Education and jobs in the digital world

national borders and obliterates distance. It can operate in real time, but it lets people in different time zones communicate easily. But it must coexist with national regimes, cultural, and language differences, and the realities of physical infrastructure that impinge on its theoretical spacelessness. The digital world will profoundly change how people learn, how they work, and what they produce, but at the same time it won’t change human nature nor the need to give children a moral as well as intellectual education. In the old days, you could achieve a semblance of equality among people by distributing land to the peasants, or later on by raising workers’ salaries or even giving them profit-sharing. But in the information (as opposed to the agricultural or industrial) economy, such tactics no longer work. People prosper less according to what they have in their hands or bank accounts, and more according to what they can do with their minds. That means the task of fostering equality (of opportunity, at least) is more complex than a simple redistribution of assets. The only feasible way is education, which requires not just giving, but helping people to take and to learn. It’s a two-way process that requires participation from the learner—and it’s just about the most important job a community can do. Education works best in the decentralized environment fostered by the Net, yet it needs to be paid for by society as a whole—even as it benefits society as a whole. That is, parents and children should benefit from the choices Esther Dyson