the downsides of how people use tech

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.

From DSC:
To set the stage for the following reflections…first, an excerpt from Climate researcher claims CIA asked about weaponized weather: What could go wrong? — from computerworld.com (emphasis DSC)

We’re not talking about chemtrails, HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) or other weather warfare that has been featured in science fiction movies; the concerns were raised not a conspiracy theorist, but by climate scientist, geoengineering specialist and Rutgers University Professor Alan Robock. He “called on secretive government agencies to be open about their interest in radical work that explores how to alter the world’s climate.” If emerging climate-altering technologies can effectively alter the weather, Robock is “worried about who would control such climate-altering technologies.”

Exactly what I’ve been reflecting on recently.

***Who*** is designing, developing, and using the powerful technologies that are coming into play these days and ***for what purposes?***

Do these individuals care about other people? Or are they much more motivated by profit or power?

Given the increasingly potent technologies available today, we need people who care about other people.

Let me explain where I’m coming from here…

I see technologies as tools. For example, a pencil is a technology. On the positive side of things, it can be used to write or draw something. On the negative side of things, it could be used as a weapon to stab someone. It depends upon the user of the pencil and what their intentions are.

Let’s look at some far more powerful — and troublesome — examples.

DRONES

Drones could be useful…or they could be incredibly dangerous. Again, it depends on who is developing/programming them and for what purpose(s). Consider the posting from B.J. Murphy below (BTW, nothing positive or negative is meant by linking to this item, per se).

DARPA’s Insect and Bird Drones Are On Their Way — from proactiontranshuman.wordpress.com by B.J. Murphy

.

From DSC:
I say this is an illustrative posting because if the inventor/programmer of this sort of drone wanted to poison someone, they surely could do so. I’m not even sure that this drone exists or not; it doesn’t matter, as we’re quickly heading that way anyway. So potentially, this kind of thing is very scary stuff.

We need people who care about other people.

Or see:
Five useful ideas from the World Cup of Drones — from dezeen.com
The article mentions some beneficial purposes of drones, such as for search and rescue missions or for assessing water quality. Some positive intentions, to be sure.

But again, it doesn’t take too much thought to come up with some rather frightening counter-examples.

GENE-RELATED RESEARCH

Or another example re: gene research/applications; an excerpt from:

Turning On Genes, Systematically, with CRISPR/Cas9 — from by genengnews.com
Scientists based at MIT assert that they can reliably turn on any gene of their choosing in living cells.

Excerpt:

It was also suggested that large-scale screens such as the one demonstrated in the current study could help researchers discover new cancer drugs that prevent tumors from becoming resistant.

From DSC:
Sounds like there could be some excellent, useful, positive uses for this technology. But who is to say which genes should be turned on and under what circumstances? In the wrong hands, there could be some dangerous uses involved in such concepts as well. Again, it goes back to those involved with designing, developing, selling, using these technologies and services.

ROBOTICS

Will robots be used for positive or negative applications?

The mechanized future of warfare — from theweek.com
OR
Atlas Unplugged: The six-foot-two humanoid robot that might just save your life — from zdnet.com
Summary:From the people who brought you the internet, the latest version of the Atlas robot will be used in its disaster-fighting robotic challenge.

AUTONOMOUS CARS

How Uber’s autonomous cars will destroy 10 million jobs and reshape the economy by 2025 — from sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com by

Excerpt:

Autonomous cars will be commonplace by 2025 and have a near monopoly by 2030, and the sweeping change they bring will eclipse every other innovation our society has experienced. They will cause unprecedented job loss and a fundamental restructuring of our economy, solve large portions of our environmental problems, prevent tens of thousands of deaths per year, save millions of hours with increased productivity, and create entire new industries that we cannot even imagine from our current vantage point.

One can see the potential for good and for bad from the above excerpt alone.

Or Ford developing cross country automotive remote control — from spectrum.ieee.org

Or Germany has approved the use of self driving cars on Autobahn A9 Route — from wtvox.com

While the above items list mostly positive elements, there are those who fear that autonomous cars could be used by terrorists. That is, could a terrorist organization make some adjustments to such self-driving cars and load them up with explosives, then remotely control them in order to drive them to a certain building or event and cause them to explode?

Again, it depends upon whether the designers and users of a system care about other people.

BIG DATA / AI / COGNITIVE COMPUTING

The rise of machines that learn — from infoworld.com by Eric Knorr; with thanks to Oliver Hansen for his tweet on this
A new big data analytics startup, Adatao, reminds us that we’re just at the beginning of a new phase of computing when systems become much, much smarter

Excerpt:

“Our warm and creepy future,” is how Miko refers to the first-order effect of applying machine learning to big data. In other words, through artificially intelligent analysis of whatever Internet data is available about us — including the much more detailed, personal stuff collected by mobile devices and wearables — websites and merchants of all kinds will become extraordinarily helpful. And it will give us the willies, because it will be the sort of personalized help that can come only from knowing us all too well.

Privacy is dead: How Twitter and Facebook are exposing you — from finance.yahoo.com

Excerpt:

They know who you are, what you like, and how you buy things. Researchers at MIT have matched up your Facebook (FB) likes, tweets, and social media activity with the products you buy. The results are a highly detailed and accurate profile of how much money you have, where you go to spend it and exactly who you are.

The study spanned three months and used the anonymous credit card data of 1.1 million people. After gathering the data, analysts would marry the findings to a person’s public online profile. By checking things like tweets and Facebook activity, researchers found out the anonymous person’s actual name 90% of the time.

iBeacon, video analysis top 2015 tech trends — from progressivegrocer.com

Excerpt:

Using digital to engage consumers will make the store a more interesting and – dare I say – fun place to shop. Such an enhanced in-store experience leads to more customer loyalty and a bigger basket at checkout. It also gives supermarkets a competitive edge over nearby stores not equipped with the latest technology.

Using video cameras in the ceilings of supermarkets to record shopper behavior is not new. But more retailers will analyze and use the resulting data this year. They will move displays around the store and perhaps deploy new traffic patterns that follow a shopper’s true path to purchase. The result will be increased sales.

Another interesting part of this video analysis that will become more important this year is facial recognition. The most sophisticated cameras are able to detect the approximate age and ethnicity of shoppers. Retailers will benefit from knowing, say, that their shopper base includes more Millennials and Hispanics than last year. Such valuable information will change product assortments.

Scientists join Elon Musk & Stephen Hawking, warn of dangerous AI — from rt.com

Excerpt:

Hundreds of leading scientists and technologists have joined Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk in warning of the potential dangers of sophisticated artificial intelligence, signing an open letter calling for research on how to avoid harming humanity.

The open letter, drafted by the Future of Life Institute and signed by hundreds of academics and technologists, calls on the artificial intelligence science community to not only invest in research into making good decisions and plans for the future, but to also thoroughly check how those advances might affect society.

SMART/ CONNECTED TVs

Potential for good:
Learning/training-related applications, networking, obtaining employment and new projects
.
Potential for bad:
Spying on people (Is Your Smart TV Spying On You? Samsung SmartTV Privacy Policy Reminds Us To Watch What We Say Around Connected Devices — from idigitaltimes.com)

Though there are many other examples, I think you get the point.

That biblical idea of loving our neighbors as ourselves…well, as you can see,
that idea is as highly applicable, important, and relevant today as it ever was.

Addendum on 3/19/15 that gets at exactly the same thing here:

Teaching robots to be moral — from newyorker.com by Gary Marcus
Excerpt:
Robots and advanced A.I. could truly transform the world for the better—helping to cure cancer, reduce hunger, slow climate change, and give all of us more leisure time. But they could also make things vastly worse, starting with the displacement of jobs and then growing into something closer to what we see in dystopian films. When we think about our future, it is vital that we try to understand how to make robots a force for good rather than evil.

Addendum on 3/20/15:

Scientists seek ban on method of editing the human genome — from nytimes.com by Nicholas Wade

Jennifer A. Doudna, an inventor of a new genome-editing technique, in her office at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Doudna is the lead author of an article calling for a worldwide moratorium on the use of the new method, to give scientists, ethicists and the public time to fully understand the issues surrounding the breakthrough.
Credit Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York Times

Automation, jobs, and the future of work [mckinsey.com]

On 12/04/2014, in 21st century, business, career development, change, emerging technologies, engineering, future, innovation, pace of change, robotics, staying relevant, technology (general), the downsides of how people use tech, trends, United States, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Automation, jobs, and the future of work — from mckinsey.com
A group of economists, tech entrepreneurs, and academics discuss whether technological advances will automate tasks more quickly than the United States can create jobs.

Excerpt:

The topic of job displacement has, throughout US history, ignited frustration over technological advances and their tendency to make traditional jobs obsolete; artisans protested textile mills in the early 19th century, for example. In recent years, start-ups and the high-tech industry have become the focus of this discussion. A recent Pew Research Center study found that technology experts are almost evenly split on whether robots and artificial intelligence will displace a significant number of jobs over the next decade, so there is plenty of room for debate.

What follows is an edited transcript plus video clips of a conversation on this topic, moderated by McKinsey Global Institute partner Michael Chui and MGI director James Manyika. The participants were Martin Baily, senior fellow, economic studies, Brookings Institution; Richard Cooper, Maurits C. Boas Professor of International Economics, Harvard University; Curtis Carlson, former president and CEO, SRI International; Reid Hoffman, partner, Greylock; Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO, O’Reilly Media; Matt Slaughter, associate dean of faculty, Tuck School of Business; Laura Tyson, professor of business administration and economics, Haas Business and Public Policy Group, University of California, Berkeley; and Vivek Wadhwa, fellow, Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance, Stanford University.

…

It’s quite clear, in the US in recent years, that we’re not creating enough good jobs. People care a lot about their W-2s—what incomes are they earning? If you segment this by educational attainment, 96.2 percent of the US workforce since 2000 is in an educational cohort whose total money earnings, inflation adjusted, have been falling, not rising.

…

What’s happening with the technology, which is skill biased and labor saving, is that it’s eliminating middle-income jobs but is complementary to high skills. The jobs are high-income jobs because some smart people have to work with the technology. But there’s a very large number of people who are being pushed down into lower-income jobs.

…

Maybe we’re looking at the wrong symptoms as opposed to looking at the fundamentals—we are not innovating at the speed of the economy. We are not adapting fast enough

Technology is leaving too many of us behind [McAfee & Brynjolfsson]

On 05/16/2014, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, creativity, education reform, innovation, reinvent, robotics, society, staying relevant, surviving, technology (general), the downsides of how people use tech, by Daniel Christian

Technology is leaving too many of us behind — from cnn.com by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson

Excerpts:

Technology is racing ahead so quickly, in fact, that it’s leaving a lot of our institutions, organizations, policies and practices behind. It’s in these latter areas where we must increase the pace of innovation. The solution is not to slow technology down but instead to speed up the invention of new jobs. That requires unleashing entrepreneurs’ creativity. It also requires a host of other conditions.

…

Will our primary education system decrease its current emphasis on rote learning and standardized testing and start teaching skills computers don’t have, such as creativity and problem-solving?

…

The greatest flaw with our current path is the fact that a large group is being left out in every important sense. Too many people aren’t getting the skills and support they need in order to participate in a rapidly changing economy and don’t feel that they have any stake in a society that’s being created around them and without them. As a result, many are dropping out — of education, of the work force, out of their communities and out of family life.

Also see:

Where the Internet of Things could take society by 2025 — from centerdigitaled.com by Tanya Roscorla

Excerpt:

The Pew Research Center Internet Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center released the report on Wednesday, May 14, as part of an ongoing future of the Internet series inspired by the Web’s 25th anniversary. Eighty-three percent of these experts, which included education leaders, agreed that the Internet of Things would have “widespread and beneficial effects on the everyday lives of the public by 2025.” The remaining 17 percent said it would not, and both camps elaborated on their answers in paragraph form.

Their explanations fall under six major points:

The Internet of Things and wearable computing will take major steps forward in the next 11 years.
Increased data from connected things will cause privacy concerns to come to the forefront and encourage the growth of profiling and targeting people, which will greatly inflame conflicts in various arenas.
Despite advancement in information interfaces, most people won’t be connecting their brains to the network.
Complicated, unintended consequences will arise.
A digital divide could deepen and disenfranchise people who don’t choose to connect to the network.
Relationships will change depending on people’s response to the Internet of Things.

From DSC:
As with most technologies, there will be positives and negatives about the Internet of Things. To me, the technologies are tools — neutral, not value-laden — and it’s how we use them that adds moral, political, legal, ethical, or social perspectives/elements to them. With that said, I’m quite sure that the IoT will have unintended consequences (#4 above). Also, item #5 — “A digital divide could deepen and disenfranchise people who don’t choose to connect to the network” — is especially troublesome to me, along with the topic of privacy concerns as mentioned in #2.

Excerpt:

‘Intelligent machines’ are increasingly interconnecting. The Internet of Things is imminent, with sensor networks and mobile devices connecting everyone and everything everywhere in the near future., Singularity’ – the moment of when machines become as capable as humans – is quickly becoming a buzzword that rivals Social Media. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is certain to play a role everywhere, and robots are dropping in price dramatically while gaining quickly in functionality and skills. Exponential technological progress is evident everywhere – but how will we – as linear beings – cope with this increasing empowerment of software and machines, the tremendous gain in the flow of real-time information, and the far-reaching implications that these developments will have? How will we keep up with thousands of real-time datafeeds, the ever-increasing volume, variety and depth of input, the tsunami of incoming communications and the rapidly improving smartness – and increasingly deep intelligence – of software, devices and machines? Will humans need to be ‘augmented’, soon, in order to keep up, and if so, where will this take us? What will happen to our ethics in a world of ultra-smart intelligent agents, artificial intelligence and the coming ‘trans-humanism’?

Immigrants from the future [The Economist]

On 04/05/2014, in change, computer science, future, game-changing environment, global / globalization, human-computer interaction (HCI), psychology, robotics, technology (general), the downsides of how people use tech, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Immigrants from the future — from The Economist
Robots offer a unique insight into what people want from technology. That makes their progress peculiarly fascinating, says Oliver Morton

The pieces in the Special Report include:

Major questions need to be asked — and addressed — due to these shifts [Christian]

On 03/17/2014, in 21st century, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, emerging technologies, engineering, entrepreneurship, experimentation, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, informal learning, K-12 related, leadership, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, marketplaces, new business models, pace of change, professional development, reinvent, robotics, staying relevant, strategy, surviving, the downsides of how people use tech, training / L&D, trends, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Excerpts:

If Daniel Nadler is right, a generation of college graduates with well-paid positions as junior researchers and analysts in the banking industry should be worried about their jobs. Very worried.

Mr Nadler’s start-up, staffed with ex-Google engineers and backed partly by money from Google’s venture capital arm, is trying to put them out of work.

…

The threat to jobs stretches beyond the white-collar world. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) also make possible more versatile robots capable of taking over many types of manual work. “It’s going to decimate jobs at the low end,” predicts Jerry Kaplan, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who teaches a class about AI at Stanford University. Like others working in the field, he says he is surprised by the speed at which the new technologies are moving out of the research labs.

From DSC:
After reading the above article — and seeing presentations about these trends (example) — I have some major questions to ask:

What changes do those of us working within higher education need to make due to these shifts? How should we modify our curricula? Which skills need to be reinforced/developed?
What changes do Learning & Development groups and Training Departments need to make within the corporate world?
How should we be developing our K-12 students to deal with such a volatile workplace?
What changes do adult learners need to make to stay marketable/employable? How can they reinvent themselves (and know what that reinvention should look like)?
How can each of us know if our job is next on the chopping block and if it is, what should we do about it?
What kind of future do we want?

These changes are for real. The work of Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee further addresses some of these trends and changes. See:

Addendum:

Also see:

Bill Gates: Yes, robots really are about to take your jobs — from bgr.com by Brad Reed

Bill Gates Interview Robots

Excerpt:

Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates isn’t going to sugarcoat things: The increasing power of automation technology is going to put a lot of people out of work. Business Insider reports that Gates gave a talk at the American Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington, DC this week and said that both governments and businesses need to start preparing for a future where lots of people will be put out of work by software and robots.

Also see:

Make Work More Human — from Harold Jarche

Items re: disruption in the workplace, freelancing, and futureproofing your career

On 02/22/2014, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, entrepreneurship, innovation, pace of change, professional development, robotics, student-related, technology (general), the downsides of how people use tech, workplace, by Daniel Christian

What jobs will the robots take? – from The Atlantic by Derek Thompson
Nearly half of American jobs today could be automated in “a decade or two,” according to new research. The question is: Which half?

Excerpt:

It is an invisible force that goes by many names. Computerization. Automation. Artificial intelligence. Technology. Innovation. And, everyone’s favorite, ROBOTS.

Whatever name you prefer, some form of it has been stoking progress and killing jobs—from seamstresses to paralegals—for centuries. But this time is different: Nearly half of American jobs today could be automated in “a decade or two,” according to a new paper by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, discussed recently in The Economist. The question is: Which half?

A Guide to the Job Market in 2034 — from mashable.com by Todd Wasserman

Excerpt:

Whether you’re an aspiring lawyer, policeman or programmer, you should be aware that at some point — maybe a decade from now, maybe two, perhaps less — many jobs in those industries will be replaced by an algorithm.

That’s what many economists predict and in some cases it looks like it will happen very soon. For instance, algorithms currently perform some tasks previously executed by paralegals, patent attorneys and contract lawyers. In Doha, Sao Paulo and Beijing, municipal governments use cheap sensors on pipes, pumps and other water infrastructure components to watch out for water leaks, a practice that has led some to speculate that fewer law enforcement workers will be needed on patrol once more sensors are deployed. Even programming — once the epitome of a safe-as-milk job in the 21st century — could be taken over by the bots as machine learning lets algorithms make and optimize design choices in coding.

All told, some 47% of U.S. employment is at risk of being automated over the next two decades, according to a 2013 study by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne of the University of Oxford.

…

Feudalism 2.0?
Workplace automation, fewer jobs and an increasingly winner-take-all society do not necessarily bode well for democracy. In 2013, the top 85 individuals in the world owned more wealth than the bottom 50% of a planet of 7 billion. Conflate that with the 47% claim and for some you have the makings of Feudalism 2.0.

Online labour marketplaces: job insecurity gone viral? — from theconversation.com by Veronica Sheen, Research Associate, Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University

Excerpt:

Some of the newest enterprises online are those which link workers to anyone who wants a job done. They’re not concerned with employment or jobs but with “tasks”. These are small, one-off, discrete portions of work for completion within a short time frame at short notice.

They are different from employment websites like seek.com which have essentially substituted for newspapers in employment advertising.

Websites Airtasker, Ozlance and Sidekicker show what’s on offer: home help tasks like cleaning or painting and small administrative jobs (Airtasker); web based assignments that can be done online (Ozlance); or explicitly business oriented, (Sidekicker), offering helpers for office work, events, hospitality, and promotions. Others include Odesk, Freelancer and Elance mostly offering online work like programming, web design and translation.

Futureproofing Your Career Part II — from WorkStrong/weddles.com

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

As I mentioned in my last post, futureproofing is now a core competency of successful career activism for one simple reason: In today’s workplace, there is only one certainty – tomorrow will be different from today.

We’re now seeing more change more frequently than at any other time in the past 100 years or more. And that change is increasingly disruptive … to our jobs, occupational fields, industries and, as a consequence, our careers.

How do you implement futureproofing so that it works for you? It’s a five step process that should be repeated twice a year:

Entrepreneurs & freelancers: Add more value or find another job — from hongkiat.com

Excerpt:

Everything changes. Change is the only constant in this Universe said Heraclitus of Ephesus. It’s funny how something talked about 2,500 years ago still isn’t understood by the majority of people. If you’re trying to succeed in business, whether you’re a freelancer or an entrepreneur, your first objective is growth.

In place of text CVs, platform lets freelancers blog their work history — from springwise.com
From Germany, Somewhere is a visual blogging platform that enables freelancers and small teams to show potential employers and clients a more engaging story of their work.

alttext

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.

Description:
Smart machines do what we thought only people could do. They include conversational assistants like GoogleNow that know how you work, understand written content and make recommendations based on what you’re doing; advisors like IBM’s Watson that can help clinicians keep up with medical literature and suggest courses of action; software that writes sports stories from box scores; and cars that drive themselves.

Key Issues
1. What are smart machines?
2. How will smart machines impact business, technology, economies and society?
3. What should you do about it?

Balance, boundaries, & limits may be required; gaming brings its plusses & minuses

On 02/01/2014, in 21st century, attention, educational games / serious games, engagement / engaging students, interaction design, interactivity, K-12 related, love of learning, participation, psychology, the downsides of how people use tech, by Daniel Christian

Some items/resources regarding gaming/video games as it pertains to education:

Bypassing the Textbook: Video Games Transform Social Studies Curriculcum

Teaching With Digital Games: a Video Case Study and Teacher Q&A with the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Lisa Parisi

State Senate bill encourages learning via video games — from Murrow News Service by Matt Benoit

Higher Education Is a Massively Multiplayer Game — from educause

BETT 2014: Exploring the classroom of the future
From 3D gesture control to augmented reality textbooks, the classroom of the future will be more connected that ever before

Jane McGonigal.com

Learning Games Network

The 10 Biggest Trends in Ed Tech

.

Play to Learn: 100- Great sites on gamification — from top5onlinecolleges.org/gamification by Emily Newton

Learning at Home: Families’ Educational Media Use in America — from joanganzcooneycenter.org by Victoria Rideout, January 24, 2014

Do Games Have a Future in Education?— from learndash.com by Justin Ferriman

Excerpt:

With the growing popularity in gamification and game-based learning, more and more conversations are being held about the viability of games in the educational sector (particularly K-12). Many are wondering to what extent should K-12 education use gamification in their learning.

The simple answer is that there really isn’t an exact answer. I think that using game theory in learning environments can prove useful (it’s been done in some capacity for years), but relying too much on it to drive home a lesson, or to teach the content, can be a mistake.

6 Lessons from the Trenches of Digital Learning Game Design at #ASTDTK14

However, excessive amounts of game playing can lead to addictions. This is a real concern. Consider the items below.

Video Game Addiction No Fun –– from WebMd.com
Compulsive video gaming is a modern-day psychological disorder that experts tell WebMD is becoming more and more popular.

How to stop video game addiction?

Video game addiction.org

End a Video Game Addiction

Avoid Video Game Addiction

Online gaming addiction in children and adolescents:
A review of empirical research
.

Online gaming addiction similar to alcoholism, gaming industry should pay for treatment, says new S Korea proposal

How to prevent and deal with video game addiction — from shelbycounselingassociates.org

Bottom line: Balance, boundaries, and limits will likely be needed here — at least in some/certain cases.

Addendum on 2/3/14:

Gamification in the Classroom — from seriousgames.msu.edu by Lissy Torres
Excerpt:
MSU’s meaningful play faculty and students came together on Wednesday to listen to Scott Nicholson, a game designer and board game enthusiast, give a talk on gamification. Nicholson currently teaches at Syracuse University, where he employs gamification in big ways through his undergraduate courses. But before we go into that, let’s have some more on the man himself.

Reflections on “A new digital ecology is evolving, and humans are being left behind” [Dvorsky]

On 10/23/2013, in 21st century, business, Daniel S. Christian, ethics, hearts -- matters of the heart, machine-to-machine communications, MBA, technology (general), the downsides of how people use tech, by Daniel Christian

A new digital ecology is evolving, and humans are being left behind — from io9.com by George Dvorsky

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Incomprehensible computer behaviors (<– Can we use the word behavior here? It seems an odd word to describe computer-related actions…) have evolved out of high-frequency stock trading, and humans aren’t sure why. Eventually, it could start affecting high-tech warfare, too. We spoke with a researcher at University of Miami who thinks humans will be outpaced by a new “machine ecology.”

For all intents and purposes, this genesis of this new world began in 2006 with the introduction of legislation which made high frequency stock trading a viable option. This form of rapid-fire trading involves algorithms, or bots, that can make decisions on the order of milliseconds (ms). By contrast, it takes a human at least one full second to both recognize and react to potential danger. Consequently, humans are progressively being left out of the trading loop.

…

“What we see with the new ultrafast computer algorithms is predatory trading,” he says. “In this case, the predator acts before the prey even knows it’s there.”

Johnson describes this new ecology as one consisting of mobs of ultrafast bots that frequently overwhelm the system. When events last less than a second, the financial world transitions to a new one inhabited by packs of aggressively trading algorithms.

.

From DSC:
I’m getting concerned about the power of emerging technologies and who is using these technologies — and how they are using them. It took humans to program these algorithms. It still takes humans to oversee these issues/trends (at least at this point in time!). Therefore, values — and hearts — come into play here — with very real effects. Quoting from the article:

“There is real money being gained and lost here — even a few thousand dollars every millisecond, which is a tiny amount on the market, is a million dollars per second,” he told us. “This money could be pension fund money, and so on. So somebody needs to understand what is going on, and if it is ‘fair’.”

Who’s involved here? Who’s making sure things are “fair?” Also…what are MBA programs teaching along these lines? Computer Science teachers/professors? What values are we instilling in the people who will be programming the algorithms that overlook such processes? That are/will be creating this new “machine ecology?”

With emerging technologies like these, we need as many “hearts of flesh” out there as possible! [Christian]

On 04/11/2013, in 21st century, Daniel S. Christian, emerging technologies, faith, global / globalization, hearts -- matters of the heart, relationships, society, the downsides of how people use tech, by Daniel Christian

Ezekiel 36:26 (NIV) says:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
.

TheStateOfTheHeart3

Looking at a sampling (below) of the emerging technologies starting to hit the landscapes…

I am struck with the thought that, we need as many hearts of flesh out there as possible!

I hope that these types of very powerful technologies are used by people who care about each other and who respect the dignity of others; those who lift up and value life.

Are we paying enough attention to information technology’s dark side?
Excerpt:
Technological power is not new, of course, but information technology’s exponential pace and declining cost is changing how the global game is played and who the players are. Control of technology is passing from the richest states and governments to smaller groups and individuals, and the results are both inspiring and terrifying. As Goodman says, “The ability of one to affect many is scaling exponentially—and it’s scaling for good and it’s scaling for evil.”

Pentagon to deploy more than 100 cyber teams by 2015

The future of surveillance will turn society into a massive online game (Quick comment from DSC: While I dislike the title of this article, it’s very relevant to this posting.)

A search engine for The Internet of Things (IoT)
Shodan, a little-known search engine, is the go-to site to find out about nuclear power plants control centers, gas stations, and highway signs connected to the internet.

13-foot 12,000-pound mechanized robot suit now for sale in Japan

This week in bots: The robots we build to kill for us

Who’s responsible when robots kill? ‘We Robot’ Conference hunts answers

The terrifying future is 3D printed weapons <– the dark side of 3D printing
and/or
This item on the DoD’s PETMAN project

For some, Google Glasses raise privacy concerns
As the launch of the latest interactive technology creeps closer, discussions about how the public will adapt have started to surface.

Facebook addresses Facebook Home privacy concerns

Why Facebook Home bothers me: It destroys any notion of privacy

Fake Twitter followers become multimillion-dollar business

3D scanner scans objects from over a half mile away, watches the grass grow

Learning Ecosystems

Automation, jobs, and the future of work [mckinsey.com]

The Internet of Things will thrive by 2025 [Pew Research; Anderson & Rainie]

Immigrants from the future [The Economist]

Reflections on “A new digital ecology is evolving, and humans are being left behind” [Dvorsky]

With emerging technologies like these, we need as many “hearts of flesh” out there as possible! [Christian]

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