Brace yourself: the most disruptive phase of globalization is just beginning

We won't dial back; what we need to do is change education qualitatively. We still have the education system we designed when, as a society, we were fact-poor. People needed to learn lots of facts to get educated.

Now we are drowning in facts--some real, some fake. What citizens need most is the ability to collect, evaluate, reorganize, and apply facts. They need to learn how to create and nurture internal systems of understanding, which they use to evaluate and interact with information.

Part of the skill that workers need now is the ability to quickly learn new skills. No one has the same job they had 10 years ago. Even people with the same title and employer are doing things differently now. Employees who cannot adapt to change are the ones who will be in trouble, long term.

We have an educational system that prepares students for career paths. We need to be producing graduates who have a sense of how to change or create their own path.

Or when the keg just ran out.

You may have missed the globalization gains party, but we still benefit in aggregate. (Cheaper prices for better goods) From an employment point of view, the technology party is still running strong. It is much more fun and higher impact to be a programmer today than 20 years ago, let alone 40. Can you imagine programming an internal IT system in assembler using punchcards?

Sometimes I feel like I showed up to the great party of life right when a mobster busted in and started holding everyone at gunpoint.