Learning to unlearn: the rise of the ‘fetch-economy’

( In an age where knowledge is no longer accumulated, but retrieved on demand, the ability to unlearn and relearn will become the most defining skill for human survival. )

The 21st century is not just an era of technological acceleration, but is more of epistemic disruption. A very fabric of knowledge-how it is acquired, processed and applied-is undergoing a transformation so profound, that it negotiates an entirely new cognitive paradigm. In the face of rapid AI, advancements and a dwindling pool of traditional jobs, globally, and learning will not be just a lazy, intellectual luxury.

This would force us to look at existential objective of societies in the age of information. We believe that this era of information retrieval as birthed what can only be termed the “fetch economy”-a state in which intelligence is no longer measured by what one knows, but by how swiftly one can access, synthesise, and deploy Decision, basis that information.

The heart of this shift is automation. Missions are not only replacing labour, but also redefining the nature of human expertise itself. AI models now retrieve, interpret and execute tasks at a scale and speed that human mission may not be able to comprehend or catch up with. World Economic Forum predict that by 2025 end, half of all employees will require skilling, with analytical thinking, creativity, and adaptability emerging as the most critical competencies. The half life of a professional skill has reduced to probably four years or less. What was once a linear path focused on what the modern education system offered, followed by decades of professional application of modern education, is now an iterative disrupted cycle of continuous recalibration.

The implications of the shift extent beyond the workplace and into the very architecture of human learning. The traditional model of frontloaded education, where students accumulate vast reservoirs of static knowledge to be deployed over a lifetime, is collapsing under the weight of irrelevance. AI announced learning platforms, micro credentialling systems, and real time, content retrieval, have already started replacing degree based knowledge and monopolies of human societies. A professional is less likely to rely on past expertise than on their ability to fetch filter and context lies knowledge in real time. The ability to unlearn outdated cognition models, and relearn with Agility is now the ultimate currency of human skill and competence.

Yet, the fetch economy, is not without its peril. At One level, it democratises  access to information, dismantling, traditional barriers to learning and enabling a broader swathe of society to upskill. At another, it risks, fostering a generation of intellectual dependence-where depth sacrifice in the name of immediacy, where critical thinking is subordinated to algorithmic curation. In an environment where knowledge is perpetual fetched, rather than deeply internalised, the danger is not just erosion of human expertise, but the dilution of independent thought itself.

This disruptive change is already visible in corporate structures, where the value of an employee is increasingly tied to their responsiveness rather than their capacity for profound inside and stored native intelligence. For example, meetings are held to summarise past meetings, emails, demand, immediate responses rather than considered deliberation and action, and professional work is measured by the efficiency of such a knowledge retrieval. Decision making is increasingly outsourced to data models, while human judgement is litigated to mere verification. The result is an economy that prioritises retrieval over reasoning, agility over depth, and reaction over reflection.

Alvin Toffler’s warning that “ the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn” has never been more blunt. The future winners of this new digital era will be those who master the art of selective and learning-who recognise when a framework is obsolete, when an assumption is fraud, when an entire knowledge base must be reconstituted from scratch.

For individuals, the challenge is clear: cultivating the discipline to understand one’s own uncertainties, to abandon intellectual inertia, and to resist the seduction of passive knowledge consumption. For institutions, it demands a radical reconfiguration of education and employment, to move to a model that offers epistemic fluidity.

Fetch economy is not just theory. The harsh reality is whether we will participate in it, whether we will shape it or end up being shaped and impacted by it without our participation. A crucial dimension to consider is the geopolitical and the economic ramifications of this fetch economy . Nations that successfully integrate such a learning ideology into their workforce development strategies will gain a competitive edge in global markets. The transition from credential based employment to competency based hiring will redefine labour, mobility, potentially making national borders, more poor for digital first, skill based workers. The ability to continuously unlearn and relearn could well become a sovereign asset, separating progressive economic from stagnant ones.

Moreover, this shift will reshape power dynamics of organisations. Traditional hierarchy, where Authority is derived from tenure and accumulated expertise, will give way to fluidity of knowledge networks. Junior employees by organisation, rank and grade, but with a superior ability to fetch and apply real time insights, may as well outperform, seasoned senior professionals who remain hooked to outdated legacy knowledge. This inversion of influence will challenge establish leadership structures, forcing organisations to embrace a culture of intellectual agility rather than institutional memory.

If the fetch economy were to be a force for societal progress rather than intellectual dilution, it must be accompanied by a parallel emphasis on critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and epistemic humility. Individuals must also develop the capacity to discern truth from noise, to challenge, prevailing narratives, and to synthesise disparate insights into coherent world views.

Ultimately, the societies that will succeed will be those that cultivate the wisdom to know what is worth fetching-and what is best left and unlearned.