from NYTs For Emily Zurek Small, college did what it’s supposed to do. Growing up in a small town in northeastern Pennsylvania, she had career and intellectual ambitions for which college is the clearest pathway. “I just kind of always wanted to learn,” she told me recently. “I wanted to be able to have intelligent conversations with people and know about the world.” She enrolled at a small nearby Catholic college, majored in neuroscience and in 2016 became the first person in her family to earn a bachelor’s degree — and later, a master’s. She now works as a school […]
Continue readingTag Archives: Future Thinking
New Zealand Faces a Future of Flood and Fire
from Wired NEW ZEALAND IS grappling with two consecutive extreme weather events—massive flooding followed by a cyclone—that have claimed at least 12 lives and left hundreds of thousands of people without power. The high winds and waters of Cyclone Gabrielle have washed away coastal roads on the north island and left bridges splintered and broken. Landslides have covered tarmac with slick mud, and houses and streets across have been left under feet of water, only weeks after heavy rain also caused widespread floods. The country has declared a national state of emergency for just the third time in its history. New Zealand’s […]
Continue readingCringeworthy in the Future
from The Technium The New York Times asked me (and others) to suggest some things our descendants might be embarrassed about in the future. Things we do now, that might make future generations cringe. Good question! My reply is this short list, which I may add to later as I think of them. Their full list was published here as Future Cringe on Jan 27, 2023. More here.
Continue readingDisruption, Technology & Law
Fall ’22… For Your Consideration… What Should You Expect? More here.
Continue readingMovable Futures
from The Technium One of the reasons it is hard to predict what the future looks like is because much of the future is movable. The thing we are trying to forecast is changed by our attempts to make it real. Many hundreds of years ago, when creative people imagined flying machines, they imagined machines that had wings that flapped. What they imagined did not happen; the deliverable moved to an airplane with fixed wings. In the 1950s we imagined wrist-watch radios on every person in the future, and that did not happen (yet), but instead, the future moved to […]
Continue readingShift Your Tech Time Horizon
from Seth’s Blog Ten years ago, if you were as good at using networks and software as you are today, most of your peers would have considered you some sort of wizard. The question isn’t whether or not each of us is going to get better at using our tools, the only issue is: how soon? We can choose to live behind the curve or ahead of it. It turns out that there are significant rewards for pushing through discomfort and getting (much) better at all the resources that are suddenly freely available in data acquisition, learning technologies, financial tech, […]
Continue readingTools For Modern Citizens
from Seth’s Blog It has taken us by surprise, but in our current situation, when everyone has more of a voice and more impact on the public than ever before, it suddenly matters. You wouldn’t take your car to a mechanic who didn’t know how to fix a car, and citizens, each of us, should be held to at least as high a standard of knowledge. Everyone around us needs to know about: More here.
Continue readingEducation As The Bridge Between Eras
from Reimagining The Future In the mid-1800s, when operating steam-driven machines required a skilled workforce, education helped the working class emerge from a period of stagnation. Later, high school helped ease the transition from the farm to the factory and office. We find ourselves straddling two eras again. The world economic forum estimates that sixty-five percent of children today will end up in careers that do not exist yet. So here we are again. Education must emerge as the bridge between eras. It must ensure that those educated embody the qualities and competencies essential to life in a society different […]
Continue readingBoston Dynamics’ Robots Won’t Take Our Jobs … Yet
from Wired IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO talk about Boston Dynamics robots without acknowledging two things: They’re a marvel of modern engineering, and their agility can be incredibly unnerving. A 46-second video of Spot the robot “dog” opening a door has more than 56 million views on YouTube. Atlas, the company’s headless humanoid robot, can go for a jog or do parkour. And just last week, the company released new footage of Spot the robot recharging on its own. (If it sounds like a Black Mirror episode, well, that’s because it sort of is.) But even as many observers joke about a […]
Continue readingChange Is The New Normal: What Are Organizations Abandoning Since COVID-19 And What Will They Not Continue To Do Once Things Return To ‘Normal?’
from Forbes Our weekly discussion last week with leaders in the Future of Work and open talent ecosystem was powerful and open. We first addressed some of the issues surrounding our individual mental wellness and connectivity. Carin Knoop, from Harvard Business School has been conducting a bunch of research lately, “We may all come out of the COVID-19 experience with some form of PTSD and loneliness and burnout, all of which are things that we used to address or face or handle on our own, but with no outlets in the form of gyms or faith groups or other sources […]
Continue readingYou’re Graduating In A Pandemic. What’s Next?
from Brookings Graduation is always an anxious time for young people on the threshold of the “real world,” but COVID-19 has created new uncertainties. For Generation Z, students’ final semesters are not exactly going as planned. Rather than celebrating with friends, many are worrying about finding a job while living in their childhood bedrooms. In recent years, I held career seminars for students across the country (with those tips published here). During this era of social distancing, I’ve moved these discussions online and adapted my advice. More here.
Continue readingWhy Is South Korea a Global Broadband Leader?
from EFF A universal fiber network that was completed years ago. Millions of 5G users. Some of the world’s fastest and cheapest broadband connections. South Korea has all of these, while other nations that have the same resources lag behind. How did South Korea become a global leader in the first place? EFF did a deep dive into this question and has produced the following report. The key takeaway: government policies that focus on expanding access to telecommunications infrastructure were essential to success. More here.
Continue readingThe Expert Generalist: Why the Future Belongs to Polymaths
from Medium Some of history’s greatest contributions have come from polymaths. Aristotle practically invented half a dozen fields of study across philosophy. Galileo was as much a physicist as he was an engineer when he helped kick-start the scientific revolution. Da Vinci might have been even more famous as an inventor than an artist if his notebooks were ever published. Even in the last 100 years, we have had people like John Von Neumann and Herbert Simon who have made breakthrough advances across fields as diverse as computer science, economics, and psychology. That is, of course, not to detract from […]
Continue readingA Dear John Letter to HR
from Reimagining The Future Nahal Yousefian is a Chief Human Resources Officer. She reached out recently to discuss her passion for disrupting the Human Resources function. She has moved from conforming in the system to learning about and experimenting with more effective models of organizational design, capability, and ultimately psychology. She pointed out that many systems and structures were designed precisely to reinforce a centralized, command and control flow of work versus an agile and responsive model. She has reframed her personal purpose at work and strives to create the world of work anew. I will let her tell you […]
Continue reading