Article link: New forms of online communication spell end of email era in Korea This article cites research that finds that over two-thirds of high school and college students in two South Korean provinces rarely or no longer use email to communicate. Younger generations are instead turning to SMS, IM and blogs to communicate. “Email’s [...]

Allee, V. (2003). The future of knowledge: increasing prosperity through value networks. Amsterdam ; Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann. Allee provides a collection of frameworks and ideas to help organizational leaders navigate through the challenges in a knowledge-based society. Her value network approach identifies key and exploitable relationships within complex, dynamic, organizational systems. These ideas are compatible with [...]

Article link: Issues in Engineering And Technology Education Cut-and-pasted from the article’s abstract: University of Lagos (UNILAG) lecturers, Prof. S. A. Balogun and Dr. D. E. Esezobor in this piece from African Regional Conference on Engineering Education (ARCEE) examine the factors affecting the quality of engineering education at the tertiary level and ways by which [...]

Enders, J. (1999). Crisis? What crisis? The academic professions in the “knowledge” society. Higher Education, 38(1), 71-81. Enders addresses the uncertainty of academic professions at universities in a future, knowledge-based society. The changing role and nature of universities in a knowledge-based society will cause fragmentation and differentiation among the professoriate to proliferate as new concepts [...]

Withinthin thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.

Is such progress avoidable? If not to be avoided, can events be guided so that we may survive? These questions are investigated. Some possible answers (and some further dangers) are presented.

Ogilvy, J. A. (2002). Creating better futures: scenario planning as a tool for a better tomorrow. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press. Ogilvy writes that the future is neither predictable nor constructed of endless possibilities. We can create better futures by thinking ahead and planning with scenarios. In a chapter on using scenarios for educational [...]

Article Link: Computers as authors? Literary luddites unite! (free registration required) The New York Times reports that to write novels, computers don’t need writers anymore. Selmer Bringsjord at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and David A. Ferrucci at IBM created “Brutus.1” an artificial intelligence program that simulates literary creativity. Read one of Brutus.1′s stories.

Article link: Education key to economic survival The BBC‘s Sean Coughlan asks, “how can a small, affluent country such as Finland maintain a high-wage, high-skill economy?” The answer: heavy investment in education and life-long learning. Says the Finnish Minister of Education, “we believe that if we invest in all children for nine years and give [...]

Van der Heijden, K. (1996). Scenarios: the art of strategic conversation. Chichester, England New York: John Wiley & Sons. Van der Heijden argues organizations need to face up to uncertain possible futures. In this book, he argues leaders need to develop organizational processes that foster success. Organizations are characterized as feedback-looped, complex adaptive systems, driven [...]

Senge, P. M. (1994). The fifth discipline: the art and practice of the learning organization (1st ed.). New York: Doubleday/Currency. Senge argues traditional organizational leaders need to “revolutionize” their management philosophy toward the highly conceptual approach of systems thinking as the basis for building learning organizations. He adds this “fifth discipline” to four others: building [...]