Tag Archives: future

Not normal any time soon

I’m thrilled that Pfizer has results that their vaccine is very effective. I think it’s fantastic that there is at least one other company with equally positive results. This is great news. What it isn’t, is news that things will be back to normal soon.

Best case scenario as I see it, the vaccine will be out in March or April. Then the priorities of who gets one first will be very evident. Of course the elderly, immune deficient, and health support workers will be top of the list. But then comes the ugly truth: The rich, the famous, and the high profile sports athletes will be next. There will be a lot of negative news about this, but it’s the reality of the world we live in.

It will be the end of 2021 before widespread distribution is possible and we will be able to see what life after Covid-19 looks like at the start of 2022.

I’d like to be wrong, and want to see things happen faster, but I’m not holding my breath. 2021 will not be normal, we won’t know what that will look like for another year.

Until then, keep doing the things you need to do to be safe. Diligence in care for ourselves and our community is what the ‘current normal’ needs to be for a while longer.

We are not alone

I love this quote by Arthur C. Clarke:

“Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.”

When I comprehend the size and scale of the universe, it is inconceivable to me that humans are the only intelligent life that seeks to understand and explore the stars and worlds beyond our own. It just seems staggeringly beyond possible that we could be alone in the universe.

I also think about Arthur C. Clarke’s 3 Laws. From Wikipedia:

British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke formulated three adages that are known as Clarke’s three laws, of which the third law is the best known and most widely cited. They are part of his ideas in his extensive writings about the future.

These so-called laws are:

  1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

  2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

  3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

His most famous of these is the 3rd one. Imagine being born 2000, 1000, 500, or even 150 years ago and being shown an iPhone or a self-driving Tesla. It would surely seem like magic or witchcraft.

I truly doubt that we will have any significant technology leap in my lifetime to see any meaningful human space travel beyond revisiting our moon. Our technology won’t get that magical so quickly. Therefore, if we were to meet aliens in my lifetime, it would be because they poses technology that seems magical to us.

So, at least in the short term, if we are visited, it will be from highly advanced aliens. I wonder what they would think of our divided, polluted planet? Would they see a primitive species? Which, if any, of our cultures would they look at and say, “I think they are on the right track”?

When I think of the idea that we are not alone, and that if we are visited, the visitors will be highly advanced compared to us, what would they say about how we treat each other? How we treat other species? And, how we treat our world?

Common Sense and Speculation

I was planning a long post to look at Covid-19 numbers and the pandemic. With global numbers around 1/2 a million new cases a day and 18-20% of those in the US, it is fairly obvious that the 2nd wave is clearly upon us. Some would argue that the second wave is worse than the first wave. I don’t think so, but I do think we are at a dangerous point where it could get worse.

I started taking screen shots and saving links to research, but I really don’t have it in me this Sunday afternoon to be writing a formal essay on Covid-19. If you want some supporting resources, here is a LinkTree to some great research from an epidemiologist.

The following is what has me concerned right now about the pandemic:

1. Of course the numbers now are worse than wave 1. During wave 1 people couldn’t get tested, there weren’t enough tests out there. A relative in California had covid in March and was sent home without a test. She isn’t a March/wave 1 statistic, as many hundreds of thousands were not, simply from a lack of testing. However, that doesn’t mean that the numbers now are good, and without effort to slow the spread, they will get worse.

2. Some people are easily fooled and manipulated. The idea that masks are either something political or something that infringes on personal rights is asinine. That people mix up being a good citizen with being a rule-following sheep is insulting to the human race. We have survived as tribes, and communities, and as a species because we are communal and support each other in times of need. We are in a time of need to cooperate and support each other.

3. There is only one way to achieve herd immunity that is morally acceptable and that is with a vaccine. Any other approach is a disregard for human life and for the most vulnerable people in our society.

4. We will need a large percentage of the population to get vaccinated. This won’t happen initially. I’m completely pro-vaccine. I’m booked for a flu shot. I will get a Covid-19 vaccine… but I’m not racing to get one that has been rushed to market without being properly tested.

5. Speculations: These are assumptions I’m making, unlike the things above that are based on facts, research and common sense, these are things that I believe will happen in the future. (Hopefully still based on common sense, but I could be wrong!)

A) We will have a safe vaccine in 6 months to a year. What that means is that we will be heading into 2022 before we have a grasp of how well we will come out from the shadow of this virus.

B) We will start to see some normalcy to our world in the middle of 2021 because rapid testing will be affordable and widespread. So things like travel can happen with 1-3 day quarantines rather than 14 days. Entire offices or schools could get tested and contact tracing will help reduce the spread. So, despite the vaccine taking more time to arrive, with proper efforts to protect ourselves and to be willingly tested, things will get better before widespread vaccine adoption.

C) Anti-vaccination and anti-mask groups will stop getting the over-glorified attention they don’t deserve, and they will diminish in size. I’m most likely to be wrong with this speculation if the current US president is re-elected, and his downplaying Covid-19 propaganda is permitted to continue.

D) Despite my optimism that anti-vaccine and anti-mask groups popularity will wane, I think we will struggle with: Conspiracy theories being confused for news; Fake news being so common and well presented that it will become harder to distinguish from real news; And, social media will continue to promote the spread of bad ideas for quite some time. We are going to witness an epic battle between Truth, fake news, censorship, and sensationalization that will leave everyone wondering where they can look to find any information that doesn’t need fact checking?

So, take a deep breath, and buckle up for another year of uncertainty. We need to recognize that nothing is going back to 2019’s version of normal for some time. That said, we need to support each other, do our part, keep our BS filters on high alert, and make smart choices as we head into the holiday season and the new year.

How long before ‘Un’school is the kind of school most kids choose?

This Hyderabad-based edtech startup aims to help students ‘un’school themselves

This is an example of disrupting higher education that I wrote about recently.

An affordable online learning ecosystem which provides a course, mentorship, projects, and guaranteed internship opportunities.

I’ve wanted to see opportunities like this at Inquiry Hub (at high school). Not for every kid, for kids that want it. But I also think that as we create these opportunities, more students will want it… if not in high school, certainly instead of an overpriced college education.

How is ‘un’schooling going to change the look of schools and universities in the future?

AI, Education, and Teachers

Have you ever had a medical scan? Have you looked at the scan afterwards? While it’s easy to look at an X-ray and see a broken bone, something like an MRI is much more difficult to read and interpret. And while an X-ray is a single shot at each angle, an MRI is numerous shots of the same angle in many layers. MRI’s create a massive amount of data for a technician or a doctor to look through. Already there are computers using Artificial Intelligence (AI) that are better than humans at finding anomalies that doctors would want to know about.

In education there are AI tools being developed that can make incredible diagnostic and pedagogical decisions to help a learner. An example is in Math: A student solves a math problem and gets the answer wrong. The AI looks at the error and recognizes it as a common mistake made by a certain percentage of students, and then suggests a tutorial (interactive) video that helps over 95% of students who make that error learn from their mistake. Just in time teaching based on responsive feedback from the learner.

AI can be a great teacher for computational thinking problems, teaching algorithms, and content-based information. If that’s all a teacher did, that teacher could be replaced. But that’s not all a teacher does! Algorithms can inform us of a real world problem, like climate change or air pollution, but they won’t necessarily help us solve these problems.

AI is decades away from being able teach us to be more collaborative, better citizens, or creative problem solvers. These skills are what teachers of the future will focus on. Let AI teach kids the basics of math, but then use that math to solve interesting problems – “The way to teach your kids to solve interesting problems…  is to give them interesting problems to solve.” ~ Seth Godin

We need to help students solve interesting and messy problems, we need to give them voice and choice, we need to help them develop their leadership and collaboration skills. We need to foster creativity, and allow students the opportunity to think outside the scope of questions that have a single answer.

If we don’t do these things in education, then not only are we going to give up our jobs to AI that can teach basic knowledge better than we can… we are also doing a disservice to our students, who deserve to learn skills that make them better, more useful, and adaptable citizens in an ever-changing world.

Decades behind where we should be

I have been on Alexa with my in-laws for over an hour trying to help them set up a wireless printer. We just got disconnected after they tried to take Alexa over to the router. This is way harder than it should be. It’s worse than trying to load disks and follow the instructions, so that I could access the internet through AOL… back in the late 80’s!

I just reconnected with my in-laws and they’ve had enough for the night. I’m not sure if they are truly done or if they just feel that they are taking too much of my time… they aren’t but I’m guessing that’s playing on their minds anyway.

Here’s the thing, none of this is easy and I’d probably struggle a bit even if I was there. It wasn’t just me trying to help them navigate a simple menu, it was a confusing set-up. The tiny keyboard gave limited buttons that my in-laws struggled with, having to hit the 1/2 button twice for 2 and the 3/4 button twice for the number 4. It’s a complicated 10-digit password on the wifi that is the default set-up. It’s the printer asking for a PIN rather than Wifi Password as the default, with PIN instructions buried somewhere in the tiny font instructions.

It’s not just this printer. I recently spent an hour and half helping my daughter switch to a new iPhone. I couldn’t load a purchased app on my TV to let it screen share easily from our Apple products. I spent about 30 minutes trying to sync two bluetooth speakers that have a ‘friendly’ app to help me.

How is it that in this day and age of connectivity, nothing likes talking to each other and every connection takes so much effort?

Economic mysteries

I don’t pretend to understand economics, but I’m beyond confused about what’s going on in the world? Countries are printing money like mad, but inflation is in check and so are interest rates.

It’s a seller’s market in real estate and price wars are happening. Family members got over asking price for a condo just north of Toronto. A friend of mine just got $100,000 over asking for a townhouse in Vancouver without inspection/conditions.

I understand why companies like Microsoft and Amazon have highly valued stocks, they have truly benefited from remote working/learning and lockdowns, but why is the whole stock market doing well, while retail companies and restaurants are laying off staff and imploding?

I’ve just tried a couple times to explain these patterns, but deleted each attempt. They are pure speculation on my part.

My fear? An eroding middle class and a world divided between the have’s and the have nots. Is this how it starts? It’s shocking how many people live paycheque to paycheque, and I’m not sure those numbers are getting better? Is this upside down and inflated economy going to last? And if it doesn’t, how will this effect the poor? The middle class?

I hope someone is paying attention and looking to the future, because I don’t think I’m the only one that sees this as a big, puzzling mystery.

Disrupting higher education

Universities and colleges are going to be around for a while, but two things are disrupting the need for many students to attend an expensive school for four or more years;

1. Targeted Certification

2. Coronavirus

Tackling the second one first, students are questioning the value of what they are paying to go to school, when suddenly most or all of their courses are online due to COVID-19. The interesting thing is that not all of them are going to head back to class and think that the experience is still worth it. Smaller universities are already struggling and if things don’t bounce back, the cost of doing business on a smaller scale are going to force costs to rise. Lower enrolment and higher costs are a double edged sword that some universities won’t survive.

As mentioned, targeted certification is another blow to the modern university. Have a look at this article Google Has a Plan to Disrupt the College Degree. For the cost of textbooks for a semester, Google is providing certification, in just 6 months, in fields where students can come out to decent paying jobs.

A few years back my nephew took an 18-month comprehensive course that cost a lot of money. The program could be paid up front, or by giving up a percentage of salary for the first 2 years after graduation. The skills training was so good and in demand, that most students took the expensive choice of paying up front, knowing they were likely going to land a 6-figure (or close to 6-figure) salary when they came out. It was a hard 18 months, but my nephew (who lives in California) landed a job with a Silicon Valley start-up soon after finishing this program.

Engineers, doctors and nurses, and other professions that require comprehensive certification will still require a university degree for quite some time now, but there is going to be a big shift to certifications and polytechnical schools.

I’m happy to have started higher education with a general arts degree that took me longer than 4 years to get. It was an amazing time. But I was able to get that degree with under $10,000 debt to my name. Many students today leave their first 4-year degree with much much more debt, and only the promise of more schooling before they can find a job and start paying back their debt.

Universities are becoming the place to either get professional degrees, or places for the affluent to spend a few years growing up, or a place for less affluent students to start accumulating debt. Meanwhile, job specific skills training and certification programs are sprouting up and challenging the need for many to go to university. This disruption is coming fast, and I think we are going to see many universities struggle to transition what they look like for a lot of students who will opt out of this path of higher education.

Foot operated buttons

Crosswalks, elevators, doors, and kiosks are examples of things that we operate with our hands. They are frequently used contact points that can spread coronavirus. We see people using their elbows, car keys, or the bottom of their shirts to shield from directly touching these high use contact points. Soon we will see the level of these contact points lowered so that we can operate them with our feet.

It’s easy to push a door, door latch, or a button with your shoe. It makes sense that we use our covered feet rather than our uncovered hands to do this. I’m not sure if we will see hand-level options removed, or just foot level options added. To accommodate wheelchair use or impaired vision, it would help to have both options.

Also, design of these lower, foot-powered options will require significant durability improvements, people are far more likely to kick a button much harder than they would press one with their finger. And these buttons or push bars will need to be larger than the options for fingers and hands. But I think we will see these options, and automatically opening doors far more frequently in the coming year.

Water fountains are an example where this already started to happen and it makes sense that we will see this trend amplified.

What else will we see being foot operated in the future?

A step behind

I asked my daughter if she saw this new way of cutting a mango?

“Dad, you are so behind on your Tik Tok trends, I saw that ages ago.”

Yes, I’m behind. We all are in different areas of our lives. There is always a new tool, a new approach, a new technique that you will bump into.

The iPhone did everything with one button, now the new ones don’t have a button. People try to put gas in Teslas. Light switches you touch instead of toggle. Apps update, move things around, and add features you need to stumble on to know they are there. And now even the rules for social engagement keep changing.

No one is ‘caught up’, everyone is a step behind somewhere. These days, that’s normal. Things change quickly. Some would say too quickly. But things change, and we catch up.

We just need to give ourselves a little time. We just need to accept some ambiguity and unknown. We need to be unafraid to ask questions. We need to know that it’s ok to feel a little behind… as long as we aren’t stagnating, we are moving forward.