Technology, Jobs and the Future of Work
EPISODE 1
DESCRIPTION: By the year 2025, it’s estimated that the confluence of Artificial intelligence, Automation, E-commerce, and Outsourcing may result in The elimination of 47% of the jobs that exist in the U.S. today. Not simply low-wage, low skilled jobs, But, also white-collar positions in the financial, legal and healthcare professions.
EPISODE 2
DESCRIPTION: In an article titled 9 to 5 is for Losers, the New York Times reports that an entire cottage industry has sprung in in Silicon Valley; a movement that celebrates workaholism as a desired lifestyle. The operative word is HUSTLE. The prevailing belief: If you want to succeed, you have to be ready to give up everything.
EPISODE 3
DESCRIPTION: Since the 19th century, the goal of American schooling has been to provide for the fullest possible development of each individual. And yet today, there are those who believe the opposite. That a liberal education is irrelevant and that job-specific training is the new path forward; the only way to ensure that Americans survive in an age defined by technology and shaped by global competition.
EPISODE 4
DESCRIPTION: Transhumanism is a way of thinking about the future that is based on the premise that the human species in its current form does not represent the end of our development but rather a comparatively early phase. Many transhumanists wish to follow life paths which would, sooner or later, require growing into posthuman persons: they yearn to reach intellectual heights as far above any current human genius as humans are above other primates; to be resistant to disease and impervious to aging
EPISODE 5
DESCRIPTION: Today, we live in a world of continuous change. One in which the verities of the past have given way to uncertainty. Like military planners confronted by invisible foes and asymmetrical forces beyond our control, we can no longer assume that our current skills and knowledge will serve us in the future. Instead, we need to embrace new strategies that enable us to successfully adapt to change and uncertainty. And the only way to do that is to place ourselves in a constant State of Readiness.
EPISODE 6
DESCRIPTION: The term Manifest Destiny was first employed in 1845 by magazine editor John L. O’Sullivan in an article on the annexation of Texas. It expressed the belief that it was the providential mission of Anglo-Saxon Americans to expand their civilization and institutions across the breadth of the North American continent. This expansion would involve not merely territorial acquisition but promote the progress of liberty and individual economic opportunity as well.
EPISODE 7
DESCRIPTION: We are a nation of immigrants, and our ability to absorb and integrate 80 million people since 1820 (when records were first kept) has been an achievement without parallel in world history. So successful have we been, indeed, that many nations with no similar history have come to take it as axiomatic that democracy and mass immigration are synonymous,
EPISODE 8
DESCRIPTION: One of our core myths is the belief that individualism is the driving force that forged this nation and makes it great. It was rugged individualism that tamed the West, created our industries, built our cities, our dams and bridges and highways, individualism that enabled us to hold firm when confronted by tyranny and aggression, individualism that continues to stand as the bulwark of both democracy and the American Way.
PRAISE FOR: AGE OF THE OBSOLETE ...
EPISODE 9
DESCRIPTION: Entering into a digital environment draped in virtual reality can be an intense, emotional experience. Technology has progressed so rapidly, that full immersion will soon be achieved. So much so that many of our senses will be “hijacked” to the degree that our mind believes that these digitally constructed worlds are actually real.
EPISODE 10
DESCRIPTION: Today, Americans work the most hours of any industrialized nation in the world. We also take the least amount of vacation days. Yet research continually shows that the key to productivity is not working longer hours but being fully engaged with the task at hand.
EPISODE 11
DESCRIPTION: Today, Americans work the most hours of any industrialized nation in the world. We also take the least amount of vacation days. Yet research continually shows that the key to productivity is not working longer hours but being fully engaged with the task at hand.
EPISODE 12
DESCRIPTION: College graduates, we are told, earn more than high school graduates. And the numbers appear to support that claim. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the wages of college-educated workers have steadily increased over the past two decades … while the annual salaries for those with only a high school education have decreased.
EPISODE 13
DESCRIPTION: First came steam and water power; then electricity and assembly lines; then computerization. This Fourth Industrial Revolution is, however, fundamentally different. It is characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, impacting all disciplines, economies and industries
EPISODE 14
DESCRIPTION: Go into any bookstore in the United States, and regardless of literary trends or political fashion one book that remains as popular today as when it was first published is Atlas Shrugged. In the 1990s, a survey by the Library of Congress named Atlas Shrugged as the most influential book in the US, after the Bible. Written by Russian émigré Ayn Rand in 1957, the 1200-page novel is an ode to unfettered, free market capitalism.