in the beginning was the word

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A fairly lengthy article in The New Humanist — Are we city dwellers or hunter-gatherers? — questions the accepted wisdom that it was agriculture that domesticated hunter-gatherer societies and as a result imposed hierarchies and created societal inequalities. The authors cite many discoveries of hunter-gatherer societies that managed to organize on a massive scale and create large complicated structures.

“Still more astonishing are the stone temples of Göbekli Tepe, excavated over 20 years ago on the Turkish-Syrian border, and still the subject of vociferous scientific debate. Dating to around 11,000 years ago, the very end of the last Ice Age, they comprise at least 20 megalithic enclosures raised high above the now barren flanks of the Harran Plain. Each was made up of limestone pillars over 5m in height and weighing up to a ton (respectable by Stonehenge standards, and some 6,000 years before it). Almost every pillar at Göbekli Tepe is a remarkable work of art, with relief carvings of menacing animals projecting from the surface, their male genitalia fiercely displayed. Sculpted raptors appear in combination with images of severed human heads. “

These required some form of institutions and command & control to coordinate work. But these works were mostly done on a seasonal basis with large groups of people getting together for a period of time and then going back to egalitarian tribal ways. This trend was also in evidence in North America and the Arctic. People were willing to get together and give up control in order to hunt or create something larger than themselves. There is also evidence that a selected few of these people were revered and their deaths celebrated to show their wealth and influence.

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What is happening to our intellectual world?

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Literacy — the written word — empowers our “harsh desire to last”. It enables our words to extend beyond our lifetimes. Western literacy is basically a tool to escape death. But the new electric media will likely inform and change literacy. George Steiner notes in a 2002 lecture that all our electric devices are based on Victorian era Boolean logic. We harbour the illusion that our current type of literacy is the result of some inevitable and logical progression, but it only reflects one narrow perspective of human understanding. For example, mathematics is a universal language. Mathematicians who speak different languages can still collaborate on problems through mathematics. Part of the future of literacy may be numeracy.

Steiner likens grammar to the musical scale. How can we make music without knowledge of notes and scales? How can we write for understanding without mastery of grammar? Like mathematics, music is a universal language.

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first finds of 2019

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.” —Kurt Vonnegut, via @ShaunCoffey

@robpatrob — “In Athens, democracy degenerated into populism, leading to the war with Sparta and defeat. Maybe there is a cycle?”

@PhilosophyMttrs — “Word of the Year” — Ultracrepidarian — adjective noting or pertaining to a person who criticizes, judges, or gives advice outside the area of his or her expertise

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citizen sensemaking

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Finland has taken a private-sector initiative to introduce people to Artificial Intelligence and turned it into a state-supported program to train 1% of the population.

“The idea has a simple, Nordic ring to it: Start by teaching 1 percent of the country’s population, or about 55,000 people, the basic concepts at the root of artificial technology, and gradually build on the number over the next few years.” —Politico 2019-01-02

This is a good idea and nobody could find fault with an educational program that helps citizens understand types of technology that affect much of their lives. But is it enough? Is it merely treating symptoms instead of looking at systemic factors? Is the long-term objective of the Finnish government to train 1% of citizens in 100 different things, so that all of them know something about a specific field that someone else has considered important?

“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” —Old Adage

Or is the real objective of any democracy to foster an aggressively engaged and educated citizenry?

Teach people to learn for themselves how to fish and they can learn anything else for a lifetime. —Harold Jarche

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embrace the snowflakes

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Q. Why in the age of the internet does the British army need the ‘snowflake generation’ more than ever?

A. Their compassion in dealing with local populations, and their technological prowess, are essential qualities in any modern military operation

Major Heloise Goodley, army chief of general staff’s research fellow at Chatham House, says that new skills are needed for the modern, machine-augmented battlefield.

“The proliferation of automation and artificial intelligence has not decreased the requirement for a human component in war, but it is changing the decision making and cognitive skills required of those soldiers. The army needs soldiers who have the intellectual and psychological aptitude to work in an increasingly automated operational environment, the very computer skills Generation Z have become derided for.” —The Independent 2019-01-05

This is not your father’s Army. It’s not even the Army I left 20 years ago. Back in 1998, on leaving the Army, I felt that global digital networks would change everything — they have. I have more recently noted that the future is networked & feminine and that we need to retrieve gender balance to adapt to new societal and economic realities. That balance is not just masculine/feminine but a balance that utilizes a broad range of human capabilities —  including “phone zombies” & “snowflakes” as the UK recruiting posters state. Just look at the leadership skills that 32,000 respondents indicated were the most important in today’s work world.

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the democratization of media

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“You’re just hearing about it [microaggression] more, because the people who have been suffering it for a long time have decided that they aren’t going to suffer it anymore. The disempowered recognize that it’s time for them to be heard.

Social media gives them a platform to broadcast that message for the first real time in history. Prior to a decade ago, they’d have to find some way to get their message out through media dominated by the very people who were looking down on them and oppressing them. The democratization of media gave them an equal playing field now.” —Peter Kruger, on Quora

Last year I wrote a series of posts on the retrieval of feminine characteristics necessitated by a network society. This started with the future is networked and feminine, the most viewed post I have ever written here.  It was summed up in retrieving gender balance, a much less controversial title. My intent with these posts was to show how diversity is essential for innovation, and ignoring or sidelining 50% of the population is just plain stupid. Heather McGowan gave some positive feedback which I appreciate, given my own privileged position in society.

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nine shifts — one is critical

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Nine Hours

In 2004 Bill Draves and Julie Coates wrote Nineshift: Work, life and education in the 21st Century. That was the same year I started blogging here. Nineshift is based on the premise that there will be a major shift in how we spend 9 hours of each day.

“There are 24 hours in a day. We have no real discretion with roughly 12 of those hours. We need to eat, sleep, and do a few other necessary chores in order to maintain our existence. That hasn’t changed much through the centuries, so far.

That leaves approximately 12 hours a day where we, as individuals, do have some discretion. That includes work time, play time, and family time.

Of those 12 hours, about 75%, or 9 hours, will be spent totally differently a few years from now than they were spent just a few years ago. Not everything will change, but 75% of life is in the process of changing right now.”

The authors put forth that society will significantly shift what we do with those nine hours and this will be complete by 2020 — one year from now.

  1. People Work at Home — “Work is an activity, not a place.”
  2. Intranets Replace Offices
  3. Networks Replace the Pyramid
  4. Trains Replace Cars
  5. Communities Become More Dense
  6. New Societal Infrastructures Evolve
  7. Cheating Becomes Collaboration
  8. Half of all Learning will be Online
  9. Education becomes Web-based

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best finds of 2018

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. Here are the best finds of 2018.

Wise Words

“Susan Sontag was asked what she had learned from the Holocaust, and she said that 10% of any population is cruel, no matter what, and that 10% is merciful, no matter what, and that the remaining 80% could be moved in either direction” —Kurt Vonnegut, via @holdengraber

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” —Victor E. Frankl, via @euan

“As the preliterate confronts the literate in the postliterate arena, as new information patterns inundate and uproot the old, mental breakdowns of varying degrees – including the collective nervous breakdowns of whole societies unable to resolve their crises of identity – will become very common.” —Marshall McLuhan (1969)

@StuartMcMillan — “The only thing you need to feel extremely smart is a lack of curiosity. The perpetually curious will always think they’re dumb.”

@mmay3r — “The internet doesn’t fracture truth, it reveals the many competing truths that always existed but were flattened by centralized broadcast technology.”

@lukewsavage — “Billionaires like Bezos and Musk are obsessed with space travel because it helps them maintain the illusion that they’re technological prometheans at the vanguard of civilizational progress, rather than greedy plutocrats who happen to own expensive bits of paper.”

@MazzucatoM — “David Ricardo was in 1821 talking about effect of mechanization on jobs and wages. But as long as profits were reinvested in the economy, new jobs appeared. That stopped with maximisation of shareholder value. Blame financialization & bad governance, not robots!”

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perpetual beta 2018

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The great thing about a blog is that it gives a view of my thinking and how it has progressed or changed over time. This year marked 15 years of freelancing and one new initiative was the perpetual beta coffee club — a community of professionals focused on work & learning in the network era — which now numbers over 50 members. A community is not a network and I am seeing more demand for safe community spaces online. Our community of practice has become a place to share ideas and have deeper conversations in a trusted space with an international group of professionals.

Speaking of changing practices, I decided to get rid of Google Analytics on this site because I did not want to be part of the growing surveillance economy. I also stopped using Google’s Feedburner service for email subscriptions. As a result I lost over 500 subscribers. Later I found the IceGram service, which does not track subscribers. You can sign up on my Contact Page. This year it also became obvious that vanity metrics — views, likes, retweets, etc. — are of little business value, so it’s best to just ignore them. I am.

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work in 2018

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When we look at the future of work, the loss of current jobs, and the effects of automation, we should use a compass to guide us, not a list of what the skills of the future may look like. That compass is self-determination theory which states that there are three universal human drivers — autonomy, competence, and relatedness. We need some control over our lives, we want to be good at something, and we want to feel that we belong with other people. These three drivers are what make us do what we do. Skills are just one aspect of being engaged at work. Even highly competent skilled workers can be disengaged or aimless.

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