Digital life in 2025 — from by Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie
Experts predict the Internet will become ‘like electricity’ — less visible, yet more deeply embedded in people’s lives for good and ill

 

Report here.

 

Excerpts from report:

One striking pattern is that these experts agree to a large extent on the trends that will shape digital technology in the next decade. Among those expected to extend through 2025 are:

  • A global, immersive, invisible, ambient networked computing environment built through the continued proliferation of smart sensors, cameras, software, databases, and massive data center s in a world-spanning information fabric known as the Internet of Things.
  • “Augmented reality” enhancements to the real-world input that people perceive through the use of portable/wearable/implantable technologies.
  • A continuing evolution of artificial intelligence-equipped tools allowing anyone to connect to a globe-spanning information network nearly anywhere, anytime.
  • Disruption of business models established in the 20th century (most notably impacting finance, entertainment, publishers of all sorts, and education).
  • Tagging, databasing, and intelligent analytical mapping of the physical and social realms

 

 

DigitalLifeIn2025

 

 

Also see:

  • The Rise of the Digital Silhouette — from shift2future.com by Brian Kuhn
    Excerpt:
    Switching gears for a moment…  there are some significant benefits to education systems in the ‘Internet of things’ movement.  Imagine that students, wearing various data logging technologies, including Google Glasses, interacting with each other, with ‘text books’, human teachers, each other, and other learning resources, along with a host of educational apps, are continuously digitally documented.  Imagine that there are ‘intelligent’ algorithms (think IBM’s Watson but even more advanced) that look for patterns, provide real-time recommendations and coaching that adjust the student’s personalized learning plan, directly interacting with and advising the students like a personal learning coach.  Imagine that when a report card is due, the student’s ‘digital learning guide’ automatically produces a summative report card complete with a ‘live’ info graphic on the student’s learning and generates it directly in the student’s online learning portfolio and sends an alert to the parents.
 

 Technology and jobs: Coming to an office near you
The effect of today’s technology on tomorrow’s jobs will be immense—and no country is ready for it — from economist.com by

 

Excerpts:

INNOVATION, the elixir of progress, has always cost people their jobs. In the Industrial Revolution artisan weavers were swept aside by the mechanical loom. Over the past 30 years the digital revolution has displaced many of the mid-skill jobs that underpinned 20th-century middle-class life. Typists, ticket agents, bank tellers and many production-line jobs have been dispensed with, just as the weavers were.

No time to be timid
If this analysis is halfway correct, the social effects will be huge. Many of the jobs most at risk are lower down the ladder (logistics, haulage), whereas the skills that are least vulnerable to automation (creativity, managerial expertise) tend to be higher up, so median wages are likely to remain stagnant for some time and income gaps are likely to widen.

Anger about rising inequality is bound to grow, but politicians will find it hard to address the problem. Shunning progress would be as futile now as the Luddites’ protests against mechanised looms were in the 1810s, because any country that tried to stop would be left behind by competitors eager to embrace new technology. The freedom to raise taxes on the rich to punitive levels will be similarly constrained by the mobility of capital and highly skilled labour.

The main way in which governments can help their people through this dislocation is through education systems. One of the reasons for the improvement in workers’ fortunes in the latter part of the Industrial Revolution was because schools were built to educate them—a dramatic change at the time. Now those schools themselves need to be changed, to foster the creativity that humans will need to set them apart from computers. There should be less rote-learning and more critical thinking. Technology itself will help, whether through MOOCs (massive open online courses) or even video games that simulate the skills needed for work.

 

BBC-GuideToNext150Years-Jan2013

 

From DSC:
Some potential scenarios of our future.  Are there implications for how we educate today’s students? For our curriculum?

 

 

 

From DSC:
I’m not a political science expert and I won’t pretend to be one…but I did study economics and I don’t see what happened leading up to — and including — Tuesday night as any sort of victory or solid deal for America.  Delaying the tough decisions is not helping us — the time will come when we have to pay the piper.  Eventually, there will be pain. But will that pain start in 2013? I hope so. Because the longer the debt builds, the harder it will be to conquer it and the more pain we’ll need to get through (eventually).  In fact, eventually 100% of our taxes will go towards just paying the interest on the debt if we follow the current trajectories.  Printing more money won’t help the  situation either, as inflation is likely to escalate at that point.

Backing up a bit…here are some resources on what happened on Tuesday night with the Fiscal Cliff in the United States:

  • Obama signs bill warding off fiscal cliff — from CNN by Matt Smith
    Cliff deal hollow victory for American people — from CNN by David Rothkopf (CEO and editor-at-large of the FP Group, publishers of Foreign Policy magazine and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)
    Excerpt:
    (CNN) — The last political drama of 2012 and the first one of 2013 suggest that if you love America, you might want to consider making your New Year’s resolution quitting whatever political party you belong to. The “fiscal cliff” debate and the last-minute deal it produced have so far resolved nothing except to show that our system is profoundly broken and that radical changes are needed to fix it.
    .
  • Fiscal cliff was bound to collapse — from CNN by Gloria Borger
    .
  • After the fiscal cliff: What comes next? — from macleans.ca and the AP
    Excerpt:
    By delaying painful decisions on spending cuts, the deal assures more confrontation and uncertainty, especially because Congress must reach agreement later this winter to raise the government’s debt limit. Many businesses are likely to remain wary of expanding or hiring in the meantime.

    Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist for the Economic Outlook Group, thinks the lack of finality in the budget fight is slowing an otherwise fundamentally sound economy. “What a shame,” Baumohl said in a research note Wednesday. “Companies are eager to ramp up capital investments and boost hiring. Households are prepared to unleash five years of pent-up demand.”
    .
  • 3 more fiscal cliffs loom — from CNN by Rich Barbieri

 

From DSC:
The media loves to divide. They hate to unite. Evidently, unity doesn’t pay the bills .

(BTW, to the remaining journalism majors out there — strive to build up and help our country, and try not to feed the flames of division just so that your organizations’ ratings go up.  Watch whose agendas are truly being served and the verbiage you use.  Unfortunately, as a Christian,  I can’t say much for the church, as there are fractions throughout the church as well.)

Getting back to what’s on my mind…delaying the pain is just making the future pain all the worse.  Let’s bite the bullet, compromise, work together, and go through the pain now rather than later.  If we wait too long, our children will be paying the price for our ways.

As educators, it looks like we need to beef up those parts of the curriculum that deal with collaboration and creative compromise!

 

CalvinsJanuarySeries2013

 

Calvin College: The January Series
Presentations begin 12:30 p.m. EST (11:30 a.m. CST, 10:30 a.m. MST, 9:30 a.m. PST)
NOTE: Due to contractual restrictions, a few of these presentations will not be recorded or archived.

More details here, but a listing of the speakers/topics include:

Thursday, January 3
Jeremy Courtney – “Restoring Hearts in Iraq”

Friday, January 4
Sheryl WuDunn – “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide”

Monday, January 7
Roberta Green Ahmanson – “Dreams Become Reality: Inspiration through the Arts”

Tuesday, January 8
Jenny Yang – “Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion and Truth in the Immigration Debate”

Wednesday, January 9
Richard J. Mouw & Robert Millet – “Evangelicals and Mormons: A Conversation and Dialogue”

Thursday, January 10
Peter Diamandis – “Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think”

Friday, January 11
Captain Scotty Smiley – “Hope Unseen”

Monday, January 14
Jeff Van Duzer – “Why Business Matters to God”

Tuesday, January 15
Rebecca Skloot – “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”

Wednesday, January 16
Cokie Roberts – “An Insider’s View of Washington DC”

Thursday, January 17
W. Dwight Armstrong – “Feeding the World and the Future of Farming”

Friday, January 18
Garth Pauley – “Rituals of Democracy: Inaugural Addresses in American History”

Monday, January 21
Robert Robinson – “Celebration through Gospel Music” in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Tuesday, January 22
Mike Kim – “North Korea-China: A Modern Day Underground Railroad”

Wednesday, January 23
Chap Clark – “Sticky Faith”in partnership with the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship

To students studying Business, Economics, Religion, Political Science, and Philosophy:

 


Please consider — and research/define where necessary — the following items occurring in the United States today. 

The fiscal cliff.
The U.S. debt limit.
Federal spending vs. revenue.
Printing money and it’s potential impact on inflation.
Recent election results.
A global economy; global competition.
The place/role of money.
Race against the machine; also see this posting.
Matthew 6:19-34.

.


Then, please discuss/answer the following questions:


  1. What makes our debt risky? On a national level? On the money and banking level? On a personal level?
  2. What are your thoughts about the following items:
  3. What implications do you see in these items? Will they be impacting you and/or your future?
    • Are there political ramifications for this?
    • Are there spiritual ramifications for this?
  4. Could the U.S. be heading for trouble? If you say yes, what support do you have for this assertion? If you say no, what do you support your argument with?
  5. Do you think we are a divided nation? What support do you have for this perspective?
  6. What characteristics of leadership would you most like to see at this point in time?
  7. After reading Matthew 6:19-34:
    • If you, personally, lost everything you had, what would that do to you emotionally? Physically? Spiritually? That is, if our savings completely dried up, what would life be like for us as a society? What would that do to our hearts?  To our perspectives/worldviews/priorities? How we choose to spend our time? What would it do to our view of God?  To our view of ourselves?

 


Some other resources to consider:


.

 

fiscal cliff

 

 

Key findings from Executive Excess 2012: The CEO Hands in Uncle Sam’s Pocket — from the Institute for Policy Studies by Sarah Anderson, Chuck Collins, Scott Klinger, Sam Pizzigati

.

Executive Excess 2012

Key findings:

  • Of last year’s 100 highest-paid U.S. corporate chief executives, 26 took home more in CEO pay than their companies paid in federal income taxes, up from the 25 we noted in last year’s analysis. Seven firms made the list in both 2011 and 2010.
  • The CEOs of these 26 firms received $20.4 million in average total compensation last year. That’s a 23 percent increase over the average for last year’s list of 2010’s tax dodging executives
  • The four most direct tax subsidies for excessive executive pay cost taxpayers an estimated $14.4 billion per year—$46 for every American man, woman, and child. That amount could also cover the annual cost of hiring 211,732 elementary-school teachers or creating 241,593 clean-energy jobs.

 

From DSC:
Considering our corporations are sitting on $1.X trillion, where is our nation’s heart? Priorities? Care for fellow mankind? It seems the “every man for himself” philosophy and manner of living is alive and well here in America. My alma mater would be proud — it’s their philosophy exactly.

 

 

13-foot 12,000-pound mechanized robot suit now for sale in Japan — from venturebeat.com by John Koetsier

Also see:

and:

 

Enormous 13 foot tall, 4 ton robot

 


 

From DSC:
These items cause me to reflect yet again on the state of our hearts...as it doesn’t take much to think of the next steps in terms of using such robots as instruments of war. Do you think I’m stretching a bit too far here?  How about after considering the following interactive visualization that Google just created?

.

Small Arms Trade Graphic by Google - August 2012

 

Addendums:

 

Recorded Future dot com

Tagged with:  

LinkedIn inDay Speaker Series with Thomas Friedman - October 20, 2011.

.

That Used To Be Us

 

From DSC:
I originally saw this at Gerd Leonhard’s MediaFuturist.com where he entitles a blog posting:

 

Some of my notes on this video — Friedman’s main talk finishes around 35:45 w/ a Q&A beginning at 36:00
(From DSC: I’ve added my own thoughts in red)

  • Non-routine work — is the kind of work that you want to be able to do (there’s also the non-routine, local work — butcher, grocier — but that wasn’t the focus here)
  • Routine work — has been crushed via algorithms, outsourcing, (robotics), etc.

The bar has risen in non-routine work as we’ve moved from connected to hyper-connected world.

We are in the middle of an IT revolution/transformation — cloud, mobile, social, other — where Information Technology changes and globalization are creating global supply changes.  Tom’s key point is that the United States needs to be involved in these changes or we’ll get left in the dust.

In their Help Wanted chapter, the following skills are wanted:

  • Critical reasonsing
  • Problem solving
  • Non-routine work oriented
  • But most of all, you must be able to invent and reinvent your job WHILE you are doing the job
  • Creative
  • Innovative
  • (Pulse-checker and responder; which is why universities and colleges must begin offering classes on futurism/developing scenarios)
  • Unique value creation
  • Be able to bring your EXTRA

Average is over.  Now that we are hyper-connected, “average” is over.  If average is over — you must bring your “extra”.

From DSC:
If “average” is over, are we developing and raising up a generation of students who are learning how to bring their “extra”?  Does standardized testing help us or hurt us in this regard?

3 key attitudes you need if you want to “lean into this world”:

  1. Think like a new immigrant
    No legacy place waiting for me; I better figure out what world I’m living in, and then I better work hard to uncover and pursue the opportunities that current world presents; nothing is owed to me
  2. Think like an artisan
    Unique, hand-made; one-off’s, work in ways that you would be proud to carve your initials into your work
  3. Think like the waitress at Perkins Pancake House in MN
    Where she gave Thomas’ friend extra fruit and she mentioned that to them both; she brought her extra in areas where she had the control to do so

United States may be in relative decline — as we experience the “rise of the rest”; but what the US has to worry about it absolute decline

American exceptionalism — hogwash; no one owes us anything; have to earn our way; formula for success was a great private public partnership going back to Alexander Hamilton and built upon by Lincoln, Eisenhower, other (person asking question used the word ecosystem).  5 main pillars of this formulate for success/ecosystem:

  1. Education
  2. Infrastructure
  3. Open immigration policy
  4. Best rules for capital formation and risk taking
  5. Solid gov’t funded research

We’ve moved away from these 5 puillars of success and we’ve treated our nation like it’s a football that can be dropped w/ no resulting issues; the reality is we’re more like an egg; in another analogy, we can cut and hit arteries quickly…doing actual damage.

We misread environment — at end of cold war we put our feet up, thinking victory was won; the U.S. chased Al Queda instead of China, Brazil, other

Q&A

  • Q: Influence — how changed and how stay the same
    A: To have influence, must get substance  right — content is key; diamond-hard realities are key; not the spins; still need to do grunt, basic work; can never be a Thor throwing down lightning bolts from on high
  • Q: Labor arbitrage
    A: Rebalancing happening, but may take time; what was outsourced may not stay where originally went to
  • Q & A about Occupy Wall Street — was/is about injustice; taking $ and treating it like they were in a casino; people doing that got away with it; what will leadership look like in a hyperconnected world?

Final thoughts:

  • Idea of OODA loop from the world of Air Force pilots — observe, ___ decide, act  — speed of OODA loops are key; our political leaders are talking about A when X,Y, and Z are really happening (and the two circles rarely intersect)
  • How long can we be a great country when our political systems cannot deliver optimal results?
  • Our political system needs shock therapy — Friedman argues that we need a 3rd party — see AmericansElect.org

From DSC:
Each of us must be able to continually do pulse checks on a variety of forces that may be affecting our domains/places of work. We must be able to develop future scenarios and our responses to those scenarios. The ability to do that will become even more important as we move forward at ever-increasing speeds. 

We can’t be looking 5-10 feet ahead when we’re driving at 180 miles per hour in this new, hyper-connected world!

The pace has changed significantly and quickly

 

 

Big Brother is watching: Document reveals surveillance of social media, blogs, image-sharing sites — from techland.time.com byGraeme McMillan

Click here to find out more!
Jim Urquhart / Reuters

Jim Urquhart / Reuters

From DSC:
As a side comment:

  • What occurs in the legislatures and courtrooms across the world lags — sometimes a great deal — behind what technology can do.  With facial recognition, cyberwarfare, trojans, keyloggers, and other items out there these days, privacy is under attack and I don’t think the courts — and the citizens of the world — are keeping up.  Minority Report comes to mind…which is unsettling to me.

 

Recording everything: Digital storage as an enabler of authoritarian governments — by John Villasenor, a nonresident senior fellow in Governance Studies and in the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings. He is also professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Within the next few years an important threshold will be crossed: For the first time ever, it will become technologically and financially feasible for authoritarian governments to record nearly everything that is said or done within their borders – every phone conversation, electronic message, social media interaction, the movements of nearly every person and vehicle, and video from every street corner. Governments with a history of using all of the tools at their disposal to track and monitor their citizens will undoubtedly make full use of this capability once it becomes available.

The Arab Spring of 2011, which saw regimes toppled by protesters organized via Twitter and Facebook, was heralded in much of the world as signifying a new era in which information technology alters the balance of power in favor of the repressed. However, within the world’s many remaining authoritarian regimes it was undoubtedly viewed very differently. For those governments, the Arab Spring likely underscored the perils of failing to exercise sufficient control of digital communications and highlighted the need to redouble their efforts to increase the monitoring of their citizenry.

Declining storage costs will soon make it practical for authoritarian governments to create permanent digital archives of the data gathered from pervasive surveillance systems. In countries where there is no meaningful public debate on privacy, there is no reason to expect governments not to fully exploit the ability to build databases containing every phone conversation, location data for almost every person and vehicle, and video from every public space in an entire country.

This will greatly expand the ability of repressive regimes to perform surveillance of opponents and to anticipate and react to unrest. In addition, the awareness among the populace of pervasive surveillance will reduce the willingness of people to engage in dissent.

As of 11/20/11 (~2:00pm EST)

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As of 8/24/11:

usdebtclock.org

.

From DSC:
With the increase in globalization — and from what I’ve seen happening in the financial systems (i.e. how what happens in Europe affects the financial systems in the U.S./Asia/other and vice versa) — it seems clear that we are all in this boat together.  If that’s true, what does that mean for:

  • Businesses and economies around the world?
  • The ability of families and individuals to afford the increasing cost of getting a degree?
  • Higher educational systems — and business models — around the world?
  • How do we resolve such massive problems?
  • What does all of this mean for how we should be educating our students?

 

Addendum on 11/21/11:

  • Debt committee: Why $1.2 trillion isn’t enough — from money.cnn.com by Jeanne Sahadi
    Excerpts:
    That’s because under the most likely scenario, reducing deficits by $1.2 trillion won’t stop the accumulated debt from growing faster than the economy.

    Thus, to stabilize the debt, Congress would need to pass a debt-reduction plan worth $4 trillion to $6 trillion, budget experts say.

A visualization of the United States Debt — from usdebt.kleptocracy.us

From DSC:
Though this is the U.S. debt, the ramifications of this affect the entire globe. I believe my cousin, Mr. Stephen Gibson, is correct when he says that we may well be heading towards a “Global Reset.”

 

usdebt.kleptocracy.us

 

 

http://usdebt.kleptocracy.us/

 

Also see:

usdebtclock.org

— as of 8/24/11 around noon

 

Addendums later on 8/24/11 from Academic Impressions:

 

First day of sessionMPR Photo/Jeffrey Thompson

Just what are states pledging for higher ed these days?

  • Fidelity® study finds significant shifts over 5-yr period in how families tackle rising college costs
    Fifth Annual College Savings Indicator Study finds parents projected to meet only 16% of college costs, despite improved savings habits
    BOSTON – Fidelity Investments®, a leader in helping families save for college, today announced the results of its fifth annual College Savings Indicator study, which found significant shifts in savings behavior from 2007 to 2011, with more families: 1) starting to save in the preschool years despite financial pressures, 2) seeking guidance and saving for college using a dedicated account, such as a tax-advantaged 529 college savings plan, and 3) making shared sacrifices to achieve their college savings goals.

    The study features the College Savings Indicator, a calculation of the percentage of projected college costs the typical American family is on track to cover, based on its current and expected savings. After four consecutive years of decline, the Indicator held steady to the prior year at 16 percent, down from 24 percent in 2007, when Fidelity first launched the study. While overall preparedness has declined, a larger percentage of parents — more than two-thirds (67 percent) — have begun saving for college costs, compared with 58 percent five years ago.

Analysis: In debt row, hints of emerging-economy crises — from Reuters by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa
WASHINGTON | Sun Jul 24, 2011 5:59pm EDT
Debt default. A ratings downgrade. Political deadlock. Such terms, once associated primarily with the developing world, now abound in the mighty United States.

 

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