology in education governance and learning; and, (v) nascent shifts in the economic imaginary, from knowledge-based to intelligent and automated.

The edusphere is one cybernetic arm of a machinic demiurge, infused with global targets to oversee a process of intelligent governance. Within the edusphere, students escape material circumstance through Extended Reality (XR), in which time and space are upended, distance is eradicated, and a lifelong game of upskilling unfolds. Education itself is constricted to schooling, with ‘what counts’ controlled by the AIEd tutor that accompanies students on their lifelong quest. School records are stored along with other personal data using immutable blockchain technology, enabling pre-emptive intervention and preparing students to enter ethereal, automated-economies under the benevolent supervision of an all-seeing Master Brain. Immersive AIEd tutoring enables the collection of mass data about the teaching and learning practices best suited to the development of 21st century skills, and research is turned over to intelligent machines as part of the automation of evidence. Supported by experts (the priesthood), messengers of the divine machine, the reimagining of the Christian-Neoplatonic cosmos is complete.

Turning to the finite future-present… Despite environmental concerns, Education 2050 still privileged sustaining limitless economic growth and the edusphere is imbued with this imperative. As the system was tightly automated, even those occupying the upper echelons of power were unable to interfere as the vision inevitably began to fragment and derail. Flight into metaphysical economies and educational forays into cyberspace could not mask the realities of a deteriorating biosphere, and as the redundant UNESCO celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2046 the impact of the money machine was everywhere manifest in the destruction of our natural habitats; a megatechnic wasteland. Disillusioned with this vast wasteland, Fred plugs into the edusphere using an XR Pod deep below the surface of the scorched Earth. Prompted by his AIEd tutor to create an avatar for a lifelong journey in upskilling, he obliges, and Alice duly slips through the portal into a digital wonderland; a ‘be-coming world’ that is at the same time both fictive and real, and which subverts human norms.

Author

• Euan D. Auld, Institute of Education, University College London