Table Of ContentLearning to Save the Future is an elegant book that analyzes the logic of the
new world of increasing complexity and interconnectivity that is digital cap-
italism to explore the future that depends upon the capacity of education. It
is a bold vision that argues for an alternative set of values beyond a techno-
economic determinism that revitalizes notions of emancipation, equality and
human freedom. Alex Means has written a compelling book with wide appeal.
Michael A. Peters, Professor, Wilf Malcolm Institute of
Educational Research, University of Waikato, New Zealand;
Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, USA
Nervous about the future? You should be. Professor Means takes on the cur-
rent dominant ideologies such as the faith that Silicon Valley and the creative
class will rescue us from looming disasters resulting from technological and
educational fixes that undermine our ability to think critically about the future.
He deftly shows us how transforming education into a collaborative and just
social process is central to avoiding a dystopian future and creating a world
characterized by equality and democracy. A book to be read and reread for its
many insights.
David Hursh, Professor, Warner Graduate School of
Education and Human Development,
University of Rochester, USA
Learning to Save the Future
Mainstream economists and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs claim that
unfettered capitalism and digital technology can unlock a future of
unbounded prosperity, create endless high-paying jobs, and solve the
world’s vast social and ecological problems. Realizing this future of
abundance purportedly rests in the transformation of human poten-
tial into innovative human capital through new twenty-first-century
forms of education. In this new book, Alex Means challenges this view.
Stagnating economic growth and runaway inequality have emerged as
the “normal” condition of advanced capitalism. Simultaneously, there
has been a worldwide educational expansion and a growing surplus of
college-educated workers relative to their demand in the world econo-
my. This surplus is complicated by an emerging digital revolution driven
by artificial intelligence and machine learning that generates worker-
displacing innovations and immaterial forms of labor and valorization.
Learning to Save the Future argues that rather than fostering progress
and mass intellectuality, educational development is being constrained
by a value structure subordinated to twenty-first-century capitalism and
technology. Human capabilities, from creativity to design, engineering,
and communication, are conceived narrowly as human capital, valued in
terms of economic productivity and growth. Similarly, global problems
such as the erosion of employment and climate change are conceived
as educational problems to be addressed through business solutions and
the digitalization of education. This thought-provoking account pro-
vides a cognitive map of this condition, offering alternatives through
critical analyses of education and political economy, technology and
labor, creativity and value, and power and ecology.
Alexander J. Means is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social
and Psychological Foundations of Education at SUNY Buffalo State
College in Buffalo, New York.
Critical Interventions: Politics, Culture, and the Promise of Democracy
Series editors: Henry A. Giroux, Susan Searls Giroux, and Kenneth J. Saltman
Twilight of the Social: Resurgent Publics in the Age of Disposability
Henry A. Giroux (2011)
Youth in Revolt: Reclaiming a Democratic Future
Henry A. Giroux (2012)
The Failure of Corporate School Reform
Kenneth J. Saltman (2012)
Toward a New Common School Movement
Noah De Lissovoy, Alexander J. Means, and Kenneth J. Saltman (2015)
The Great Inequality
Michael D. Yates (2016)
Elsewhere in America: The Crisis of Belonging in Contemporary Culture
David Trend (2016)
Scripted Bodies: Corporate Power, Smart Technology, and the Undoing of Public Education
Kenneth J. Saltman (2016)
Gender for the Warfare State: Literature of Women in Combat
Robin Truth Goodman (2016)
Disposable Americans: Extreme Capitalism and the Case for a Guaranteed Income
Paul Buchheit (2017)
The Public in Peril: Trump and the Menace of American Authoritarianism
Henry A. Giroux (2017)
Learning to Save the Future: Rethinking Education and Work in an Era of Digital Capitalism
Alexander J. Means (2018)
Learning to Save the Future
Rethinking Education and Work in an Era
of Digital Capitalism
Alexander J. Means
First published 2018
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2018 Taylor & Francis
The right of Alexander J. Means to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-21261-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-21262-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-45020-9 (ebk)
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CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgments viii
Chapter 1 Solutionism: Cancelling the Future 1
Chapter 2 Economism: Ethics and Ideology 17
Chapter 3 Precarity: The Ticking Time Bomb 37
Chapter 4 Creativity: Education and the Common 68
Chapter 5 D igitization: Algorithmic Learning
Machines 97
Chapter 6 Automation: Displacement and Rupture 126
Chapter 7 F uturity: Capitalism and Mass
Intellectuality 153
Index 170
vii
preface and acknowledgments
We live in a world of increasing complexity and interconnection—a
world beset by myriad problems, such as inequality, joblessness, racism
and ethnic conflict, weapons proliferation, and ecological crises. It is
also a world in which brilliant technologies are harnessing the power
of artificial intelligence and big data to reconfigure possibilities for how
we produce, work, engineer, learn, design, and engage in politics, albeit
typically within a narrow set of assumptions and priorities. Within the
mainstream orbit of TED Talks and Ideas Festivals, it is often assumed
that capitalism and digital technology can unlock a future of endless
prosperity, create endless high-paying jobs, and solve the world’s vast
social and ecological problems. The key to realizing this future of pros-
perity and abundance is often said to rest in the transformation of
human potential into innovative human capital through new forms of
learning. Education as a means of economic and technological innova-
tion is the default engine of future progress.
Learning to Save the Future explores the sociological limitations of
this logic. It asks the question: How can the future be said to depend
on the capacity of educational systems and learning practices to pro-
duce new human capabilities such as inventiveness, problem solving,
creativity, and innovative knowledge production, while at the same
time the human-development mission of K-12 and higher education is
viii
preface and acknowledgments ix
eroded, defunded, and routinized, and its deeper cultural and i ntellectual
foundations are emptied of substance? The book suggests this contra-
diction reflects an enclosure of sociality and politics, whereby educa-
tional imagination is constrained by a value structure subordinated to
twenty-first-century capitalism and technology. Human capabilities,
from creativity to design, engineering, and communication, are con-
ceived narrowly as forms of human capital, valued in terms of economic
productivity and growth. Similarly, challenges such as the erosion
of livelihoods and expanding inequality are conceived as educational
problems to be addressed through integrative business solutions and
the digital transformation of education systems, primarily to serve cor-
porate and financial interests, rather than the commonweal. Moreover,
for perhaps the majority of people today, education is experienced as
little more than an austere competition for an increasingly precarious
and automated “gig” economy. The position taken in this book is that
we need a different set of values for education and society beyond eco-
nomic and technical determinism—values rooted in the emancipatory
potential of education to enhance freedom and equality for all.
This book reflects my own idiosyncratic investigations in recent years
and certainly does not exhaust the kinds of questions that could be
useful for thinking about educational change. The analysis has been
influenced by a desire to understand at a deeper level the economic
and ideological processes that are transforming education and society
including the relationship between education and the economic strug-
gles of young people since the Great Recession, human creativity and
educational administration within cognitive capitalism, and the intensi-
fying push for “disrupting” education through Silicon Valley platforms.
While attempting to foreground global processes, I draw examples
mainly from the United States, which is the context where I live and
work. This necessarily informs and narrows the perspectives offered.
The text straddles the borders of political economy, critical theory, and
sociology of education. It is not a traditional scholarly monograph, nor
is it written explicitly for a general audience. It is a hybrid.
While all errors of judgment, large or small, are entirely my own,
I have compiled numerous debts while writing the book. I first want
