Clear the pipes - Decentralized education to change the world

I am not a big fan of the current setup of government authorities but the sad truth is that they do represent us. I am not talking simply because (for the most part) we vote them into their positions, I am speaking of the pipelines that got them there. The fact is that the people who populate governments, banks and corporations are people, just like us. You may argue this point of course but all of them have gone through the same cultural conditioning that trains them to behave in certain ways and given the position and pathway, we would likely do the same.

Targeting results isn't enough

Often, we look at the result of something and then try to change it directly, for example, numbers of women in STEM related fields which is low. Preferring women in the hiring practices doesn't actually solve the problem because it sets up an unhealthy rating system that isn't based on merit. To fix the numbers takes generations not a couple of election cycles. The reason is that there are more factors at play than just 'women don't have opportunity' which include a massive amount of social dynamics.

In Australia they ran a program that saw a massive increase of women in high school STEM programs but, when it came to University applications, the ratios remained unchanged. This is for various reasons with one being that men and women often have different interest areas that affect their decision making. This could be inherent in the organism or, socially learned but either way, it isn't going to be a 'quick fix' to change this, it is going to take a great deal of time.

Government is much the same, all education is much the same. Which is what I actually want to talk a little bit about.

Exclusion through education

Education systems are very narrow skill focused and have been designed this way to cater for governments and corporations who require various skills and numbers of participants to get their agendas completed. This has been this way since the industrial revolution.

The problem is that for various reasons, the narrow skillset rewarded by education is very exclusive, meaning that favours some types of people much more heavily than others and because of the way industry works, there are vast differences (average) results between those who fit the system and those who do not. Education is a sorting and ranking process engineered to push what industry needs to the top and let the rest scramble for whatever is left over, it is part of the mechanism that creates wealth inequalities and disenfranchisement of populations.

Narrow focus, leaky pipes

If we picture Steem as a representation of this, content that is Steem/development focus gets more support because the corporations (the larger accounts and investors) are interested in this area of the platform. They reward that content because that is what they need to support their agendas of platform growth. But, this will change over time with distribution, which is something that the real world is yet to learn because the education market is not a free market.

In the real world, the engineered and centralized environments are going to get increasingly volatile because the narrow and exclusive focus skills that once supported industry are going to support less and less as automation replaces more of the positions. This means there is a decreasing need for this type of education but, there is still the need for revenue from those same groups to maintain a consumer base and tax revenues to fund the very governments that engineered such a fragile system and then subsidized it heavily to remain narrow.

This very system they have created has developed a pipe network that feeds populations to all other positions, including the governments and corporations. It is a massive, massive institutionalized circlejerk of sorts that drives similar types of people into power positions who in turn, favour similar types of people. Cronyism.

When we look at the results of something and identify change is needed, it isn't good enough to attack the head alone, it has to be a holistic approach that heals the entire ecosystem. What I see as a potential driver of this is decentralized education which is already happening to some degree but with blockchains and cryptocurrencies, can happen to a much greater degree in time.

Free education

I say already happening because it is very hard but not impossible to self-train and create a career outside of the formal institutions. The hard part isn't getting access to the information required, it is convincing people programmed to favour formal education over self-taught passion learning. One of the leading authorities on AI learning left school at 12 as it didn't support his development style.

Decentralized education means that a free-market system can influence the education sector instead of a process of tailoring to the immediate needs of a corporation or government. This means that large populations of people will slowly organize and decide what skillsets are important and while to begin with, STEM is likely to be very strong, over time it will weaken and strengthen.

It will weaken because there will be more opportunity for people to diversify and educate in areas that are of interest to them rather than what is expected of them to participate in an economy. It will strengthen because those who are actually interested in STEM will focus their efforts there without the noise of others who are their because they have to be. Over time, this can have some profound effects on the entire ecosystem, including governments.

Governments aren't inherently evil

Changing the pipe network and diversifying what skills are wanted by the market means that there is going to be more distribution as to what skills are rewarded by that market. What this means is that there are less peaks in results and fewer lows. On top of this, the attitude of the market will change markedly as people start to not only embrace a wider range of skillsets but also benefit directly from being able to do more of what they enjoy without being penalized as heavily for it not being what a corporation wants of them. Rather than have a job monetized by a company, it is rewarded by the market directly.

This also changes the role of governments because through a (long) process of dissolution of narrow power, government becomes a population support function that has people working within it who are interested in supporting the community. This means that the cronyism that exists today because of the narrow agendas is removed and the people working in government are those interested in best servicing the infrastructure needs of the community that facilitate its strength as a unit, not as segments ranked on importance of how they best serve narrow agendas.

Decentalized communities

If we imagine Steem as a new form of government that focuses on the community (not there yet), the government benefits when the community benefits, and the community strength is in its ability to be inclusive, not exclusive. Even though there will be niches that have higher or lower rewards, distribution of resources and a free market system will slowly organize itself so that there are fewer high peaks and low troughs unless the market decides it.

What this means is that in time (a long time most likely) participation in the community is rewarded on the basis of what skillsets are deemed necessary for the community at any given time and when large populations are moving on a very diversified spectrum, there is less volatility but, it will continually shift without getting into positions that there is cataclysmic failure like we are likely approaching now with global economics.

Do what you want

Being part of a decentralized community means you are free to do as you please however, this doesn't guarantee return on what you do and, there is likely less support for those who choose not to participate in the community itself. Of course, there are a great deal of variables and options in this approach which is the point because it means that more people can be included without having to rely on making it through a fine-grained filtering system for a chance of success.

Upstreaming the future

Essentially (in my opinion) a decentralized community does a much better job of upstreaming challenges faced because rather than pulling information from a narrow set of points, it is in a constant negotiation looking for solutions without actually looking for solutions directly. This also means that less future problems are likely to arise as they are avoided in the pipelines before they have a chance to stabilize into institutional foundations.

Lowering costs and maintaining quality

What is also going to be a game changer in education across decentralized networks is that through the lower cost of infrastructure compared to centralized institutions, increasing numbers of people are able to have access to a massive range of resources that provide opportunity to develop as individuals without having to rely on an authority to provide and choose what is important. Combine this with the ability to create trust in information and there is a future potential that fields of study will get even stronger as the pool of participants is truly a global resource.

Where does this lead?

Hard to say but if all of these areas are going to concurrently be put under pressure from automation, what can happen is that people are able to spend more time doing what they want while having various needs catered for by the increasing capabilities of the automation. This could lead to a dystopia but if the pipelines are of the type that value community over narrow competition, there is the chance that existence and experience of the community ecosystem and the individual is one of flourishing, rather than degradation and zero sum returns.

In my opinion, this is not one of those 'in my lifetime' processes and I do not think that I am going to see much of the changes of this even if they are happening as we speak but for me, this is the bigger picture, the long, long, long-term view. What this requires of course is an increasing amount of participation and shift in values both from a moral perspective and an economic one, which is what is already happening here. Narrow perspective, crony systems do not give up their positions easily though which is why the values have to change.

As decentralized communities start to gather momentum and more participation takes place, the plumbing from the ground up starts to change its structure and the pipes that lead into the institutions will feed an increasing number of 'decentralized minds'. They will slowly disrupt at all levels of the centralized structure to the point that what was controlling and authoritative, now becomes a healthy system that supports the community.

Caveats

We are nowhere near this point now and although I have faith that it is possible, I am under no illusion that it is probable. There are no guarantees in this life but if we consider how much needless suffering there is in this world to date, looking for ways to improve experience for the greatest number of people isn't necessarily a bad way to waste a life. The game we play now can have ramifications that fundamentally change the experiences of those to come, even if will never live to see a smile on their face as they spend their days doing what they love.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]