Surviving the Renaissance: Flourishing in an Age of Technology-Driven Chaos and Disruption New Media Consortium June 02016
Surviving the Renaissance:
Flourishing in an Age of Technology-Driven Chaos
and Disruption
New Media ConsortiumJune 02016
https://futuristpaul.com/2012/09/27/how-to-make-strategy-sexy/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/15831109296/
http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=2192
https://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/16283090113
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonny2love/4016385671
https://www.flickr.com/photos/128688968@N03/16201298985/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rooners/15649718968/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/uflinks/4955877639/
1. Short term: to 2021
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021
https://www.flickr.com/photos/collegeofsanmateolibrary/15373589050/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/multnomahcountylibrary/18457790768
Making stuff• Global economic
shifts
• Rethinking consumer vs producer
• What happens when we take students seriously as producers?
http://studentasproducer.lincoln.ac.uk/blog/
Hardware heading towards the invisible
https://www.flickr.com/photos/26556146@N07/16347907406/
https://www.reddit.com/r/IllBeYourGuide/
Internet of Everything
Rethink:
• privacy
• data ownership and control
• safety tradeoffs
• public and private
• Brin, T Society
http://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety.html
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lorda/14613457286
http://www.cnet.com/news/and-heres-a-drone-with-a-chainsaw-attached/
The boring new old stuff
Social media, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, open source, data analytics, mobile computing, gaming, gamification, virtualization, digitization, digital storytelling, always-on media capture, always-on surveillance, hacking…
That's all in the short term.
We already know all about this stuff.
2. Medium term
https://consumerist.com/2016/01/04/a-message-from-the-year-2026-about-the-future-of-your-tv
http://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-world-of-virtual-reality-in-2026-2016-4
automation• Self-driving
car
http://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar
/
http://avc.com/2016/04/an-ai-first-world/
AI taking up human functions
http://americangut.org/how-it-works/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nnova/7159517903
add robots
http://www.memes.com/img/381928
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-08/wall-street-has-hit-peak-human-and-an-algorithm-wants-your-job
objections•Humans want contact!•Automation is too expensive!
•I’m scared of machines doing bad things to me and my children!
3. Long term
http://www.newsweek.com/forget-2015-2050-year-predictions-296481
• Let’s look ahead even further. Try 2050.
http://www.businessinsider.com/ways-the-world-will-be-terrifying-in-2050-2015-3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0151U75ME/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0151U75ME/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1
The new silicon order
• Bostrom, Hawking, Forbin Project
• Or Iain Banks.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177
/
The new social order• Given sufficient automation in post-1990
forms?
• Might not see new jobs appear.
• Income inequality accelerates to 19th-century levels.
• we could see two new worlds of work.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dlnorman/27513144566/
Hacking life
• http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.macromol.6b00091
The new humanity
What happens to our sense of what it means to be human?
The new humanity
https://www.flickr.com/photos/pennstatelive/12103651054/
http://www.dezeen.com/2012/09/07/paralympic-design-flex-foot-cheetah-blades-by-ossur/
A new nature“Really, what I am is a futurist,.. Our project is acknowledging that a future is coming where nature is no longer fully natural.”
-marine biologistRuth Gates
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/18/a-radical-attempt-to-save-the-reefs-and-forests
,
http://www.billmckibben.com/eaarth/eaarthbook.html
A new nature
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_claims_in_the_Arctic
Hacking the world
• Humans change humans
• Humans change the world
• The new world changes humans
• And so it goes.
Renaissance?• A rebirth of human creativity and
identity
• an expansion of our powers and capacities
• fraught with all kinds of dangers and disasters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyanhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden
https://antivigilancia.org/es/2016/03/ciudades-rebeldes-hacia-una-red-global-de-barrios-y-ciudades-rechazando-la-vigilancia/
Hang on
https://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/109934159/
“I love the poorly educated!”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/16283090113
Let’s go even further
https://www.quora.com/What-will-the-world-look-like-in-2075
https://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/16228105584/
We are so not ready• Weird simultaneity of popular
($$-fed) embrace of technology with strong anti-scientism, unreason
• Academic disciplines not necessarily ready (think political science, macroeconomics)
• Radical divides over human nature
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_McCarthy
We are so not ready
• Horrendous American tv “news”
• Horrible legacy of prejudice restricting human growth and creativity
• Returning inequality “ “ “ “ “ “ “ “
What shouldn’t we do?
Don't think about it.
What shouldn’t we do?
Stop evading the issue by thinking about retirement
What shouldn’t we do?
(present generations don’t have a good record about leaving a world to the young right now)
What is to be done?
The blindingly obvious things:
What is to be done?Collaborate with each other, across institutions, sectors, nations, populations, professions
What is to be done?
Work through inter institutional groups (like NMC!)
What is to be done?
Use social media
What is to be done?
Use and be open
What is to be done?
Read and watch science fiction
What is to be done?
The not so obvious, and challenging: Rethink everything in terms of automation’s possibilities…
What is to be done?
What could be replaced?
What is to be done?
Become a cyborg
What is to be done?
Use futures methods
What is to be done?
More challenging:
What is to be done?
Lead - you’re best placed on campus to inform people in context
What is to be done?
Get political
What is to be done?Imagine different worlds and inhabiting them - yourselves, your institution, your children and the generation to come
Image credits
•Each cited on slide.
•Otherwise, mine.
Selected bibliographyAndrea Castillo, “Can a Bot Run a Company?” http://reason.com/archives/2016/05/24/can-a-bot-run-a-company
Alison Cook-Sather, Catherine Bovill, Peter Felten, Engaging Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching: A Guide for Faculty (2014)
Kristi DePaul, “Robot Writers, Open Education, and the Future of EdTech” (2015) http://er.educause.edu/blogs/2016/4/kyle-bowen-robot-writers-open-education-and-the-future-of-edtech.
Donna Haraway, “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene: Staying with the Trouble” http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/anthropocene-capitalocene-chthulucene/ .
Selected bibliographyMichio Kaku, Physics of the Future.
Rebecca Keller, “The Rise of Manufacturing Marks the Fall of Globalization.” https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/rise-manufacturing-marks-fall-globalization
Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable .
Ray Kurzweil, http://www.kurzweilai.net/how-to-erase-bad-memories-and-enhance-good-ones
Selected bibliographyBrooke McCarthy, “Flex-Foot Cheetah”. http://www.ele.uri.edu/courses/bme281/F11/BrookeM_2.pdf
Alexis Madrigal, "'The Future Is About Old People, in Big Cities, Afraid of the Sky’". http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/03/the-future-is-about-old-people-in-big-cities-afraid-of-the-sky/284459/
Babak Parviz, "Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens" http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/bionics/augmented-reality-in-a-contact-lens/0
Selected bibliographyBrandt Ranj, "Goldman Sachs says VR will be bigger than TV in 10 years “. http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-predicts-vr-will-be-bigger-than-tv-in-10-years-2016-1
David Rose, Enchanted Objects.
Avianne Tan, “Legally Blind 5th Grader Sees Mother for 1st Time Through Electronic Glasses”, http://abcnews.go.com/Health/legally-blind-5th-grader-sees-mother-1st-time/story?id=38740863
http://bryanalexander.org
http://twitter.com/http://twitter.com/bryanalexanderbryanalexander