Vol.
3, No. 7 | May 2017 | AAI
Foresight
Hot
Topic: Future Jobs—Or Not
The Pew Research
Center [http://www.pewresearch.org/]
has released the results of its survey of technologists, scholars,
practitioners, strategic thinkers, and education leaders on the
future of workplace training in the next decade. More than 1,400
participants responded to the survey, which Pew conducted with Elon
University’s Imagining the Internet Center
[http://www.elon.edu/e-web/imagining/]
in summer 2016.
In addition to
addressing how disruptive technologies such as IT, AI, automation,
and robotics may develop, Pew asked respondents to focus on the
potential disruptions these technologies may have on capitalist
systems and particularly on jobs.
While a narrow
majority (52 percent) of the respondents said technological advances
will create more jobs than they destroy, that doesn’t mean things
will be easy for tomorrow’s human workers. For the 30 percent of
respondents expressing pessimism about people’s prospects in a
tech-dominated economy, a major concern is how people will meet their
basic needs and the impacts of these needs on economic systems.
 | ||
| Credit: Geralt/Pixabay |
If,
as Microsoft researcher Jonathan
Grudin
says, “People will create the jobs of the future, not simply train
for them,” education and learning will need to adapt to new
priorities. Human skills that will be required include creativity,
collaboration, abstract thinking, complex communication, and social
and emotional intelligence. But, Pew reports, about “a third of
respondents expressed no confidence in training and education
evolving quickly enough to match demands by 2026.”
Among
the recommendations for adapting education and learning was to
emulate the environments human learners already exist in, such as
those of gaming and social media. Psychologist and futurist Dana
Klisanin
of Evolutionary Guidance Media R&D, wrote, “Educational
institutions that succeed will use the tools of social media and game
design to grant students’ access to teachers from all over the
world and increase their motivation to succeed.… Online educational
programs will influence the credentialing systems of traditional
institutions, and online institutions will increasingly offer
meet-ups and mingles such that a true hybrid educational approach
emerges.”
The
bottom line, according to AAI Foresight’s Timothy
C. Mack,
is that, “In the area of skill-building, the wild card is the
degree to which machine learning begins to supplant social, creative
and emotive skill sets.”
Read
“The Future of Jobs and Jobs Training”
[http://www.pewinternet.org/2017/05/03/the-future-of-jobs-and-jobs-training/]
by
Lee Rainie and Janna Anderson, Pew Internet (May 3, 2017).
art credit:
Geralt/Pixabay
Europe’s Summer
of Futuring
Futures-oriented
groups across Europe are planning events in conjunction with the
Antwerp Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibition “A Temporary
Futures Institute”
[https://www.muhka.be/programme/detail/660-a-temporary-institute-of-futures-studies]
running through the end of September. Organized by Agence Future,
[http://www.agencefuture.org/]
the events include:
Humankind 2050,
June 7-10, Jondal, Norway. The World Futures Studies Federation’s
[https://www.wfsf.org/]
annual meeting, themed “Peace, Development, Environment,” seeks
to “envision, design and work towards creating peaceful, ecological
and equitable futures for humankind for the next fifty years and
beyond.” The event also marks the 50th anniversary of the Mankind
2000 meeting in Oslo, which “put futures research on the global
map” and led to WFSF’s formation. Details at the WFSF conference
page.
[https://www.wfsf.org/our-activities/wfsf-conferences/22nd-wfsf-world-conference-june-7-10-2017]
Futures of a
Complex World,
June 12-13, Turku, Finland. Celebrating its 25th anniversary of
academic research, the Finland Futures Research Centre at the
University of Turku is holding its 18th international futures
conference, organized in cooperation with the Finland Futures
Academy, the National Foresight Network, Finland, and Foresight
Europe Network. Among the keynote speakers will be John
L. Casti
of The X-Center. Details at the center’s conference page.
[https://futuresconference2017.wordpress.com/
]
Design - Develop
- Transform, June
15-17, Brussels and Antwerp, Belgium. Organized by the knowledge
center Applied Futures Research-Open Time and the Museum of
Contemporary Art of Antwerp, this event invites academic and
professional futurists from around the world to look at how futures
are designed, developed, and transformed. Teach the Future
[http://www.teachthefuture.org/]
and the Association of Professional Futurists [https://apf.org/]
are co-creating content for this “unconference,”
and
Jim
Dator, founder
of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies,
[http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/]
will be the keynote speaker. APF will also conduct a professional
development day workshop during the event. Details at the conference
page. [https://ddtconference.org/]
Moves in the Field
James
Dator
is retiring as director of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures
Studies. [http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/]
He will be succeeded by Jarius
Grove,
who is on sabbatical until summer 2017.
Jamais
Cascio
[http://www.openthefuture.com/jamais_bio.html]
was awarded an honorary doctorate from the
University of Advancing Technology in Tempe, Arizona. “The
technologies and tools we make are as much artifacts of our culture
as artifacts of our science,” Cascio said. “What a technology
means—its social utility, its ethical footprint, its role in our
lives—increasingly matters as much or more than what a technology
does.” Watch UAT’s commencement, featuring Cascio’s speech,
online. [http://www.uat.edu/commencement]
Maria
H. Andersen
is co-founder and CEO of Coursetune Inc. [http://coursetune.com/]
She was previously director of learning design at Western Governors
University.
Marco
Bevolo,
PhD, is a member of the editorial board of the journal Research
in Hospitality Management.
[https://www.ajol.info/index.php/rhm]
He is also partner, foresight and design thinking, at Amati &
Associates. [www.amati-associates.com]
He was previously research principal at Philips.
Manjul
Rathee
is senior service designer at Shift - Product design for social
change. [http://www.shiftdesign.org.uk/].
She was previously service designer at Mind of My Own.
Recent Publications
“Always
Tomorrow Now,”
[https://doi.org/10.1177/1946756717697336]an
interview with Luiz
Alberto Oliveira
(Museum of Tomorrow) by Stuart
Candy,
World
Futures Review [http://journals.sagepub.com/home/wfr]
(March 2017). Opening in Rio de Janeiro in December 2015, Museu do
Amanhã (the Museum of Tomorrow) received more than a million
visitors in its first nine months. In this article, museum fellow
Candy interviews curator Oliveira, exploring the “the story and
thinking behind a cultural institution of foresight dedicated to
questions rather than answers, experiences rather than artifacts, and
multiple possible futures rather than an unalterable past.” See
discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at
ResearchGate. [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313391057]
“Anybody
out there? The Future of Tax”
[http://jfsdigital.org/2016-2/vol-21-no-2-dec-2016/articles/anybody-out-there-the-future-of-tax/]
by
Gitte
Heij
(Melbourne University Law School), Journal
of Futures Studies
(December 2016), 21(2): 35–50. This paper uses the Three Horizons
model of analysis, exploration, and futures imagination to consider
“possible futures for raising tax revenue in an environment of
rapidly evolving technology, automation, globalization, the rising
power of powerful interest groups, and the trend of increased
accumulation of wealth in the hands of fewer taxpayers.”
Special Offer: Futuristic
Education Archives
In
celebration of his 80th birthday (May 11) Arthur
Shostak, emeritus
professor of sociology, Drexel University, is offering to share many
of the educational items he has collected since learning about
futuristics as an undergraduate in the 1950s.
The materials available include
books, magazines, and academic articles “of continued value in the
study of the probable, possible, preferable, and preventable future.”
He only requests reimbursement for shipping costs. If interested,
contact him at arthurshostak@gmail.com.
In
Memoriam
Robert
William Taylor, 85,
computer networking pioneer whose early work in the 1960s as director
of the Information Processing Techniques Office at the Advanced
Research Projects Agency is credited as a significant contribution to
the development of the Internet. Read more in the New
York Times.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/14/technology/robert-taylor-innovator-who-shaped-modern-computing-dies-at-85.html?_r=0]
Donald
Kitchell Conover,
85, a former vice president of corporate education for AT&T who
led the Corporate Education Center at Princeton. He was also a member
of the World Future Society, among many professional and civic
organizations. Read more in the Bucks
County Courier Times.
[http://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com/obituaries/bcct/donald-kitchell-conover/article_47075802-bf12-5903-8c58-207703a44296.html]
__________
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Feel
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2017 AAI
Foresight
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