The Economist published an article entitled 'Lifelong Learning is Becoming an Economic Imperative' this month.
Gilles Deleuze's Postscript on the Societies of Control was first published in 1990 in L'Autre journal (which, as far as I'm aware, no longer publishes).
Here are excerpts from both placed alongside each other.
“In many occupations it has become essential to acquire new skills as established ones become obsolete [...] To remain competitive, and to give low- and high-skilled workers alike the best chance of success, economies need to offer training and career-focused education throughout people’s working lives [...] Universities are embracing online and modular learning more vigorously. Places like Singapore are investing heavily in providing their citizens with learning credits that they can draw on throughout their working lives.”
“the corporation constantly presents the brashest rivalry as a healthy form of emulation, an excellent motivational force that opposes individuals against one another and runs through each, dividing each within. The modulating principle of “salary according to merit” has not failed to tempt national education itself. Indeed, just as the corporation replaces the factory, perpetual training tends to replace the school, and continuous control to replace the examination. Which is the surest way of delivering the school over to the corporation.”
“Individuals, too, increasingly seem to accept the need for continuous rebooting […] Another survey, conducted by Manpower in 2016, found that 93% of millennials were willing to spend their own money on further training. Meanwhile, employers are putting increasing emphasis on learning as a skill in its own right.”
“Many young people strangely boast of being “motivated”; they re-request apprenticeships and permanent training. It’s up to them to discover what they’re being made to serve, just as their elders discovered, not without difficulty, the telos of the disciplines. The coils of a serpent are even more complex than the burrows of a molehill.”
(Continuous re-booting - software updates - is what The Economist recommends for us all.)
Well.