Category: Recent Ideas from Twitter

Futures Lens in the World

Short-termism: Civilization’s greatest threat? This is a far reaching article that will stretch your thinking beyond today, next week and next year. What is our obligation to future generations? I spend a lot of time (obviously) wondering how and where social works’ most important responsibilities lay in this work, in this thinking. This article is worth the time to read…it will provoke more questions and ideas!

Society and Technology

What is a “public interest technologist” and why do we need more of them? I’ve included brief pieces on this before in this curated list – but here is another great one. I’m definitely continuing to feel like this is a space where social workers of the future have enormous opportunities. Our colleagues who have been leading the #socialworktech charge for years now are great folks to follow on Twitter if you are interested in this area. I definitely expect lots of development and increasing activity in this space.

How virtual reality helps neurosurgery patients to “tour” their own brains. Utterly amazing. One never knows which of these kinds of prototype experiments will go to scale…but this is the kind of thing we might wish for all folks to have access to should they need it.

Data and the future of the economy. What does it mean when data is the most valuable resource (outpacing oil) on the planet? How does power shift? This article explores.

What is the future of cyberattacks in the world? What do we know – and what are we doing to prevent?

Tech and Gender-Based Violence

Great overview and helpful (mind-expanding) ways to think about how gender based violence can be heightened through use of technology. As social workers – we ever need to grow our capacity to both see, prevent and address such issues in new online and technologically-enhanced spaces. Good and helpful read!

The Future of Education

Interesting and thought provoking ideas about the evolution of learning in the present and future.

What does it look like when a whole university campus commits to futures practice and a futures lens? Check this out for a glimpse at what California State University at Long Beach has been up to.

Artificial Intelligence

Who wants to argue with a computer? These folks can make that happen. The mind boggles with the implications.

Is artificial intelligence entering a “golden age?” These authors think so – but persistent questions remain that for all the good that may come of these remarkable technologies, are we ready for the shifts in power and in exacerbating inequity that may also likely occur? Much more discussion, debate and dialogue is needed.

Where racism and AI intersect. Huge work to be done in this space with exceptional people leading the way. Learn more about the brilliant and dedicated leaders taking on racism in artificial intelligence.

Design Thinking

I have been a fan of design thinking, but I’ve also been somewhat unsettled by its overwhelmingly corporate tone and its lack of self-reflection about its limitations and even dangers. I continue to believe it in because I think it introduces (if deployed without a profit-seeking agenda) methods and pathways for new ideas that have transformational potential. That said, this is among the first such “reflexive” article I’ve come across that challenges design thinkers to go deeper, be more courageous and note the risks and dangers associated with our blinders.

Every now and then I like to gather up an assortment of interesting items I see go by on Twitter for my social work friends who like me, are curious and passionate about learning about the future and the role that we may play in it. I did two in November (here and here) and will continue to post additional curated lists from time to time. Some of my other lists include more topic specific lists and/or new futures vocabulary. Explore the site and explore some of what is here. Enjoy!

Artificial Intelligence

Great piece that summarizes some key ideas to watch related to the future of artificial intelligence. I continue to assert that as social workers, we should dedicate ourselves as a matter of ethics to engaging in study and dialogue about how to increase the positive uses and interrupt the negative impacts of AI in the world ahead. (Note that I did a whole post dedicated to the exciting and concerning dimensions of this important area of science and work. )

Design justice, AI, and escape from the matrix domination is an essay from the Design Science Journal (from MIT) – brilliantly dissecting/critiquing the experience of “traveling while trans.” Highlights a variety of cutting edge social justice and tech issues that should be on the minds of social workers.

The future of war. This is just plain scary – words fail me. These are frightening possibilities.

Envisioning “the end” of a social problem

I love this piece imagining what the end of a social problem (in this case mass incarceration) looks like. I’m excited about the application of futures thinking (and speculative imagination skills) to push us into new spaces imagining beyond deep entrenchment of social problems. While our “solutions” may be far out – to imagine the end of our issue (addictions, poverty, etc.) we owe it to future generations to unlock more creative possibilities than merely the slow and gradual typical change cycle. What courageous, creative, BIG ideas might help us envision the better world we aspire to help build…and how can these kinds of thought experiments help us stretch our imaginations?

Government and the Future

What happens when U.S. Mayors learn to think like futurists

Higher Education and the Future

Six ways colleges can think differently to meet the workforce needs in America

Higher education innovation expert Dr. Cathy Davis speaking about the past, present and future of higher education. I learned a lot from reading this book – and was struck by the fact that higher education hasn’t inherently changed much since its inception a couple of hundred years ago. Some renovation and rethinking is probably due! She’s got some good ideas in this video. Special thanks to Dean Gautham Menon for sharing this item with me. Here’s another short set of slides she did in a recent presentation on her work. You can read more about Dr. Davis here.

This is a particularly challenging and creative article that challenges those in higher education – how do we prepare students for jobs that don’t exist yet? Of course part of the answer is that college is not just about “getting a job” – but that is easy to say for people who don’t mortgage their lives to be there. For most people, a college degree is absolutely linked to a desire and intention to increase one’s economic mobility. Our challenge is to help them grow as people, as we ready them to participate the world that is to come. In social work education, I think we have not much wrestled with this issue widely – though it is a frequent discussion among colleagues. We put a lot of stock in “fundamental skills” as well as specialities that reflect real world social problems, and intend (with good faith) that these will “weather” the future well. Much of that may be true. But I believe it is imperative to challenge ourselves more centrally to prepare social workers for challenges we do not yet see…and to be more intentional in inviting both known and unknown dimensions of this question to our classrooms and curriculum development efforts, even if and when it might be disruptive.

Intellectual Humility

While this piece isn’t explicitly about the future – it inherently reflects a vital aspect of ethical futures thinking – HUMILITY. No one can “know” the future and anyone who says they can is definitely selling something. That said, the goal of futures work is to use the information we have to combine with specific analytic tools and frameworks to help us anticipate possibilities and play for as many as we can – rendering us “more ready” as much as we can. In the end, humility matters – futures work must be guided by intense curiosity and hopefully, goodwill and hope for the future. Humility is an essential component in the future I want to see. This one is a good read and a new favorite.

Optimism

Yes, you read that right. Futures work isn’t only about worrying! I also love this brief piece about cultivating optimism in the midst of all the challenges around us. This is an important read. Dive in.

Technology and Society

Great interview from Douglas Rushkoff and Dana Boyd who has written a new(ish) book called “It’s complicated: The social lives of networked teens.” From the text: “How does technology amplify our biases? Where does human agency lie in complex, networked systems? What is the distinction between a “network” versus a “community?” These and many more questions explored in this deep-dive into social media and the relationship of digital technology to our everyday lives.” A great piece.

Nothing like a bunch of cool TED talks curated just for those of us that like to think abut the future. Here you go!

Gamification

This is a fascinating and expansive piece about a game that engages players in solving long-standing global challenges with creativity and courage. Tacking geo-political and economic challenges of humans all across our planet…the game encourages some interesting possibilities. This is thought provoking.

This overview covers a number of interesting items I saw go by this past week related to artificial intelligence, technology for social good, the future of social movements, equity issues and the future of work.   All of these items intersect in one way or another with social work futures – challenging us to think in new ways about social problems, the experiences and trajectories of vulnerable populations, and the skills needed by effective social workers and other social change actors to achieve our goals.    These links are intended to stimulate thinking about our roles ahead in the world that is unfolding.

Artificial Intelligence

Long-form (1+ hour) discussion about the social implications of artificial intelligence. 

Law could be the next profession to be disrupted by artificial intelligence. 

High tech redlining:   New technology leading to deeper kinds of institutionalized racism. 

Automation may take our jobs, but it will restore our humanity.

The A-Z of how artificial intelligence is changing the world

Technology for Social Good

How Washington DC used technology to make access to policy change tools more possible and successful. 

America needs to align technology with a public purpose.

Using technology (Virtual reality and games) as an alternative to medications for rehabilitation. 

Meet Zora, the robot caregiver

The internet doesn’t need civility, it needs ethics

What is a “public interest technologist” and how can they make the world a better place?

5 Reasons you might be a public interest technologist

Building ethics and privacy into the next generation of the internet

The Future of Social Movements

Interesting overview of next generation social activism.   The new repertoire of repression and how movements resist.  

Brief popular press story in Fast Company:  Keep marching:  Why street protests really do make a difference and  Original research report

More than code:  Practitioners reimagine the landscape of of technology for justice and equity

Equity Issues 

How automation of the workplace of the future may harm workers of color disproportionately

Beijing to begin rating residents on behaviors by 2020

The newest Jim Crow – “e-racism” in the U.S. criminal justice system

Is your software racist?

AI programs exhibit gender and racial bias

Austerity, inequality and automation

Algorhithms of oppression book review

The Future of Learning (University and Lifelong Learning)

5 Ways to meet the modern learner

The Future of Work

How the future of work may impact our well being

The seven forces that will shape the way you work

Is your job threatened by robots?

Augmented intelligence and the future of work

Here are a few more interesting, intriguing and potentially disruptive ideas I’ve run across as I continue the futures learning journey.   Where appropriate – I’ll offer some brief commentary and some questions along the way!   Do you have a link or idea you think is worth sharing? Share it here or email it to me at nissen@pdx.edu!!  Thanks for visiting.   

Economics

• What if capitalism is the problem?  Interesting piece about millenials attitudes (preview:  changing) about the future of capitalism.   Social workers need to be more fluent, creative and participatory in matters of economic, racial and other forms of justice, well-being and futures.  
• What comes after capitalism? Perhaps “reparation ecology.”  I’m intrigued.  Many implications for our field.   This is a review of a provocative book called “A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things.”
• How gamers make money.   Fascinating short film about this emerging economy.   Wondering how this will morph and evolve as time goes by. 

Health and Technology

• Big investments coming in digital health – are social workers ready to contribute, participate and even lead in the future of digital and technology-enhanced health with an equity lens as our organizing principle?
• Artificial intelligence helping to make cancer treatments less toxic. 
• Walking again after spinal injury with small implanted device being tested. 
• Using Virtual Reality technology to build empathy in professional helpers. 

Data Science

• What data scientists actually do.      If a core skill of the future is computational thinking – and if the world will increasingly be running on “big data” then the rest of us have an obligation to at least understand what these scientists are really doing – if only in lay terms.   How can we as social workers engage with this topic and these processes to play a role in assuring that big data serves the most vulnerable, not contributes further to exploitation?  Ethics are mentioned as one of the biggest emerging challenges for this field.    How can we insert ourselves into these dialogues and at least begin to ask the right questions?

Equity and Diversity Issues in the Future

• The future of diversity research (as conceptualized by the University of Michigan.  Interesting read!   I think social work scholars need to be part of leading this conversation, don’t you?

Climate Issues

• Low income and POC disproportionally impacted by smoke and other climate change issues.    How can SW do more to raise awareness and increase our advocacy and energy towards this underdiscussed health and economic well-being issue?

Higher Education

• Is the future of higher education about “badges” instead of degrees?  Wonder what the implications might be for social work study and practice – seems especially useful in the near future as folks build additional credentials beyond BSW and MSW designations. 
• Google, Apple and 12 other companies that no longer require a college degree.   Interesting developments in shifts around educational expectations and supports for sector specific learning on the job. 

Periodically – I’ll just offer a list of some of the more interesting, intriguing and potentially disruptive ideas I run across as I continue the futures learning journey.   Where appropriate – I’ll offer some brief commentary and some questions along the way!   Do you have a link or idea you think is worth sharing? Share it here or email it to me at nissen@pdx.edu!!  Thanks for visiting.   

The Future of Gaming

• The future of gaming.     Deep end of the pool analysis by a gaming expert, this is a fascinating read on the past, present and future potential of gaming as a force that is here to stay.
• Fundamentals of “gamification.”   If you’re new to gaming, this is a useful little overview that is an easy and helpful read.   Even if you are a gamer…it provides quite interesting context to understand the building blocks of the form.    Should social workers be considering incorporating more gaming elements in our work?  Is it possible that social change, healing, and reconciliation could actually be fun as well as meaningful?  Requires imagination…we can do that!!  

Higher Education Futures

• Imagining the university classroom of the future
• Will tech disrupt higher ed?

• The future of public higher education

• Colleges rush to embrace the uncertain future of blockchain

• Centering teaching in the future of higher education
• Three perspectives on the future of higher education

Imagining Possible Impacts of Block Chain

• Will block chain transform the public sector?   This could be among the most powerful “macro” issues to impact our economic world.   I don’t see many social workers involved to shape and activate our principles.   Important place for us to get learning!
• Great piece on blockchain – written by a social worker!!!  Lots to talk about and explore here.  Bravo to this SWer for taking the leap to understand and wrestle with what this might mean for our profession!
• Excellent primer on block chain from MIT.

Artificial Intelligence in Action

• Interesting checklist to explore if you’re ready to work with robots!  Creative piece – I did find myself wondering while reading it how I might have written it differently if I was writing to a social work audience.  I do think we need to explore this! 
• Stephen Hawkings’ predictions about AI in the modern world
• The future of AI-Human collaboration
• From agriculture to art – the AI wave sweeps in
• Five artificial intelligence insiders in their own words 
• What robots can teach us about being human

General Futures Info.

• 85% of Jobs in the Year 2030 Don’t Yet Exist.  How might this change what social workers do?   Will “job displacement coordinator” become an essential role as the workforce changes? 

• Preparing for workforce needs of the future when we don’t know what the jobs will be.  We’ve been here before.   Great piece that outlines the fundamentals and reminds us that these shifts in workforce focus have occurred before in history.   Given that this is a piece from a business journal…not enough attention paid to the implications of folks already in an economically vulnerable position BEFORE all of these changes.   Can social work itself be a force in assuring greater supports to transition workers less painfully from one “workforce era” to another to preserve and protect well being and dignity?

• Digital body language – more in the series of words/phrases that are new to me from the futures world!
• The Fourth Industrial Revolution.   Found myself thinking entirely about a) the future of the social work workforce and b) the displacement and resulting vulnerability of so many.   How can we participate in constructive and productive ways that reflect our values as social workers in all that is to come?
• How management needs to change to be ready for the future.   Thought provoking.  It goes without saying that all places where social workers work will likely be going through profound ecological changes (political, economic, etc.) during the next 20 years.  Does it make sense that our management approaches will change as well? This would be a great piece to have macro social workers re-write and/or augment.  Does what is written here adequately reflect the values we hold dear?