Currently, as we live through a time of accelerations, I observe trends, imagine a better world, and contemplate how to shape the future. While taking a class on the history of entrepreneurship, I practiced idea generating daily, so as I continue to learn about professional foresight, I enjoy generating ideas and expressing vision.
Traditionally schools have followed strict curriculum guides, but as schools in the 21st century realize they need to turnaround, incorporating art and embracing innovative teaching practices helps them to modernize. I envision a public school system in which providing ways for students to think outside the box and engage in creative activities becomes normalized. I envision these creative activities supporting students’ test scores and longer-term careers as well.
Recently, KQED published an article, What Happens to Student Behavior When Schools Prioritize Art, sharing an example of school like the ones I envision in the future. In the article, Sir Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica write about how while traditionally the education system sees no ways to change the rigid operations, “innovative schools everywhere are breaking the mold of convention to meet the best interests of their students, families, and communities”, and schools are embracing “visionary leadership” styles. As schools embrace change, they turnaround and benefit more students in healthy ways.
Students do not only need to perform highly on standardized tests and in STEM; particiapting in school activities, engaging in hands-on projects, and expressing artistically lead to higher flexibility in life, and when teachers support more creative and global learning opportunities, students’ test scores tend to increase because the children have the ability to think more freely as well as logically. The authors of the KQED article present Orchard Gardens Elementary School in Roxbury, Massachusetts as one example of a school in which investing in arts and culture programs helped turnaround the students’ experiences; “test scores were in the bottom 5 percent of all Massachusetts schools” before 2010, but when Principal Andrew Bott arrived he devised “a radically different solution” to address the school’s challenges and “invested…money in arts programs” as well as second language classes. After implementing the new programs, the school found that “the arts classes gave the students fresh enthusiasm for learning”, and the art “created a more stimulating environment and sense of ownership by the children”; students similarly enjoyed learning a second language. With a new approach to education - a broader curriculum, Principal Andrew Bott designed a school where teachers embrace students’ whole selves, students want to learn, and test scores increase.
I envision an education system in which embracing students’ whole selves and letting people grow more expressive, and subsequently healthy grows normalized. As people voice concerns for “systems of oppression” in society, I see creating “systems of expression” starting within schools as key to turning the American culture around.
Community, the word for a “unified body of individuals” helps people connect. People have not been born to live alone because while people need solitude to think, people would die alone; people have been born to come together to interact, think, and communicate with those around them and live, love, and express fully.
In 2019, I first woke up to the spirit of community while visiting a local Starbucks in the neighborhood and seeing the vibrant scene where employees sell coffee and local residents drink, eat, and work. In Starbucks coffeeshops, I can feel the community around and in the space. The spirit of community exists also on the sidewalks, in the public library across the street, and in the art shows around the city.
In a recent article, Why I Found My Community in a Starbucks, Amir Khafagy writes about how he has found community in the local neighborhood Starbucks also. While buying a drink or food, eating, or writing, reading, or chatting, customers build a vibrant, open place to have fun, think, and connect. Khafagy explains how with few public spaces, “Starbucks has emerged for some as a de facto town square. It’s where many of the eclectic personalities that shape the community converge.” People similarly come together to read books, hear public talks, meditate, or create social gatherings at coffeeshops that owners run independently.
Outside of these coffeeshops people can feel a sense of community by walking on the street. While to many individuals, it may feel like strangers pass by them, all individuals move as members of one human race and participate in a broader social system.
Other public spaces like libraries contribute to the common unity within the city, where people can work on more rigorous study and work with other citizens there to guide them to books, activities, or jobs; and art shows support transforming our social systems of oppression into social systems of original expression.
Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote on community in Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? to heal racial and economic divides. His words provide a spiritual and moral compass for community, in which people can fully express in some of the outlets shared in this blogpost. I envision our communities growing more solid, true, artistic, and diverse as the human race advances in the 21st century and people break out of states of being isolated and victimized into states of being valued. As Martin Luther King, Jr. highlights in the last chapter of his book, quoting a famous novelist, “‘A widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together.’ This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited a large house, a great ‘world house’ in which we have to live together - black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu - a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace” (p. 177). Everyone has inherent value within no matter their sub-community, and people can learn from each other and interact peacefully in these public spaces; writing about the future, Martin Luther King, Jr. states, “So we must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody that is far superior to the discords of war. Somehow we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the nuclear arms race, which no one can win, to a creative contest to harness man’s genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all the nations of the world. In short, we must shift the arms race into a ‘peace race.’ If we have the will and determination to mount such a peace offensive, we will unlock hitherto tightly sealed doors of hope and bring new light into the dark chambers of pessimism” (p. 196).
Nature often arises as a topic people consider when expressing concerns, hopes, and predictions for the future. I think that we as a human species can learn to live in harmony with nature. Some people worry that the human species tends to exploit nature; according to Chandigarh in ‘We have exploited nature in the name of development’, Friedrich Nietzsche once remarked, “The world is beautiful, but has a disease called man.” Then Chandigarh asks, “is it too late to correct our mistakes?” I do not think that the time has run out for humans to correct mistakes. Natural systems restore themselves because of the essence of the universe Humans must take their ego out of the way for this to happen, however; humans must not seek to dominate the earth but rather live in harmony and more gently with it, and change starts from within systems through perception.
The universe, which includes humanity and nature, originally lives in harmony and perfect equilibrium. “All that exists, all that is animate and inanimate, owes its existence to the Source, which helps to nurture, sustain, protect, motivate, feed, and cover under its protection. All these systems harmonize spontaneously…There’s no need for human oversight of natural processes, and any attempts to artificially manipulate natural systems usually have undesirable outcomes…The Mother of all things is our common origin.” according to Michael McCurley in (p. 70, The Tao of Systems Thinking).
Where, then, does evidence for nature being out of balance come from? I agree with McCurley that evidence is an effect of humans’ limited perceptions - “A problem exists in the rather short perspectives we have of day to day existence in our own lifteimes. We tend to preceive things around us in limited time frames as individuals, who don’t take much larger dynamic time spans into acocunt, which we haven’t yet fully understand” (p. 7, The Tao of Systems Thinking). Growing more aware of the naturally restorative systems already in flow across time, and realizing that people to tend to need to dominate over their environment due to fear, conflict, and want, will bring humanity back into balance with its surroundings. Pointing out the success of people in society who have stepped outside of their own limited self and have grown aware of natural principes, McCurley writes, “Leaders who have real understanding of systems recognize that social systems can function in harmony because they’re interrelated, like natural systems, with one another. Those who have this wider perception are more flexible, and learn to work without self-interest because they care about others and realize that this is the best way to ensure our well-being as individuals and as a species. The best leaders have an essential understanding of how things work” (p. 10, The Tao of Systems Thinking).
I think it’s possible to foresee a world in which nature integrates into humans’ lives within the city more and helps people to find restoration and greater balance. Great work lives in urban areas; thus people tend to populate in urban areas. Urban areas need to stay healthy, however, and so do the people within them; integrating natural design into these places for the future will thus sustain the earth for the third millennium. Spaces within cities can exist for animals that can share the area in equilibrium with people; buildings can incorporate natural lighting, greenery on ceilings and walls; cars can use solar energy; and space on the streets can allow for more air to breathe, inspiration to receive, and room to walk. Just envision how cool this natural design within cities is for nature, animals, and people alike! Others have been ideating as well around this topic. What an energetic world we can create for the future when living in more natural flow with the source of universal life.
I can imagine a rebirth in salons as places for civic dialogue in cities across the US and elsewhere in the 21st century. Our cities already have many coffee shops; students with degrees in the liberal arts, in particular, joke that they might only have the opportunity to work as a barista after graduating college. But these types of open spaces - including libraries and open work spaces like WeWork and The Assemblage - I think have the potential to flourish in the 21st century if designed intentionally to support dialogues across business, the work being done in and in reaction to the daily news, and government.
Much news write now circulates across algorithmically-driven platforms, and the country’s citizens watch debates where politicians yell at each other. Where are the dialogues and productive conversations taking places across divides? These dialogues (see Bohm’s On Dialogue) must happen for healthy civic engagement and flourishing cities. I avidly believe in the future of 21st century salons with a formalized structure and focus on continuous and integrated learning, dialgoue, and creative problem solving. America would not exist without these types of 18th century salons that developed into a formalized structure with a “focus on literature, learning, and debate”. Many of the country’s founding documents “were studied and discussed in the salons of Paris”, and “American diplomats and visitors like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson used these”. These open spaces filled with people engaged in dialogues on the daily news and science, creating useful products, and responding to the news and science with fulfilling projects would enliven the participative democracy in the 21st century.
To broaden this vision even further, I can envision in the future a “Life School” that integrates common learning as it relates to the intellect, business practice, law, government, arts and creative endeavours, policy, and science, where all freely can participate in Renassiance learning through “Life’s classrooms” but more quickly apply seamlessly what they learn directly to valuable projects.
According to Wikipedia, “Data Science is an interdisciplinary field about processes and systems to extract knowledge or insights from data in various forms, either structured or unstructured, which is a continuation of some of the data analysis fields such as statistics, data mining, and predictive analytics, similar to Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD).”
William S. Cleveland coined the term ‘data science’ at the beginning of the 21st Century. In 2001, he wrote, “Data Science: An Action Plan for Expanding the Technical Areas of the Field of Statistics.”
Some people have compared the data scientist’s profession to that of the doctor’s profession. “Tell Your Kids to be Data Scientists, Not Doctors”, people argue. There are many types of doctors that specialize differently - psychiatrists, primary care physicians, neurologists, and more. Similarly, the legal profession has standards and exams admitting people to the field. The data science profession, still new, has not had these standards developed yet.
As the use of data proliferates through business, government and academia, and the new job title — the data scientist — emerges, “an extensive committee of educators” at the well-established National Academy of Sciences “provides perspectives on the current state of data science education and poses questions that could help shape the way data science education evolves”. Questions include the following:
While the National Academy of Sciences, established technology companies and consulting firms are working with General Assembly to develop data science professional standards. “Everyone — from highly skilled data scientists to novices who have yet to write their first lines of code — must infuse data science principles into their work to capture the full opportunities offered by today’s technology transformation. We’re speeding this evolution within our firm by launching a multi-year journey to train thousands of Booz Allen employees as data scientists. And, we’re excited to bring our expertise to help formalize the broader industry effort to codify a standard and certification through the Data Science Standards Board”. As the data science practice expands, “leaders across the industry need to work together on common standards that provide more transparent pathways to prepare individuals for success as data scientists”.
In the future, I think the data science field can become more guarded with ways to specialize and ways to be admitted into the field based on the types of data a professional uses, the technologies they use and develop, how professionals receive education, the domain they work in, and how professionals move through different stages in their careers. General Assembly has started to support envisioning the profession’s future by breaking down role levels in the article as detailed below.
What is culture? Culture is a set of social behavior and norms. And while culture is more “fuzzy” to define, nuanced, and something people understand through intuition, culture in this new age may serve as a differentiator for those developing modernized infrastructures.
As “software eats the world”, every organization has to think about how techology integrates into daily operations. And for those with the ambition to develop a differentiated set of integrated software components for a specific goal, the culture around that set of software components may further drive success and drive the shape of the technology.
How can culture drive the shape of the technology? In STS, there’s a theory in which technology is arguably embedded in the social world. Technology is a set of tools constructed in a setting to support a set of social behaviors, so a knowledge and conceptualization of social behaviors can influence how people construct the set of tools.
In a world in which many companies may have the ambition to develop a differentiated set of integrated software components, it will be the organizations that combine software development with artistic endeavor, socially-oriented goals, intellectual rigor, and lively social norms that succeed. This is so because they will become multidimensional if done in a unidirectional way.
With these thoughts, I argue that as “software eats the world”, culture is one of the last things to be “eaten”. As software automates tasks, curates and recommends contents, and drives decisions, culture has to support the people creating the software or other products, services, and experiences, as well as making decisions with technological support; technology won’t develop understanding of cultural nuances quickly easy - only humans can do that. Unlike artificial intelligence, cultural intelligence requires understanding the details in group dynamics, intepersonal communications, and unspoken policies; and culture develops through human authenticity, genuity, heart, and intellect. As society heads into a world where the market demands superieror experiences, culture will have to develop finely to differentiate one organization from another.
Leading thinkers have pointed out that people in the millennial generation and generation Z demand more socially conscious behavior than does anyone in other generations. Some people also argue that businesses more efficiently develop and use resources in comparison to organizations in the social or public sectors. If businesses generate the most value and run society through a free market, then how should business stakeholders hold businesses accountable? I think that for the world’s long-term growth, businesses must integrate strategic social impact goals with financial goals, and for people to compare businesses by how they contribute to social goals.
I envision a world in which goals, like the social development goals, guide business institutions. I envision an ecosystem with intersecting organizations, institutions, and systems that contribute to the goals in diverse ways, while also monitoring metrics. I envision a world in which businesses listen to stakeholders.
Work that supports this vision includes Paul Tudor Jones’s thoughts on “Why We Need to Rethink Capitalism”, and it’s exciting to learn about alinear technological development that can further support reaching goals.
Data Science is a buzzword right now. Virtual reality will soon be also. The internet once was a buzzword. So was telegramming, I’m sure. But onto shaping the future with virtual relation…
These are examples of ways this people may deploy this new technology. More exist, but the emerging ways businesses will have the opportunity to adopt it will open up new verticals and horizons.
Why will VR be helpful? Or will it just be a new gadget? I think that VR will become another way to minimize the distance between people through high touch experiences. I think that VR will become another way to help eliminate resources. There may be unintended consequences to prepare for, however; for example, with the rise of social media usage and the internet, people report that teenagers are becoming increasingly anxious and depressed, though technologies do not necessary cause this anxiety. Will VR have any secondary consequences on mental well-being, and how can technology deployers consider such consequences?
The classes in a liberal arts and sciences program cover broad topics; liberal arts and sciences programs develop fluid thinking. In a liberal arts and sciences program, one learns to understand and sense culture, read and think critically, dialogue and debate in writing and orally, as well as study phenomena objectively and scientifically. If one commits to a true liberal arts and sciences education, he or she will take courses across multiple disciplines from painting to classics to astronomy to computer science; and with a broad education, especially if he or she finds common themes that run across the disperse disciplines, he or she might learn to connect the dots across disciplinary boundaries; adapt himself or herself to different people, thinking styles, and situations; and develop a unique value proposition.
Often, politicians, businessmen, and technologists criticize the unrealistic, liberal arts and sciences education model. Critics argue that “a liberal arts degree does not prepare people for jobs.” I argue that a liberal arts and sciences degree prepares people for future careers and supports their developing the abilities to think beyond a job or a title.
In the 21st century, with rapid technological and political change, uncertainties exist. Leading management consultants talk about the various pressures on organizations due to change and the uncertainty about how the world will continue to change in the future; the pressures on organizations then put pressure on people within organizations. Everything is in flux. The nature of work is changing. And people do not know what the jobs of the future will become. Thus people and organizations must work flexibily and fluidly.
To shape the world beyond what is in flux, one must be adaptable, have a strong educational foundation, and have an opinion. Committing to liberal arts and sciences education, where skills attained may be broader and cross-disciplinary, from writing to coding, liberates one to see beyond a highly specialized job and then work fluidly through the workplace. The education model liberates one to question what is most valuable and to influence what could be valued. The education frees one from the fear of what jobs will exist in ten years because students carry the ability to imagine what jobs can become.
The dean at UVA has introduced a new curriculum that facilitates more interdisciplinary studies. Critics might accuse that when I was at UVA, I was scattered while taking courses across the drama, history, english, computer science, media studies, and math departments; but by taking classes across the disciplines, I was able to see trends relating to global and technological change, revolutions, entrepreneurship, mental models, and paradigms, as well as develop skills ranging from writing to coding to speaking to modeling that can only enhance one another if well-used. While the liberal arts and sciences educational form does not lead to instant gratification in the professional world, I think that the ability to see phenomena from multiple perspectives and quickly shift perspectives will become helpful in the long term. People criticize the liberal arts and sciences form of education, but I think the education model will support freedom continuing to ring and America’s values continuing to sing long into the 22nd century.
Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered, among many, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC the following words:
“And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of ‘interposition’ and ‘nullification’ – one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; ‘and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.’”
The power of a vision, or a dream is strong.
People use the word “strategic thinker”, claiming to be one. Through this blog, I want to argue that Martin Luther King demonstrated the art of strategic thinking through his sharing his dream to the nation. He did not speak as a president; he spoke as an African American in a country still segregated. He was putting himself at risk by speaking to the public. Not all in power shared his vision, but as a leader, he was convicted that the country was rooted in freedom and included all races, so strategically by sharing his dream, he had to support the systemic breakthrough for African Americans. Because of his strategic foresight into how the country needed to be shaped for the improvement of it, he let his voice echo through the valley, the hill, the mountain, the rough places, and the crooked places.
It’s up to us to to live his dream, but I believe that we can continue to shape a world where equality is normal. We can lift each other up and embed values of freedom, equality, and inclusiveness into our systems - social, data, and technical. How can we do this? There may be ways to measure social freedom, equality, or inclusiveness in organizations. There may be ways to measure how algorithms affect social freedom or social inclusiveness. There may be ways to systemically break down mental, physical, or technical barriers by becoming more aware of what still blocks complete integration. These are just a few of many - but the dream, I believe, must continue to be dreamt, and lived strategically.