In U.S., decline of Christianity continues at rapid pace — from pewforum.org
An update on America’s changing religious landscape

 

 

 

From DSC:
Looking around…how’s that going for us? How is the United States doing internally? How is our nation doing externally? In my own life, when I’ve gotten away from the LORD, things have not gone very well. When family members have grown apart from the LORD, things declined in their lives as they did in my own life. I look around and I see that kind of phenomenon happening corporately as well.

 

Psalm 33:12 New International Version (NIV)

12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord…

…and conversely…???

 

Addendums on 10/18/19:

 

Priorities for new lawyers are changing. Can the legal industry keep up? — — from law.com by Annie Datesh, Natasha Allen, and Nicole Hatcher, Atrium
As the legal field continues to move forward, it is well-primed to place greater value on technological advancements, diverse leadership, and healthy work cultures over settling for the status quo.

Excerpts:

Yet the legal industry these lawyers are joining is evolving, and now increasingly hosts a new cohort of professionals—those shaped by technology and innovation, and who value diversity, mentorship, and efficiency over homogeneous workplaces with minimal coaching and exhausted capacities.

Amid a strengthening job market, why are jobs in a generally well-respected industry being looked over in favor of other industries? One reason could be the legal industry’s notorious lack of progressiveness. The industry’s technology landscape is one such area of slow growth; its lack of diversity is another.

The legal industry’s long-standing dismissal of technology, while slowly changing, is fairly well known. While legal technology holds enormous potential for law firms, the industry as a whole has been famously slow to adopt modern technologies or meaningfully innovate on the traditional law firm business model. Why? For smaller firms, money can be tight, and solutions can be expensive.

 

The good news is that the legal industry is slowly but surely becoming more receptive to the benefits of evolving its traditional approach to the business and practice of law. Legal technologies continue to offer increased efficiencies to law firms, should they elect to adopt them, and the call for diversity and other cultural improvements within firms and the legal industry more broadly is on the rise.

Those players in the legal industry who are able to recognize prevailing industry trends now will be in the best position to act on them.

 

An inserted graphic from DSC:

 

Also see:

Blockchain: 5 Ways Cybercriminals Can Hack The Unhackable — from disruptionhub.com

 

From DSC:
Though this posting sounds negative on blockchain, I don’t mean it to be…as I think it may very well have a future. But these postings show that it’s still early in the game here.

 

The Future Ready Lawyer — from Wolters Kluwer

Excerpts:

Leveraging technology as a strategic advantage is characteristics of high-performing businesses and professionals around the world. The same is true for the legal sector. Technology is a differentiator, and will become even more important as legal professionals recognize and leverage the unprecedented insights, capabilities and efficiencies that technology delivers. In addition, the emerging legal ecosystems will demand it, as tech-empowered players outside of the traditional legal profession continue to enter and disrupt the market.

 

Excerpt from the Future Ready Lawyer

 

 

From DSC:
It’s interesting to note how many times the words “technology” (205 times) and/or the word “technologies” (77 times) appear in that report.

 

 

IT laggards could lose up to $20 billion in revenue over the next 5 years, says Accenture — from zdnet.com by Larry Dignan
Accenture’s leaders see enterprise technologies as a system compared to independent fixes and bet on cloud, AI, big data analytics and IoT.

Excerpt:

Companies that fail to scale innovation may lose up to $20 billion in revenue over the next five years as enterprises thrive or dive based on information technology decisions, according to Accenture.

Accenture’s report was based on a survey of more than 8,300 companies across 20 industries and 22 countries. Accenture scored companies on technology adoption, depth of technology adoption and cultural readiness. From there, Accenture segmented companies into leaders, defined as the top 10%, and laggards, which represent the bottom 25%.

 

Also see:

 

The 7 biggest technology trends in 2020 everyone must get ready for now — from forbes.com by Bernard Marr

Excerpts:

  • AI-as-a-service
  • 5G data networks
  • Autonomous Driving
  • Personalized and predictive medicine
  • Computer Vision
  • Extended Reality
  • Blockchain Technology

 

From DSC:
I appreciate this list from Bernard. I would also add voice-enabled interfaces/products (NLP) to this list, as well as more integration of AI into learning-related applications and services. 

For the federal agencies, state representatives, senators, law schools, students in law school, lawyers, legislators, CIO’s, and CEO’s etc. out there: Are you/we ready for these? Given the pace of exponential change, how are you seeking to keep a pulse-check on these types of emerging technologies and their impacts on our society? How are you/we guiding the development of these emerging technologies?

 

UPS just beat out Amazon and Google to become America’s first nationwide drone airline — from businessinsider.com by Rachel Premack

Key points:

  • The US Department of Transportation said Tuesday it granted its first full Part 135 certification for a drone airline to UPS.
  • UPS currently conducts drone deliveries at a large hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina.
  • It will now be able to operate drones anywhere in the country — an industry first.
  • Another drone operator — Wing, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet — also has Part 135 certification. But the scope of its operation is limited to Christiansburg, Virginia, about 210 miles southwest of the state capitol Richmond.

From DSC:
Add to that, these delivery bots, drones, pods, and more:

 

From DSC:
I wonder…will we be able to take a quiet walk in the future? That may not be the case if the building of these armies of drones continues — and becomes a full-fledged trend.

 
 

How augmented reality will overhaul our most crucial industries — from singularityhub.com by Peter Diamandis

Excerpts:

Healthcare
(1) Surgeons and physicians
(2) Assistance for those with disabilities
(3) Biometric displays

Retail & Advertising
(1) Virtual shopping
(2) Advertising

Education & Travel
(1) Customized, continuous learning

Within the classroom, Magic Leap One’s Lumin operating system allows multiple wearers to share in a digital experience, such as a dissection or historical map. And from a collaborative creation standpoint, students can use Magic Leap’s CAD application to join forces on 3D designs.

In success, AR’s convergence with biometric sensors and AI will give rise to an extraordinarily different education system: one comprised of delocalized, individually customizable, responsive, and accelerated learning environments.

(2) Training
(3) Travel

Manufacturing
(1) Design
(2) Supply chain optimization
(3) Quality assurance & accessible expertise

Transportation & Navigation
(1) Autonomous vehicles
(2) Navigation

Entertainment
(1) Gaming
(2) Art

 

 

Information Technology (IT) skills and jobs are widely misunderstood to be housed primarily in the tech sector, and they are also thought to be inaccessible to all but a small minority of people who have focused intently on computer science. Building on our prior research efforts and mining a database of more than 150 million unique online U.S. job postings, Oracle Academy and Burning Glass Technologies produce new evidence that neither of these perceptions are borne out by data. To the contrary, 90% of IT skills and jobs are concentrated in 10 non-tech industries, leaving only 10% in the tech sector. The rapid growth of IT jobs is more than 50% greater in non-tech industries than in tech industries.

 

Per Jane Hart on LinkedIn:

Top 200 Tools for Learning 2019 is now published, together with:

PLUS analysis of how these tools are being used in different context, new graphics, and updated comments on the tools’ pages that show how people are using the tools.

 

 

 

5 emerging tech trends impacting the enterprise — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

Excerpts:

Gartner’s Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle focuses specifically on new technologies (not previously highlighted in past Hype Cycles) that “show promise in delivering a high degree of competitive advantage over the next five to 10 years.” The five most impactful trends to watch this year are:

  1. Sensing and mobility.
  2. Augmented human.
  3. Postclassical compute and comms.
  4. Digital ecosystems.
  5. Advanced AI and analytics.
 

Screen Mirroring, Screencasting and Screen Sharing in Higher Education — from edtechmagazine.com by Derek Rice
Digital learning platforms let students and professors interact through shared videos and documents.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Active learning, collaboration, personalization, flexibility and two-way communication are the main factors driving today’s modern classroom design.

Among the technologies being brought to bear in academic settings are those that enable screen mirroring, screencasting and screen sharing, often collectively referred to as wireless presentation solutions.

These technologies are often supported by a device and app that allow users, both students and professors, to easily share content on a larger screen in a classroom.

“The next best thing to a one-to-one conversation is to be able to share what the students create, as part of the homework or class activity, or communicate using media to provide video evidence of class activities and enhance and build out reading, writing, speaking, listening, language and other skills,” says Michael Volpe, marketing manager for IOGEAR.

 

Technology as Part of the Culture for Legal Professionals -- a Q&A with Mary Grush and Daniel Christian

 


Technology as Part of the Culture for Legal Professionals A Q&A with Daniel Christian — from campustechnology.com by Mary Grush and Daniel Christian

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Mary Grush: Why should new technologies be part of a legal education?

Daniel Christian: I think it’s a critical point because our society, at least in the United States — and many other countries as well — is being faced with a dramatic influx of emerging technologies. Whether we are talking about artificial intelligence, blockchain, Bitcoin, chatbots, facial recognition, natural language processing, big data, the Internet of Things, advanced robotics — any of dozens of new technologies — this is the environment that we are increasingly living in, and being impacted by, day to day.

It is so important for our nation that legal professionals — lawyers, judges, attorney generals, state representatives, and legislators among them — be up to speed as much as possible on the technologies that surround us: What are the issues their clients and constituents face? It’s important that legal professionals regularly pulse check the relevant landscapes to be sure that they are aware of the technologies that are coming down the pike. To help facilitate this habit, technology should be part of the culture for those who choose a career in law. (And what better time to help people start to build that habit than within the law schools of our nation?)

 

There is a real need for the legal realm to catch up with some of these emerging technologies, because right now, there aren’t many options for people to pursue. If the lawyers, and the legislators, and the judges don’t get up to speed, the “wild wests” out there will continue until they do.

 


 

Podcast: Susan Patrick on Transforming Education Systems for Equitable High-Quality Learning — from gettingsmart.com by Tom Vander Ark & Susan Patrick

Excerpts:

5 Global Trends

  1. Ensuring education systems are fit for purpose.
  2. Modernizing educator workforce and professional learning.
  3. Innovating education for equity, prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion.
  4. Aligning pathways from early childhood, K-12, college and workforce.
  5. Redesigning schools based on the learning sciences.
    In Fit for Purpose, Patrick and colleagues said, “A school redesign informed by learning sciences puts student success at its center. It incorporates youth development theory, culturally responsive teaching, and evidence-based approaches.” She added, “We must ensure we are designing for equity using research on how students learn best, youth development theory and evidence-based approaches.”


From DSC:

Below are the comments that I relayed back to Tom and Susan on Twitter:

“We need to keep asking– how do we design a system fit for the world we live in?” I thought that this was a great point from Susan. I would just add that not only do we need to look around at the current landscapes, but also what’s coming down the pike (i.e. the world that we will be living in). With the new pace of exponential change, our graduates will need to be able to pivot/adapt frequently and quickly.

Also, watching my wife’s experiences over the last few years, only one of the three school systems offered solid training and development. The other two school systems needed to pay much more attention to their onboarding and training programs. They needed to be far more supportive — working to establish a more team-oriented teaching and learning environment. While the corporate world can learn from the K-12 world often times, this is where the K-12 world could learn a lot to learn from the corporate world.

 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian