COMPLEXITY OF STUDENTS ' LIFE : MASTER PRECIS

THE WORLD at its best - no longer runs on the equation '' my finished product for yours.'' It runs on 21st century networks of collaborators built on trust and bullying.

How To Govern In The Polycene : This kind of explosion of diverse new players is hardly without precedent in the history of our planet.

While we often think of evolution as slow and incremental, the fact is that world history has been punctuated by massive bursts of new species and new designs - but this is not true only in nature, Beinhocker said to me.

Human civilisation has also followed a similar pattern of big bangs, he explained, '' each dramatically amplifying the complexity of human life, by expanding the number of empowered actors, connections, interactions and feedback loops in human society. 

THINK, Beinhocker said, '' of how the shift from hunter-gatherers to settled civilizations '' - with farmers and peasants and partisan and kings - '' Complexified life.''

Think of how the printing revolution broke the monopoly on information held by religious and royal elites, and how the Industrial Revolution amplified human and machine power, enabling much more global trade and connectivity.

Now we have artificially intelligent machines and robots joining the play, adding exponentially more nodes, networks and combination of actors.

The World Students Society thanks Thomas L Friedman.