The following article was part of a presentation made to the California Farm Bureau Federation in December of 2011.

The looming shortage of freshwater is not unique to farmers here – it’s rapidly going global. Many farmers will choose to see the problems ahead with water as a crisis, but it could, instead, become a significant opportunity if they play it properly. Let’s start with the fundamentals of the emerging crisis.

There’s no shortage of water on Earth: three-quarters of the Earth’s surface is covered with it. However only 2½% of Earth’s water is fresh water, and most of that is not where it’s needed, or available when it’s needed. In fact, of that 2½%, more than 2% is frozen, mostly locked up in the Arctic regions (for the moment). That leaves less than ½ of 1% of usable freshwater, the vast majority of it is contained in aquifers. Unfortunately, many aquifers are largely non-renewable resources, being, in effect, fossil water laid down over periods of hundreds, thousands, or millions of years, but which we are depleting in periods of decades. When they run dry, problems will multiply very quickly.

Now, given where we are right now, there are seven major factors contributing to coming water shortages, and they will have differing levels of effects on farmers:

• Population growth here at home will produce modest, but steadily increasing pressure on supplies. Meanwhile, population growth elsewhere, especially in places like India and other developing countries, will be a major source of freshwater difficulties. By the third quarter of this century, it’s estimated that there will be another 3 billion human beings, all of whom will need water. Yet, short of technological breakthroughs (which will come, but not cheaply, and not soon), there are no major new sources of water available.

• Increases in the standard of living will be largely neutral here (unfortunately), but another major cause of stress on water sources in the developing world.

• Agricultural intensification (especially using irrigation in dry areas) will moderately increase water shortages here, but again will be a big cause of water shortages elsewhere as almost 70% of the world’s water is used in agriculture.

• Urbanization will be one of the major causes of shortages of water everywhere as rapidly growing cities ratchet up the demand for an increasing share of static or dwindling water supplies.

• Pollution will be pretty well neutral here, which means it’s not going to get much worse even if it doesn’t get much better as we’ve already done most of our polluting. The same isn’t true in the developing world, where farmers are looking to increase yields by using more fertilizers, and the run-off will contaminate water sources and aquifers.

• Depletion of aquifers (fossil water), which can destroy an aquifer, or at least reduce its long-term capacity, will be a major issue here and everywhere else, particularly as much of the damage to aquifers comes as the levels get low. Worse, predictable as aquifer depletion may be, virtually no government, agency, or voting public ever thinks that the aquifer they’ve exploited for years will ever run dry – until it does. They are then caught by surprise, and completely unprepared. This is one of the most surprising things about the coming water shortages – there should be no surprise at all, but there inevitably is.

• Climate change (which changes where and when water is available) will also be a major issue. While people can argue over whether humanity’s at fault for climate change or not, there’s very little real argument left about whether climate is changing, and farmers are among the first to notice and feel the changes. Moreover, the changes that do occur are more likely to be negative than positive.
For these, and other reasons, the shortage of water is going to force itself on global consciousness. You’ve all probably heard water referred to as “the new oil”, but I say that vastly underestimates the problem. There are substitutes for oil, but there is no substitute for water. Water shortages are going to be felt to varying degrees, but at a rapidly increasing rate all over the world, and are going to affect what farmers can grow, where industries can flourish, and how fast economies can expand.

Likewise, you’ve all heard about carbon neutrality, now you’re going to start hearing about water neutrality. For example, Coke & Pepsi were required by the Indian government to put 1 liter of water back for every liter they withdrew from community sources. If you think about what they sell, you realize how difficult this was for them to accomplish this – but they did. So water neutrality and steadily improving water management is something you should be thinking about, even if you’re already ahead of everyone else on this issue, as water continues to grow scarcer.

Meanwhile, political conflicts are going to continue to grow between user groups (e.g., farmers vs. cities), states (Texas vs. New Mexico, for example) and national governments (especially the U.S. vs. Canada and Mexico). Perhaps the two coming conflicts that will get most attention here are the conflicts between cities and farmers, which are going to get steadily worse, and the conflict between water-rich Canada and water-seeking America.

Yet, while farmers here think they know about water scarcity, I think we’re just scratching the surface on this problem, and they would be well advised to look at ways of increasing their water productivity. As water scarcity becomes a worldwide issue, more and more attention will be focused on it, and its perceived value will continue to rise. This will cause more people, groups, and political bodies to try to grab more control over it. It will also attract attention from financial players, like sovereign funds and pension funds, who will start buying water sources to control and toll, which will further escalate the conflicts.

But there’s an upside, too: Those farmers that improve their water management practices can benefit from the water problems of other parts of the world through increased demand for the agricultural products they produce.

One of the big changes to come is that countries, like India, that were self-sufficient or even net exporters of food are becoming net importers simply because they don’t have enough water to grow what they need. This kind of importing of “virtual water” through crops will increase the opportunities for farmers who are proactive in learning how to manage water supplies even more carefully than they do now. I’m not suggesting this will be simple, but there are more water-efficient technologies out there that can help, like those from Israel, and forward-looking farmers should be actively seeking out new techniques, new technologies, and new, possibly GM crops that allow them to grow more with less water.

In summary, water shortages are inevitable, they are going to become increasingly high profile, and they offer real opportunities to those who can be proactive in managing supplies. You know that there will be problems with water, you know that agriculture is a big user of water, and you know that those who are prepared for a problem while their competitors are still struggling to catch up can prosper from difficulties.

So take the plunge – exploit the future of water.

© Copyright, IF Research, February 2012.

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The year ahead is going to be a tumultuous one, challenging in political, economic, and financial terms. Despite this, there are opportunities for those prepared to take advantage of them, because uncertain times mean that market share is up for grabs. And no, it’s not a coincidence that there are 12 trends for 2012. I discarded a bunch more, but it’s such a catchy title I couldn’t resist.

I’m going to approach these 12 trends with three objectives: What is important? Why is it important? And what does it mean to you?

And I’m going to start with the bad news, and end with the silver linings.

1)    Declining American influence – America’s absolute and relative influence in geopolitics, economics, finance, and the military is declining for a host of reasons: the rise of competing powers like China, India, Brazil, and others; the very expensive military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have sapped America’s willingness to engage in aggressive political and/or military action; the Arab Spring, which eliminated Middle Eastern strongmen like Mubarak who followed America’s political lead, and the continued stalemate over the fate of the Palestinians, means that America’s influence over this critical and unstable region is at or near an all-time low; the Great Recession, which has sapped America’s economic and financial clout; and the dysfunctional stand-off between Republicans and Democrats that has frequently led to policy paralysis.

The implications of this are a less stable, more dangerous world. America may have gone back and forth on whether it wanted to be the world’s policeman, even though it truly was the global cop, and it’s inability to fill that role now means that the world is a more dangerous place.

This sets the stage for sticky situations to emerge, such as the twin nuclear threats from a suddenly even less-stable North Korea, and the only slightly more stable and geopolitically ambitious theocracy in Iran. It also leaves more elbow room for the ever-ambitious China to expand its power and influence, notably in south Asia and the South China Sea. It also leaves critical global issues, like what to do about climate change, without essential leadership.

The implications of this is a world where there are more likely to be more, and more serious, geopolitical, financial, and economic crises, and greater uncertainty in virtually every aspect of life. Others may not always have agreed with American policies, but they will miss America’s steadying influence as it ebbs from their lives.

2)    Ho-hum! Just another financial crisis (European edition) – The daily drumbeat of scary headlines dealing with the financial crises in Europe have gradually deadened everyone’s awareness for how dangerous the situation truly is. In particular, Angela Merkel is juggling hand-grenades, and hoping that she won’t drop any, and that none of them will go off unexpectedly. Germany is the only European country with the potential to stop the rolling crises that are affecting Europe, and then only if Merkel acts in a timely basis. To do this, she must let Greece go bankrupt instead of propping it up, shore up the banks, notably German banks, that have bought far too many dodgy EU bonds in the past, allow the European Central Bank (ECB) to become a lender of last resort, with the ability to stop a run on European bonds, and halt the bond market attacks on other European countries, starting with Portugal and Ireland, but extending to the much bigger countries like Spain, Italy, and even France. But Germany doesn’t want to do these things, and German voters are adamant that they won’t subsidize what they see as the lazy, profligate lifestyles of southern Europeans. But if Germany doesn’t act, and in a timely fashion, it may lose the ability to act at all, and come under attack from the bond markets as well. Indeed, German bonds are no longer being bought with as much enthusiasm as they were even two months ago. If Germany doesn’t act soon, it may lose the ability to do so at all.

Remember what happened in the American financial markets in 2008? If Germany doesn’t act in time, we could see the same kind of thing happen in 2012, this time starting with a run on European government bonds. From there a run could spread to those banks – American as well as European – that hold too many of these bonds. And once such a run started, the most dangerous question of all would emerge: “Who’s next?” Investors, frightened by the panic, would look to sell any and every questionable credit, and their attention might turn to the various U.S. state and local governments, like Illinois, California, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, among many others, that are struggling with their finances.

The U.S. Federal Reserve has become the de facto lender of last resort to the entire developed world, and would undoubtedly step in and support the banks and markets with everything they had. But this time, remembering the callous, greedy ingratitude of last rescue of the banking industry, American voters and the American Congress would likely tell the banks to drop dead. It was a hard enough last time to get Congress to bail out the banks; this time I suspect it would be impossible, even though failing banks would take the global economy down with them. Moreover, the Fed doesn’t have anywhere near as many bullets today as they did in 2008, and Fed Chairman Bernanke already has some Republicans, notably Ron Paul, baying for his blood over the quantitative easing from the last crisis.

The danger here is frighteningly real, and even greater than the risks we faced in the panic of 2008. Yet, the steady drip of crisis headlines and last-minute rescues has left many people convinced that nothing will happen. If it does, it will catch people flat-footed, not because they didn’t know there was a crisis, but because they have been hearing about it for over two years now, and have tuned it out. We could muddle through, and probably will – but the risks are far higher than most people realize. It will be important to have thought out a Plan B to deal with the unthinkable, if it happens, one that prepares you and your finances for a bigger repeat of the 2008 panic. Again, it probably won’t happen – but it’s better to have a plan and not need it, than need a plan and not have it.

3)    Yes, China’s influence will continue to rise, but…  Napoleon famously said, “China is a sleeping giant. Let it sleep.” Well, China’s very much awake now, and throwing her weight around – although cautiously. If I were (God forbid) Emperor of China, I would require my minions to tread cautiously, to smile a lot at our trading partners and neighbors, and to make our gains slowly, one salami slice at a time, never appearing too greedy or overreaching. I would practice soft diplomacy, offering aid and comfort where I could do so cheaply, loudly proclaiming our respect for other countries’ internal policies, taking leadership positions in things, like climate change, where I knew I was going to have to make changes anyway, and generally trying to look like a good global citizen. I would act, in short, as if time were on my side, and I was going to be the next Big Thing.

And generally speaking, that is precisely what China is doing – except that every once in a while the mask slips, and the avarice and aggression shows, as with the boundary disputes with other countries, especially as related to the South “China” Sea, which China (the nation) seems to be trying to interpret literally as being a Chinese lake.

But China has an Achilles’ heel – several of them, in fact – and does not have (much) time on its side. Its biggest weakness is that it is aging faster than any other significant country on Earth. Because of its One Child policy, China’s population is expected to peak, and begin declining, sometime around 2020 – within the next 10 years. And its labor force is already in decline, even as the demands for higher wages push its cost structures higher.

Meanwhile, although there is a great deal of pride in China’s new affluence among the Chinese, that affluence is not evenly spread, and there is unrest among those who remain poor. Add to this the widespread corruption of Chinese officials at all levels, which often provokes revolts, like the one in Wukan, which leads to simmering dissatisfaction among many Chinese.

This will further be exacerbated by the fact that China’s factories are automating almost as quickly as those of the developed world, which threatens to slow the rate of job creation, productivity, and affluence markedly over the next 10 years. Yet, China dare not automate; to do so would mean a loss of competitiveness, which would produce even worse results as industries would move elsewhere.
So, with that in mind, what would I, as self-appointed Emperor of China, do? Worry about a future I couldn’t control, and for which I could not see a clear path forward. The next 10 years will mark the beginning of the end of China’s ascension, and if I were Emperor, I’d think about retiring to some warm, cushy haven before the revolution came. Chinese Spring, anyone?

The implications are for China to step up its attempts to increase power and influence, and throw its weight around even more actively before that power starts to wane, but as quietly as possible. Look for China to try to make this the China Decade, especially in finance, trade, and geopolitics, as it attempts to pull in as much as it can while it can.

4)    American Spring? Meanwhile, closer to home, while those on the political right like to dismiss the Occupy movement (e.g., Occupy Wall Street), the fact that the movement happened at all is the most significant part of it. Indeed, Time magazine made protestors its “Person of the Year”, and that’s not restricted to just the Arab countries. The Occupy movement and protests against cut-backs in many developed countries had many of the earmarks of the Arab Spring: protestors saying that their governments serve an elite clique and not the people; lots of people, especially young men, who cannot find work despite months or years of trying; and a belief that the political system is neither representative nor responsive. Just because winter has fallen, and the Occupy settlements have been disbanded does not mean that the dissatisfaction has gone away. And with increasingly dysfunctional government in America, the potential is there for a much stronger protest movement against the System, however that is defined. American Spring, perhaps? It sounds unlikely, but not as unlikely now as it did before, and it won’t be restricted to America for discontent will grow in all developed countries.

This is especially true as the boomers move towards retirement, only to find that their either don’t have the resources to retire and that no one is going to donate them, or that the civil servant pensions that they were promised are unaffordable.

The protest movements have only just begun, and they are going to be acrimonious, disruptive, and at times hijack the political process.

5)    Mixed signals for both weaker – and stronger – economic growth.  Europe and its prospects are dragging the global economy down. The uncertainty in Europe, combined with the painful budget cuts in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, mean that Europe is now in recession and a drag on the global economy.

Meanwhile, China, which had been concerned about inflation, and hence was hiking interest rates in a bid to slow it, has now reversed itself, which I can only interpret as concern that growth will slow more than they want. That’s a potential positive, as it will add stimulus to the global economy.

Canada, which has to date seemed to skate above most of the problems of the rest of the developed world, now seems to be experiencing slower growth, with an unexpected jump in the unemployment rate, while its housing market is looking pricey, frothy, dangerous, and much like America’s prior to the collapse in 2008, especially in condo development in its major cities like Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary. Moreover, its consumer debt levels are exceeding the levels of American consumers in 2007, and no less a figure than Mark Carney, the highly respected Governor of the Bank of Canada, has warned consumers and banks alike to cut back on consumer borrowing. Canada could be arriving late for the financial meltdown of 2008 – but if its consumers don’t mend their ways, they will get there.

And yet, America, which until 2008 was seen as the world’s engine of growth, seems to be picking up for no specific reason. Actually, this was almost inevitable because of the natural dynamism and entrepreneurship of the American economy. What has prevented America from rebounding earlier, or more strongly, has been the housing market, which is still in horrendous shape – but slowly improving.

So how will this balance out through 2012? Assuming that Europe doesn’t crash and burn, and drag everyone else down with it, and that Iran doesn’t precipitate a significant war in the Middle East, then America will continue to recover, its jobless rate will continue to decline (slowly), the world will lick its (economic) wounds, and things will slowly get better.

Accordingly, while I continue to counsel my clients to have a Plan B in their back pocket if things do go bad, my primary advice is the prepare now for better times ahead. There are problems – big problems – ahead, and the American election in 2012 is not going to help, but for 2012 we are likely to see an improving environment, and opportunities re-emerging for those with the courage to grasp them, as I outline in Trend #7 below.

6)    Climate change accelerates – and the consequences will multiply. The most significant and portentous climate news of 2011 was the discovery of methane gas bubbling up in the Arctic Ocean off the north coasts of both Siberia and Alaska. Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and the melting of the Arctic ice cap, combined with the rise in the temperature of the Arctic Ocean, has started to release methane from the ocean floor. As well, as temperatures rise in the northern polar regions of Siberia, Alaska, and Canada, the permafrost melts, releasing even more methane into the atmosphere. The amounts of methane that could be released by both sea floor methyl hydrates and permafrost are staggeringly huge, and could dramatically accelerate the rate of climate change. If this trend continues, not only will the debate over climate change be over, but humanity will be forced to race to keep up with the potential changes.

As it happens, the vast majority of climate scientists – something approaching 95% – now agree that climate change is happening, and that humanity is at the very least a significant contributor to it. Since I speak to lots of different kinds of audiences, I can tell you that most groups now accept that climate change is happening, even those that have been among the most vocal doubters. The doubts they now raise are more along the lines of whether humanity is to blame. But from my point of view, it no longer matters: if your house is on fire, you don’t throw gasoline on the fire, regardless of how it started. That’s roughly the position we’re in now.

In 2012, we will get more information about the release of methane, and can only pray for good news. Meanwhile, brace yourself for more strange, and increasingly extreme weather. And because climate is a chaotic system (where chaos theory is a branch of mathematics), it is literally unpredictable. This means we can’t tell whether we will get floods or drought, hurricanes or tornados, or something else unforeseen. But it won’t be business as usual, either.

7)    Innovation as Steve Jobs’ legacy.  Jobs didn’t invent innovation, but he sure popularized it! Innovation has become a corporate religion in recent years, and with good reason: innovation can allow you to disrupt the marketplace, scoop up market share, increase profits, and win friends and influence people, just as Jobs and Apple have done. Yet, innovation is hard, especially because there’s a natural resistance to change and to the real risk-taking that innovation requires.

But if there is a theme for the corporate world in 2012, it is that now is the time to get serious about innovation. As an innovation specialist who runs seminars and workshops for corporate clients, I’m seeing this on a daily basis in genetic and medical research, agriculture, the automotive industry, the insurance industry and finance generally, plus just about every other sector of the economy. And technology itself embodies innovation. Indeed, the idea of a technological company not working hard at innovation seems like recipe for extinction. The world is changing rapidly, and there are lots of new opportunities – and disasters – out there. It’s raining soup, but if you just stand there, looking up in surprise, you’ll drown!

8)    Who dares, wins. Such is the motto of Britain’s fabled SAS – one of the world’s premier commando groups. But their motto applies equally to unsettled times. During such times, it’s easy and very, very tempting to hunker down, conserving cash, and wait for lazy, easy times to return. But study after study shows that companies that continue to market aggressively, and pursue research into new ideas, new products, and better results for their customers make far more inroads with modest expenditures during bad times than spending far more during good times, when everyone else is competing hard. Moreover, loyalty is won when times are bad, both among consumers, and among employees. And best of all, you can often accomplish a great deal with careful planning and foresight rather than lavish expenditures. This is where strategic planning comes to the fore. The time to be thoughtfully aggressive is when your competitors are playing turtle.

9)    The Red Invaders. The emergence of a Chinese middle class not only means upward pressure on food and fuel prices, it also means a vast invasion of Chinese tourists bearing money. For those countries and regions able to attract such tourists, it means a new source of revenue, and a big shot in the arm. And, as with all ethnic groups, it also means serving them the way they want to be served in terms of language, food, and customs. To the winner go the mega-spoils.

10) Haggling returns to North American retailing. Smart retailers are recognizing that it’s no longer enough to post a sign saying “10% off” to attract consumers, but that consumers are more demanding now, and are moving away from the traditional “no haggle” approach to buying. Moreover, haggling offers two additional benefits to consumers: it’s become somewhat of a game where they can enjoy the thrill of the hunt; and it offers bragging rights when talking with their friends. As a result, haggling has been emerging in two different ways, one passive, and the other active.

The passive form of haggling is to wait for sales. You can witness this almost anywhere when consumers see an item they like in a store, and ask if it’s on sale. When they’re told that it’s not, they turn up their noses, and say they’ll wait until it is. This might be described as “temporal haggling”, where the consumer is saying, “I’ll wait until you lower the price before I buy it. And if you don’t lower it enough, I won’t buy it.” Smart stores are responding in creative ways. Some salespeople say, “No, that’s not on sale, but it will be starting next week,” which amounts to a counter-offer. A smart consumer will reply by saying, “Can you put it aside for me until then?”, implicitly offering to buy it if they do. Some salespeople say no, others say “Sure.” The net result is that store and consumer have haggled over the price to agree on a sale/purchase. Yet the smart retailer actually has an advantage in this exchange: they get to name the sale price in temporal haggling.

By comparison, in active, more traditional haggling the consumer takes the initiative, saying something like “What’s your best price on this widget?” If the salesperson replies with the sticker price, the haggle is over and the consumer leaves. If the salesperson names a price, the consumer responds dismissively, and says, “I wouldn’t pay a nickel over $X for that”, and the salesperson can choose to respond or not. This is, as I say, traditional marketplace haggling.

If a retailer wants to capitalize on the re-emergence of haggling into the North American marketplace, they need to anticipate it, and come up with a range of responses. One might be to say, “We can’t discount this item today, but it is going on sale next week. Would you like to put a deposit on it to hold it until then?” The retailer regains the initiative this way, and moves towards a close. Or better still, the retailer should look for a way to add value rather than cut price by making a counter-offer like, “No, I’m sorry, we can’t discount that item. But we can offer you a 50% discount on a matching accessory if you buy it.”

Regardless of approach, though, retailers should be prepared to return to marketplace haggling, and have a range of responses ready to deal with it. Consumers, as always, should decide what they want, and what their bottom line is in getting it.

11) Health care magic blossoms. Putting aside the issue of cost, which concerns everyone, the ability of health care to solve problems is beginning to move at computer speeds, in part because IT is increasingly being used by doctors, nurses, hospitals – and patients – to manage health care, and in part because research is increasingly being done using smart, powerful computer tools to perform research and execute treatments. Among the changes in the immediate future of health care are:

• The rapidly rising ability to repair failing hearts and minds (or at least brains) and other organs with stem cells. Stem cell treatments are starting to move out of the laboratory and into the operating room, and 2012 will see hundreds of people receiving this kind of therapy.
• Similarly, 3D printers, which have been in development for roughly 20 years, are now good enough that they are starting to be used to create replacement organs from a patient’s own tissue. This will gradually move into mainstream medicine, with replacement hearts, livers, and kidneys being at the top of the list.
• Quadriplegics will increasingly be able to interact with the world through prosthetics controlled by thought alone, either through electrodes that interpret brain wave patterns, or implanted chips which interpret specific thought-impulses.
• Retinal implants are starting to emerge that can help blind people discern light, shapes, and some objects. The implication is that we may be able to help aging boomers improve their failing eyesight as they age – one of the biggest complaints of old age!
• Health care is increasingly falling into the hands of the patient – literally. Smartphones, which are fundamentally wearable computers with all the capabilities of what used to be called “supercomputers”, can now work with Bluetooth-enabled sensors to monitor various aspects of health, from the vigor of your workout, to the health of your heart, to the level of your blood sugar. This will lead to a revolution in health management, with consumers sometimes way out in front of practitioner.
• Likewise, as patients become more and more comfortable with researching medical conditions and treatments online; they are demanding an increasing role in their own diagnosis and treatment; becoming active, important advocates for fund-raising and acceptance of treatments; and blunt critics of health care practitioners through social media and word of mouth. Smart practitioners are accepting this trend and rolling with it. Old school practitioners are resisting, but may wind up steamrolled by it.
• Crowdsourcing of tough diagnoses, and novel solutions to the medical and financial problems of health care promise to open yet another front in the health care revolution. This follows on with the success of crowdsourcing in helping leading-edge research scientists in astronomy (galaxyzoo.org) and protein research (Foldit game softwear).
• Sequencing your genome gets cheap. Sequencing the first genome cost billions of dollars and took decades to perform (culminating in the Human Genome Project). Today it costs about $1,000 (although analysis costs significantly more). Within 10 years, it will cost $100, and analysis will cost about $500 more, and will provide you a complete run-down of where your vulnerabilities lie, and what you can do to forestall future health problems. For 2012, we will see incremental advances towards that goal, with major diseases identified, and a short list of things you do – and don’t – want to do or eat prescribed. This is the true beginning of personalized medicine, and it will revolutionize health care.

12) Technology accelerates in 2012. It’s hard to know what to leave out: electronic mind-reading? Glasses that emit sounds and smells to allow you to enhance social media? The proliferating tablets and smartphones with ever-more wondrous abilities? Here’s a partial list of things I think demonstrate trends that will become increasingly important:

• 3D printers – As well as making replacement organs, 3D printers are coming into the price range of consumers, and may mean that you can buy your own desktop factory. Need a replacement screw for a door? Make it yourself. Need to duplicate a key? Ditto. See a nifty device on TV? Download the plans and make it yourself. Of course, who knows what the ink cartridges will cost.
• Near-eye monitors – These look like glasses, but are computer monitors. They’re the lineal descendents of jet fighter heads-up displays, and will revolutionize the way we use computers, particularly smartphones, but have been hampered by high costs. Prices are starting to approach luxury consumer levels, so applications will start to appear in things like immersive gaming, personal entertainment theaters, medical imaging, and augmented reality.
• Augmented reality through your smartphone – Augmented reality is overlaying information on top of the view from your Mark 1 eyeball, much as Google Street View overlays the names of shops on a photo. You’ll be able to hold up your smartphone’s camera and have your phone overlay directions, stores, infrastructure views, or whatever else might be useful to you. This gets better when you can view the results in your near-eye monitors.
• Cloud computing explodes – Owning a computer is so 2010. Cloud computing is rapidly placing the resources of today’s supercomputers in your hands for pennies a minute. One researcher used one of the commercial clouds to try to break his password to a social media website by brute force, just to see if he could do it. Using the cloud and standard code-breaking techniques he did it in minutes, and it cost him 39¢. As the tools to harness this power get more powerful and easier to use, the potential of the cloud will be adapted by more and more users.
• Siri & copycats + babbling to your smartphone – Siri is an application of the iPhone 4S that allows you to speak to your iPhone and get it to do things for you. This might be setting a count-down timer, converting milliliters to fluid ounces, finding an address and directions from your present location, or looking up a phone number (all of which I’ve done). Apple is offering this technology as a beta version now, but every Siri request goes through Apple’s servers. This means the potential exists to assess what people want to do, and come up with solutions, improving the results really quickly, making personal avatars (also called PDAs, butlers, or assistants) much more valuable in short order. And that means everyone will rush into the field. This will lead to lots of really bad copycat applications, but ultimately a revolution in how we use technology.
• Biometric passwords – Our world is becoming so full of passwords that need to be foolproof (meaning our tendency to forget them) that biometric passwords are almost inevitable, and they are beginning to appear. They will be expensive at first, but gradually retina, fingerprint, voiceprint, and other means of making sure you are you will become cheap and commonplace, and then you will become your own password, no memory required.
• Robots – Everyday robots are here, but they are clunky, expensive, or just plain cute. That’s changing very quickly, and 2012 will see more and more of them appearing in more and more places. Typically these will be commercial settings, but health care is one place where robots make sense and will be used. Rosie the Robot won’t be washing your dishes this year, but she’s coming – if you’re willing to pony up the equivalent of the price of a luxury car.

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The Occupy movement is most significant not for what the protestors say, but rather that the movement is happening at all. It demonstrates significant unrest, and the greatest dissatisfaction with the capitalist system that we’ve witnessed since the fall of the Soviet Union. But where is it headed? That’s a much more worrisome question.

The fuel that powered the Vietnam war protests was the draft. There were many other issues – objections to the military-industrial complex, objections to American foreign policy, objections to the money misspent on the war, dislike and disagreement with McNamara and Johnson, even objections to war per se – but without the draft, the protests could not have been as sustained or as widespread as they were.

In the same way, the fuel that powers the Occupy movement is jobs – or rather, lack of jobs. In America, and most other developed countries, the official unemployment rate is high, but the true unemployment rate is obscenely so. In the U.S., for instance, the official rate is 9%. But if you include those who have stopped looking for work, and therefore are no longer counted in the official unemployment statistics, then add those who are underemployed, the true rate approaches 20%. And if you look at the rate for young men, particularly among minorities, it approaches 40%. There is immense frustration with the lack of opportunity, and the smug, self-righteous people who look at the protestors and sneer, “Get a job!” only reveal the vast depths of their ignorance.

It’s true there are many issues embraced by the Occupiers, but without the lack of jobs, the movement would never have developed into much of anything. Americans are not generally a jealous people. If people were prospering, the middle class was expanding, and young people were able to find jobs and start their careers, they wouldn’t really have cared what percentage of total wealth is held by the top 1% of income earners. What rankles is that the rich continue to get richer through a perceived manipulation of “the system”, while the vast majority of other people suffer economically. It leads to the belief that the game is fixed in favor of those who can afford to buy the politicians. Whether this is right or not may not matter – it’s the perception that’s important here. And that perception may be explosive.

But where is this movement going? What’s next?

The Future of Work

If the future holds more jobs, and greater prosperity for most workers, then the Occupy movement will collapse from lack of fuel, and be remembered as a strange fad that came and went, like pet rocks or hula hoops. That’s not the case, because the future of work is much bleaker than people, even most top economists realize.

There are two forces that are squeezing workers in all developed countries: foreign competition, and domestic automation. One is going to get much worse, and the other is going to get slightly better.

The one that will get slightly better, at least in manufacturing, is foreign competition. There have been headlines for decades about the offshoring of jobs. There was even a management cliché for it in the 1990s: “Emigrate, automate, or evaporate,” which meant move your factories offshore in order to take advantage of dramatically lower wages in developing countries; decrease the labor content of your products in order to reduce the advantage of cheap labor in developing countries, or go out of business. (As an aside, there’s actually a fourth option: innovate, but that’s another story.)

This happened because of the emergence of the global economy. A global marketplace implies a global labor pool. If workers in developing countries can do similar work, but at much lower wages, then the work will naturally gravitate to them, and away from workers in developed countries. This has been going on since the 1970s, and is a familiar tale. It makes headlines, and becomes the subject of learned papers by economists, and protests by industries and unions that want protection. And the offshoring of jobs will continue until there is a rough parity between those producing things offshore, using cheaper labor, and the cost of producing things at home, using more expensive labor.

One way this could happen is through wages falling in developed countries, and rising in developing countries. But wages tend to be sticky; not many people are willing to take a cut in pay. As a result, what has tended to happen instead is that workers here are let go, and their jobs disappear, even as the wages in places like China and India are, indeed, rising.

The mild good news here is that much of this adjustment has already happened. Indeed, there are a few reports of manufacturers moving production back to America as the cost of labor in China, for instance, has risen, and as governments, particularly in the southern American states, have reduced legal protections for workers, effectively lowering their cost. (Whether you view this as a good thing or not is a separate issue. Indeed, it’s a difficult issue: do we want good worker protection, but no jobs, or bad worker protection and some jobs?)

The other way for workers in developed countries to compete is through higher productivity, and many companies have survived and kept their production in America that way. Yet, even when they succeed, the number of jobs required goes down. Businesses survive, but only by shedding jobs, leaving a trail of unemployment in the wake.

This is the past and present. The future will be different.

Increased productivity comes most notably through increased automation, and we’ve all experienced that, as when we go to the gas pump, swipe our credit card, and pump our own gas, all without an attendant. But automation is about to become supercharged.

The rate of change in computing speed and cost-effectiveness is not only accelerating, but the rate of acceleration is increasing. Some technology forecasters believe that computers will increase in power by 1,000 times over the next 10 years. With this growth in computing power available at steadily cheaper prices, automation is going to accelerate dramatically, eating its way up the workplace food chain. Only this time, it’s not going to be primarily blue-collar jobs that disappear – that’s pretty well already happened – but white-collar jobs that are hard hit. Indeed, anyone who uses a contemporary computer can experience this for themselves.

With the Macintosh laptop that I’m using to write this blog, I could (if I had the talent) write a new piece of music, score it, perform it with dozens of (computerized) instruments, record it and release it for sale. I could take videos with my iPhone, download them to my laptop, edit them, add titles and special effects, add in the music that I had created, and then publish the end result on YouTube. In effect, with these two tools, a laptop computer and a smartphone, I can replace composers, performers, and an entire movie making team – and that’s using today’s technology. Very shortly, I could make an entire movie, using technology to create photo-realistic virtual actors and background scenes, dub the voices myself, then change the sound of my voice using technology, and produce an entire movie without anyone else. True, it would be a terrible movie as I know nothing about directing, editing, or acting, and not much about composing or playing musical instruments – but that’s not the point. The point is that the tools we use are becoming so powerful that high-end jobs that used to require skilled people can now be done by ordinary folk.

Likewise, computers will move into medicine, performing research using Genetic Programming, and assisting doctors to do complex diagnoses using smart computers like IBM’s Watson; performing clerical work in almost every conceivable industry, and displacing millions of white collars workers along the way; drive cars, trucks, and trains unassisted; and almost any other kind of routine work. Indeed, computer intelligences and everyday robots will move towards replacing workers in any and every kind of repetitive work, leaving only creative, innovative, entrepreneurial work – and leaving millions, or even tens of millions of people unemployed.

What Happens When Too Many People Are Unemployed?

If you look at the Arab Spring from earlier this year, it wasn’t so much a yearning for the freedom to read newspapers not approved by dictators, or the desire to vote that was the driving force that caused people to revolt, but unemployment, especially among young men – leading the inability to create a life, to feed your children, or even to be able to afford to get married and start a family – that drove the revolutions, and inspired young men to face bullets and tanks. If you look at the protests in Europe, it’s not just the anger that a lazy, luxurious way of life is being taken away from Greek citizens, but a very real fear that they won’t be able to live that drives citizens to the barricades.

Unemployment, the specter of want, and the inability to make a decent living, to have a decent life, is historically a very potent, very scary force in geopolitics, and it’s with us now. The Occupy movement is not just about fairness, but driven by the fear and anger that there is no opportunity unless you are one of the privileged class that has a job. As the number of jobs lost to automation rises, so too will the number of people who will respond to the goad of fear and anger about their future.

Worse, it’s not just about finding a job – it’s also about keeping one. Jobs appear and disappear faster than at any time in history, and someone who is a valued employee and a rising star one day can be redundant and valueless the next. A person in that position can try to retrain and find new work, but they find themselves among the multitudes of people desperately seeking work. Without the in-demand skill that got them a job in the first place, they are reduced to the same pavement-pounding, resuming-producing, faith-sapping odyssey that afflicts so many out of work people today.

I’ve seen this coming for some time. In 1993, I wrote a book called Facing the Future. In that book I wrote the following passage:

It’s an overall decline in the need for work that concerns me, brought about by the increasing capabilities and sophistication of computers.

I seem to be very much in the minority on this view, and I may be dead wrong. The conventional view is that as jobs disappear from manufacturing and clerical work, for instance, the steadily rising productivity of workers using increasingly sophisticated automation will create a new prosperity that will increase demand and create new jobs. This is certainly reasonable, because it is precisely what has happened throughout history. But where, I wonder, will the new jobs appear? The conventional view is that new services will spring up, and that higher living standards will allow people to spend money on things they could never afford before, and that much of this will be for personal and personalized services.

I can see logic in this. New services do appear. There were no aerobic instructors, for example, in my grandfather’s day. But how much personal service can we use? Moreover, generally speaking, service jobs pay less than manufacturing jobs. As for being able to buy things that we couldn’t afford before, since manufacturing will increasingly be automated the higher demand for manufactured goods won’t necessarily generate more jobs.

This is not a problem that will burst on the scene in the next five to ten years. Humans are still capable of offering a flexibility, initiative, and creativity that machines cannot duplicate. But at some point, whether it’s twenty years away or one hundred, I’m afraid that the time will come when there will be very few jobs that computers can’t do better, faster, cheaper, and more reliably than humans. As that day approaches, we will be confronted with several problems.

In the first place, we will need a new economic system. Much as it grieves me to say so, free market capitalism may be dying, for it only pays those who are part of the production process. If virtually no one is part of this process, all the fruits of production will belong to those who own the machines – a recipe for the peon-and-aristocracy patterns of Third World economies. But where will the machine-owners find their customers? People can’t be consumers unless they have money to spend. …[1]

In the intervening 18 years, I’ve seen nothing to change my mind. We are, indeed, heading towards a world of aristocrats and peons. Indeed, that is precisely what the Occupy forces are demonstrating against, only they use a slightly different terminology: the 1% and the 99%. Same thing.

So where is this leading us? If I’m right, then even if the economy and employment picks up, and mollifies the Occupy protestors and their spiritual kin, the concerns will return again and again as the long-term rates of unemployment, especially among the young, continue to rise. And that way lies revolution.

What Should We Do About This?

If we lived in Naples in 79 A.D., and saw steam pouring out of the top of Mount Vesuvius, we would try to warn the residents to flee. We are in an analogous situation. This volcano won’t erupt in the next month or next year – but as things are trending, we need to take action, and soon, or we risk precisely the kind of revolution we witnessed in the Arab Spring earlier this year.

It’s no good trying to stem the tide of automation. That smacks of the 19^th century luddites smashing mechanized looms that they felt were stealing their jobs. Moreover, it would be like trying to hold back the tide, and about as successful. It is possible that politicians, under voter pressure, will seek to ban automation and the productivity increases that automation produces in order to preserve jobs. (This is also called “featherbedding”.) All that means is that countries that do not ban automation will see their relative productivity increase, their cost structure decrease, so that the jobs will migrate from here to there rather than being lost to automation.

Instead, politicians, economists, and anyone else interested in our future prosperity and stability should be taking a serious look at how to create new, better jobs that people can do best. These will largely be entrepreneurial, I suspect, and will all be creative, and focus on innovation. This also implies a complete revamp of our education system, away from rote learning and memorization, and towards creativity and individually customized education, to enable each person to emphasize the things they are best at.

None of this will happen quickly or easily. It requires a very different view of “job creation” and a very different understanding of the future of work. The “magic of the markets” won’t solve this problem. Capitalism, left to itself, will emphasize greater productivity through automation, leading to greater profits for the owners of the machines – until profits collapse because there aren’t enough consumers to by the goods and services industry produces. Capitalism will lead to a dead end.

This is not the conventional view, and many will decry my message as “socialist”, although I’ve said nothing at all about redistributing wealth. Some will pillory me for being alarmist, but without attempting to refute my reasoning. And some will just hide their heads in the sand and say “it can’t happen here.”

To this last group, I would suggest that they tell that to Moammar Gadhafi and Hosni Mubarak. They were sure it couldn’t happen there, either.

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The Apple iPhone 4S announced last week received generally tepid reviews. The tech press was expecting more, mostly in the external form factor of the iPhone, and was disappointed when the “new” iPhone looked the same as the old.

I completely disagree with the lack of enthusiasm, and think that the tech press missed a truly important development. I believe the iPhone 4S will eventually be seen as a crucial turning point in the history of technology because of its Siri speech comprehension software. Specifically, Siri is going to take a tool, the smartphone, and turn it into a companion. Computers aren’t going to be boxes that we use to do things any more. Instead, they are going to be our friends, allies, and servants that do things for us. They are going to be our protectors, advocates, and alter egos in cyberspace. Technology is moving past its First Era of being passive enablers that allow us to do things while we use them, into a more mature, Second Era where they work alongside of us.

Apple is not the first, but…

Apple isn’t the first company to create smart computer systems. IBM’s Watson computer made its public debut by beating the human champions on the television game show Jeopardy!, which was chosen because of it’s whimsical, very human use of the English language. Genetic programming (“GP”) is a means of creating rules to identify patterns by means of natural selection, and can solve problems that humans can’t, or create solutions that humans might not consider, thereby augmenting human brains. John Koza, one of the pioneers in the field of GP, has used it to create new technologies, including new, patentable inventions. And there are undoubtedly other smart systems of the Second Era out there.

And Apple didn’t create Siri, they bought it from a company called SRI Ventures, which co-developed it with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, an arm of the U.S Department of Defense that, among other things, invented the Internet. Siri was originally sold as an app for the iPhone, starting in February of 2010, with no involvement by Apple. But Apple bought it in April of 2010, and went to work on improving it and making it smarter and more responsive. Moreover, the fact that Apple has made it a significant feature of the iPhone, and calls it a beta version, means that it intends to continue to improve it.

But what Apple has done, and the reason why Siri will be so significant, is that it has created an entrancing user interface for a powerful technology that will entice people into using it, and it is this that is going to be a game changer. I suspect that Apple sees Siri and related developments as the way of the future: a computer that acts as if it’s your intelligent assistant or personal genie in cyberspace. Assuming it works reasonably well, and isn’t laughed off the stage, it will change the way we use technology forever.

Avoiding the mistakes of the Newton

Apple had a new technology laughed off the stage in the late 1980s with the much-maligned Newton, one of, if not the first tablet computer. Apple’s marketing people, in the absence of Steve Jobs, billed it as a handwriting recognition computer, but the handwriting recognition software wasn’t good enough to live up to the billing. As a result, the Newton was ridiculed, and deemed a flop, even though it was building a solid, even rabid following among organizations that needed computing power with graphic capabilities outside the office, like the U.S. Census Bureau and Boeing. Had Apple billed it as a powerful hand-held computer that had some handwriting recognition ability, it would have become a smash success, and we would be years ahead of where we are today. Unfortunately, when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he found the company in dire financial straights, and killed the Newton as not immediately important to Apple’s mission. Instead, he focused on revitalizing the Macintosh and less ambitious new products, like the iPod, that could rebuild the company’s position and cachet. Having done that, Apple is now ready to radically change our relationship with technology – a fitting memorial to Steve Jobs.

Apple is not about to allow the kind of embarrassing failure that happened with the Newton to happen again. Indeed, in my view, this development has Jobs’ fingerprints all over it. As Jonathon Ive, who is Senior Vice-President of Industrial Design at Apple, said in a September, 2011 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Apple’s goal is always to “make something that looks like it wasn’t really designed at all because it’s inevitable.” Siri fits perfectly with that goal. If early reports are right, Siri works just the way you’d want a computer assistant to work – if you had thought about it.

Speech comprehension, not speech recognition

Earlier I called Siri “speech comprehension” software as opposed to “speech recognition” software. The distinction was deliberate. There’s a big difference between recognizing what word has been spoken, and understanding what the speaker means. Most speech recognition systems run off menus that seek to match a recognized word with one of their listed answers. If you step outside this menu, such systems are lost, useless, and infuriating. Siri, on the other hand, goes far beyond that with context-sensitive capabilities, and will undoubtedly get better and better as time goes on, and as Apple continues to improve the software’s IQ. This is the critical issue with Siri: it may not be the first smart computer system, but it’s the one that will make the computer-as-companion desirable, even enjoyable. It represents Jobs’ and Apple’s genius at integrating technology into our lives in ways that we enjoy and find natural.

I’ve been thinking about, and expecting, this development to happen in one form or another for more than 20 years. In The Next 20 Years of Your Life, which I wrote in 1996, I used the following vignette to illustrate this kind of human-computer relationship:

 Marc is late, he hasn’t been able to find a parking space near his destination, and he has to walk through one of the seedier, more dangerous parts of town to get to his appointment. Even though his concern about the interview ahead occupies most of his thoughts, he also has niggling doubts about his safety on the mean streets of Toronto’s inner city.

But Marc is a 35 years old software engineer specializing in adaptive computing software in the year 2017. He was a technologically sophisticated teenager, keen on the latest computers and an avid Net surfer even back in the communications Stone Age of the 1990s. As a result, he has eagerly and nimbly shifted from change to change as new communication technologies have appeared, and as companies have come and gone in the industry. He now prepares to use this skill to protect himself from potential danger.

“Shields up, Mr. Sulu,” Marc mumbles to his genie, whom he has named after a character in the classic 1960s television space opera, Star Trek. The “shields up” command triggers a sequence of events. First, Mr. Sulu pinpoints Marc’s exact geographic position from the Global Positioning Network of satellites. Next, Mr. Sulu contacts Marc’s security provider, Minders Inc., alerting the monitoring genie that Marc is currently safe, but has concerns about his welfare. This commlink will remain continuously open during the “shields up” alert, and if trouble arises, or if the link is cut, Minders’ genie will immediately call the police and give Marc’s last known location.

Finally, Mr. Sulu turns his attention to monitoring Marc’s surroundings. Tapping into the satellite network again, Mr. Sulu calls for a live video picture of Toronto, tightly focused on the area immediately around Marc. This is relatively expensive—it will probably cost Marc four or five dollars for the ten minutes he will use it—but it gives Mr. Sulu the opportunity to examine all the buildings and people around Marc, and to warn Marc of potentially dangerous situations or ominous groupings of people.

“Cross the street here,” Mr. Sulu says to Marc. “There’s a group of five people in the alley on your right up ahead, and only one of them has a phone address. From their dress and size, I would guess they are street kids. Move to the far side of the sidewalk opposite, and put some other pedestrians between you and them.” Marc does as suggested. Sure enough, as a woman walks by the alley, the group emerges and starts to hassle her under the guise of asking for spare change.

“Video feed to the police,” Marc instructs. He has ordered Mr. Sulu to forward the satellite image of the group, along with his own video images captured by his LCD Looking Glasses as he walked by, to the police.

Thirty seconds later, a police cruiser and van pull up, and two officers get out while their drivers watch alertly, hands on riot control weapons. The police don’t arrest the loitering kids, but the kids leave, muttering about invasions of privacy, and casting about angry looks as they try to determine who might have called the cops.

“Try to sell the images,” Marc tells Mr. Sulu, even as he hurries away from the scene. Local news retailers are not interested in an assault that didn’t happen, but a sociology professor in Wichita, Kansas who is researching street youth offers to reimburse Marc for his costs for the clip. After a brief negotiation, Mr. Sulu accepts the offer, and the credit transfer is made.

Marc arrives at his appointment in time to catch his breath and cancel the shields up alert before being ushered into the interview. As the conversation between Marc and the interviewers goes back and forth, Mr. Sulu reminds Marc of the things he has said in his proposal to this group, of the committee’s statements about what they is seeking in a candidate, and something of the backgrounds of each of the interviewers. The interviewers hear and see nothing of the information Mr. Sulu is feeding Marc, and Marc gives nothing away by his demeanor. However, the interviewers know exactly what Mr. Sulu is doing for Marc, because each of them is getting the same kind of information from their own genies.

At a critical point in the interview, Mr. Sulu tells Marc that the company interviewing him has just issued a press release announcing the signing of a contract in Venezuela. The services they are to provide to the Venezuelan government are dependent on exactly the kinds of skills Marc has. Mr. Sulu estimates that the company will need either him, or someone very much like him, and quickly. Based on this information, Marc makes a calculated gamble, and toughens his negotiating posture, asking for a lower base fee plus a share of the profits, rather than a flat fee for the entire project. Realizing that his genie has tipped Marc off, the interviewers quickly agree before Marc has a chance to make any further evaluation and up his demands.

There are handshakes most of the way around. However, the personal health profiles each person’s genie transmits to every other genie indicate that there are slight but measurable health risks between Marc and one of the interviewers if they come into direct physical contact. Accordingly, on the instructions of both genies, they merely nod in a friendly way. No offense is taken by either party; this is a common social occurrence that carries no stigma.

Marc leaves, satisfied that he has an entry into a major new contract, and has started to build a useful new relationship. Feeling cocky and preoccupied with his good fortune, he has to be reminded by Mr. Sulu to call for a “shields up” alert again for his walk back to the car.

 The First Era of the relationship between humans and technology was technology as a passive tool, starting with the stone tools used by hominids over 2 ½ million years ago, and includes the vast majority of today’s computers and communications systems. I believe that Siri and similar developments represent a revolution, and the beginning of the Second Era: technology as companions and assistants working alongside us.

The Third Era will arrive much faster, within the next 10-20 years, or even less: technology that can think and act independently of humans.

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Libraries are cutting edge. Schools are not. Librarians move with the changes in technology. Teachers do not. And we need to ask ourselves why that is, because we spend a lot more on our schools than on our libraries.

Now let me make the obvious amendments: Not every library and librarian rides the cutting edge of technology, and not every school is stuck in the 19^th century. But if you had to make a generalization about each of these two pillars of our culture, that would be the one to make, because it’s largely true. And this is ironic, because these two institutions should, theoretically, complement and support each other as sources of knowledge, understanding, even wisdom in our society.

Why is this so? Why have they moved in such divergent fashions when they have so much in common? Well, first of all, libraries are affected by something very like market forces. In a world where a computer may cost a few hundred dollars, and where I or almost anyone else can perform the research that we need online, without ever venturing into a reference library, and where kids and younger adults live and play in cyberspace as easily as they breathe, then what is the role of a library? When people can buy and download books into an iPad or smartphone, and carry an entire library’s worth of books in a laptop in a backpack or briefcase, what is the role of a library? When cyberspace provides places for people with like interest to congregate, discuss, and network, no matter where they live, what is the role of a library? When you can consult experts, either live or through their video, audio, and published works, from wherever you are, what is the role of a library? When traditional print media are under siege by cybermedia, and you can read any newspaper or magazine from anywhere you want, what is the role of a library?

Nobody forces you to go to a library; you go because you want something and they have it, whether for pleasure or for serious intent. As a result, libraries have to operate at the cutting edge of technology, because otherwise they will loose their relevance, and patrons will stop coming through their doors. And librarians have long since not only realized this, but embraced it, seeing in technology new, and more powerful tools that can help them to help library users.

There is no such force acting on schools. Students are required by law to go to public school (or find an acceptable and sometimes expensive or labour-intensive equivalent), so schools have an effective monopoly – which they abuse by forcing students to endure years of agonizing boredom. It is well-intentioned boredom, and possibly useful-at-times boredom, but boredom notwithstanding.

Next, for the most part, except in major cities, libraries are lightly administrated and not terribly politicized. Most community libraries have a volunteer board that steers and assists them. There is usually a head librarian who acts as an executive, but there are not layers of administration heaped on top of the basic operations. There is no “ministry of libraries”, and about the most political aspect of libraries is their funding, and whether it’s too much or not enough.

Public schools, on the other hand, are top-heavy in administrators. They have principals and vice-principals, each of whom must adhere to ever-thickening books of rules about what they can and cannot do, plus the many things they absolutely must do. Teachers have forms to fill out to convince the education bureaucrats that they are complying with the prescribed teaching plans and teaching the prescribed material. Each district has a board that administers the buildings, the staffs, the budgets, and the pedagogy. And every state or province has a secretariat or ministry, usually a very big one, to make sure that everyone else is doing just the right things at just the right moments. (And an obvious comment: clearly the sheer size of our education system, and the importance of its task require that there be administration; but private schools seem to function perfectly well with a much, much lighter load.) All of this mass of people making sure that other people are doing just the right things, and only just the right things means that change is very difficult. It is a dead weight on the progressiveness of schools.

Next, libraries don’t usually attract a lot of political attention. Those who don’t like them typically just don’t go there. They don’t argue that what’s being done in libraries is undermining our rights or our government, or spreading unhealthy lifestyles or propaganda. Schools, unfortunately, have become highly politicized, and everybody disagrees about what should be done, and how, which tends to exacerbate the paralysis.

And whereas people who don’t like libraries probably never liked them, and probably never went to them, everyone had to go to school. And everyone who went to school as a kid thinks they know what’s going on in our schools, and that it’s really pretty simple stuff that anyone could do, if they weren’t occupied doing more important things. Couple this with the widely held misperception that teachers have a cushy number, knocking off work at 3, taking extended holidays at Christmas and in the Spring, and enjoying Summers off, and it’s clear to anyone that teachers don’t work very much or very hard. Nobody complains about “librarian’s hours,” because people mostly don’t care, even when libraries are publicly funded. Of course, that this perception of teachers and teaching is mostly wrong doesn’t get much attention.

Then there’s the union issue. Librarians in big cities tend to be unionized, but with smaller community centers, this isn’t usually the case. And while there is clearly a valid and legitimate reason for teachers’ unions, they have, in the main, tended to block and fight changes in the way schools operate. They must feel threatened by such changes, although I’m not sure why. But the result is that they act like lead boots, further adding to the difficulties that prevent schools from changing.

The end result of all this is that we have one of the critically important foundations of our society and economy – our school systems – mostly stuck in the 19^th century, whereas our libraries are racing forward into the second decade of the 21^st century, and stretching towards the third.

It’s not good enough, and it needs to change. But who has the courage, the will, and the authority to change it? That may turn out to be the critical question for the 21^st century.

© Copyright, IF Research, September 2011.