Tag: future

How The Future Of Work Might Look — Business In The 2050s
RECOMMENDATIONS

How The Future Of Work Might Look — Business In The 2050s

Predictions of the future are often wildly inaccurate. For example, Back To The Future promised us hoverboards, while almost everyone who saw Blade Runner couldn't wait to get their hands on a flying car. Unfortunately, neither are readily available to the general public yet, which is a crying shame. Casting an eye into the future and speculating how the world may look at that time, is never an easy task - there are simply too many variables involved. New technologies which no-one saw coming may be pulled from the aether, while existing fields which have substantial growth potential, may fail to develop as expected. A good example of this is 3D films; time and again they've been touted as the future of the film industry because production companies have thought consumers would jump at...
Children Of Color Often Omitted From Sci-fi Books From The Future For Young Readers
EDUCATION, Journalism

Children Of Color Often Omitted From Sci-fi Books From The Future For Young Readers

While visiting an elementary school library in 2016 to count the fantasy books for a graduate class on fantasy literature, I noticed there were hardly any science fiction books for readers under 12. This discovery prompted me to spend the next five years researching the shortage of science fiction books for children in this age group. I reached two big conclusions. First, I found that adults often think that kids can’t understand science fiction – but they can. Second, I found that authors and illustrators are not depicting characters from diverse backgrounds in children’s stories about the future. As a researcher who specializes in children’s literature, these findings make me wonder if the reason there is so little diversity in children’s science fiction is because authors don’t believ...
Are Employee Ownership Programs The Future Of Corporate America?
FOR BUSINESS

Are Employee Ownership Programs The Future Of Corporate America?

(BPT) - It's no secret it's a job seekers market. Many people are open to new work and employers are vying to attract the best talent. This gives job seekers more options than ever to find positions where they'll get the best benefits and be happy long-term. While salary is a core component of an employment package, benefits are just as important. Forward-thinking CEOs are going beyond the basics of health insurance and retirement programs and offering truly meaningful benefits that have a major impact on employees. Employee ownership programs really stand out in attracting top talent, motivating current employees and boosting employee satisfaction. For instance, Integrity Marketing Group, a leading distributor of life and health insurance, and provider of innovative solutions for wealth...
How The FBI Knew What To Search For At Mar-A-Lago – The Presidential Records Act An Essential Tool For The National Archives And Future Historians
IN OTHER NEWS, POLITICS

How The FBI Knew What To Search For At Mar-A-Lago – The Presidential Records Act An Essential Tool For The National Archives And Future Historians

The FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, on Aug. 8, 2022, has sparked a vigorous outcry from Trump and his allies. The details of the search are not clear, but reporting by The New York Times confirms that the search was “at least in part” for presidential records that Trump had taken from the White House and which were being sought by the National Archives and Records Administration. We asked Shannon Bow O'Brien, a scholar of the presidency at the University of Texas, Austin College of Liberal Arts, to discuss the history, law and customs associated with presidential archives. How do the archivists actually know what’s missing? Isn’t that hard to figure out? The archivists probably have a really keen idea of what is and what isn’t missing, based upon t...
A Historic Black Community Races To Save Its Future Six Months After Hurricane Ida
IN OTHER NEWS

A Historic Black Community Races To Save Its Future Six Months After Hurricane Ida

Briana Flin Residents of Ironton, Louisiana are rallying for their share of recovery funds. Audrey Trufant Salvant has deep roots in Ironton, a close-knit, majority-Black community 25 miles downriver from New Orleans. Her great-great-great grandmother, who had been enslaved, is buried here, and her descendents kept the unincorporated town in Plaquemines Parish alive, despite near-impossible circumstances. Founded by formerly enslaved people in the late 1800s, Ironton’s residents have since endured racial terror, segregationist parish leaders, and decades without even the most basic services. But they fought to survive. They gained access to running water in 1980 and rebuilt the town after Hurricanes Katrina and Isaac in 2005 and 2012, respectively. Today, residents say devastation from...
4 Essential Reads On Past Pandemics And What The Future Could Bring – When Will The COVID-19 Pandemic End?
COVID-19

4 Essential Reads On Past Pandemics And What The Future Could Bring – When Will The COVID-19 Pandemic End?

More than two years after the first cases of COVID-19 were diagnosed, people are exhausted by the coronavirus pandemic, ready for all this to end. When – if ever – is it realistic to expect SARS-CoV-2 will recede from the headlines and daily life? That’s the unspoken question beneath the surface of many of The Conversation’s articles about COVID-19. None of our authors can see the future, but many do have expertise that offers insights about what’s reasonable to expect. Here are four such stories from our archive. Written by historians and scientists, they each suggest a way to think about what’s at the end of the pandemic tunnel – and paths to get there. 1. Past pandemics are not a perfect prediction Almost as soon as it hit, people were trying to figure out how the COVID-19 pandemic wou...
For Terrorists And Extremists The Metaverse Offers A Future Full Of Potential
TECHNOLOGY

For Terrorists And Extremists The Metaverse Offers A Future Full Of Potential

The metaverse is coming. Like all technological innovation, it brings new opportunities and new risks. The metaverse is an immersive virtual reality version of the internet where people can interact with digital objects and digital representations of themselves and others, and can move more or less freely from one virtual environment to another. It can also involve augmented reality, a blending of virtual and physical realities, both by representing people and objects from the physical world in the virtual and conversely by bringing the virtual into people’s perceptions of physical spaces. By donning virtual reality headsets or augmented reality glasses, people will be able to socialize, worship and work in environments where the boundaries between environments and between the digital an...
Will The Future Of College Involve Fewer Professors?
EDUCATION

Will The Future Of College Involve Fewer Professors?

Patricia A. Young, University of Maryland, Baltimore County At a large private university in Northern California, a business professor uses an avatar to lecture on a virtual stage. Meanwhile, at a Southern university, graduate students in an artificial intelligence course discover that one of their nine teaching assistants is a virtual avatar, Jill Watson, also known as Watson, IBM’s question-answering computer system. Of the 10,000 messages posted to an online message board in one semester, Jill participated in student conversations and responded to all inquiries with 97% accuracy. At a private college on the East Coast, students interact with an AI chat agent in a virtual restaurant set in China to learn the Mandarin language. These examples provide a glimpse into the future of teach...
In An AI-Dominated World Why Improvisation Is The Future
TECHNOLOGY

In An AI-Dominated World Why Improvisation Is The Future

Rich Pellegrin, University of Florida In his autobiography, Miles Davis complained that classical musicians were like robots. He spoke from experience – he’d studied classical music at Juilliard and recorded with classical musicians even after becoming a world-renowned jazz artist. As a music professor at the University of Florida, which is transforming itself into an “AI university,” I often think about Davis’ words, and the ways in which musicians have become more machinelike over the past century. At the same time, I see how machines have been getting better at mimicking human improvisation, in all aspects of life. I wonder what the limits of machine improvisation will be, and which human activities will survive the rise of intelligent machines. The rise of machine improvisation Mac...
Black Women Who Experience Racism Are At Higher Risk For Future Health Problems – Brain Scans Show Trauma-Like Effects
Journalism

Black Women Who Experience Racism Are At Higher Risk For Future Health Problems – Brain Scans Show Trauma-Like Effects

Sierra Carter, Georgia State University The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Black women who have experienced more racism throughout their lives have stronger brain responses to threat, which may hurt their long-term health, according to a new study I conducted with clinical neuropsychologist Negar Fani and other colleagues. I am part of a research team that for more than 15 years has studied the ways stress related to trauma exposure can affect the mind and body. In our recent study, we took a closer look at a stressor that Black Americans disproportionately face in the U.S.: racism. My colleagues and I completed research with 55 Black women who reported how much they’d been exposed to traumatic experiences, such as childhood abuse and physic...