INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION campusreview. com. au
Brain belts
Australia’ s former manufacturing towns could become hosts to the‘ smartest places on earth’.
By James Wells
Converting rust belts into brain belts. That’ s how Dutch economist and author Antoine van Agtmael describes the process of transitioning a nation’ s economy from an uncompetitive manufacturing or resources base to one that thrives on the products developed by a smart populace with smart ideas.
Both sides of federal politics know that Australia’ s economy must transition from a reliance on resources exports to an economy built on innovation. The federal government acknowledged this when it launched the much-hyped National Innovation and Science Agenda in 2015.
And at the Universities Australia conference in Canberra, held March 1 – 3, shadow education minister Tanya Plibersek said Australia’ s future economic prosperity“ doesn’ t lie in the rear-view mirror”.
But Van Agtmael, who co-authored the book The Smartest Places on Earth with retired Dutch financial journalist Fred Bakker, said that today’ s political populists – such as US President Donald Trump and his left-wing analogue Democratic senator Bernie Sanders; France’ s nativist presidential candidate Marine Le Pen; the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders; the UK’ s Brexit champion Nigel Farage; and Australia’ s own One Nation party lead Pauline Hanson – are searching for prosperity in the past, as they blame globalisation and technology disruption for sluggish economies and social ills.
Speaking at the Universities Australia conference, Van Agtmael said that, if these people were economic doctors, their diagnoses“ would be flat wrong”.“ It’ s very easy to scapegoat emerging markets,” he told delegates. Jeffrey Bleich, a former US ambassador to Australia who served under the Obama administration, outlined in his own address to the same conference why he believed Trump and his counterparts across the world come to power by tapping into people’ s legitimate fears about the future of work.
Bleich explained that these people have to find a job and support a family in a world where technology is advancing exponentially and changing societies in wildly unpredictable ways.
“[ The ancient Greek inventor ] Archimedes said,‘ If you have a long enough lever, you can move the Earth’,” Bleich said.
“ The lever of technology has gotten so long that it takes very little pressure now to fundamentally move the Earth. This dramatic acceleration of technology affects not only the workers who see their jobs disappearing, who fear these new technologies, it inspires fear in retirees and dependents just as much.
“ Technology may make it possible for people to live healthy, active lives past the age of 100. That should be a great cause for celebration: people getting to know their great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren,” Bleich continued.“ It’ s also frightening. How will society support a generation that lives 20 years longer after it runs out of retirement savings?
“ As technology accelerates, the training [ we are offering ] may barely be sufficient to last 10 years. How’ s that going to work? How do we educate and train people for six careers over a lifetime, and what sort of jobs would those be? How will we give people purpose when machines are doing everything that is dull and
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