Bruce Krasting On Paul Krugman's Epihany

Via Business Insider:

What’s dawning on PK is that his vision of the future does not take into proper consideration the role that technology has today, and will play in the future, on labor employment. What he’s looking at is a structural change; one that can’t be altered. He’s coming to the conclusion that Social Security doesn’t “work” when there are not enough workers paying into the scheme. This is a remarkable conclusion from the most liberal economist out there.

Move on a few days and PK does some more deep thinking. He now realizes that the current expectations for future revenue for SS are unrealistic. He knows that the lines will cross more quickly than is now anticipated. He understands that this is a here-and-now problem, but he also has grasped that this is also a 75-year problem. So he comes up with a plan; simple yet elegant. He wants to tax the robots.

Bruce Krasting On Paul Krugman's Epihany - Business Insider

Points:

• “PK has observed, for the first time in his economic career, the simple fact that technology has reduced the role of labor in the economy.”
• “I don’t think that PK really believes that taxing investments in manufacturing technology is a good idea. The fact is, it’s a terrible idea, and PK knows it. If you want an economy to grow, and be globally competitive, you create incentives (tax breaks) for capital investment; you don’t create disincentives. Period.”
• “The villain is technology that reduces the long-term demand for labor. His solution, not surprisingly, is more taxes. But there is not a chance in 100 of taxes on capital investments to support SS (nor should there be).”

Some interesting points made, but the general tone directed against Paul Krugman makes the short essay seems a bit over the top.

Laws for driverless cars: Who is responsible for crashes and traffic violations?

Via Slate:

Still unclear, even with these early adopters, is the precise responsibility of the human user, assuming one exists. Must the "drivers" remain vigilant, their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road? If not, what are they allowed to do inside, or outside, the vehicle? Under Nevada law, the person who tells a self-driving vehicle to drive becomes its driver. Unlike the driver of an ordinary vehicle, that person may send text messages. However, they may not "drive" drunk—even if sitting in a bar while the car is self-parking. Broadening the practical and economic appeal of self-driving vehicles may require releasing their human users from many of the current legal duties of driving.

Laws for driverless cars: Who is responsible for crashes and traffic violations. - Slate Magazine

Points:

• “…we have time to figure out some of the truly futuristic legal questions: How do you ticket a robot? Who should pay? And can it play (or drive) by different rules of the road?”
• “…legal issues related to disclosure, consent, and ownership will mix with important policy questions about the costs and benefits of data sharing.”
• “…what happens when things go wrong—or at least not as right as they might?”

Some reading about technology and the law in print and electronic formats:

Will a Robot Take Your Job?

Via The New Yorker:

Slowly, but surely, robots (and virtual ’bots that exist only as software) are taking over our jobs; according to one back-of-the-envelope projection, in ninety years “70 percent of today’s occupations will likewise be replaced by automation.” Should we be worried?

Will a Robot Take Your Job? : The New Yorker

Points:

• “Kevin Kelly, “senior maverick” at Wired magazine, and source for the above guestimate, says we shouldn’t. Instead, argues Kelly, in a Utopian piece titled “Better than Human,” we should welcome our new robot overlords.”
• “…over the last decade throughout the economy, there has been a drop in the employment-to-population ratio and a drop in median wages, and many of the people who lost jobs couldn’t find new ones that paid as well as the ones that they lost.”
• “But there is no causal mechanism, physical, economic, sociological, or legal, that guarantees that new jobs will always come into existence.”
• “Anything that can be automated will, but where we can create new things, there still may be a niche for us to fill.”

Books and authors mentioned in the article (print and electronic formats):

15 Things overachievers do

Via Penelope Trunk, a list for your new year: 15 Things overachievers do | Penelope Trunk Blog. Based on the comments, some items on the list might be counterintuitive or contrarian.

In the grand tradition of self-improvement lists like George Washington’s, Benjamin Franklin’s, and the Book of Proverbs.

This Air Force Is Replacing All Of This Unit's Fighter Jets With Unmanned Drones

Via Business Insider:

…all 21 F-16s at the Iowa National Guard's 132nd Fighter Wing will be replaced with an unnamed type of pilotless drone.

This Air Force Is Replacing All Of This Unit's Fighter Jets With Unmanned Drones - Business Insider

It won’t affect just the US Air Force. Your future is arriving at Mach speed.

10 awesome android uses and apps

10 awesome android uses and apps: A set of apps shared by Richard Byrne at NCTIES 2012.

Dr. Oz On The Future Of Medicine

Via Business Insider:

Dr. Oz believes that technology and advancements in design and functionality of everyday objects will play a great part in the future of health and medicine.

Dr. Oz On The Future Of Medicine - Business Insider

Watch the video in case you were wondering.

Obama Digital Team's Election Romp

Via Business Insider:

The Obama campaign's digital operations proved to be a crucial point of success that led to the re-election of President Barack Obama in November. 

Based on a sophisticated effort and larger emphasis on digital and new media, the Obama campaign engaged supporters and raised an unprecedented amount of money through its digital efforts.

Obama Digital Team's Election Romp - Business Insider

Points:

• The linked article lists ways the Obama presidential campaign analytics team did better than the Romney analytics effort.
• The linked article also lays out elements of IT-based analytics and illustrates the power of understanding data.
• The linked article points out how the Obama campaign was able to optimize donations, ad buys, and other income/expense processes.

Ponder: What innovative uses of IT will 2016 bring?

Feds Requiring 'Black Boxes' in All Motor Vehicles

Via Wired:

Federal regulators are proposing that new automobiles sold in the United States after September 2014 come equipped with black boxes, so-called “event data recorders” that chronicle everything from how fast a vehicle was traveling, the number of passengers and even a car’s location.

While many automakers have voluntarily installed the devices already [note the status of the program I highlighted in bold font], the National Transportation Safety Agency wants to hear your comments by February 11 on its proposal mandating them in all vehicles. Congress has empowered the agency to set motor-vehicle-safety rules.

Feds Requiring 'Black Boxes' in All Motor Vehicles | Threat Level | Wired.com

Points:

• “…privacy advocates are raising the alarm bells, and want the agency to require data safeguards, including demands that data be anonymized, and to prohibit the marketing of it.”
• “The vehicle black boxes — which are either tiny standalone devices or part of a vehicle’s computer system — are to record speed, engine throttle, breaking, ignition, safety belt usage, the number of passengers, airbag deployment, and among other things time of the recording and sometimes a passenger’s location, depending on a vehicle’s model.”
• “questions remain about the black boxes and data. Among them, how long should a black box retain event data, who owns the data, can a motorist turn off the black box and can the authorities get the data without a warrant.”

What Jesus Changed

Via Patheos:

Jesus changed none of these things while he was on earth. But all of them have been changed, in various times and places, by Jesus' redeemed people in the centuries since. What a beginning it was, those twenty centuries ago, when Jesus came as a newborn baby to live among us. The world then was a darker place for the average person: brutal, dangerous, ignorant, and unjust. Jesus didn't need to experience that, but he came and lived with it for a time.

He didn't regime-change the empire; he didn't rewrite the law or adjust the "distribution" of wealth; he didn't explain the solar system or provide antidotes to infections; he didn't abolish slavery or proclaim the equality of women. Doing those things wasn't the purpose for his life on earth.

He came here, to this cynical, mean-spirited, ugly-hearted world of men and women, to change us—to make us different, to give us new hearts, new eyes, and a new power. And he did.

What Jesus Changed

What didn’t Jesus change according to the linked article?

• “…even the wealthiest and most powerful people of the day were subject to the rampant infections caused by poor public hygiene”
• “…average lifespan was short”
• “…vast majority of humans had to scratch their daily bread from the earth, tending animals or growing crops”
• “…slavery was widespread”
• “Rome herself, while she promoted abroad a certain level of enlightenment and order, was a hard and often brutal taskmaster to conquered peoples.”

Ponder:

• The article stresses that such things as were changed came from changed people.
• The need to continue becoming changed people is echoed in these statements from Your Unfinished Business:
• “Ultimately, pursuing your unfinished business, that is, being a steward of your unique circumstances, leads you to becoming a servant. And it’s unfinished business because a servant’s work is never done. Not only are there always needs to meet, there’s always room for becoming a better servant.”
• “Being a servant is never about getting something for yourself but about ensuring what’s best for others. That mindset comes because God’s priorities have replaced your priorities, giving you a duty to meet God’s needs.

  “How can the God Who created the universe have needs? In Jesus’ description of the final judgment, He commends some, saying, “I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me” (Matthew 25:35,36). The “I” to whom Jesus was referring was Himself, identifying Himself with the world’s greatest needs. And God’s needs are the needs of the world for compassion, decency, and holy living. So meeting those needs is how you go about your Master’s business.”

Ready to eat: the first GM fish for the dinner table

Via The Independent:

A GM [genetically modified] salmon which grows twice as fast as ordinary fish could become the first genetically-modified animal in the world to be declared officially safe to eat, after America's powerful food-safety watchdog ruled it posed no major health or environmental risks.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it could not find any valid scientific reasons to ban the production of GM Atlantic salmon engineered with extra genes from two other fish species – a decision that could soon lead to its commercial production.

Ready to eat: the first GM fish for the dinner table - Science - News - The Independent

Points:

• “Successive chief scientists to the UK Government, as well as science institutions such as the Royal Society, have endorsed the concept of GM technology as a tool for increasing food production in the 21st Century, but consumer opposition has so far blocked the approval of GM food for the dinner table.”
• “Supporters of the technology believe the GM salmon will make it not only easier and cheaper to produce farmed salmon, but that it could also be better for the environment because they can be grown on land-based fish farms.”
• “GM opponents, however, argue that the introduction of the fast-growing salmon creates risks for both human health and the environment. They also argue that the salmon will be the start of concerted efforts to create other GM animals for human consumption, which could raise serious questions about animal welfare.”

What Turned Jaron Lanier Against the Web? | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine

Via Instapundit and Smithsonian Magazine:

…Jaron Lanier and the ideology he helped create, Web 2.0 futurism, digital utopianism, which he now calls “digital Maoism,” indicting “internet intellectuals,” accusing giants like Facebook and Google of being “spy agencies.” Lanier was one of the creators of our current digital reality and now he wants to subvert the “hive mind,” as the web world’s been called, before it engulfs us all, destroys political discourse, economic stability, the dignity of personhood and leads to “social catastrophe.”

What Turned Jaron Lanier Against the Web? | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine

Points:

• “As a pioneer and publicizer of virtual-reality technology (computer-simulated experiences) in the ’80s, he became a Silicon Valley digital-guru rock star.”
• “Lanier became the fiercest and weightiest critic of the new digital world precisely because he came from the Inside. He was a heretic, an apostate rebelling against the ideology, the culture (and the cult) he helped found, and in effect, turning against himself.”
• “…there’s this idea that whoever has the biggest computer can analyze everyone else to their advantage and concentrate wealth and power…it’s the reason why the rise of networking has coincided with the loss of the middle class, instead of an expansion in general wealth.”
• “The connection Lanier makes between techno-utopianism, the rise of the machines and the Great Recession is an audacious one. Lanier is suggesting we are outsourcing ourselves into insignificant advertising-fodder. Nanobytes of Big Data that diminish our personhood, our dignity.”
• “…they’ve [techno-utopians] made a joke out of spirituality by creating, and worshiping, “the Singularity”—the “Nerd Rapture,” as it’s been called. The belief that increasing computer speed and processing power will shortly result in machines acquiring “artificial intelligence,” consciousness, and that we will be able to upload digital versions of ourselves into the machines and achieve immortality.”
• “…he singled out one standout aspect of the new web culture—the acceptance, the welcoming of anonymous commenters on websites—as a danger to political discourse and the polity itself. At the time, this objection seemed a bit extreme. But he saw anonymity as a poison seed. The way it didn’t hide, but, in fact, brandished the ugliness of human nature beneath the anonymous screen-name masks. An enabling and foreshadowing of mob rule, not a growth of democracy, but an accretion of tribalism.”

Kids Want Gadgets Not Toys

Via Business Insider:

This Christmas will be characterized by society's evolution toward high-tech gadgets; an evolution that has not bypassed children.

For dozens of years, toy manufacturers have not only had to adapt to this technological revolution, but they have also had to adapt to a society undergoing profound change.

Kids Want Gadgets Not Toys - Business Insider

Points:

• “Manufacturers are the ‘victims of a phenomenon that is called 'age compression,' meaning that children feel older at a much younger age.”
• “Often, the next year, the younger siblings start playing with these toys, because they’ve been in contact with their older siblings, whereas the older siblings don't want to play with toys that young children like as well.”

Ponder: Will children’s comfort with technology make the Uncanny Valley an obsolete concept?

The Polemics of Disbelief: An Atheist, an Agnostic and a Catholic Priest

Via Patheos:

Born of Jewish parents, then raised Protestant, Stossel is not steeled against religion—he just hasn’t experienced the spark of faith in his own life.  By his own admission, he’s gone to churches and temples; but he just hasn’t been convinced that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God.

In the video which follows, Stossel discusses the question “Does God exist?” with two men who have each considered the possibilities, and who have arrived at two very different answers.  One is Michael Shermer, founder of The Skeptics Society and editor-in-chief of Skeptic magazine.  The other is Catholic priest and Fox News correspondent Fr. Jonathan Morris.

The Polemics of Disbelief: An Atheist, an Agnostic and a Catholic Priest

Click the link to view the video and listen to the discussion. What does religion have to do with living in a technology-centric society? Can it provide a framework for making decisions about the moral use of technology?

A New Birth of Reason

Via Arts & Letters Daily and American Scholar:

Ingersoll emerged as the leading figure in what historians of American secularism consider the golden age of freethought—an era when immigration, industrialization, and science, especially Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection, were challenging both religious orthodoxy and the supposedly simpler values of the nation’s rural Anglo-Saxon past. That things were never really so simple was the message Ingersoll repeatedly conveyed as he spoke before more of his countrymen than even elected public leaders, including presidents, did at a time when lectures were both a form of mass entertainment and a vital source of information.

The American Scholar: A New Birth of Reason - Susan Jacoby

Points:

• “Known as Robert Injuresoul to his clerical enemies, he [Robert Ingersoll] raised the issue of what role religion ought to play in the public life of the American nation for the first time since the writing of the Constitution, when the Founders deliberately left out any acknowledgment of a deity as the source of governmental power.”
• “To the question that retains its politically divisive power to this day—whether the United States was founded as a Christian nation—Ingersoll answered an emphatic no.”
• “The argument over the proper role of religion in civil government was (and is) only a subsidiary of the larger question of whether the claims of supposedly revealed religion deserve any particular respect or deference in a pluralistic society.”
• “The overarching question in Ingersoll’s time was whether any of these issues [evolution, race, immigration, women’s rights, sexual behavior, freedom of artistic expression, and vast disparities in wealth] could or should be resolved by appeals to divine authority. To this Ingersoll also said no, spreading the gospel (though he would never have called it that) of reason, science, and humanism to audiences across the country.”

Ponder:

• Does religion have a role at all?
• Can we arrive at ethical decisions from a purely empirical perspective?

Some perspectives on apologetics: s:

Made on the Moon: 3D Printing, Lunar-Style

Via Popular Mechanics:

…researchers led by Washington State University mechanical engineering professor Amit Bandyopadhyay have shown that future moon explorers might be able to fabricate new parts simply by pouring that regolith into the hopper of a 3D printer. The astronauts would then load a computer-aided design (CAD) file of the part that needs replacing and press the start button.

Made on the Moon: 3D Printing, Lunar-Style - Popular Mechanics

Points:

• “Computer simulations at NASA's Johnson Space Center found that 5 percent of parts aboard the International Space Station will, at some point, break down.”
• “…first to test whether a future mission could also leave the 3D-printer feedstock at home and use material from the moon.”
• “…it would mean prospective lunar missions wouldn't need to carry expensive-to-lift refining equipment.”

Ponder: Can this come-as-you-are approach to 3D printing be done on earth?

American Dream Fades for Generation Y Professionals

Via Bloomberg:

Generation Y professionals entering the workforce are finding careers that once were gateways to high pay and upwardly mobile lives turning into detours and dead ends. Average incomesfor individuals ages 25 to 34 have fallen 8 percent, double the adult population’s total drop, since the recession began in December 2007. Their unemployment rate remains stuck one-half to 1 percentage point above the national figure.

American Dream Fades for Generation Y Professionals – Bloomberg

Points:

• “The nation’s younger workers have benefited least from an economic recovery that has been the most uneven in recent history.”
• “Professionals who start out in jobs other than their first choice tend to stay on the alternative path, earning less than they would have otherwise while becoming less likely to start over again later in preferred fields.”
• “Only one-fifth of those who graduated college since 2006 expect greater success than their parents.”
• “Those who finish only high school or drop out fare worse. Almost four out of five jobs destroyed by the recession were held by workers with a high school diploma or less.”

Ponder:

• Are these graduates caught in the dynamics of structural change rather than a slow recovery? That is, has how they can earn good incomes radically changed from how their parents earned good incomes?
• Should colleges be liable for their graduates’ inability to get jobs?

Georgia Tech building 'Decepticons'

Via Fox News:

The Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing professor took this crafty squirrel strategy and applied it to robots. His detailed research was published in this month’s IEEE Intelligent Systems, funded by the Office of Naval Research.

Arkin’s robot succeeded in luring a "predator" robot to a fake location, delaying the exposure and seizure of the resources it was tasked to protect.

Georgia Tech building 'Decepticons' | Fox News

Points:

• Examples of deceptions in nature robots could use:
• “Nefarious tricksters, squirrels gather acorns, store them in specific location and then routinely return to patrol the hidden caches. If a hungry squirrel sidles up for a raid on the caches, the nut owner will visit empty acorn sites to deceive the would-be squirrel acorn-nicker.”
• “If under threat of an attack, Arabian babbler birds will sometimes opt to launch a mob counterattack, banding up with other birds to harass the predator until it finally surrenders and departs…this deception technique was the best approach -- provided there were enough robots to create a group large enough to harass a predator into departing.”
• “Equipping robots with the ability to deceive each other -- not to mention humans -- is rife with ethical issues, however.”

Andrew Boz Bosworth Facebook Interview

Via Business Insider:

When he's not coding new features like News Feed, a once-controversial ticker of updates that's now the core of the social network, he's serving as the hardcore drill sergeant behind the appropriately named Bootcamp, Facebook's program to get new programmers up to speed.

But he has a generous, nurturing side, too: In his spare time, he advises entrepreneurs, like the founders of hyperlocal startup Spindle.

Andrew Boz Bosworth Facebook Interview - Business Insider

Points:

• Advising start-ups: “…since I put Facebook first I end up being very selective about the companies I advise.”
• “The biggest challenge small organizations face is choosing what to work on.”
• “One thing we think a lot about at Facebook is not just hiring great engineers but also building a platform that enables engineers across the world to create great social products.”
• “I think the biggest lesson I've learned is to get excited about ideas and not implementations.”
• “I think people who are successful at building products are just very mindful as they go about their day.”

Ponder: A perspective on a career in tech.

Twitter's Friends And Enemies

Via Business Insider:

Since its earliest days, Twitter has depended on the kindness of strangers. Companies like Yahoo and LinkedIn lent a hand when it was just a fledgling startup, with little to its name but its unrealized potential.

But now that it's grown up into a position of strength, with 200 million users, Twitter doesn't seem as kind.

Twitter's Friends And Enemies - Business Insider

Points:

• “Twitter has changed the rules for developers, and it restricts what apps that "attempt to replicate Twitter's core user experience" can do. It did this because it decided it's better to maintain tight control over how people access tweets.”
• “Twitter seems to be sending a hardball message: Sell to us, or we'll cut you off. Have some sympathy for Twitter: That's a tactic its leaders learned the hard way, first-hand.”
• “Its abrupt termination of a long-term partnership with LinkedIn in June presaged its hard stance with Tumblr and Instagram.”
• “The bottom line: If you want to partner with Twitter, you can send your content its way. If you want to use Twitter's content, you'd best step carefully.”

Ponder: A perspective on how tech firms really operate.

Water In Our Solar System

Via Business Insider:

In searching for worlds we humans might one day try to inhabit, the presence of water is among the most pertinent considerations.

So where else should we be looking for water? How can we detect water on planets we can’t get to? And why is the search for water important anyway?

Water In Our Solar System - Business Insider

Points:

• “…convincing discoveries that implied Mars was once much wetter in its early history.”
• “…interesting possibilities for the potential for life on Mercury.”
• “…extraterrestrial water can help us better understand the origin of water on Earth and its distribution within our planetary system.”

Ponder: Intriguing quests leading to staging areas for expanding exploration.

Congestion Tied To Certain Commuters

Via Business Insider:

Canceling some car trips from just a few strategically located neighborhoods could drastically reduce gridlock and traffic jams in cities, a new study suggests.

The study, conducted amid a global trend toward urbanization, could lead to new strategies and maybe even smartphone apps to help prevent traffic congestion, the researchers said.

Congestion Tied To Certain Commuters - Business Insider

Points:

• “…used mobile phone information from more than 1 million users over the course of three weeks to map out where drivers were concentrated on roads.”
• “…congestion forced Americans living in metropolitan areas to spend 4.2 billion more hours traveling and purchase an additional 2.8 billion gallons of fuel, at a total cost of more than $87 billion.”
• “…certain neighborhoods in these urban areas were home to drivers that caused major congestion.”
• “…canceling just 1 percent of trips from these neighborhoods could drastically reduce travel time that was otherwise added due to congestion.”

Ponder: If these kinds of results can come from mobile phone data, can networking driverless cars create the kind of synchronization that reduces congestion?

What college majors got what jobs?

Via Business Insider and Satyan Devadoss:

The left side of the circle is broken into 15 parts, each representing a grouping of all majors available at Williams. For example, "Cultural Studies" includes such majors as Anthropology, Sociology, and Asian Studies. The right side of the circle is similarly broken into 15 parts, each representing a grouping of possible careers chosen by Williams alums. Each of the 15600 alums has an arc going from the left side of the circle to the right. Those with double-majors have two arcs on the left (one from each of their majors, each arc of 1/2 thickness) that combine into one resulting career choice. Scrolling over (or clicking) the individual images on the right will highlight that particular major compilation.

Satyan Devadoss

Click through to play with a fascinating infographic that shows college majors and the jobs they ended up taking after graduation.

It Takes More Than An IQ Number To Describe How Our Brains Work

Via Business Insider:

Intelligence Quotient, or IQ, has been used to sort people, whether job candidates or schoolchildren, for decades. Now, a century after psychologists first came up with the idea of “general intelligence”, the world’s biggest study of its kind has put paid to the simplistic idea that we can use an IQ figure to describe the astonishing abilities of the human brain.

It Takes More Than An IQ Number To Describe How Our Brains Work - Business Insider

Points:

• “…variations in performance [in cognitive tests]…could be accounted for by three key factors: short-term memory; reasoning; and, finally, a verbal component. No single factor, or “Intelligence Quotient”, could explain all the variations revealed by the tests.”
• “Regular brain training didn’t aid performance at all, yet people who often played other types of computer games did significantly better in terms of both reasoning and short-term memory.”
• “…age diminished short-term memory and logical reasoning, with performance peaking in the late teens and declining rapidly thereafter.”
• “…verbal intelligence held up well in the elderly.”
• “Physical exercise, weekly alcohol consumption, and the number of hours slept each night seemed to have negligible effects on performance.”
• “…amount of cigarettes smoked. Forty-a-day puffers had significantly lower scores in terms both of short-term memory and verbal intelligence.”
• “…right or left-handedness, number of siblings and month of birth all made little impact.”
• “Gender…showed little overall difference in performance, although men did do slightly better than women in terms of spatial short-term memory.”

They Haven't Built A Better Mousetrap

Via Business Insider:

Since William Hooker of Abingdon, Ill. invented the spring-loaded mousetrap in 1894, more than 4,400 patents for new mousetraps have been filed in the U.S.

But has anyone really improved on the spring trap?

A recent protracted and methodical battle with a mouse in my apartment suggests they have not.

They Haven't Built A Better Mousetrap - Business Insider

Ponder: What’s the difference between resisting innovation because of fear of change and not innovating aggressively because some things really do work just fine?

Confessions Of A New York City Doorman

Via Business Insider:

In the half hour we talked to Pablo he greeted at least 20 residents and five workmen coming and going  (in English and Spanish); made at least ten calls upstairs to announce visitors; helped someone who had the wrong address; answered a call about a package delivery; fielded a call about an intercom that wasn't working; joked with the super; politely informed a person who wanted to distribute menus under doors that that wasn't happening and answered questions about what that burning smell was this morning:  overdone toast.

Confessions Of A New York City Doorman - Business Insider

Points:

• Advice for children and grandchildren: “I would prefer that they go to school and finish college. But if they don't, I would recommend it. It's a clean job. It's always lively, I'm never bored.”
• Duties: “I am expected to open the door, announce people, take packages and if asked I will help someone get a taxi. I don't expect a tip for that. Some tenants ask me to move their car for them but I always say no. That's not my job and it's too risky.”
• Best part of job: “The people. You get to know everyone in the building and they're all very good to me. I love children and now we have lots of them in the building. Some of the children who grew up here in my early years here have their own children now and come back to see me. I love that.”

Ponder: The theme that runs through this is community-building. He’s not there to open doors and do tasks. He has a higher purpose: to build community in that building.Think of that as you think about your career.

GiveDirectly Gives Poor Kenyan Families $1000

Via Business Insider:

Paul Niehaus, Michael Faye, Rohit Wanchoo, and Jeremy Shapiro came up with a radically simple plan shaped by their own academic research. They would give poor families in rural Kenya $1,000 over the course of 10 months, and let them do whatever they wanted with the money. They hoped the recipients would spend it on nutrition, health care, and education. But, theoretically, they could use it to purchase alcohol or drugs. The families would decide on their own.

GiveDirectly Gives Poor Kenyan Families $1000 - Business Insider

Points:

• “Ninety-two cents of every dollar donated to GiveDirectly is transferred to poor households through M-PESA, a cell phone banking service with 11,000 agents working in Kenya.”
• ”Initial reports from the field are positive. According to Niehaus, GiveDirectly recipients are spending their payments mostly on food and home improvements that can vastly improve quality of life, such as installing a weatherproof tin roof. Some families have invested in profit-bearing businesses, such as chicken-rearing, agriculture, or the vending of clothes, shoes, or charcoal.”
• “GiveDirectly remains an outlier in the development arena, perhaps the only organization that distributes private donations, made online, directly to the poor with no strings attached — no requirement to launch a business or to immunize one's child; no distribution of bed nets, solar lanterns, or goats.”
• “…other development experts who have tested unconditional cash transfers are enthusiastic about the approach. The trouble is convincing NGOs to invest in such programs beyond the pilot stages.”
• “Unconditional cash transfers to individuals do little to address the structural factors responsible for poverty, such as government corruption, gender discrimination, and the lack of quality jobs, schools, and health care.”

Ponder: In a world where access to technology is what separates the haves and have-nots, what is the best economic development model for closing the gap?

GiveDirectly Gives Poor Kenyan Families $1000

Via Business Insider:

Paul Niehaus, Michael Faye, Rohit Wanchoo, and Jeremy Shapiro came up with a radically simple plan shaped by their own academic research. They would give poor families in rural Kenya $1,000 over the course of 10 months, and let them do whatever they wanted with the money. They hoped the recipients would spend it on nutrition, health care, and education. But, theoretically, they could use it to purchase alcohol or drugs. The families would decide on their own.

GiveDirectly Gives Poor Kenyan Families $1000 - Business Insider

Points:

• “Ninety-two cents of every dollar donated to GiveDirectly is transferred to poor households through M-PESA, a cell phone banking service with 11,000 agents working in Kenya.”
• ”Initial reports from the field are positive. According to Niehaus, GiveDirectly recipients are spending their payments mostly on food and home improvements that can vastly improve quality of life, such as installing a weatherproof tin roof. Some families have invested in profit-bearing businesses, such as chicken-rearing, agriculture, or the vending of clothes, shoes, or charcoal.”
• “GiveDirectly remains an outlier in the development arena, perhaps the only organization that distributes private donations, made online, directly to the poor with no strings attached — no requirement to launch a business or to immunize one's child; no distribution of bed nets, solar lanterns, or goats.”
• “…other development experts who have tested unconditional cash transfers are enthusiastic about the approach. The trouble is convincing NGOs to invest in such programs beyond the pilot stages.”
• “Unconditional cash transfers to individuals do little to address the structural factors responsible for poverty, such as government corruption, gender discrimination, and the lack of quality jobs, schools, and health care.”

Ponder: In a world where access to technology is what separates the haves and have-nots, what is the best economic development model for closing the gap?

In Their Focus on Religious Giving, Romneys are Like Most American Donors

Via Business Insider and Dana Goldstein:

According to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, only about one-third of all American charity--from individuals, foundations, and corporations--directly serves the poor, either within the United States or abroad. Year after year, religious organizations, typically local church groups, take home the biggest slice of American charity, even in the wake of major humanitarian crises.

In Their Focus on Religious Giving, Romneys are Like Most American Donors - Dana Goldstein

Is the implication that religious organizations don’t serve a social good a correct one? In a world driven by technology, social concerns can easily fall by the wayside. Can religious organizations have an impact?

The Folly of Scientism

Via Arts & Letters Daily and The New Atlantis:

The temptation to overreach, however, seems increasingly indulged today in discussions about science. Both in the work of professional philosophers and in popular writings by natural scientists, it is frequently claimed that natural science does or soon will constitute the entire domain of truth. And this attitude is becoming more widespread among scientists themselves. All too many of my contemporaries in science have accepted without question the hype that suggests that an advanced degree in some area of natural science confers the ability to pontificate wisely on any and all subjects.

The New Atlantis » The Folly of Scientism

Some points:

• “Central to scientism is the grabbing of nearly the entire territory of what were once considered questions that properly belong to philosophy. Scientism takes science to be not only better than philosophy at answering such questions, but the only means of answering them.”
• “…scientists can be prone to errors of elementary logic, and these can often go undetected by the peer review process and have a major impact on the literature — for instance, confusing correlation and causation, or confusing implication with a biconditional. Philosophy can provide a way of understanding and correcting such errors. It addresses a largely distinct set of questions that natural science alone cannot answer, but that must be answered for natural science to be properly conducted.”
• “…philosophers have no one but themselves to blame for the low state to which their discipline has fallen.”

Invasion of the cyber hustlers

Via Arts & Letters Daily and NewStatesman:

Like every other era, the internet age has its own class of booster gurus. They are the “cybertheorists”, embedded reporters of the social network, dreaming of a perfectible electronic future and handing down oracular commandments about how the world must be remade. As did many religious rebels before them, they come to bring not peace, but a sword. Change is inevitable; we must abandon the old ways. The cybertheorists, however, are a peculiarly corporatist species of the Leninist class: they agitate for constant revolution but the main beneficiaries will be the giant technology companies before whose virtual image they prostrate themselves.

Invasion of the cyber hustlers

Points:

• “Cybertheorists’ jargon often betrays an adolescent hatred of the world in which they find themselves.”
• “The cyber-credo of ‘open’ sounds so liberal and friendly that it is easy to miss its remarkable hypocrisy. The big technology companies that are the cybertheorists’ beloved exemplars of the coming world order are anything but open.”
• “…cyber-thinkers have run with the wisdom-of-crowds notion to a place that bears little resemblance to reality as we know it, high-fiving each other among the rubble of reason in a fatuous kind of hi-tech, misanthropic herd-worship.”
• ”Cybertheorists, in any case, daren’t attempt to distinguish information from knowledge, because to do so would require them to perform the kind of intellectual triage that their rhetorical success depends crucially on avoiding.”
• “…cybertheorists celebrate what they euphemistically refer to as the sharing of music and films by people who didn’t buy them, conflating it with sharing as the practice of retweeting a link and with the Oprah-era sense of sharing that denotes emotional revelation.”
• “…cybertheorists have adopted a term of presumptive virtue and sprayed on to it a newly etiolated and instrumental meaning. Social is now a commercial technique to persuade users of digital services to reveal more to potential advertisers about their ‘networks’ of friendship and business contacts and to ‘connect’ such users more intimately with brands by means of a ‘Like’ button – and soon, as recent reports of in-house experiments at Facebook suggest, a ‘Want’ button.”
• “What sells, to the cyber-fanatic’s intended audience, is ludicrous utopian fantasy, silicon Panglossianism.”

Museum of Mathematics at Madison Square Park

Via Arts & Letters Daily and NY Times:

MoMath is not what you might expect. At first you might not even guess its subject. There are a few giveaways, particularly if you recognize the symbol for pi on the door or discover the pentagonal sinks in the bathrooms.

Museum of Mathematics at Madison Square Park - NYTimes.com

Points:

• “This is not a museum, you might think, it is a high-tech playground, some 19,000 square feet with 30 attractions on two floors.”
• “The goal, each principal emphasized in conversations this week, was to show that math was fun, engaging, exciting. MoMath is a proselytizing museum. “
• “The reason that there haven’t been many math museums is that the enthusiasm the subject inspires is not easily communicated and not readily discovered.”

Joy

Via Arts & Letters Daily and NY Review of Books:

It might be useful to distinguish between pleasure and joy. But maybe everybody does this very easily, all the time, and only I am confused. A lot of people seem to feel that joy is only the most intense version of pleasure, arrived at by the same road—you simply have to go a little further down the track. That has not been my experience. And if you asked me if I wanted more joyful experiences in my life, I wouldn’t be at all sure I did, exactly because it proves such a difficult emotion to manage. It’s not at all obvious to me how we should make an accommodation between joy and the rest of our everyday lives.

Joy by Zadie Smith | The New York Review of Books

Points:

• “Where there is no discernment there can be no awareness of expertise or gratitude for special effort.”
• “…we do not have so many reliable sources of pleasure in this life as to turn our nose up at one that is so readily available.”
• “…there is something in that old chestnut: ‘shared interests.’”
• “…there are all the many things that the dog does and says, entirely anthropomorphized and usually offensive, which express the universe of things we ourselves cannot do or say, to each other or to other people.”
• “Occasionally the child, too, is a pleasure, though mostly she is a joy, which means in fact she gives us not much pleasure at all, but rather that strange admixture of terror, pain, and delight that I have come to recognize as joy, and now must find some way to live with daily.”
• “…sometimes joy multiplies itself dangerously.”

The Data Vigilante

Via Arts and Letters Daily and Atlantic:

He is, on the contrary, seized by the conviction that science is beset by sloppy statistical maneuvering and, in some cases, outright fraud. He has therefore been moonlighting as a fraud-buster, developing techniques to help detect doctored data in other people’s research. Already, in the space of less than a year, he has blown up two colleagues’ careers. (In a third instance, he feels sure fraud occurred, but he hasn’t yet nailed down the case.) In so doing, he hopes to keep social psychology from falling into disrepute.

The Data Vigilante - Christopher Shea - The Atlantic

Points:

• “Simonsohn initially targeted not flagrant dishonesty, but loose methodology.”
• “Simonsohn stressed that there’s a world of difference between data techniques that generate false positives, and fraud, but he said some academic psychologists have, until recently, been dangerously indifferent to both.”
• “ Outright fraud is probably rare. Data manipulation is undoubtedly more common—and surely extends to other subjects dependent on statistical study, including biomedicine.”
• “…sloppy statistics are “like steroids in baseball”: Throughout the affected fields, researchers who are too intellectually honest to use these tricks will publish less, and may perish. Meanwhile, the less fastidious flourish.”

What are the top five books you must read?

Via Barking Up The Wrong Tree: What are the top five books you must-read? | Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Click the link above for short summaries; click the links below to buy the books:

Paperback              Kindle                    Audio

Hardcover               Paperback            Kindle                     Audio

Hardcover Paperback Kindle Audio

Hardcover              Paperback             Kindle

Hardcover              Paperback             Kindle                    Audio

The Seven Deadly Sins: A Research Roundup

Via Pacific Standard:

While the “seven deadly sins” may seem a misty morality lesson from the past, the cardinal vices are always with us–even in the strait-laced arena of academic research.

The Seven Deadly Sins: A Research Roundup -

Points:

• “Researchers at the University of Washington have electrically spun dissolvable cloth with nanometer-sized fibers that can release drugs to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.”
• “Archaeologists have discovered evidence that people in Europe have been making cheese for the last 7,500 years- the first and only sign of Neolithic cheese-making.”
• “British students agreed to pay £43 to avoid disgust and £95 for an hour of love, while Hong Kong students were more likely to pay to avoid regret, embarrassment and frustration.”
• “DryBath, a water-less bathing lotion…it could be a huge boon for the 2.5 billion people across the world without readily available water and sanitation.”
• “…a partner in a marriage that has been forgiven for some kind of trespass is 6.5 times likely to do something wrong again.”
• “Recent graduates are likely to be highly envious of those who have graduated before them.”
• “Watching others do what we do takes less energy and is easier for our brains to process.”

Ponder: The title is just a come-on to get you to read a little bit about some academic research.

First Catapult Launch Of The X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System

Via Armed with Science:

The Navy‘s first-ever steam catapult launch of the pilotless X-47B ensures the vehicle can structurally handle the rigors of the aircraft-carrier environment.

First Catapult Launch Of The X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System | Armed with Science

There will be much to write about because unmanned systems mean a change from the Top Gun culture of organization using human-piloted aircraft to what may be seen by some as a videogame culture of remotely piloted aircraft.

Seven Signs of a Successful Incubator

Via Forbes:

Many companies address their growth gaps by establishing incubators for new efforts, and they struggle.  One study of 300 such incubators found that only 47% met their strategic goals and 24% met their financial goals.  What makes for a successful incubator?

Seven Signs of a Successful Incubator – Forbes

Points:

• “The way management exercises control, the process-driven culture, the ability to experiment freely, and several other variables dictate what companies can and cannot let incubators do.”
• “A mandate protects an incubator against an influx of pet projects, and it gives collective coherence to individual projects requiring flexibility.”
• “…engages with the broader organization, making its relevance clear to other stakeholders and aligning them for its success.”
• “…concentrate on building excellence in a handful of key areas.”
• “…be purposeful in where and how it embraces processes.”
• “…determined a narrow but diverse set of metrics.”
• “…availability of staff can lead to decisions around incubator size.”

The End of the University as We Know It

Via Instapundit and The American Interest:

In fifty years, if not much sooner, half of the roughly 4,500 colleges and universities now operating in the United States will have ceased to exist. The technology driving this change is already at work, and nothing can stop it. The future looks like this: Access to college-level education will be free for everyone; the residential college campus will become largely obsolete; tens of thousands of professors will lose their jobs; the bachelor’s degree will become increasingly irrelevant; and ten years from now Harvard will enroll ten million students.

The End of the University as We Know It - Nathan Harden - The American Interest Magazine

Points:

• “Credential inflation is devaluing the college degree, making graduate degrees, and the greater debt required to pay for them, increasingly necessary for many people to maintain the standard of living they experienced growing up in their parents’ homes.”
• “…the birth of something entirely new as we accept one central and unavoidable fact: The college classroom is about to go virtual.”
• “…students themselves are in for a golden age, characterized by near-universal access to the highest quality teaching and scholarship at a minimal cost.”
• “…big-budget universities carrying large transactional costs stand to lose the most. Smaller, more nimble institutions with sound leadership will do best.”
• “…the primary platform for higher education may be a third-party website, not the university itself.”
• “Students can learn as much from their peers in informal settings as they do from their professors in formal ones.”
• “Creating the world’s premier, credentialed open online education platform would be a major achievement for any university, and it would probably cost much less than building a new luxury dorm.”

The future is malleable

Via RT:

The NIC released on Monday “Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds,” an 140-page report that brings together the best brains within the intelligence sector to find out what we might expect a few decades down the road. Given the current rate of growth in technology and medicine, the marvels considered in the NIC report shouldn’t come as all too surprising. Only 18 years down the road, however, the ideas being pitched by the people behind the report might not be as much science fiction as soon-to-be-reality. It also might very well be predictive policy making.

Superhumans, supercities and supercomputers: US intelligence's vision of 2030 — RT

The report appears to be available for download but it looks like everyone is trying to get at it.

The NIC blog is at Global Trends 2030. Note: The National Intelligence Council (NIC) is a U.S. Government entity, operating as part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

Legendary Inventor James Dyson Explains Why You Need To Hire Inexperienced People

Via Business Insider:

Dyson said that in engineering, you need to hire inexperience. Why? Because they haven't been told what's right or wrong, and they try non-traditional paths.

Legendary Inventor James Dyson Explains Why You Need To Hire Inexperienced People - Business Insider

Points:

• “They haven’t learned — or been told — what is right or wrong.”
• “With an unhindered mind, nothing is off limits.”

4 Differences Between Leading And Managing Your Job Hunt

Via Business Insider:

There's a huge difference between looking around for a job and actually taking full responsibilities of your job hunt. In this competitive workforce, you need to be completely proactive.

According to a survey conducted by JobVite, 61 percent of jobseekers say that it’s been harder finding a job this year compared to the previous one.

And this is the reason why those looking for a job should stop managing their job hunt and instead start leading it.

4 Differences Between Leading And Managing Your Job Hunt - Business Insider

Points:

• “The manager will create a LinkedIn profile whereas the leader will belong to groups and discussions.”
• “The manager will think about job opportunities alone whereas the leader will evaluate these opportunities with others.”
• “The manager will study the company’s web site whereas the leader will study the company’s social media sites.”
• “The manager will connect with current employees, but the leader will connect with former employees as well.”

Look Inside a Futuristic Nanotech Lab

Via Popular Mechanics:

NanoTech Complex, which is run by the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, or CNSE, at the State University of New York at Albany. Sprawling over more than a half-dozen buildings in three locations, the $14 billion facility includes 800,000 square feet packed with advanced laboratories and computer-chip manufacturing equipment. Here, about 2600 researchers, engineers, and technicians working for the U.S. military, research institutions from around the world, and the world’s top semiconductor-makers are pushing their way into ever smaller realms in the quest for faster and more energy-efficient computers, micro-electromechanical systems, sensors than can be embedded in anything from a helicopter rotor blade to a human tooth, and more.

Look Inside a Futuristic Nanotech Lab - Popular Mechanics

Points:

• “All the major chip-makers have their own labs. But nowhere else do they share those facilities with their competitors and students working side by side on the same state-of-the-art equipment.”
• “Key to the complex’s work is developing not only prototypes of new tech, but also the techniques needed to manufacture them at the scale needed for industrial production.”
• “Such technologies in development at the Nanotech Complex include directed self-assembly, which has the potential to coax molecules to assemble themselves into circuit structures via magnetic fields and other means.”

Does It Matter That Apple and GE Are Bringing Back Manufacturing?

 

[Bringing back manufacturing] is not as important as we want it to be.

The reason is: jobs represent a lower and lower proportion of hardware production. And hardware represents less and less of the value-added in a product.

Does It Matter That Apple and GE Are Bringing Back Manufacturing? – Forbes

Points:

• “…the jobs’ problem is partly a talent problem that no educational institution has a handle on.”
• “The jobs’ growth continues to be in software. And the competition for software talent is global. Every company I have interviewed so far has off-shored software jobs – in the spirit of finding the best talent, wherever it might be. As far as I can see nothing is being done at a policy level to address that drain.”
• “The absence of global supply is holding companies back. And so too is the lack of experience in this fast changing environment. The necessary problem solving skills are difficult to teach, and the experience is often impossible to acquire because so much is new.”

Ponder: “…make the labor market more fluid, allow people to expose their skills’ development more publicly, teach people to package their business experience better, make people better developers of their own narrative, better managers of their core problem solving skills rather than their exact implementation skills, accept we are constantly in beta mode, and teach people, quickly, to function in conditions of unprecedented uncertainty.”

The Growing Skills Gap Explained

Via Business Insider:

There's high youth unemployment around the world, despite a multitude of job vacancies.

Blame the skills shortage, which 39 percent of employers say is preventing them from filling entry level jobs, according to a McKinsey report. Meanwhile in most of the world, less than half of students think their educations prepare them for employment. 

Employers know what we're doing isn't working. Students know it as well. But educational institutions apparently don't, which may be preventing them from making needed changes

The Growing Skills Gap Explained - Business Insider

Points:

• “While students prefer hands-on and on the job learning and feel it's more effective, even vocational schools don't always make it a priority.”
• “…despite leaders and pundits praising vocational training, few parents want to send their own kids to those schools.”
• “Solutions may require (1) educators changing their perspective, (2) employers investing more in training raise wages when skills are in short supply, (3) and societies changing some deeply held preferences.”

An Entrepreneur’s Guide To Patents (Part 3): Application Strategy For Utilization Or Monetization

Via TechCrunch:

…the time from filing a non-provisional utility application to final disposition of the application is typically 3-4 years using the standard examination process with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). With this process, the standard USPTO application fees apply, which may include, but are not limited to, the filing fee, search fee, examination fee, and processing fee. Three to four years is a long time in “startup years.” There are a multitude of startup strategies, but generally obtaining patent protection sooner rather than later is preferential.

An Entrepreneur’s Guide To Patents: Application Strategy For Utilization Or Monetization | TechCrunch

Points:

• Strategy options:
• “Licensing/Sale. This scenario often arises when an inventor chooses not to pursue a startup company full-time but still wants to profit from the idea.”
• “Commercialize. A second scenario arises when an inventor wants to directly commercialize the invention.”
• Application options:
• “Track One Prioritized Examination. The USPTO established the Track One procedure in 2011 to provide a final disposition (allowance or final rejection) within 12 months on average for all applications submitted under this process.”
• “Accelerated Examination...Similar to the Track One procedure, the USPTO’s goal is to provide a final disposition (allowance or final rejection) within 12 months on average for all applications submitted under the Accelerated Examination process.”

An Entrepreneur’s Guide To Patents (Part 2): How To Determine Whether They Are Right For Your Company

Via TechCrunch:

…probably the most difficult question: “Should you pursue patents for your company or invention?” Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy or direct way to answer this question. Each business is unique and requires an individual analysis. This article discusses some frequently asked questions and presents an analysis framework that may be useful for you to explore the applicability of patents for your business/invention.

An Entrepreneur’s Guide To Patents: How To Determine Whether They Are Right For Your Company | TechCrunch

Points:

• “Given the significant costs of obtaining a patent, should you spend any of your limited capital on them?”
• “Given the startup failure rate and patent timeframe, should most Internet startups skip patents?”
• “How can you determine whether your patent will be valuable?”
• “Will a patent help me fundraise and what do angel investors and VCs think of patents?”
• Click through the link to find additional questions to help you with developing your patent application.

An Entrepreneur’s Guide To Patents (Part 1): The Basics

Via TechCrunch:

some authors and commenters around the web do not fully understand patents and the patent system. In some instances, the scope of a patent was blown way out of proportion and deemed excessively broad. In other instances, conclusory statements were directed toward the entire patent system without an explanation or justification. For example, some people claim that patents are outdated relics that now only serve to stifle innovation. Typically, this argument has been made in regards to so-called “software patents,” but it is interpreted by many as implicating the entire patent system.

An Entrepreneur’s Guide To Patents: The Basics | TechCrunch

Points:

• “One of the key principles of the patent system is to serve as an incentive for innovation.”
• “…the rise of computers and software allowed novel ideas to be created quickly with little or no capital expense required, and they created a new virtual field, where inventors applied for patents for seemingly abstract ideas and business methods.”

Catcher in the Rye dropped from US school curriculum

Via The Telegraph:

Books such as JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird will be replaced by "informational texts" approved by the Common Core State Standards.

Suggested non-fiction texts include Recommended Levels of Insulation by the the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Invasive Plant Inventory, by California's Invasive Plant Council.

The new educational standards have the backing of the influential National Governors' Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, and are being part-funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Catcher in the Rye dropped from US school curriculum – Telegraph

Points:

• Pro: “…will help pupils to develop the ability to write concisely and factually, which will be more useful in the workplace than a knowledge of Shakespeare.”
• Con: “…education has to be about more than simply ensuring that kids can get a job. Isn't it supposed to be about making well-rounded citizens?”

Ponder: I looked up the Common Core Standards and browsed the readings. The linked article makes it seem as if students are getting boring government documents rammed down their throats. There’s a little more to it than the Pro and Con statements would convey.

• There are a lot (I mean A LOT) of texts listed in the Common Core Standards and in the appendix documents, including many in the tradition English canon like Shelley and TS Eliot. In contrast to the Pro statement, Shakespeare is still in the list. In contrast to the Con statement, the recommended exercises include lots of comparisons between works, a fundamental skill for well-rounded citizens.
• The appendix documents are where you’ll find the recommended works listed. Each listed work contains an short extract to illustrate its complexity level. There are suggestions on how to use the works. Here’s is an example: “Students compare and contrast how the protagonists of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter maintain their integrity when confronting authority, and they relate their analysis of that theme to other portrayals in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foundational works of American literature they have read.”
• The government documents identified in the linked article are indeed in the reading list. However, the context appears to be so teachers can use them in comparison with other works to discuss how information is organized and presented.

Replace people with robots

Via Business Insider:

Credit Suisse's analysts argue the that industrial automation — when humans workers are replaced by robots — is a bullish long-term economic theme as it boosts productivity.

…

Credit Suisse argues that the underpenetration in the emerging markets presents a big opportunity for the world to boost productivity.

Robot Density For Select Countries - Business Insider

Points:

• Example from the linked article: US has more robots, and China has more cheap labor. US is 7.5 times more productive.
• This is seen to offset the cheap labor advantage of developing countries.

Ponder:

• What should humans do to prepare?
• If even deep individual expertise becomes replaceable, is the human employment future in the ability to coordinate and integrate group efforts like projects?