UNLearning: the New Skill of the Future

I get a lot of my concepts and ideas from talking and listening to others, and in this case, I came upon a new idea  from a conversation I had with Dean Kamen—inventor, entrepreneur, and tireless advocate for science and technology.

While we were conversing at a conference, Dean happened to say that he thought young people and children are probably not necessarily faster or better learners; they just have less to unlearn. His comment really struck me, and I have been working on developing this idea ever since. So let's take a closer look now at this new skill of the future that I'm calling "UNLearning".

 

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DOWNLOAD                     Size: 16.7 MB          Duration: 23:46                                  Transcript:              350 KB

In this podcast, Unlearning: the New Skill of the Future, I show you how our inability to "UNLearn" prevents us from taking full advantage of new innovations and technologies—making it the single biggest obstacle to our future productivity and performance in a rapidly changing world.p>

Comments

[marcia]

Great insight! I'm amazed at how few people think about what they need to unlearn themselves, let alone talk about unlearning. Maybe we ought to UNLearn that habit, too. I wrote an article on this topic a few months ago. Thought you'd enjoy seeing it.

Learn, Unlearn, and Relearn (M. Conner, Fast Company's Learning Resource Center, Feb 2006) http://www.fastcompany.com/resources/learning/conner/022706.html