Education (learning)

Magic Leap: A Virtual World In Our Reality

Submitted by Daryl Weade on

Magic Leap has pulled in half a billion in funding from names such as Google and is the brainchild of a medical robotics billionaire and a cofounder of Weta Workshops. Sean Hollister at Gizmodo provides a deep look into the history of the company and looks at their current work - including hands-on opportunities, patent information, and hiring practices – to see what they’ll be selling in the future.

It’s a lengthy article with several videos, some as long as 22 minutes. And that video is an excellent look at Magic Leap by Graeme Devine and worth the time to watch.

What will future jobs look like?

Submitted by Daryl Weade on

Andrew McAfee, one of the authors of The Second Machine Age, gives a presentation on the future of jobs as one of his TED talks. He provides a nice overview of the benefits and challenges of "the new machine age" and, on the human side, who will be impacted. At 15 minutes long, it's a fairly complete overview on the topic and how our societies might adapt to prepare our children and the adult unemployed for this change.

Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think

Submitted by Daryl Weade on

Book coverIn Abundance, Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler present trends taking us towards a better future - one in which individual needs are met on a global scale. Using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as a foundation, they explore technology will find ways to improve efficiency by fostering cooperation, providing access to clean water, producing enough food for a planet of nine billion, and even enabling equality as limitations dissipate.

Many projections offer a future half empty. Here, we get a lesson on how our biases enable close tracking of negative trends, whether serious, global issues or personal issues threatening a comfortable ideal we would not wish to give up. Yet, data show the world is improving. As an example, Bill Gates' annual letter from this past January presents how effective support of poor economies is stabilizing population, improving health, and helping develop economies capable of supporting human rights and freedom.

The point of Abundance is that we can both thrive as a race, free of draconian measures to tame our needs, and solve our problems going forward, using new methods and technologies to empower humanity. Why settle for half empty or half full, when the future can be filled to the brim?

Providing flexible education for a robust economy

Submitted by Daryl Weade on

Digital classroomIn 2010, I attended a the New Media Consortium's summer conference and Peter Smith's presentation "The End of Scarcity: Can We Handle It?" Part of the presentation focused on America's current intellectual capacity and how quickly we could fall behind China and India as those nations continue to birth dozens of children for every one in America. As he mentioned in the session, in China's high schools, the top 20% outnumber America's entire class of graduating seniors. As a result, we're at risk of being outperformed based on sheer numbers - a real issue we must deal with in order to retain our place in a world economy.

Smith makes the point we must maximize every American's potential and offer a range of programs capable of providing skill mastery through easily accessible and time-flexible learning opportunities. What changes might we see to maximize opportunity? Here are two articles providing a look at the future of education and post-secondary education specifically.

Impact of technology on our youth

Submitted by Daryl Weade on

Toddler with a tabletThis week gives us a warning from the UK's Association of Teachers and Lecturers of young children losing core abilities as the result of tablet overuse. According to a Telegraph article:

  • Children of three and four are able to manipulate a tablet screen, but "have little or no dexterity in their fingers" after hours of this activity and are not developing the dexterity to play with building blocks.
  • "...some older children were unable to complete traditional pen and paper exams because their memory had been eroded by overexposure to screen-based technology."

Will drugs + devices = superhuman intelligence?

Submitted by Daryl Weade on

Colorful pillsRaw intelligence is a major factor in our individual level of success - some develop more and some develop less. Whether attempting to maximize your income, research a cure for cancer or win a sporting contest, the ability to take a range of information, internalize it, and turn it into effective decisions can heavily influence whether we encounter failure or success at each task. Human intelligence is the outcome of millions of years of evolution and access to opposable thumbs has provided the ability to make the tools we have used to conquer our world. While there are proposed methods for increasing our intelligence, some individuals are using different technologies and chemicals to increase their own.

A world of living data - Wikipedia on steroids?

Submitted by Daryl Weade on

Robot wearing a press hatHumans have issues with data. Data on its own is hard to turn into information, which we can understand much more easily. Weather data is a great example, as it is both a global and local phenomenon impacting almost every day of our lives. If my phone's weather app presented data, I would receive information about regional climates as far as the Arctic and Gulf of Mexico. It would be difficult for most anyone but a meteorologist (amateur or otherwise) to make an accurate prediction using this data.

Future Babble

Submitted by Daryl Weade on

Future Babble coverWhy do we try to predict the future? According to Dan Gardner, it's because of our human need to protect ourselves that we are constantly attempting to recognize risk before the lions, tigers and bears descend upon us. In Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions are Next to Worthless and You Can Do Better, Gardner provides historical insights on the types of futurists able to make the most reliable predictions. Guess what? Those predictions don't come from experts in a field, they come from people with a wide range of knowledge looking at trends from different angles.

Dan Abelow: The journey to our full potential

Submitted by Daryl Weade on

House comparisonFuturists often explain our potential consumption in the number of planets we would need if everyone lives like a Westerner with large homes, multiple cars, and a dependency on consumerism to drive the economy - the last count I read was six Earths. It's a fair assumption and a questionable habit. In fact, I believe teaching my daughter to control her consumerism will be a key asset in her future no matter where or how she lives.

As part of an ongoing series to introduce his new book, Dan Abelow introduces chapter 1.2 about the Age of Crisis, which he refers to as The Crisis of Success. He sums the crisis up very well in a single sentence:

Our growing Crisis of Success comes from who we are: Everyone wants it all, wants it now, and won’t stop.

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