8 items re: learning as it relates to those in prison

On 03/29/2016, in 21st century, economics, reinvent, social learning / networks, society, sociology, staying relevant, surviving, United States, by Daniel Christian

From Wikipedia’s page on “Prison Education” (emphasis DSC):

Reductions in recidivism
Recent research on prison education programs presents discouraging statistics on the current recidivism rate. The Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) reported in 2011 that nearly 7 in 10 people who had been incarcerated will commit a new crime, and half will end up back in prison within three years. Given that about 95 out of every 100 incarcerated people eventually rejoin society, it is crucial that there are educational programs in the prison system.^[16] Not only is it important to develop programs in prison that are educational but if recidivism is a goal then there also needs to be support programs in the community to support the reentry population where they can either continue their education or get assistance in finding a sustainable job.^[17]

Skeptics claim that, in many cases, prison education produces nothing more than “better educated criminals”.^[18] However, many studies have shown significant decreases in recidivism. “The more educational programs successfully completed for each six months confined the lower the recidivism rate” according to Harer (1994), in his Federal Bureau of Prisons Office of Research & Evaluation report.^[19]^[20]

…
Personal development
To those afforded the opportunity to further their education, it “may be the first glimmer of hope that [they] can escape the cycles of poverty and violence that have dominated their lives”.^[21] Pursuing an education can also undo some of the damage accrued during their stay in prison; it can awaken senses numbed and release creativity that is both therapeutic and rehabilitative.^[22]

With good skills and an education, released prisoners have a better chance at moving on with their lives despite their criminal record. 75% of college-educated ex-prisoners are able to find stable employment.^[23] Employment helps ex-prisoners stay out of prison, despite the formidable obstacles, including the social stigma of being an ex-con and state laws that bar them from professions requiring licensure. They will be dealing with these obstacles for the rest of their lives.

A College Education for Prisoners — from/by the Editorial Board of the New York Times

Excerpt:

States are finally backing away from the draconian sentencing policies that swept the country at the end of the last century, driving up prison costs and sending too many people to jail for too long, often for nonviolent offenses. Many are now trying to turn around the prison juggernaut by steering drug addicts into treatment instead of jail and retooling parole systems that once sent people back to prison for technical violations.

But the most effective way to keep people out of prison once they leave is to give them jobs skills that make them marketable employees. That, in turn, means restarting prison education programs that were shuttered beginning in the 1990s, when federal and state legislators cut funding to show how tough they were on crime.

a16z Podcast: Your worst deeds don’t define you — life and redemption in prison — this podcast is produced by Andreessen Horowitz (aka “a16z”), a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm

Description:

Men and women who have spent decades in prison are being released into an iPhone-enabled world that they hardly recognize. Shaka Senghor is one of those people, imprisoned at age 19 for second-degree murder and released almost two decades later in 2010. “It was like Fred Flintstone walking into an episode of the Jetsons,” he tells Ben Horowitz in a conversation about his book, Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison.

Today, Senghor is an activist, advocate, and mentor for young men and women who find themselves on the same troubled path he took. This episode of the a16z Podcast covers Ben and Shaka’s conversation about healing, humanity, and redemption — especially if you believe that it’s how you finish, not just how you start, that matters.

Prison ministry degree program reflects restorative justice — from calvin.edu by Jon Gorter; from 2/26/15

Excerpt:

At Handlon Correctional Facility in Ionia, MI, select inmates will have the opportunity to earn an AA or BA degree in Ministry Leadership through Calvin College this fall.

The Ministry Leadership program, initiated by the Calvin Theological Seminary (CTS) in partnership with Calvin College, has gained the interest of the college; and though it is still waiting for final accreditation, was approved by faculty senate at the beginning of this month.

Each year, around 18 to 20 selected inmates will be transferred from various Michigan prisons to the Handlon Correctional Facility to take courses in required core disciplines and in Ministry Leadership.

After completing at least 124 semester hours over a period of 5 years, students will receive a BA degree, which will enable them to lead worship, disciple fellow inmates, and mentor short-term prisoners.

Related:
Calvin programs designed to educate inmates — from calvin.edu by Anneke Kapteyn

Also relevant/see:

Traveling the World in Search of a New Vision of Justice — from takepart.com by Rebecca McCray
Baz Dreisinger traverses the continents in her new book, visiting prisons worldwide and bringing their lessons back to the U.S.
Excerpt:
As a longtime teacher in U.S. prisons, journalist, and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Baz Dreisinger has spent many hours considering incarceration in the United States. In her new book, Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World, she takes her expertise and looks out to the rest of the world. Traveling from South Africa, to Uganda, to Brazil, to Thailand, and Australia, Dreisinger takes her teaching skills into far-flung modern prison complexes and gives her readers a glimpse into the lives of the men and women incarcerated there.TakePart talked to Dreisinger about what she learned while working on the book and how it changed the way she thinks about justice in the U.S. (The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.)
.
The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI)
The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) creates the opportunity for incarcerated men and women to earn a Bard College degree while serving their sentences. The academic standards and workload are rigorous, based on an unusual mix of attention to developmental skills and ambitious college study. The rate of post-release employment among the program’s participants is high and recidivism is stunningly low. By challenging incarcerated men and women with a liberal education, BPI works to redefine the relationship between educational opportunity and criminal justice.
.
Divine Hope Seminary
Excerpts from website:
Divine Hope Reformed Bible Seminary is a dedicated prison seminary that operates within the Danville Correctional Center (Illinois) and the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, the Westville (Indiana) Correctional Center and the Rockville (Indiana) Correctional Center.
…
The school is called Divine Hope Reformed Bible Seminary because it provides an opportunity for hope-giving and life-changing studies that prepare our students for useful service within and outside of prison.

Addendums on 4/4/16:

Hebrews 13:3 New International Version (NIV)

³Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.

Why Tribeca Film Institute is doing screenings in prison — from fastcompany.com by David Zax
The Community Screening Series helps prisoners connect to each other, the world outside, and new educational opportunities.

Excerpt:

The evening’s screening—Tribeca does two every month—would also serve as an on-ramp to other educational initiatives in the prison; several men in the audience had come to early screenings where they learned about a higher education program in the prison offered through John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
…
But Bravo had a longstanding interest in mass incarceration and prison education. Growing up in Far Rockaway, Queens, people in his community kept getting locked up, so often on simple drug possession. “I realized there was a direct relationship between the prison industrial complex and poor communities of color,” he recalls today. In the ’90s, he became a hip-hop journalist, editing a column for a magazine about prisons, and he began to visit them. Meanwhile, the U.S. prison population soared (it now stands at 2.4 million, giving the U.S. one of the highest incarceration rates in the world).

Bravo kept wanting to work to connect prisoners to the outside world. When he started making documentaries for PBS, he made sure to screen them in prison. When he worked for the famed documentarian Albert Maysles, he did the same. “I thought of prison audiences as a vital stakeholder group in the community,” he recalls.
…
At Otisville, the screening winds to its conclusion. Ransom, White, and Rodriguez break the men into three groups, leading them in discussion. In Rodriguez’s group, conversation about the film turns heady immediately, as the men pick apart Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” laws, which so wildly lower the bar for self-defense claims. “Citizens are killing people because they thought he had a gun? That has to be addressed,” says one. “My mother told me you have to teach young black males how to deal with police authority,” says another. “These are not things young white men have to learn…”

As the evening unfolds, the conversation winds more generally to the topic of justice.

“What does it take to have justice?” White asks the men, as Bravo looks on.

One of the incarcerated men responds immediately: “Education.”

This case of using big data is aimed at finding jobs & developing skills

On 03/18/2016, in 21st century, career development, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, economics, global / globalization, microlearning, reinvent, society, training / L&D, United States, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Topic: Big data meets job finding; targeted training programs brought to you by LinkedIn.com

See:

How LinkedIn is helping create economic opportunity in Colorado and Phoenix

Excerpts:

LinkedIn’s vision is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Notice that I said every member, not just white collar workers with four-year college degrees. Everyone.

To achieve our vision, we’re building the world’s first Economic Graph — a digital map of the global economy that includes every member of the global workforce and their skills, all open jobs, all employers, and all educational institutions. We’ve been sharing labor market insights from the Economic Graph with dozens of policymakers across the globe to help create greater economic opportunity.

For example, we’ve been sharing Economic Graph insights with policymakers in Colorado and Phoenix. We realized the combination of our Economic Graph insights and the LinkedIn platform can have an even greater economic impact. So last June we joined Skillful (formerly Rework America Connected) — a Markle Foundation initiative to help workers in Colorado and Phoenix with high school diplomas and some or no college education acquire new skills to advance their careers.
…
That’s why we developed Training Finder — a new product that helps job seekers acquire new skills and advance their careers. It shows them relevant training programs in their area; which programs are affiliated with employers; whether or not they’re accredited; the program’s employment rate, cost, and duration; the skills the program will teach them; the jobs they’ll be qualified for when they complete the program; and the estimated salary. These insights will help them choose the training program that will teach them the skills they need to get the job they want.

From DSC:
This is the kind of thing I was trying to get at in this earlier posting.

From DSC:
Hmm…I wonder how job seekers and job providers could benefit if IBM Watson were to team up with LinkedIn.com/Lynda.com? And/or for those freelancers who are seeking to work on new projects with those organizations who have projects to be completed…?

I’m thinking Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based job exchanges/marketplaces, with the engines constantly churning away through — and making sense of — enormous amounts of data in order to find people just the right job for them.

For example, someone in Texas wants to work part time in special education and their LinkedIn.com profile shows that they have x, y, and z as their credentials and that they have taken a, b, c, d, and e courses (which the person could also find on the “marketplace section” as having been necessary in that state). They are looking for 20 hours a week and, as they live in San Antonio, they need something in or near that city.

Would this collaboration bring something that other current job exchanges don’t? I’m not sure, as I don’t know how much data mining is occurring with them. But the scale of the two companies — along with the technologies and the strategies that they are pursuing — could present some interesting affordances.

+

This idea of the need for such a marketplace/mechanism takes on all the more importance if it’s true that we are living in a post-jobs economy and that getting new project-related work is key in putting bread and butter on the table.

Without having looked at this very much, it appears that LinkedIn.com has already been pursuing this type of goal/vision, as seen with the work they are doing involving The Economic Graph.

See:

Questions for students studying economics

On 02/11/2016, in business, economics, by Daniel Christian

Questions:

In the article, Goldman Sachs says it may be forced to fundamentally question how capitalism is working,” Goldman lays out the case for the bull and bear sides of the profit margin debate. The profit margins debate could lead to an unsettling conclusion they say. What are your thoughts on this issue and what does data from the last 50 years say?
.
How important is China to what occurs in and to the global markets? How about the impact of oil on the world’s markets? Do recent events point to their power/influence in the markets? Please be ready to display several graphs that back up your perspective. Are there ways to temper the impact of those 2 forces on the markets?
.

“Virtual reality is the ultimate empathy machine” / VR shines light on illiteracy at World Economic Forum [Gaudiosi]

On 01/20/2016, in 21st century, economics, education, education reform, education technology, emerging technologies, Europe, global / globalization, health, hearts -- matters of the heart, ideas, immersion, psychology, reading, society, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, by Daniel Christian

Virtual reality shines light on illiteracy at World Economic Forum — from fortune.com by John Gaudiosi

Excerpt:

A trio of virtual reality experiences, Project Literacy: A Life Unseen, debuted at the World Economic Forum in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, today.
…
Each virtual reality scenario is a frozen moment in the life of an illiterate person. They explore the global nature of illiteracy and its correlation with gender inequality and malnutrition. According to UNESCO, these two global challenges incur economic costs estimated at $3.5 trillion and $12 trillion, respectively.
…
“As others have aptly called it, virtual reality is the ultimate empathy machine,” Shamlin says. “Nothing else gives you the same sense of immersion and presence. The international struggle to fight illiteracy has raged on for a long time and we were asked to bring fresh perspective. Now, with the advent of this technology, we can bring a renewed and more intimate awareness of how people struggle with illiteracy.”

Report from Davos: 5 million jobs to be lost by 2020 because of tech advances — from siliconbeat.com by Levi Sumagaysay

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

A new report predicts a loss of 5 million jobs in the next five years because of technological advances, but don’t blame it all on the robots.

The other culprits: artificial intelligence, 3-D printers and advances in genetics, biotech and more.

The World Economic Forum, which is holding its annual meeting in Davos this week, in its report details the effects of modern technology on the labor market, for better or for worse. It says “the fourth industrial revolution” will be “more comprehensive and all-encompassing than anything we have ever seen.”

The report actually estimates a loss of 7 million jobs in 15 economies that today have 1.86 billion workers, or about 65 percent of the world’s workforce, but it also expects 2 million new jobs to be created.

From DSC:
If this turns out to be true, how should this affect our curricula? What should we be emphasizing and seeking to build within our students?

Automation potential and wages for US jobs [McKinsey Global Institute]

On 01/08/2016, in 21st century, business, career development, change, disruption, economics, engineering, reinvent, robotics, staying relevant, surviving, trends, United States, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Automation potential and wages for US jobs — from McKinsey Global Institute
McKinsey analyzed the detailed work activities for 750+ occupations in the US to estimate the percentage of time that could be automated by adapting currently demonstrated technology.

Also see:

Four fundamentals of workplace automation — from mckinsey.com by Michael Chui, James Manyika, and Mehdi Miremadi
As the automation of physical and knowledge work advances, many jobs will be redefined rather than eliminated—at least in the short term.

“The technology behind bitcoin could transform how the economy works.”

On 10/30/2015, in business, economics, ideas, innovation, marketplaces, technology (general), workplace, by Daniel Christian

The promise of the blockchain |The trust machine — from economist.com
The technology behind bitcoin could transform how the economy works

Excerpt:

The blockchain food chain
To understand the power of blockchain systems, and the things they can do, it is important to distinguish between three things that are commonly muddled up, namely the bitcoin currency, the specific blockchain that underpins it and the idea of blockchains in general. A helpful analogy is with Napster, the pioneering but illegal “peer-to-peer” file-sharing service that went on line in 1999, providing free access to millions of music tracks. Napster itself was swiftly shut down, but it inspired a host of other peer-to-peer services. Many of these were also used for pirating music and films. Yet despite its dubious origins, peer-to-peer technology found legitimate uses, powering internet startups such as Skype (for telephony) and Spotify (for music streaming)—and also, as it happens, bitcoin.

The blockchain is an even more potent technology. In essence it is a shared, trusted, public ledger that everyone can inspect, but which no single user controls. The participants in a blockchain system collectively keep the ledger up to date: it can be amended only according to strict rules and by general agreement. Bitcoin’s blockchain ledger prevents double-spending and keeps track of transactions continuously. It is what makes possible a currency without a central bank.
…
Bitcoin itself may never be more than a curiosity. However blockchains have a host of other uses because they meet the need for a trustworthy record, something vital for transactions of every sort. Dozens of startups now hope to capitalise on the blockchain technology, either by doing clever things with the bitcoin blockchain or by creating new blockchains of their own (see article).

Addendum on 11/1/15:

Bitcoin is 100 times More Powerful than Google — from cryptocoinsnews.com

Reinventing the company [economist.com]

On 10/23/2015, in business, change, changing business models, corporate / business world, disruption, economics, entrepreneurship, innovation, reinvent, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Reinventing the company — from economist.com
Entrepreneurs are redesigning the basic building block of capitalism

Excerpt:

NOW that Uber is muscling in on their trade, London’s cabbies have become even surlier than usual. Meanwhile, the world’s hoteliers are grappling with Airbnb, and hardware-makers with cloud computing. Across industries, disrupters are reinventing how the business works. Less obvious, and just as important, they are also reinventing what it is to be a company.

To many managers, corporate life continues to involve dealing with largely anonymous owners, most of them represented by fund managers who buy and sell shares listed on a stock exchange. In insurgent companies, by contrast, the coupling between ownership and responsibility is tight (see article). Founders, staff and backers exert control directly. It is still early days but, if this innovation spreads, it could transform the way companies work.
…
New companies also exploit new technology, which enables them to go global without being big themselves. Startups used to face difficult choices about when to invest in large and lumpy assets such as property and computer systems. Today they can expand very fast by buying in services as and when they need them. They can incorporate online for a few hundred dollars, raise money from crowdsourcing sites such as Kickstarter, hire programmers from Upwork, rent computer-processing power from Amazon, find manufacturers on Alibaba, arrange payments systems at Square, and immediately set about conquering the world. Vizio was the bestselling brand of television in America in 2010 with just 200 employees. WhatsApp persuaded Facebook to buy it for $19 billion despite having fewer than 60 employees and revenues of $20m.

The jobs that AI can’t replace — from bbc.com by Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee
At the heart of capitalism is the concept of creative destruction. And this phenomenon is turbocharged by technological progress. Innovations from the cotton gin to electricity to the computer have created dramatic changes in the way that we work and the jobs that are available.

Excerpt:

Current advances in robots and other digital technologies are stirring up anxiety among workers and in the media. There is a great deal of fear, for example, that robots will not only destroy existing jobs, but also be better at most or all of the tasks required in the future.

Our research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has shown that that’s at best a half-truth. While it is true that robots are getting very good at a whole bunch of jobs and tasks, there are still many categories in which humans perform better.

Get ready for ‘The Economy Of Things’ — from forbes.com by Veena Pureswaran

Excerpt:

The IoT is not just about smart homes that light up when you arrive or washing machines that text you when the cycle is done. The IoT will turn physical assets into participants in real-time global digital markets. As the Internet of Things continues to turn physical assets into participants in new real-time, digital marketplaces, it’s creating what we describe as a new “Economy of Things.”

These types of assets will become as easily indexed, searched and traded as any online commodity. In fact, such digital marketplaces represent huge economic opportunities for growth and advancement.

Who’s the boss? Hitachi looks to promote artificial intelligence — from blogs.wsj.com by Jun Hongo; with thanks to Norma Owen for this resource

Excerpt:

Hitachi Ltd. is looking to promote artificial intelligence to management.

The Japanese electronics maker said it has developed a new artificial intelligence program that will enable robots to deliver instructions to employees based on analyses of big data and the workers’ routines.

“Work efficiency improved by 8% in warehouses with the new artificial intelligence program, compared to those without them,” a Hitachi spokeswoman said. “The program can examine an extremely large amount of data to provide the most efficient instruction, which is impossible for human managers to handle.”

Hitachi last month unveiled a fast-moving two-armed robot which it says may replace humans in performing basic functions like retrieving items in warehouses.

Tomorrow’s workers want mobile, but are employers ready? — from domo.com
70 percent of future workforce expect a bring-your-own-device culture; value technology perks nearly five times more than a stocked kitchen

Excerpt:

The study, which polled more than 2,000 college students, confirmed what many have assumed: that millennials are a mobile-first generation. Not surprisingly, the survey confirms that millennials spend most of their time accessing the Internet via a mobile device, 46 percent via a mobile phone and 43 percent on a tablet or laptop. Additionally, the report uncovers how much time millennials spend on various mobile activities. More than 97 percent use their phones to send or receive text messages, 96 percent use them to access the Internet, and 68 percent turn to a mobile device to stream music and send or receive pictures.

The findings also affirm how critical it is for companies to adjust to the ever-changing mobile-centric business world in order to attract top talent, which will increasingly be comprised of the millennial generation.

‘Transformer in chief’: The new chief digital officer — from mckinsey.com by Tuck Rickards, Kate Smaje, and Vik Sohoni
The CDO role is changing dramatically. Here are the skills today’s world demands.

Excerpt:

In the alphabet soup that is today’s crowded C-suite, few roles attract as much attention as that of the chief digital officer, or CDO. While the position isn’t exactly new, what’s required of the average CDO is. Gone are the days of being responsible for introducing basic digital capabilities and perhaps piloting a handful of initiatives. The CDO is now a “transformer in chief,” charged with coordinating and managing comprehensive changes that address everything from updating how a company works to building out entirely new businesses. And he or she must make progress quickly.

According to social forecasts in the U.S., U.K. and Australia, the point at which our labor market has more freelancers than full-time employees is between 5 to 10 years away. The growing automation of knowledge work means that, globally, we are expected to lose around 2 billion jobs by 2030. Some of that loss will be softened by new jobs created, but they’re going to be of the low-paid, temporary, variety. Today’s university graduates are facing what has been termed a “high skills/low income” future. The recent rapid growth in “knowledge process outsourcing” — the breaking up of salaried jobs into bid-for tasks, through websites like Elance.com and Freelancer. com — may well be transforming economies of developing countries like India, but it is causing futurists in the west to predict “the end of job.”

— What the Future Economy Means for How Kids Learn Today

The unlikely cities that will power the U.S. economy — from bloomberg.com

Excerpt:

Huntsville is one of a growing number of smaller U.S. cities, far from Silicon Valley, that are seeking to replace dwindling factory jobs by reinventing themselves as tech centers. Across the Midwest, Northeast, and South, mayors and governors are competing to attract tech companies and workers.

How freelancers are fighting for their labor rights — from fastcompany.com by Dillon Baker
In the absence of unions, creative freelancers are finding new ways to work collectively.

Excerpt:

“On average, our members are owed over $10,000 in unpaid invoices and spend 36 hours tracking down each missing payment,” says Freelancers Union founder and labor lawyer Sara Horowitz. She explains that nearly half (44%) of their members report issues in getting paid.

But getting paid on time is just one of the hurdles that the growing independent workforce faces.

For example, the Internet has lowered the bar to entry for professional writing and created more opportunities than ever, which on one hand is good news for entry-level writers, but shrunken profits have also hollowed out freelance rates at many publications.

4 ways to prepare for the workplace of the future — from fastcompany.com by Erin Palmer
Millennials face a much more volatile workplace than ever. Here are four ways to adapt.

Excerpt:

The workplace of the future will be a world of contradictions—which the next generations that enter it will need to master.

Charting a career path in a mercurial workforce means staying focused and adaptive in equal measure. That’s something millennials and their younger generation Z counterparts will need to be able to do more successfully than their elders ever had to.

For now, though, the learning curve still looks steep. A recent study by the online work company Upwork found that despite the millions of millennials looking for work, 53% of hiring managers said that they struggle to find and retain millennial employees.

Today’s leaders have gotten to where they are by adapting to what’s now and what’s next, not blindly clinging to one specific path.

Addendum on 9/15/15:

APIs Are The New FTEs — from techcrunch.comby Gaurav Jain
Excerpt:
A decade ago, a VP of engineering at a startup might have evaluated the resumes of five solid front-end engineers. Five years ago that VP would have looked at GitHub profiles. Today, they are just as likely to evaluate a front-end framework like Ionic, Meteor or Aurelia and build it themselves.

It’s not just front-end options. We’ve seen a massive proliferation in frameworks, libraries and other tools that allow a single talented engineer to do the work of a team.

Companies and products like Heroku, Celery, RabbitMQ, Mandrill, Fastly, Chartio, Chargebee, Shipwire, Docker, Codeship, Rainforest QA, Replicated and Chartbeat have changed the nature of tech development. These are just a small subset of services that replace the work of individuals or entire teams.

WordPress Ate Webmasters
This trend has pros and cons. It will make life harder for those with only mid-tier technical knowledge. Look at what WordPress has done to “webmasters.” The blogging platform turned CMS has colonized the web, and accounts for ~23 percent of Internet traffic.

What the Future Economy Means for How Kids Learn Today [Price]

On 09/10/2015, in attention, economics, education, education reform, future, global / globalization, K-12 related, motivation, open courseware and systems, participation, student-related, teachers, youth, by Daniel Christian

What the Future Economy Means for How Kids Learn Today — from kqed.org/mindshift by David Price

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

While this myopic and somewhat irrelevant argument takes place, the gulf in motivation between the learning that our students have to do, and the learning that they choose to do, grows ever wider. Meanwhile, the implementation of standardized testing and high-stakes accountability leaves a devastating legacy of what Yong Zhao calls side effects: increasing student (and staff) disengagement; perceived irrelevance of formal education; and the loss of autonomy and trust in the teaching profession.

If we want to re-engage learners, re-professionalize teachers, and re-think how we prepare students for a globally competitive working life, we need to follow the learners, and develop more open learning systems.

From the Inter-American Dialogue and the Inter-American Development Bank: A new foresight resource freely available to the public entitled, A Database of Reports on Global Trends and Future Scenarios.

This database includes nearly 800 foresight publications and reports from around the world, and it provides governments, banks, corporations, universities, think tanks, and other institutions continuous access to information and analyses on trends and future scenarios.

From DSC:
Given that the pace of change has changed & given that disruption seems to be upending one industry after another, futurism should be taught throughout K-12 & throughout higher education. (There are some programs out there within higher education, but not many.)

If more of us were trained in looking up to see what’s happening around us — or what’s about to happen around us — the chances of us being broadsided or surprised by something are greatly diminished. Also, we can better plan for — and create — our futures.

That ‘useless’ liberal arts degree has become tech’s hottest ticket — from forbes.com by George Anders; with a shout out to Krista Spahr for bringing this item to my attention

Except:

What kind of boss hires a thwarted actress for a business-to-business software startup? Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s 42-year-old cofounder and CEO, whose estimated double-digit stake in the company could be worth $300 million or more. He’s the proud holder of an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Canada’s University of Victoria and a master’s degree from Cambridge in philosophy and the history of science.

“Studying philosophy taught me two things,” says Butterfield, sitting in his office in San Francisco’s South of Market district, a neighborhood almost entirely dedicated to the cult of coding. “I learned how to write really clearly. I learned how to follow an argument all the way down, which is invaluable in running meetings. And when I studied the history of science, I learned about the ways that everyone believes something is true–like the old notion of some kind of ether in the air propagating gravitational forces–until they realized that it wasn’t true.”
…
And he’s far from alone. Throughout the major U.S. tech hubs, whether Silicon Valley or Seattle, Boston or Austin, Tex., software companies are discovering that liberal arts thinking makes them stronger. Engineers may still command the biggest salaries, but at disruptive juggernauts such as Facebook and Uber, the war for talent has moved to nontechnical jobs, particularly sales and marketing. The more that audacious coders dream of changing the world, the more they need to fill their companies with social alchemists who can connect with customers–and make progress seem pleasant.

Addendum on 8/7/15:

STEM Study Starts With Liberal Arts — from forbes.com by Chris Teare
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Much has been made, especially by the Return on Investment crowd, of the value of undergraduate study in the so-called STEM fields: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Lost in the conversation is the way the true liberal arts underpin such study, often because the liberal arts are inaccurately equated solely with the humanities. From the start, the liberal arts included math and science, something I learned firsthand at St. John’s College.

This topic is especially on my mind since reading the excellent article George Anders has written for Forbes: “That ‘Useless’ Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech’s Hottest Ticket” In this context, understanding the actual origin and purposes of the liberal arts is all the more valuable.

Beyond Automation [Harvard Business Review; Davenport & Kirby]

On 07/17/2015, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, change, corporate / business world, economics, future, game-changing environment, generational differences, new business models, pace of change, robotics, society, staying relevant, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Beyond Automation — from hbr.org by Thomas Davenport & Julia Kirby

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

After hearing of a recent Oxford University study on advancing automation and its potential to displace workers, Yuh-Mei Hutt, of Tallahassee, Florida, wrote, “The idea that half of today’s jobs may vanish has changed my view of my children’s future.” Hutt was reacting not only as a mother; she heads a business and occasionally blogs about emerging technologies. Familiar as she is with the upside of computerization, the downside looms large. “How will they compete against AI?” she asked. “How will they compete against a much older and experienced workforce vying for even fewer positions?”

Suddenly, it seems, people in all walks of life are becoming very concerned about advancing automation. And they should be: Unless we find as many tasks to give humans as we find to take away from them, all the social and psychological ills of joblessness will grow, from economic recession to youth unemployment to individual crises of identity (*DC insert: See my footnote below). That’s especially true now that automation is coming to knowledge work, in the form of artificial intelligence. Knowledge work—which we’ll define loosely as work that is more mental than manual, involves consequential decision making, and has traditionally required a college education—accounts for a large proportion of jobs in today’s mature economies. It is the high ground to which humanity has retreated as machines have taken over less cognitively challenging work. But in the very foreseeable future, as the Gartner analyst Nigel Rayner says, “many of the things executives do today will be automated.”

From DSC:
* These are the types of concerns I was trying to get at when I asked the question: Which street do we care more about, Wall Street or Main Street?

If the we make decisions solely on the basis of the bottom lines and with an eye solely on shareholders, we could have some major issues to deal with. We must consider the effects of automation on Main Street, not just on Wall Street.

From DSC:
Many times we don’t want to hear news that could be troubling in terms of our futures. But we need to deal with these trends now or face the destabilization that Harold Jarche mentions in his posting below.

The topics found in the following items should be discussed in courses involving economics, business, political science, psychology, futurism, engineering, religion*, robotics, marketing, the law/legal affairs and others throughout the world. These trends are massive and have enormous ramifications for our societies in the not-too-distant future.

* When I mention religion classes here, I’m thinking of questions such as :

What does God have in mind for the place of work in our lives?
Is it good for us? If so, why or why not?
How might these trends impact one’s vocation/calling?
…and I’m sure that professors who teach faith/
religion-related courses can think of other questions to pursue

turmoil and transition — from jarche.com by Harold Jarche

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

One of the greatest issues that will face Canada, and many developed countries in the next decade will be wealth distribution. While it does not currently appear to be a major problem, the disparity between rich and poor will increase. The main reason will be the emergence of a post-job economy. The ‘job’ was the way we redistributed wealth, making capitalists pay for the means of production and in return creating a middle class that could pay for mass produced goods. That period is almost over. From self-driving vehicles to algorithms replacing knowledge workers, employment is not keeping up with production. Value in the network era is accruing to the owners of the platforms, with companies such as Instagram reaching $1 billion valuations with only 13 employees.
…
The emerging economy of platform capitalism includes companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple. These giants combined do not employ as many people as General Motors did. But the money accrued by them is enormous and remains in a few hands. The rest of the labour market has to find ways to cobble together a living income. Hence we see many people willing to drive for a company like Uber in order to increase cash-flow. But drivers for Uber have no career track. The platform owners get richer, but the drivers are limited by finite time. They can only drive so many hours per day, and without benefits. At the same time, those self-driving cars are poised to replace all Uber drivers in the near future. Standardized work, like driving a vehicle, has little future in a world of nano-bio-cogno-techno progress.

Value in the network era is accruing to the owners of the platforms, with companies such as Instagram reaching $1 billion valuations with only 13 employees.

For the past century, the job was the way we redistributed wealth and protected workers from the negative aspects of early capitalism. As the knowledge economy disappears, we need to re-think our concepts of work, income, employment, and most importantly education. If we do not find ways to help citizens lead productive lives, our society will face increasing destabilization.

Also see:

Will artificial intelligence and robots take your marketing job? — from by markedu.com by
Technology will overtake jobs to an extent and at a rate we have not seen before. Artificial intelligence is threatening jobs even in service and knowledge intensive sectors. This begs the question: are robots threatening to take your marketing job?

Excerpt:

What exactly is a human job?
The benefits of artificial intelligence are obvious. Massive productivity gains while a new layer of personalized services from your computer – whether that is a burger robot or Dr. Watson. But artificial intelligence has a bias. Many jobs will be lost.

A few years ago a study from the University of Oxford got quite a bit of attention. The study said that 47 percent of the US labor market could be replaced by intelligent computers within the next 20 years.

The losers are a wide range of job categories within the administration, service, sales, transportation and manufacturing.

…

Before long we should – or must – redefine what exactly a human job is and the usefulness of it. How we as humans can best complement the extraordinary capabilities of artificial intelligence.

This development is expected to grow fast. There are different predictions about the timing, but by 2030 there will be very few tasks that only a human can solve.

Learning Ecosystems

This case of using big data is aimed at finding jobs & developing skills

Questions for students studying economics

“Virtual reality is the ultimate empathy machine” / VR shines light on illiteracy at World Economic Forum [Gaudiosi]

Automation potential and wages for US jobs [McKinsey Global Institute]

“The technology behind bitcoin could transform how the economy works.”

Reinventing the company [economist.com]

Global Trends & Future Scenarios Database; ~800 foresight publications/reports from around the world

That ‘useless’ liberal arts degree has become tech’s hottest ticket [Anders; Forbes]

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