From DSC:
Normally I don’t advertise or “plug” where I work, but as our society is in serious need of increasing Access to Justice (#A2J) & promoting diversity w/in the legal realm, I need to post this video.
On 02/03/2020,
in dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, ethics, faith, morals/values, political science, psychology, relationships, society, United States, youth,
by Daniel Christian
From DSC:
My brother-in-law sent me the link to the video below. It’s a very solid interview about racism and what some solutions are to it. It offers some important lessons for us.
A heads up here: There’s some adult language in this piece — from the interviewer not the interviewee (i.e., you know…several of those swear words that I’ve been trying since second grade to get rid of in my vocabulary! Sorry to report that I’ve not enjoyed too much success in that area. Thanks for your patience LORD…the work/process continues).
While I have several pages worth of notes (because that’s just how I best process information and stay focused), I will just comment on a couple things:
* A 10 year old boy has rocks thrown at him by adults and kids and rightfully asks, “Why are they doing this to me when they don’t even *know* me?!” That burning question lead to a decades-long search for Mr. Daryl Davis as he sought the answer to that excellent question.
* Years later Daryl surmised this phenomenon was/is at play: Unchecked ignorance –> leads to fear –> unchecked fear leads to hatred –> unchecked hatred leads to destruction. One of the best ways to stop this is via education and exposure to the truth — which we can get by being with and talking to/with each other. How true.
One of the best things my parents ever did was to move us from a predominantly white neighborhood and school setting to a far more diverse setting. Prior to the move, we used to hear (and likely believed was true) that “There are all kinds of guns and knives at this junior high school and at this high school. Violence abounds there.” After moving and getting exposure to the people and learning environments at those schools, we realized that that fear was a lie…a lie born out of ignorance. The truth/reality was different from the lie/ignorance.
* Mr. Daryl Davis is an instrument of peace. He is:
- Highly articulate
- A multi-talented gentleman
- A deep thinker
- …and an eloquent communicator.
I thanked my brother-in-law for the link to the interview.
Also see:
Healing Racial Trauma: The Road to Resilience— from christianbook.com by Sheila Wise Rowe
Product Description
As a child, Sheila Wise Rowe was bused across town to a majority white school, where she experienced the racist lie that one group is superior to all others. This lie continues to be perpetuated today by the action or inaction of the government, media, viral videos, churches, and within families of origin. In contrast, Scripture declares that we are all fearfully and wonderfully made.
Rowe, a professional counselor, exposes the symptoms of racial trauma to lead readers to a place of freedom from the past and new life for the future. In each chapter, she includes an interview with a person of color to explore how we experience and resolve racial trauma. With Rowe as a reliable guide who has both been on the journey and shown others the way forward, you will find a safe pathway to resilience.
- T14 Law School Removes Racist Benefactor’s Name From Building — from abovethelaw.com by Staci Zaretsky
Prestigious law schools are starting to question the legacies of their donors.
On 01/23/2020,
in 21st century, Access to Justice (A2J), Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, career development, change, collaboration, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, emerging technologies, entrepreneurship, ethics, faith, future, game-changing environment, global, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, morals/values, online learning, pace of change, platforms, policy, political science, professional development, society, technologies for your home, technology (general), the downsides of how people use tech, trends, Uncategorized, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, youth,
by Daniel Christian
From DSC:
As some of you may know, I’m now working for the WMU-Thomas M. Cooley Law School. My faith gets involved here, but I believe that the LORD wanted me to get involved with:
- Using technology to increase access to justice (#A2J)
- Contributing to leveraging the science of learning for the long-term benefit of our students, faculty, and staff
- Raising awareness regarding the potential pros and cons of today’s emerging technologies
- Increase the understanding that the legal realm has a looooong way to go to try to get (even somewhat) caught up with the impacts that such emerging technologies can/might have on us.
- Contributing and collaborating with others to help develop a positive future, not a negative one.
Along these lines…in regards to what’s been happening with law schools over the last few years, I wanted to share a couple of things:
1) An article from The Chronicle of Higher Education by Benjamin Barton:
2) A response from our President and Dean, James McGrath:
From DSC:
I also wanted to personally say that I arrived at WMU-Cooley Law School in 2018, and have been learning a lot there (which I love about my job!). Cooley employees are very warm, welcoming, experienced, knowledgeable, and professional. Everyone there is mission-driven. My boss, Chris Church, is multi-talented and excellent. Cooley has a great administrative/management team as well.
There have been many exciting, new things happening there. But that said, it will take time before we see the results of these changes. Perseverance and innovation will be key ingredients to crafting a modern legal education — especially in an industry that is just now beginning to offer online-based courses at the Juris Doctor (J.D.) level (i.e., 20 years behind when this began occurring within undergraduate higher education).
My point in posting this is to say that we should ALL care about what’s happening within the legal realm! We are all impacted by it, whether we realize it or not. We are all in this together and no one is an island — not as individuals, and not as organizations.
We need:
- Far more diversity within the legal field
- More technical expertise within the legal realm — not only with lawyers, but with legislators, senators, representatives, judges, others
- Greater use of teams of specialists within the legal field
- To offer more courses regarding emerging technologies — and not only for the legal practices themselves but also for society at large.
- To be far more vigilant in crafting a positive world to be handed down to our kids and grandkids — a dream, not a nightmare. Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.
Still not convinced that you should care? Here are some things on the CURRENT landscapes:
- You go to drop something off at your neighbor’s house. They have a camera that gets activated. What facial recognition database are you now on? Did you give your consent to that? No, you didn’t.
- Because you posted your photo on Facebook, YouTube, Venmo and/or on millions of other websites, your face could be in ClearView AI’s database. Did you give your consent to that occurring? No, you didn’t.
- You’re at the airport and facial recognition is used instead of a passport. Whose database was that from and what gets shared? Did you give your consent to that occurring? Probably not, and it’s not easy to opt-out either.
- Numerous types of drones, delivery bots, and more are already coming onto the scene. What will the sidewalks, streets, and skies look like — and sound like — in your neighborhood in the near future? Is that how you want it? Did you give your consent to that happening? No, you didn’t.
- …and on and on it goes.
Addendum — speaking of islands!
Palantir CEO: Silicon Valley can’t be on ‘Palo Alto island’ — Big Tech must play by the rules — from cnbc.com by Jessica Bursztynsky
Excerpt:
Palantir Technologies co-founder and CEO Alex Karp said Thursday the core problem in Silicon Valley is the attitude among tech executives that they want to be separate from United States regulation.
“You cannot create an island called Palo Alto Island,” said Karp, who suggested tech leaders would rather govern themselves. “What Silicon Valley really wants is the canton of Palo Alto. We have the United States of America, not the ‘United States of Canton,’ one of which is Palo Alto. That must change.”
“Consumer tech companies, not Apple, but the other ones, have basically decided we’re living on an island and the island is so far removed from what’s called the United States in every way, culturally, linguistically and in normative ways,” Karp added.
On 01/20/2020,
in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, Augmented Reality (AR), dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, emerging technologies, ethics, morals/values, platforms, privacy, society, the downsides of how people use tech, wearables, XR - extended reality,
by Daniel Christian
DC: Hmmmm…I’m wondering if this type of thing will be integrated with something like Clearview #AI …unsettling to me.https://t.co/VZgbH5z29s https://t.co/ihNRknmt6r
— Daniel Christian (@dchristian5) January 20, 2020
On 01/18/2020,
in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Asia, computer science, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, emerging technologies, ethics, generational differences, human-computer interaction (HCI), law schools, legislatures / government / legal, morals/values, society, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, trends, United States, vendors, youth,
by Daniel Christian
From DSC:
Very disturbing that citizens had no say in this. Legislators, senators, representatives, lawyers, law schools, politicians, engineers, programmers, professors, teachers, and more…please reflect upon our current situation here. How can we help create the kind of future that we can hand down to our kids and rest well at night…knowing we did all that we could to provide a dream — and not a nightmare — for them?
The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It — from nytimes.com by Kashmir Hill
A little-known start-up helps law enforcement match photos of unknown people to their online images — and “might lead to a dystopian future or something,” a backer says.
His tiny company, Clearview AI, devised a groundbreaking facial recognition app. You take a picture of a person, upload it and get to see public photos of that person, along with links to where those photos appeared. The system — whose backbone is a database of more than three billion images that Clearview claims to have scraped from Facebook, YouTube, Venmo and millions of other websites — goes far beyond anything ever constructed by the United States government or Silicon Valley giants.
Excerpts:
“But without public scrutiny, more than 600 law enforcement agencies have started using Clearview in the past year…”
Clearview’s app carries extra risks because law enforcement agencies are uploading sensitive photos to the servers of a company whose ability to protect its data is untested.
On 12/22/2019,
in art, communications, creativity, education, Europe, future, ideas, innovation, K-12 related, morals/values, society, student-related, tools, youth,
by Daniel Christian
Art-filled journeys into the future — methods of futures education for children in lower stage comprehensive school — from kultus.fi by Ilpo Rybatzki and Otto Tähkäpää
See this PDF file which contains the following excerpt:
In art, futures literacy plays a significant role. Art has the ability to point elsewhere; to fool and mess around with things and shake up conventions without needing to achieve measurable benefits (Varto, 2008). Art ensures a solid background for imagining alternative worlds. It is important to support a permissive atmosphere that supports experimentation! From the perspective of art pedagogy, activities focus on the idea of art experience as meeting place (Pääjoki, 2004) where people can see themselves in a new light beside another person’s thoughts and imagination. Strengthening futures literacy means supporting transformative learning that aims for change. Through this type of learning, we can question norms, roles, identities and the concept of what is ‘normal’ (Lehtonen et al., 2018).
When discussing the future, we are always discussing values: what kind of future is desirable for any one person? Artistic activity can produce materials through which human meanings can be communicated from one person to another and questions about values in life can be discussed (Varto, 2008; Valkeapää, 2012). Encounters create opportunities for dialogue and enriching one’s perspectives. Important aspects include creating safe settings, the individual expression of the participants, the courage to open up and thrown oneself into the centre of an experience, as well as the courage to question or even completely let go of presumptions. In the age of the environmental crisis, art has a critical role in all of society. We cannot solve difficult problems using the same kind of thinking that created the problems in the first place.
On 12/11/2019,
in Europe, global, leadership, morals/values, motivation, participation, passions, policy, political science, society, UK, United States, youth,
by Daniel Christian
Greta Thunberg is the youngest TIME Person of the Year ever. Here’s how she made history — from time.com
Excerpt:
The politics of climate action are as entrenched and complex as the phenomenon itself, and Thunberg has no magic solution. But she has succeeded in creating a global attitudinal shift, transforming millions of vague, middle-of-the-night anxieties into a worldwide movement calling for urgent change. She has offered a moral clarion call to those who are willing to act, and hurled shame on those who are not. She has persuaded leaders, from mayors to Presidents, to make commitments where they had previously fumbled: after she spoke to Parliament and demonstrated with the British environmental group Extinction Rebellion, the U.K. passed a law requiring that the country eliminate its carbon footprint. She has focused the world’s attention on environmental injustices that young indigenous activists have been protesting for years. Because of her, hundreds of thousands of teenage “Gretas,” from Lebanon to Liberia, have skipped school to lead their peers in climate strikes around the world.
