All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
This article was first published in the November 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
This article was taken from the preview of The WIRED World in 2016. In November, WIRED publishes its fourth annual trends report, a standalone magazine in which our network of expert writers and influencers predicts what's coming next. Here's a small selection of what to expect.
Facebook and LinkedIn have been around for more than a decade. Twitter is almost as old. In 2015, social networks are so all- encompassing it's hard to imagine how we lived without them. Similarly, it's easy to imagine that the ones we currently use are enough. How many different places do you really need to present your digital self to the world -- especially when that self is built around your actual name in most instances. Three? Five? Ten?
Obviously, it varies for each individual. But there are still major networks to create. So, I predict that, in 2016, we will see at least one education network go mainstream.
In education, people maintain unique identities and relationships, and optimal outcomes are key to one's overall quality of life. As such, it can benefit from the efficiencies, amplifications and accelerations that networks create.
To fully appreciate the value an education network can unleash, just think about the critical role that more general networks already play in how we identify important new ideas and innovations, and spread them faster. Ten-plus years ago, the key competitive edge to winning in business involved accessing information more efficiently than one's competitors. Those who did this were better informed, had more context and could see more clearly where things were heading.
Today, all this holds true. But how you achieve this competitive edge has shifted. We've entered what I call the Networked Age: an era where what you know is framed by who you know.
In the Networked Age, our friends and colleagues find and filter information that is most useful to us. Networks make it possible to engage in extremely high numbers of interactions and transactions, in part by aggregating and redistributing trust. You may not know the eBay seller who is promising you an item. But you do know that 479 other buyers in eBay's marketplace have rated that seller favourably, so you proceed with the transaction.
I'm keen on many networks, because people are complex, with many different facets. We engage in a variety of pursuits, in a variety of environments, and often the relationships we maintain in these environments are unique to that realm. One way to get a sense of how many identities people maintain is to simply look in their wardrobes. We have different clothing for different facets of our identity and different modes of behaviour. You can think about social networks as digital clothing. They're what we "wear" to present different versions of ourselves online, as we engage in different pursuits.
Of course, many of these networks aspire to be the shirt you can wear anywhere. But there is still a significant need and a demand for much more targeted networks and platforms. Although you might be able to pull off a high backhand volley in a tuxedo, you're likely to perform much better in a tennis shirt.
Networks are the same: general-purpose networks are obviously valuable, but there's a growing role for more specialised ones. In 2005, we hit one billion global internet users, a benchmark that helped usher in the era of social networks. Just ten years later, we're at more than three billion global users, many of whom access the internet via phones and tablets.
In other words, more people are using the internet more often, in more places than they were ten years ago. That's creating an opportunity for a whole new generation of networks that cater to various aspects of personal identity and the relationships associated with them.
Roughly speaking, Facebook is where you maintain personal relationships. My company LinkedIn is for your professional life. Twitter is for what's happening now. Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube and Instagram are venues for sharing your creativity.
These are generalisations and there's overlap in many of these networks, but they're all fairly broad and flexible, and in part that's why I think there's so much growth left. Magazines didn't stop at Time or Life. Television didn't stop at the BBC and ITV. In the cable era, we saw the rise of hundreds of "specialised" channels that can still reach hundreds of millions of people.
Over the next decade, we'll see a similar trajectory play out with platforms that are explicitly built around networks. NextDoor, for example, where I serve on the board, is built around a person's identity as a member of a specific geographic community. Edmodo, where I'm also a board member, is an education-oriented network that caters to people's identities as teachers, students and parents of students. I was involved in the first round of funding for Change.org, which is a network where people establish and maintain their identities as participants in civil society. Kiva.org (I'm a board member) is a micro-finance network where lenders provide zero-interest loans to entrepreneurs.
In the Networked Age, technologies shift overnight. Opportunities span the globe, but so does competition. As I wrote in my book, The Start-up of You, individuals must cultivate an adaptive, entrepreneurial mindset to survive. Education is the key to success -- starting at the K-12 level (pre-school to year 13 in the UK) and continuing throughout one's life. In developing countries, this dynamic is even more pronounced -- smartphones are often the only device for knowledge acquisition.
The more people recognise that education equates to prosperity and security in the Networked Age, the more they'll recognise the importance of using networks to enhance their education. Think about the current landscape. Schools have spent billions investing in laptops and tablets for their students. Thousands of content creators are producing courseware, ebooks, video, study apps and tools. As platforms such as Khan Academy, Udacity, Coursera, Alt.school and Lynda.com (which LinkedIn acquired for $1.5bn in April) come online, the opportunities to pursue education at all stages of life are becoming more flexible.
To utilise these abundant resources most effectively, it helps to have a network of trusted peers and allies providing context, recommendations and other kinds of information and feedback, collectively and in real-time. Ultimately, education is a highly social activity. Humans learn by modelling the behaviour and internalising the experiences of others. When people learn in social settings they retain information better. That's why educational networks make so much sense.
Also critical is the fact that education is a realm where people have very distinct identities and relationships that they'd like to maintain apart from the rest of their lives. For example, if you're a student, your Facebook friends probably include fellow classmates -- but not your teachers or your principal. If you're a parent, your Facebook friends may include other parents whose children go to the same schools yours do -- but not many.
And even then you may not consider Facebook the most appropriate domain to engage in an in-depth way about specific and confidential school-related issues. Education, in short, is a domain where a more topic-specific network can deliver much more value than a general-interest one.
An education network gives students a focused venue where they can discuss homework assignments and find tools and materials that can help them. It gives teachers a place to share recommendations about new courseware. It allows parents to follow what their children are learning on a more informed basis.
Education networks also make physical classrooms both more intra-connected and more extensible. Students in the same physical class can work collaboratively inside and outside the classroom, but these networks also allow students to find resources and peers outside of their own physical class who are studying the same topics.
Any classroom that is simply using its connectivity to allow students to all participate in the same massive open online course at 11am each day is only scratching the surface of what computers and networks can actually provide.
To get the most out of a highly connected, digitised world, you need platforms that emphasise personal interconnectivity. The success of platforms as varied as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, eBay, Uber, Dropbox and Airbnb has shown how networks can increase, amplify and accelerate positive outcomes of all kinds. In 2016, I believe the education world will embrace this fundamental lesson -- let's call it Networks 101 -- and matriculate to the Networked Age.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
