Technology

information & communication technology

valued work is not standardized

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Does automation result in job loss?

“Consider, for example, the effect of the automated teller machine (ATM) on bank tellers. The number of fulltime-equivalent bank tellers has grown since ATMs were widely deployed during the late 1990s and early 2000s (see Figure 1). Why didn’t employment fall? Because the ATM allowed banks to operate branch offices at lower cost; this prompted them to open many more branches (their demand was elastic), offsetting the erstwhile loss in teller jobs (Bessen 2016).” —WEForum: James Bessen

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retrieving rationality

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“The underlying social and psychological motivations that drive crowds have remained constant over time. But our new technological scaffolding has changed the way that they form and exist in the world. Today’s crowds can grow to unheard-of proportions and never dissolve. Their members are no longer equal. And for the technologically savvy, their power they embody is easier to wield, and the members are easier to manipulate.” – Renee DiResta on RibbonFarm

According to Renee DiResta, the new digital crowd that influences public opinion is “persistent and large & unequal and easy to manipulate”. Digital social media platforms are changing the influence that crowds have on society because once formed, they no longer need to disperse. I mentioned before that social media can reverse into constant outrage, in we are the media.

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top tools 2016

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Jane Hart compiles a list every year of the Top 100 Tools for learning. This is the 10th year! Well done, Jane :)

Voting closes on 23 September 2016.

Here are my top tools this year, with the past five years shown below. It’s interesting to note that my preferred tools have not changed much.

Please add yours!

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holistic technology

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I first came across the work of Ursula Franklin through her CBC Massey Lecture series on The Real World of Technology.

Dr. Franklin died last week and I found this line from her obituary illuminating.

“[Ursula Franklin] distinguished between the holistic technology of creative artisans and the prescriptive technologies of large corporations and bureaucracies that discouraged critical thinking and created a culture of compliance.” – The Globe & Mail

In the book based on the lecture series, Franklin elaborated: “When work is organized as a sequence of separately executable steps, the control over the work moves to the organizer, the boss or manager. In political terms, prescriptive technologies are designs for compliance.”

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we are the media

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As we shift from a market-dominated to a network-dominated society, we do not lose our previous tribal, institutional, and market organizational forms. However, their relationships between each other changes. For example, print-based media now operate at electric speed increasing the urge to feel immediate outrage for events not directly connected to us. Short-form social media writing platforms like Twitter push the printed word to its limit and in so doing, reverse it to a new form of orality. A tweet is ephemeral and soon forgotten, like a quick spoken comment.

Social media can extend the emotion of our words, while obsolescing the linearity of long-form writing. They can retrieve the immediacy of oral communication, with the caution that this can quickly reverse into constant outrage. This is a danger when our existing institutions have lost much of their authority with the public.

“When the prevailing mood is anti-elite and anti-authority, trust in big institutions, including the media, begins to crumble.” —Katherine Viner, editor-in-chief Guardian News & Media

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it’s all about our data

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Platform capitalism is the ability of a common internet exchange medium to enable easy commercial transactions. Buyers of services get convenience, while sellers get a larger market. The spoils go to the owner of the platform, receiving a significant percentage of revenues. Most of these platforms are created when regulations and oligopolies make these transactions difficult by traditional means. Platform capitalism initially disrupts a sector that is poorly served. It requires four contributing factors.

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turmoil and transition

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One of the greatest issues that will face Canada, and many developed countries in the next decade will be wealth distribution. While it does not currently appear to be a major problem, the disparity between rich and poor will increase. The main reason will be the emergence of a post-job economy. The ‘job’ was the way we redistributed wealth, making capitalists pay for the means of production and in return creating a middle class that could pay for mass produced goods. That period is almost over. From self-driving vehicles to algorithms replacing knowledge workers, employment is not keeping up with production. Value in the network era is accruing to the owners of the platforms, with companies such as Instagram reaching $1 billion valuations with only 13 employees.

We have connected the world so that data and information can flow in the  blink of an eye. There are fewer information asymmetries, as companies like Amazon bust down one industry after another. Interconnectedness and increasing computational power will continue to automate work and outsource any job that can be standardized. New businesses are employing fewer employees, while manufacturing is moving to an increased use of robots.

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