Unconventional Thinking

From the Singularity University site, future studies is in the purview of futurist while forecasting is in the realm of statisticians. The aim of higher education in this module is to cultivate the student’s exponential intuition.

For example faced with a situation like the evolving field of wireless electricity for example, student will be able to determine which of the competing approaches to electromagnetic induction i.e inductive coupling or radio-frequency harvesting or magnetically coupled resonance will win out in the commercial world.

Although SU mentions only futurist as lecturers, it is obvious that a simple need for exponential intuition in the case above include multiple variable that will require some statistics and even technological evaluation as well.

Following the theme on the previous post about singularity University, I want to delve in to what are the subjects that will be taught to the future brainiacs that will be dominating our world or help invent our ways out of the current doldrums?

Theses are what the academics tracks are:

Future Studies & Forecasting

Networks & Computing Systems

Biotechnology & Bioinformatics

Nanotechnology

Medicine, Neuroscience & Human Enhancement

AI, Robotics, & Cognitive Computing

Energy & Ecological Systems

Space & Physical Sciences

Policy, Law & Ethics

Finance & Entrepreneurship

 

If you click on any of these links, it will take you to the schools’ page and the description of what is covered in each of these subjects. More importantly, the students will be at a graduate level, so one could expect them to already have the basics. This assumption is not true for the general masses that I hope an exposure to this very information could help to be more creative. While I am not assuming they know nothing (college degree or equivalent experience can be assumed), the issue is one of functional education versus a brad liberal not arts education. An education that is directed as creating future renaissance men and women, who can do research, innovate and move the world forward without the limitation of a specific curricula.

For this folks education is driven by interest and passion. What do you want to know? Why do you want to know it? Where to start? Start and see what other interesting question that leads you to…

A TechCrunch article about Singularity University arrested my attention today. What caught my eye about the university are the people involved which include Kurzweil (Inventor and Author) and Diamandis (X Prize), Myhrvold (Microsoft). Also the subjects that these smart people thinks hold the future of innovation and inventions i.e nanotechnology, biotechnology, genetics, computing etc.

The thesis of Singularity University seems to be that by exposing top tier graduate students to cutting edge information in these fields (at a cost of $25,000) they will be able to synthesize innovation.

However what went through my mind is can we expose a lot of people to this information using freely available information on the web and based on the wisdom of the crowd and self selection innovation will flow.

The idea of knowledge is not about what you know, but what you can do with what you know.  This is something I will like to play around with. Stay tuned…