The lights dim in the conference hall, and the silvered image of a humanoid robot appears on the screen, the music starts and the slides begin to change. 'Shift Happens', announces the title slide of the presentation before page after page of statistics and images scroll by; images designed to persuade the audience of teachers, policy makers and academics that the world is changing, that the future will be different and that education needs to 'adapt to the 21st century'.All across the world, audiences of teachers and policy makers are watching what has become known as the 'Shift Happens' slideshow (''Shift Happens,'' 2007) soaking up its 60-odd slides of statistics that tell a tale of the decline of the West, the rise of China, the seemingly relentless development of digital technologies. First created by a schoolteacher in the US, the slides were refined and promoted by Microsoft. It has since become a hugely popular resource; YouTube report over 5.5 million downloads of the original and over 4.8 million downloads of the second version. It has been shown around the world in classrooms, as part of teacher training and professional development and in the conference halls of the growing transnational education industry.This slideshow is just one of the many tools being used by policymakers, activists, advisors, and salesman arguing that education must change to meet the demands of 'the future'. Politicians and businessmen paint pictures of international global competition; environmentalists describe futures of climate catastrophe (''We are the people,'' 2007); scientists and engineers make the case for rapidly approaching technological disruption (''Learning without frontiers,'' 2012). What these groups have in common is the argument that educators should insert calculations about 'the future' into decision-making about education today.