Learning Today

ILLUSTRATION BY C.J. BURTON, © 2016

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Futureto Make Better of Decisions Work Learning about Today

By Marina Gorbis f you’ve participated in r ecent discussions about the future of higher education, inevi- tably you have heard people argue about the purpose of educa tion. “It should b e about preparing students to be good, educated, and engaged citizens,” some ar gue. “We shouldn’t bend education to suit today’s needs of acquiring sp ecific work skills. T hese may quickly change, leaving graduates with little to fall Iback on as demand for their particular skills wanes. Instead, we should equip p eople with basic critical thinking skills and a desire to learn. A curious mind is a much greater asset than specific content knowledge.”

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Others respond: “That is all ni ce and transformative shifts. R ather, a clus ter of erful new smart machines—yields a much good, but in an era of rising tuitions and interrelated technologies, often acting in more nuanced view. high student debt, it is mor e important concert with demographic and cul tural Over the coming decade, smart than ever for gr aduates to be able to earn changes, is r esponsible for dr amatic machines will indeed b egin to enter vir- good incomes, not onl y to repay their changes and disruptions. T echnolo- tually every domain of our li ves in small debts but also t o lead sustainable lives. To gies coevolve with society and cul tural and big w ays, including assis ting doctors ensure this, we need t o more tightly con- norms—or as M arshall McLuhan is oft en during surgery, fighting on ba ttlefields, nect education and work preparation.” quoted as having said: “We shape our building things in factories, and helping in Such debates are not new; they’ve been tools and aft erwards our t ools shape us.” classrooms. In particular, smart machines around for decades if not long er. What Nowhere does this apply more critically are poised to take on tasks that are repeti- is new are the ways that both the nature today than in the world of work and labor. tive, dangerous, data-intensive, or too large of work and the t ools and pr ocesses for Here, I fo cus on four clus ters of t ech- or too small for humans to perform effec- learning are changing. These fundamental nologies that are particularly important in tively. These are, in fact, the types of tasks transformations are making dis tinctions shaping the changes in the w orld of work that humans are not particularly good at. between work, learning, and living ever and learning: smar t machines; coordina- Naturally, the pr omise of smar t more artificial. The Institute for the Future tion economies; immersive collaboration; machines spurs anxiety over the loss (IFTF), in par tnership with ACT Founda- and the maker mindset. of jobs. However, it is w orth noting that tion, recently published Learning Is Earning no technology has yet resulted in our in the National Learning Economy—a visual Smart Machines: A New Era working any less. D espite generations synthesis of futur e forces that are shap- of Human-Machine Symbiosis of new t echnologies, we ar e currently ing this tr ansformation. The work shows We’re on the cusp of a ma jor transforma- working more than ever b efore. Adult how the pr oliferation of online learning tion in our r elationship with our t ools, male peasants in the thir teenth century resources (free and for pay), the rise of analogous to the transformation humanity in the United Kingdom w orked an a ver- alternative learning and making spaces underwent during the agr arian revolu- age of 1,600 hours a year; manufacturing (from TechShop to General Assembly and tion. As agri cultural production became workers in 1900 in the U nited Kingdom makerspaces), and the mechanized, farm labor worked an average of 1,850 hours; and a diffusion of mobile tech- A new generation shrank, with many rural full-time employee in the U nited States nologies and p eer-to- of smart software families moving int o cit- today works an a verage of over 2,0 00 peer communities allow ies and new g enerations hours.2 Machines don’t just replace what every moment of the and machines finding employment in we do. They change the na ture of w hat day to become a learning is emerging to factories and cons truc- we do: by extending our capabilities, they moment. At the s ame once again tion. Over time , the con - set new e xpectations for w hat’s possible time, the w ay we h ave redefine our solidation of urban la bor and create new p erformance standards come to think a bout produced a manag e- and new needs. Yes, smart machines will work—that is, 9 -to-5 pre- relationship rial class, and the la test replace some human labor, but they will dictable jobs in formal to work. phases of development also augment humans in new w ays and organizations—is less have built out this layer of change how we get things done. and less a r eality for the gr owing number labor in cities around the world. of working-age adults. So in thinking Now, a new g eneration of smar t soft- Replacing Routine, Repetitive Work about the futur e, we need t o understand ware and machines is emerging to once We will continue to outsource to machines the forces that are reshaping both work again redefine our r elationship to work. any task that can be routinized, decoded, and learning, and we need t o make link- Smart machines have the ability to com- and programmed. We have been doing ages between the two. Instead of debating municate with each other, adapt t o and this in manufacturing and are increasingly whether learning is for learning ’s sake or learn from changing conditions in r eal doing so in servi ces. David Autor, an MIT as a means for earning a li ving, we need to time, and do all of this a utonomously economist who studies U.S. labor trends, think about the forces and signals of trans- without human supervision. Diffusion concluded in a 20 10 study that there has formation and what they mean for hig her of such smart machines may bring an y been a dramatic decline in mid-skill white- education today and tomorrow. number of dystopian scenarios to mind: collar clerical, administrative, and s ales So let’s explore these deep er transfor- robots taking over the w orld, software occupations and mid-skill blue-collar pro- mations.1 From our e xperience of doing “eating” our jobs, and machines running duction, craft, and operative occupations. forecasting work for nearly fifty years, we amok and r eproducing themselves. B ut The shift is not sud den but, rather, has at the IFTF b elieve that it is usuall y not a look at what is under development been occurring over several decades. The one technology or one tr end that drives today—and at the potential of these p ow- result is what Autor calls “polarization” of

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jobs, with job opportunities concentrated center, see what the ROV is seeing (along And thanks to advances in neur osci- in relatively high-skill, high-wage jobs and with data from other sensors) and control ence and b ehavioral economics, we’ve low-skill, low-wage jobs.3 In other w ords, the ROV with a jo ystick.6 Similarly, we’re come to realize that humans generally tasks that are predictable, routine, and now using dr ones for w arfare, a pr actice aren’t very good at thinking through prob- easily codifiable are increasingly being that raises questions about the ethi cs abilities and risks and making rational automated. This impacts not only physical of remote warfare. But as we sub stitute economic choices based on those pr ob- work in manuf acturing but also r outine humans with machines in direct combat, abilities. Whereas we likely don’t want to knowledge and service work. we’re also pr ototyping systems to help use pure rationality when making mor al We see this shift even in t oday’s class- care for humans in the battlefield. Trauma or ethical decisions, mor e rationality rooms. Already, thousands of r obots Pod, a system developed by a consor tium would be helpful in si tuations such as are assisting with repetitive language of organizations led by SRI International, when making financial decisions. We’re instruction (correcting pronunciation) in makes it possible to retrieve wounded sol- already relying on softw are to help us Korean schools,4 and new pr ototypes of diers from the ba ttlefield, diagnose them make many complex decisions—includ- automated food preparation are begin- remotely, and even p erform lifesaving ing modeling climate change scenarios, ning to enter fast food restaurant chains procedures en r oute to a hospi tal. Inside impacts of financial market interventions, and supermarkets. For example, Momen- the prototype theater is a t eam of robots, and optimal oil-drilling lo cations—but tum Machines created led by a r obotic surgeon what happens when every decision, lar ge the world’s first fully remotely controlled by a or small, incorporates decision support automatic hamburger human surgeon. from our machine helpers? This is begin- machine. This ham- Similarly, in the ning to happen: we routinely check Ama- burger machine can recent Ebola outbreak, zon ratings before buying a pr oduct or prepare, cook, and serve robotics emerged as a scan Yelp reviews before deciding w here freshly ground, custom- possible solution to care- to eat. Imagine a futur e in w hich every made burgers—at a r ate giving in hospi tals and decision we mak e incorporates rational of 400 per hour—with- infected areas. Robotic analysis of risks and pr obabilities. We’ll out a single human hand tasks include everything outsource some decisions complet ely to being involved. The from managing contami- machines, while also assimilating compu- makers claim th at their invention “ does nated waste to “zapping” contaminated tational rationality into our own decision everything employees can do e xcept bet- environments with ultraviolet pulses t o processes. ter” in w hat they call “ the most labour providing care for inf ected and quar an- intensive industry in the country.” In addi- tined babies. This deployment of r obots Human-Machine Symbiosis tion, the mac hine can ad d the r equested builds on the field of t elemedicine and While smart machines will replace human toppings (e.g., slicing tomatoes directly telepresence robots, one of the earl y test- labor in some ar eas and ena ble humans onto the bur ger) and p op the bur ger out ing grounds for colla borative robotics. to do new things in other ar eas, the most to a nea tly wrapped sandwich ready for Robotic manufacturing can t ake place profound impact of smart machines is the human consumption.5 in conditions that are inhospitable to new level of symbiosis or interconnected- humans. Already, the J apanese robotics ness we will establish between ourselves Augmenting Human Abilities company FANUC is op erating a f actory and such machines. What this means is Since time immemorial, our tools have in which robots are building other r obots that most of our int eractions—whether extended our abilities to manipulate our at a rate of about 50 per 24-hour shift and at work, in learning , or in heal th—will environment and to do things that indi- can run unsupervised for 30 days at a involve some level of combined mac hine viduals can’t do alone (e.g., lift large stones). time—with no lig hts, air condi tioning, or and human effort. In f act, a r ecent Mc- A new generation of smar t machines will heat required. Kinsey & Compan y study claims th at extend our r each even fur ther beyond Humans are also not suited to manipu- fewer than 5 percent of occupations can be human abilities, enabling us t o go into late things on a very small scale. H ere entirely automated using current technol- places that are too dangerous or simply too again, machines will b e recruited to do ogy. However, about 60 percent of o ccu- hard to reach. For example, robots have things that previously couldn’t be done. pations could have 30 percent or more of played a key role in helping to contain Today, nanorobots in pill form can di ag- their constituent activities automated.7 In the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP nose cancer or deli ver highly targeted other words, automation is likely to change used remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) chemotherapy. Machines will ena ble us the vast majority of o ccupations—at least to conduct underw ater observations and to reach hidden places in the body and to some de gree—which will necessi tate repair work. ROVs are operated by human assemble objects molecule by molecule in significant job r edefinition and a tr ans- controllers who, sitting in a command new manufacturing facilities. formation of business pr ocesses. BMW

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12-25 Feat 1-Gorbis.indd 16 4/19/16 11:26 AM is testing “collaborative robots” that can convert data into stories—taking sports est generation of toys shows all the impor- glue together parts held in place by (mor e scores or financi al data and deli vering tant features of symbiotic learning: highly precise) human fingers. The da Vinci Sur- written narratives that are often hard to dis- personalized learning, constant feedback gical System from Intuitive Surgical can tinguish from those produced by human loops, integration of learning and pla y, perform laparoscopy, prostate, and other journalists. Increasingly, journalists are flexibility and adapt ation. What will the surgeries with a level of accur acy that’s using such writings as drafts to which they generation of kids w ho are growing up difficult for h uman surgeons to achieve add personalized flourishes and p oints with such learning and pla y companions alone. Rethink Robotics has introduced of view. expect from their work and educational an industrial robot, “Baxter,” designed t o The machine-human symbiosis is also settings? As artificial intelligence and con- safely interact with humans, who can eas- transforming the learning pr ocess. Just nectivity become embedded in p hysical ily program it for simple t asks. Baxter is look at the new g eneration of smar t toys objects and spaces around us, we will have intended for sale to small businesses and from CogniToys: toy dinosaurs with Inter- to fundamentally rethink the na ture and is being promoted as the r obotic analog net connectivity, backed by IBM’s Watson structures of our educational institutions. of the p ersonal computer. IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence platform, and wi th supercomputer is b eing used t o evaluate speech-processing capabilities. Children Coordination Economies: evidence-based cancer tr eatment options can ask their Dino m yriads of ques tions Socialstructured Value Creation for physicians, driving the decision- and have various language-based inter- The automation and the diffusion of making process down t o a ma tter of actions with the t oy. As a c hild begins to smart machines are accompanied by seconds. play, CogniToys Dino will slowly adjust another development—the emer gence Lawyers are using t ext-mining tech- its content and experience based on how of coordination platforms such as Uber, niques to perform automated analyses the child is using the toy and on the child’s Shyp, and Airbnb. A decade ag o, workers of vast amounts of do cuments. Similarly, vocabulary levels, int erests, etc. The toy in the U nited States and E urope worried Narrative Science makes it possible to will literally “grow” with the child. This lat- about jobs being outsourced overseas.

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Today, companies suc h as Upwork and of this form of pr oduction, but the num - reshape how we think a bout work and LiveOps can assemb le and co ordinate ber of socialstructs—in fields from health labor and about the skills people will need teams “in the cloud” t o provide sales to science t o finance—is growing rapidly. in order to sustain their livelihoods. and customer support, help with edito- We are seeing this in pub lishing, music, rial work, conduct research, design and and broadcasting: bloggers, amateur From Jobs to Tasks prototype products, and perform many musicians, and YouTube stars can r each At the cor e of so cialstructing is our a bil- other tasks and or ganizational functions. audiences larger than those of many estab- ity to break down man y large tasks into New digital platforms are beginning to lished media channels. This new form of smaller pieces and assign those smaller act like real-time online staffing agencies: economic activity is very different from tasks to many different people, wherever bridging borders, orchestrating complex institutional production because it often they might be, quickly and effectively. tasks across teams of mi cro-workers, and happens on an ad hoc basis without clearly Such micro-tasks or micro-contributions integrating the g lobal workforce at levels assigned roles, hierarchies, or tr aditional may take different forms: conducting and speeds never seen b efore. As a r esult, management structures. Algorithms, basic calculations, searching for da ta, many workers in the U nited States are rather than managers, often distribute doing some editing or code development, feeling the impact of global labor arbitrage tasks and coordinate work. In addition to or delivering a packet of medications to a more keenly than ever before. It is easy to per-pay contributions t o socialstructed house-bound patient. This new form of find the b est programmers, best editors, work, many contributions ar e provided coordination not only can help solve the and best designers from anywhere in the at no pay, disrupting traditional notions thorniest problems faced by or ganiza- world. of monetary incentives tions and communities but also can create These companies ar e The growth of and enabling individuals manageable, accessible jobs for people all transforming not only these online task- or small gr oups to use around the world. Already, micro-work is what people do t o earn networks of v olunteers beginning to engage the underused talents their livelihoods but also, coordination or micro-taskers and cre- of people from a v ariety of g eographical at a muc h deeper level, platforms is ate value comparable to areas and from a variety of educational and how we organize to cre- reshaping the or greater than that pro- professional backgrounds. ate value. New types of formal organization duced by paid employees According to some es timates, almost workers are emerging: within institutions. 54 million Ameri cans—approximately 34 micro-taskers—people of labor built up Indeed, the so cial- percent of w orkers—did freelance work who are signed up on over the last structing of organiza- in 2015.8 This number is expected to grow multiple digital coordi- century. tions will fundament ally significantly in the ne xt twenty y ears as nation platforms such challenge many long- online platforms and tools make it increas- as Uber, Lyft, Gigwalk, and MobileWorks standing working relationships and struc- ingly possible to break jobs up into smaller and whose work experience doesn’t tures. As production methods increasingly tasks and to engage many people in com- involve stable 9-to-5 jobs but, rather, a shift to micro-contributions, algorithmic peting for those job t asks. Upwork is just stitching together of v arious tasks per- coordination of t asks, nonmonetary one online s taffing platform that allows formed in flexible niches of time. incentives, and r eputation metrics, many businesses to post jobs, search for fr ee- The growth of these online t ask- firms will b e forced to reexamine their lance professionals, and solicit proposals. coordination platforms is r eshaping the fundamental operating principles. T his The platform can evaluate the contractors formal organization of labor built up over adaptation process is lik ely to include applying for the job and, once a contractor the last century, with an accompan ying reevaluations of management hierarchies, is selected, serve as a c hannel for commu- decline in traditional managerial struc- rewards, physical space use, and even the nications and e xchanges of w ork deliver- tures as more flexible and adaptive struc- nature of emplo yment itself. Over time , ables between contractors and requestors. tures take advantage of new t echnologies pressure will incr ease for or ganizations Payment for jobs, which can be either to create value outside of formal organiza- to crowdsource, or cloudsour ce, many hourly-rate or pr oject-based, is made by tions. I call this typ e of value production functions and t o focus their effor ts on the client through Upwork’s system. Each socialstructing. At its core is the a bility to aggregating these functions t o add value. freelancer can p ost a pr ofile displaying divide larger tasks into smaller pieces Socialstructed organizations are likely past jobs and f eedback, a p ortfolio, and (micro-tasks), divvy them up among a large to resemble fluid sub cultures more than specific skill and educational-background network of people according to their avail- rigid pyramids. Organizing, coordinating, information. Another platform is LiveOps, ability and e xpertise, and aggr egate the participating in, and navigating these fluid an on-demand contact and call center that resulting micro-contributions using social networks will b e vital competencies for enables outsourcing of servi ces for h un- tools and technologies. making a living in the future. dreds of companies through its network of Wikipedia is probably the best example Socialstructed value creation will over 20,000 independent at-home agents.

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12-25 Feat 1-Gorbis.indd 18 4/19/16 11:26 AM LiveOps tracks the p erformance of eac h Rise of Alternative Currencies and skill wi th more fine-grained and call center representative in minute detail, and Reputation Markers personalized systems. GitHub, an op en- displaying results on a dashb oard and In his ess ay “On M oney and M agic,” the source social programming platform, has automatically matching callers with those game researcher Edward Castronova enabled many developers to use their cre- agents who have the highest performance argues that in order to give money or an y ations on the platform in lieu of résumés. ratings. One mor e recent innovator in currency its magical power, a group needs Developers’ profiles and contributions this space is Samasource, a mi cro-work to collectively agree and believe that a par- are considered their work portfolios. For platform that focuses on pr oviding ticular thing—a piece of paper, an ounce of those wanting to find a job as a pr ogram- enterprise services worldwide by tapping gold, or the U.S. dollar—has value and that mer, what they’ve created on Gi tHub is poor women and y outh in developing it can be exchanged for goods and services often a more direct pathway to a job than regions of the world. It began with a focus within the gr oup.9 It is precisely because a college degree. Mozilla Open Badges on women in r efugee camps but h as we are the ones w ho imbue money wi th allows users to track skills that they teach expanded to become a global matchmaker value, and because the creation and circu- and learn informally by issuing verifiable for tasks and people who may not have lation of money r equires a social contract digital badges that are stored and dis - access to traditional job markets. (a social agreement of i ts value), that a played in a “ digital backpack.” Degreed, group of any size can p otentially create a a recently launched start-up, argues that Algorithmic Coordination currency. The existence of par ticipatory how someone g ot expertise—whether A key piece of eff ective socialstructing technologies makes it relatively easy to through informal means or via formal is the use of softw are to route or manage create social currencies educational institu- crowd contributions. In some cases, this and alternative repu- tions—doesn’t matter. is simply a matter of matching a task to the tation systems within Degreed measures and most qualified person available. However, online groups, whether validates all types of the approach can also b e used t o tightly as in-game currencies educational inputs, coordinate a comple x series of t asks so (in-gaming communi- whether they are from that they come together in an on-demand ties), reputational badges formal institutions or fashion. This mechanism will be a founda- (alternatives to degrees from more informal tion for co ordinating any activity in the and grades), or lo cal cur- learning platforms such coming years and will be a potent force for rencies (valid for lo cal as Khan Academy or amplifying and disrupting existing institu- trades). Thus, the pr olif- Udacity, and then works tions, since the co ordination of t asks has eration of online par ticipation platforms with employers to use these scores in hir- been the primary r ole of manag ement. will inevitably lead to the proliferation of ing and promotion processes. ReThinkery Labs, a r ecently announced new types of r eputation and r eward cur- Technology creates new w ays to track venture by D evin Fidler, one of m y col- rencies. This trend will impact b oth the and acknowledge learning th at happens leagues at the IFTF, makes it possible to world of work and the world of learning. anywhere—in school, on the job , and in automate a v ariety of or ganizational pro- In the business and technology circles, informal settings. R eputation and digi tal cesses, including the pr ocess of r esearch substantial resources are being invested performance trails will increasingly weigh report writing. In a recent project, its soft- in the cr eation of al ternative currencies more than college degrees, attendance, or ware broke down the research process into such as the bi tcoin and i ts underlining other proxies for assessing knowledge and discrete tasks, used an algorithm or a set of blockchain technologies. Although much competency levels. Indeed some emplo y- automated instructions to recruit people is still not clear a bout such technologies, ers, including G oogle, have begun to on a v ariety of e xisting digital work plat- their main impact is the disintermedia- deemphasize traditionally dominant met- forms (e.g., Upwork, TaskRabbit, Mechani- tion of traditional structures of authority rics such as Ivy L eague diplomas in f avor cal Turk), and then manag ed the work of and gatekeeping, from central financial of a more direct analysis of an appli cant’s qualified people on these pla tforms. The regulators to various types of educational unique personal style and backgr ound. final report involved the work of hundreds certification agencies. The promise of Whereas the logis tics of this kind of of human contributors, aided by machine blockchain technologies is t o enable approach would have been prohibitively intelligence and manag ed by softw are true peer-to-peer verifiable transactions, difficult in the pas t, the gr eater visibility algorithms—the ultimate example of making it easy to track contracts, levels of of one’s body of w ork today makes this human-machine symbiosis. This kind of expertise, and knowledge acquisition. an ever-easier strategy to use. Clearly, the symbiotic relationship is lik ely to trans- Even in the absence of such technolo- assessment of skills or sui tability for a form most jobs, from entry-level t o the gies, a growing number of platforms are particular task or job , particularly digital most sophisticated ones, including those aiming to replace degrees, resumes, and work, will become more varied, complex, in research and C-suites. other traditional markers of e xperience and nuanced than ever.

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To see how such reputation systems have so far largely filled a recreational networks will b e greatly prized. Virtual might evolve in the futur e, the IFTF and or contact-directory role. At the s ame collaboration requires that those involved ACT Foundation ran a for ecasting game time, social network infrastructures are leave digital trails of their w ork so th at centered on the idea of a blockchain-based permeating the work domain with team others know w here the g aps are, what platform. The Ledger tracks everything productivity and coordination tools, such needs to be done, and w here they need you’ve ever learned, every one you’ve as Google Docs and G oogle Hangouts, to contribute. Google Docs, wikis, and learned from, and every one who has Asana, and Slack . Meeting augmentation many other colla boration platforms will learned from you. The Ledger tracks not platforms such as MindM eld promise to enable the cr eation and manag ement of only what you know but also all the proj- deliver critical information flows in the such digital trails. Curating these tr ails ects, jobs, gigs, and challenges you’ve used context of online meetings. These systems may become micro-tasks for people with that knowledge to complete.10 seek to repurpose the communi cations local, on-the-ground knowledge as well tools used by Facebook and others to facil- as those dedicated to and skilled in a new Immersive Collaboration: From itate a deeper coordination of professional kind of w ork management. Asana is a Face-to Face to Blended Reality teams. The ability to deftly manage and web and mobile appli cation designed t o We are creating a new kind of r eality, one apply social networking tools—in order to enable teamwork without email. E ach in which physical and digital environ- both communicate effectively and facili- team gets a workspace that contains proj- ments, media, and interactions are woven tate the accomplishment ects and tasks. In each together throughout our dail y lives. In of practical tasks—will task, users can add notes, SECURITY CHALLENGES this world, the vir tual and the p hysical be increasingly valued. comments, attachments, are seamlessly integrated. Cyberspace is Many entrepreneurs and tags. Users can fol - not a des tination but is, r ather, a la yer of are also using online low projects and t asks, experience that is tig htly integrated into platforms to create show- and when the s tate of a the world around us. T he proliferation rooms and storefronts to project or t ask changes, ARE GROWING! of mobile and sensing devi ces, advances sell their products. followers receive updates in virtual and augmented reality, and the This world of immersive virtual collab- about the c hanges. Another e xample is explosion of v arious types of lightweight oration will drive new work patterns, will Trello—a free, online, and mobile collabo- collaboration platforms are making i t further support entrepreneurial efforts in ration tool that organizes projects into PEOPLE PROCESS TECHNOLOGY easier than ever to work, share ideas, and countries with high unemployment, and boards. At one glance, Trello users can see be a part of a global team while still being will create new dilemmas th at individuals what’s being worked on, who’s working on physically separated. In fact, being a par t and governments will need to navigate. what, and where something is in a process. of a geographically distributed workforce We offer a full range of IT management and security services to help our clients identify is quickly becoming a de facto standard in 24/7 Global Teams Quantified Work exposures, remediate vulnerabilities and reduce risks, including: today’s work environment. Putting together global teams that can With so muc h work being done thr ough Although the amount of informa tion undertake tasks continuously, using time digital technologies and wi th the pr olif- ► Interim and Shared Information Security Officer (ISO) that can b e transmitted via typical online differences as a comp etitive advantage eration of digi tal trails, it becomes easy video platforms is cur rently limited, it in the pr ovision of g oods and servi ces, to create exceedingly precise individual ► Security Policy and Education Development is poised to jump dr amatically as a new has become an effi cient and often highly and team performance and pr oductivity ► Risk Assessments generation of gigabit telecommunications desirable practice in several industries. It is metrics. Having this type of data is essen- Penetration Testing networks is deployed and even rural areas already playing out in the world of finance, tial to creating algorithms for effi ciently ► get connected with mesh wir eless com- where traders operating in global and inte- allocating tasks. Such measurement can ► Identity and Access Management munication tools. Virtual reality devices, grated teams can use minut e advantages be done a t an indi vidual level and also ► Endpoint Management and Security once the purview of science fi ction or in timing to create greater profits. Increas- aggregated across workers. When this data high-cost research labs, are entering retail ingly, this global advantage works for the is collected and used at an individual level, Our actionable solutions are tailored to meet the needs and budgets of our clients. markets with the intr oduction of Oculus worlds of programming, selling, and many however, it creates concerns about a new Rift, which consumers can pur chase for other areas as well and will drive require- kind of T aylorism, potentially increas- about $300. These devices are poised to ments for a new kind of t eam literacy in ing individual stress levels and r aising enter not onl y entertainment spaces but labor markets around the world. concerns about privacy and coercion. We also learning and w ork environments, are already beginning to see this issue enabling people to create shared “realities” Digital Work Trails emerging among packag e delivery work- independent of geographies. As virtual collaboration across borders ers, many of w hom resent continuous At the s ame time, the online so cial becomes ever easier, those w orkers with monitoring of their vehi cles. Online t ask networking industry has seen enormous the ability to orchestrate, shape, and platforms such as Upwork can see at what growth over the las t decade. T hese sites productively participate in ad ho c value time of day what type of workers are most phone 888.699.4440 20 EDUCAUSEreview MAY/JUNE 2016 www.MoranTechnology.com © 2016 Moran Technology Consulting Inc. All rights reserved

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productive anywhere in the world or what fundamentally reshape many of our basic as something that can be taken apart and type of coding is most efficiently done in a assumptions about production itself. The reconfigured and remixed in new ways. particular country. LiveOps measures time manufacturing industry and, by e xten- spent by eac h freelance agent on a t ask: sion, the nature of many economies will be Community Labs and Maker Spaces time spent with a customer can be logged transformed in the process. To accommodate the growing DIY move- in and correlated with an outcome such as ment, the numb er of communi ty labs making a sale. Growth of Maker/DIY Movements (such as BioC urious) and manuf actur- Maker and DIY (do-i t-yourself) com- ing clubs (such as TechShop) has grown Maker Mindset: Democratizing munities are growing around the world, over the past few years. These spaces, for Production and Creation resulting in w hat some ar e calling a which members pay a monthly member- The diffusion of mobile t echnologies and hardware renaissance. In jus t the las t few ship fee, serve mul tiple purposes. They personalized tools for cr eation—from years, an entire ecosystem has developed function as r esearch communities, and cheap video cameras to music- and video- to support entrepreneurial hardware they provide places for pr ototyping new editing tools—has gone hand in h and development and h ardware start-ups. A ideas, meeting lik e-minded individu- with the rise of digi tal manufacturing support infrastructure of tools, manuals, als, taking classes, learning fr om ad ho c techniques, particularly the maturation of and instructions for mak ers is gr owing. mentors, and even s tarting companies. 3D printing t echnology. This technology, Alchematter is jus t one example. It is an Such spaces blur the boundaries between a digitally guided ad ditive approach to experimental platform that attempts to work, learning, and so cial communities. manufacturing, enables organize manufacturing BioCurious, for example, is a hacker space operators to assemble and making knowledg e for people interested in synthetic biology. products layer by la yer, into tools, materials, Participants range from academics doing allowing variations to people, and pr ocesses. advanced biology research at universities be built into individual Kind of a Wikip edia for to teenagers wanting to learn and to engi- units. Although remark- making, this pla tform neers and pr ogrammers eager to apply able uses of 3D print - for modular, sequential their engineering e xpertise to biological ing have already been developed, from procedures hopes to create a uni versal systems. A small membership fee enables replaceable machine parts to viable language for making. participants to take classes, work and learn human organs, the t echnology is s till in The maker mindset is fos tering new from others, and colla borate on v arious its infancy. It will r each its full p otential cross-border relationships and par tner- projects. A recent much-publicized proj- in the coming decades as i t is combined ships among engineers, entr epreneurs, ect coming out of BioCurious aims to cre- with emerging biotechnology and nano - designers, and op en source enthusiasts ate phosphorescent trees that can absorb technology applications. The rise of mor e who are connecting thr ough this br oad sunlight during the day and phospho- customizable materials will allow manu - movement. Small entr epreneurs operat- resce at night, thus saving on electricity. facturers to more precisely tailor the mate- ing out of T ech Shops—membership- rial properties of a product to its function. based maker spaces—are linking up wi th Crowdfunding Platforms These technologies and t ools are small flexible manufacturers in China t o With the rise of mak er spaces and mak er contributing to the rise of the g lobal produce products at various scales. F or mindsets, the domains of consumption “maker” and “ hacker” movements—not example, the creators of OpenROV, a mini and production, which we used to think of just in develop ed economies lik e North underwater robot that is used for explora- as being completely different, are becom- America and E urope but also in small tion on ocean floors, designed the proto- ing increasingly blurred. Crowdfunding thriving pockets on ever y continent. type at the TechShop in San Francisco and plays a key role, enabling maker spaces to These movements are offering new path- quickly turned t o Chinese suppliers t o serve as giant experimental labs for creat- ways to education, work, and livelihoods. produce early models. ing new kinds of r elationships between Bottom-up learning communities connect The maker mindset is r eshaping how the people who make things and the p eo- people who want to learn how t o make people approach many arenas, from ple who consume them. Crowdfunding is and build things. F ormal and informal actual design and manuf acturing to how creating new e xpectations on the par t of community workshops and co-w orking we approach social issues, including the people who back campaigns. They are and co-creating spaces give them a place to issues influencing ci ties and educa tion. discovering how much more meaningful use expensive equipment and learn skills Increasingly, people adopting the mak er it is to buy a product (or service) when their from one another. Crowdfunding plat- mindset are less lik ely to accept e xisting dollars actually matter in bringing it to life forms provide a small-scale funding boost, institutions and appr oaches as immu - and when they get a direct emotional con- a source of feedback, and viral marketing. table. Instead, they are likely to view these nection with the people who are providing This world of op en making is p oised to institutions and approaches as hackable— it. In the process, instead of simply buying

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12-25 Feat 1-Gorbis.indd 22 4/19/16 11:27 AM and consuming products, people become any formal c hannels, and t ake advantage labor flows. investors and learn man y of the det ails of of distribution and pr omotion channels At the IFTF, we firmly believe that the how the product is produced, the manu- online. purpose of s ystematically thinking a bout facturing processes behind it, the p eople There is no doubt that the new genera- the future is not to predict the future but to involved, and the materials used. The pro- tion of technologies will open up opportu- help people make better decisions t oday. cess of production is transformed into a nities to those who have the basic literacy There is no data about the future. The only highly social and educational experience. and media savvy to turn these connections data we have is about the past. Historical Betabrand is a f ashion company that into paid w ork. In this sense , continued patterns are important because they gi ve is structuring its interactions with buyers investment in a basic communications us frameworks for thinking. By looking at through a cr owdfunding model. Design- infrastructure that ensures access t o the historical patterns and identifying signals ers and fans submit ideas for products— widest possible number of people should of change around us today, we can b etter such as a “ hoozer,” which is a sui t jacket be a continued priori ty for g overnments prepare for the transformations occurring and a ho odie at the same time—and then and development or ganizations. This in both work and learning. n people vote on whether or not they’re should be coupled wi th an emp hasis on going to fund the idea for pr oduction. So developing literacy and media skills. One Notes consumption is b lending with an inves t- particularly important avenue for achiev- 1. For an exploration of what these transformations tell us about the skills that students will need in ing mentality in a new kind of impact ing this is creating online content that can order to successfully navigate the new landscape, shopping. be accessed in local languages as well as see my article “New Workers, New Skills” in the providing access to a rich ecology of con - online edition of EDUCAUSE Review. 2. Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American: The Implications tent via global sources such as Coursera Unexpected Decline of Leisure (New York: Basic The core set of technologies outlined and edX. Books, 1991); Lydia Saad, “The ‘40-Hour’ above will r eshape work and the la bor Even though many of the emer ging Workweek Is Actually Longer—by Seven Hours,” Gallup, August 29, 2014. force over the next decades, but not neces- platforms and t ools are likely to engage 3. David Autor, “The Polarization of Job sarily in the s ame way under all cir cum- the more educated and connected people, Opportunities in the U.S. Labor Market: stances in all parts of the world. When there is a gr eat opportunity to use the Implications for Employment and Earnings,” Center for American Progress and the Hamilton these technologies combine with external platforms and tools to integrate those who Project, April 2010. economic, social, and environmental fac- have traditionally been excluded from 4. Susannah Palk, “Robot Teachers Invade South tors, they ar e likely to produce different participation in formal organizational Korean Classrooms,” CNN, October 22, 2010. 5. Marco Chown Oved, “Automatic Burger Machine outcomes. structures: those wi th Could Revolutionize Fast Food,” Toronto Star, For example, these disabilities, young peo- November 29, 2012. four technology clus- ple, the elderl y. Much 6. Joel K. Bourne, “Robots of the Gulf Spill: Fishlike Subs, Smart Torpedoes,” National ters will cr eate unprec- of the online w ork can Geographic News, October 27, 2010. edented opportunities be done on a task basis, 7. Michael Chui, James Manyika, and Mehdi for integrating people opening up opp ortu- Miremadi, “Four Fundamentals of Workplace Automation,” McKinsey Quarterly, November from developing coun - nities for those who 2015. tries into global production networks and cannot commit to 9-to-5 or other rigid 8. Freelancers Union, Freelancing in America: 2015, flows of work. While automation will con- schedules (e.g., those wi th caretaking October 2015. 9. Edward Castronova, “On Money and Magic,” tinuously replace many rote and repetitive responsibilities). Engagement and allo ca- Journal of Virtual Worlds Research 2, no. 4 (2009). manufacturing and servi ce jobs, online tion of t asks is done on the basis of skill 10. Institute for the Future and ACT Foundation, platforms such as U pwork will ena ble assessment and r eputation rather than Learning Is Earning 2026 (2015). workers from anywhere in the w orld to being based on in- built social hierarchies © 2016 Marina Gorbis. The text of this article is bid on t asks and b ecome members of and biases, opening up opportunities to licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- extended teams. We are already seeing this previously disenfranchised populations. NonCommercial 4.0 International License. global labor arbitrage in action as w orkers Finally, a lot of the work can be done in Marina Gorbis (Twitter: @ from the Philippines, Indi a, and Pakistan place, thus minimizing the costs associ- mgorbis) is a futurist and are increasingly engaging in edi torial, ated with commuting t o places of w ork, social scientist who serves software development, and s ales tasks usually in ci ties, and ag ain opening up as executive director to the using online work platforms. At the same opportunities: for those in rur al areas or Institute for the Future (IFTF), time, many more people from around the the elderly. Here again, the focus on digital a Silicon Valley nonprofit world are able to access capi tal through access and inclusion, coupled with invest- research and consulting organization. She is various crowdfunding and peer-to-peer ments in education, can result in substan- the author of The Nature of the Future: Dispatches mobile online platforms as well as cr eate tial advances in int egrating previously from the Socialstructed World (2013). storefronts, attract customers outside of disadvantaged populations into global

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