Originally published at Institute for the Future’s Future Now blog. “We are suffering from a bad attack of economic pessimism. …

Why “free time” is key to learning, social justice, and personal liberation. Whoever has not two-thirds of his time to himself is a slave. ~ Nietzsche It’s what you do in your free time that will set you free, or enslave you. ~ Unknown Let’s say you are a senior…

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. ~ Nietzsche Just a few years before he died of cancer, Steve Jobs, one of the most iconic business leaders of our time, shared with us how he understood his own life story. He was famous for having…

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Watching the film, Social Network, the fictionalized chronicle of Facebook’s founding, you can’t help…

Whoever has not two-thirds of his time to himself is a slave. ~ Nietzsche It’s what you do in your free time that will set you free, or enslave you. ~ Unknown Let’s say you are a senior at a public high school in Washington. You have a 3.0 GPA…

When we reject the single story, when we realize that there was never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise. ― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie If you’re an American teenager growing up in the early part of the 21st century, life is about to get very…

To fully grasp the significance of the education revolution happening around us, it helps to see it in a larger context. What’s being disrupted isn’t just one industry, important as it is, but an entire narrative around which most of us organize our lives. …

On May 16, 2020, IBM’s Watson addressed UC Berkeley’s Class of 2020 at their graduation — the first time in history a robot has been invited to write and deliver a commencement address. Here is a transcript of the speech. Good afternoon. It’s an absolute pleasure and a tremendous honor…

If we’re going to force children to go to school and learn what we tell them to learn — and they have no say in the matter — then it’s only fair that we pay them. Let’s pay them to learn what we think they absolutely need in order to…