So, think about how many "jobs of the future" already exist, on every level, just related to crowdsourcing: (1) the full array of programming jobs, building computational platforms for participation ("crowdsourcing"); (2) the full array of manufacturing jobs building the hardware by which information is transmitted (cell-phone towers are structures) and received, by which computers are assembled; (3) the full array of assessment jobs, creating and designing and implementing relevant testing systems, such as those used by web developers such as Top Coder, so that anyone's contribution to a crowdsourced system can be "graded"; (4) intellectual property lawyers to sort out the complex IP issues of our age, ideally not just reforming but reconceptualizing outdated and stifling copyright and patent laws. The list goes on.



In the years ahead, we will need knowledgeable activists to fight to protect our labor laws in a new economy and to protect our personal and civil rights at a time when, from Egypt to San Francisco, authorities have been willing to turn off the cell-phone towers to quell protests. We will need new kinds of financial analysis to understand and regulate erratic market behaviors that the new computational systems already allow. And we will need new artists, writers, dancers, and musicians who can make beauty from our digital, interactive participation on the Web and beyond it.

When you think in these terms, about how drastically paradigms and potentialities have shifted in such a short time, you realize even that 65% number is probably too small!

You write that "Games are unquestionably the single most important cultural form of the digital age." What do you mean by that? How could games be used to improve education?

Games are integral in human society, from ancient times to the present. Games are based on strategy and on challenge. If you do well at a game, your reward isn't "recess" or a "time out"; it's a greater challenge. When you beat a tough opponent, you seek out a tougher one. That is learning. Being able to harness the energy of games is one of our best learning tools, as any good parent knows, from patty-cake to Simon Says to musical chairs to chess or go. You can advance physical, mental, linguistic, and intellectual progress through games where the testing isn't after the fact but is intrinsic to and embedded in the very structure of play.

In the 1980s and 1990s virtually all the research on early video games was positive, about the benefits to everything from attention to memory. Games are still used to train pilots, the military, architects, surgeons (robotic and traditional), musicians, engineers, and are also used for rehab and to help or enhance elderly cognitive functions. But three factors shifted the focus of the research on games away from learning to the negative effects games could have on kids. (1) Cute, abstract games like PacMan gave way to graphic, violent narrative games such as Grand Theft Auto. (2) Kids really took to video games; a recent Pew survey indicates 97% of kids play games. And (3) blame for the terrible 1999 Columbine tragedy, where kids systematically sought out and executed their classmates, was pinned by the public and the press on rock music and video games. The actual commission that studied Columbine did not reach this conclusion but parents and educators understandably were alarmed. After 1999 research dollars that once went to thinking about games and learning were rerouted to moralistic studies about how video games lead to violence, asocial behavior, and so forth. We lost a decade.