The Next 25 Years | No Country for Teachers | Canada’s Leaf Changes Color

Yesterday Pnut’s Publisher attended the Wired 25 conference in San Francisco, a conference celebrating Wired magazine’s 25th anniversary. The speakers were the who’s who of global tech leaders: Jeff Bezos (Amazon’s CEO), Sundar Pichai (Google’s CEO), Satya Nadella (Microsoft’s CEO), and Jack Dorsey (Twitter’s CEO). Here are the relevant and rapid takeaways of the event and also some predictions on the next 25 years of technology and society:

• Over the past 25 years technology has become the dominant industry so much so that today if your business or company is not tech enabled, then there is a very high probability that it will soon be out of business. Note that 25 years ago Sears was one of the largest businesses (Amazon before Amazon existed) and yesterday it filed for bankruptcy.
• The largest companies today (the majority being tech) did not exist 25 years ago. 25 years from now, the largest companies have probably not even been founded yet.
• Technology has enabled and contributed to the erosion of America’s middle class as it enables vast amounts of wealth and ownership to pool to the relatively small number of employees at these companies.
• These companies today are so large that they are better thought of as techopolies. But because our laws are so far behind the tech industry it will be a very long time before a tech trustbuster is able to break their monopolistic power. When that trustbuster arrives she will be remembered just as much as Teddy Roosevelt was.
• The techopolies are more powerful than nation states. And many of them think of themselves as responsible to not just the United States but to a global stakeholders (for example Google in China. And Google’s CEO said they are indeed exploring launching Google search in China). It’s shocking that today people find it shocking when an American CEO says “We are going to continue to support the Department of Defense and I think we should.”
• Our laws, societal values, and cultural understanding of the impacts of technology are so far behind what is being used and being launched. Hence Russia was able to influence our 2016 elections, and there will be more negative effects of new technology exposed in the coming months to years (smartphone addiction, how overusing social networks is bad for one’s mental health, the ability to quickly spread misinformation, etc…)
• The greatest threat to the techopolies is not domestic competition as they are swallowing-acquiring would be competitors, and not regulators as many senators don’t even understand how these companies work or even what they do. But Chinese companies. We are in a trade war with China, the next war might be a tech one or cyberwar, and the one after is hopefully not a real one.
• The vast majority of consumer technology companies make the vast majority of their revenue via advertising (Google, Facebook, and increasingly Amazon). Google is in the search business, Facebook is in social networks, but they are all in the business of better connecting advertisers with consumers and trying to get more eyeballs on their platforms. Many of the consumer tech companies are best understood as large media companies. They are in the business of harvesting attention and eyeballs.
• There is a reason that the vast majority of “tech elites” do not want or strictly limit their kids using their own tools. They know the inherent yin-yang associated with their tools.
• The most responsible and mature CEOs among the many seemed to be Jeff Bezos in his understanding of the responsibilities of big tech companies, and Marc Benioff in how he personally feels responsible to give back to future generations via his philanthropy and political influence, and his realization that business and society are interconnected.
• Artificial intelligence is overhyped currently but it is underhyped in the middle to long run.
• We hope Pnut will be around in 25 years.

Source: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

Why Teaching for America is Increasingly Unappealing: There was a time in America when pursuing a career in education was a fine thing to do. It was always more of a social consciousness pursuit than a money-making path; no one ever accused teachers of becoming inordinately wealthy. But the profession has been suffering more and more from fading competitiveness, which is manifesting itself in recruitment and quality. Public schools are facing a staffing crisis, and the drop in competitiveness will make it worse. While teachers’ salaries have increased almost everywhere in the world since 2005, in America, salaries have actually dropped over the past decade. Poor pay is a career non-starter. Education funding has been cut in many red states by Republican governors, engendering a wave of teacher strikes this year, and motivating a growing number of teachers to run for political office.

It is a phenomenon perplexing observers elsewhere, particularly in Europe. The majority of people on both sides of the Atlantic tend to agree that teachers are important, and deserve to be well paid. But no other developed country besides the US has such a large gap between salaries paid to teachers and to professionals with similar degrees. Germany, for example, cites its teachers as among that nation’s top earners, often out-pacing Web developers or sometimes even entry-level doctors. Europe’s social welfare states generally perceive education as a right rather than a privilege. College is free in many of those nations; some countries, Denmark for example, even pay people to attend. Contrastingly, the idea of government assistance in the form of a robust social welfare system is routinely attacked by those on the right.

Ukraine is Doing What Facebook Can’t: Ukraine’s leaders are attempting to make the Ukrainian Orthodox Church completely free from its current Russian affiliations. Ukrainian leaders hope that this divide will be the start of the country further distancing itself from their Russian ties. The Russian side of the church has responded to the separatist plans stating, “The Russian Orthodox Church won’t sit idly by and watch this”. The decision will ultimately fall to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the leader of the Orthodox Christians, who will be deciding the fate of the church within the coming days. (WaPo)

That’s Not A Far-Right, That’s A Far-Right: Between their giant spiders, fiendishly hot summers, and constant knife size comparisons– Australians are not known for their subtlety. So when it comes to the Australian far-right party, One Nation, they’re a bit more blunt with their plans. The Australian Senate voted 31 to 28 to squash an “It’s OK to be white” motion that would force the senate to acknowledge the “rise” in anti-white racism. The motion was originally started by One Nation’s leader (and all around fun gal) Pauline Hanson. The leader of the Green party, Richard Di Natale acknowledged that “It’s OK to be white” “has got a long history in the white supremacist movement”(Guardian) Additional read: “Government blames ‘administrative error’ for its support for ‘it’s OK to be white’ vote.”

– “Google and Orange building cable between US and France: The 6,600km undersea cable will open in 2020 and is one of seven Google is building over the next two years” (Guardian)

Canada’s Leaf Changes Color: On Wednesday Canada will legalize marijuana after 95 years of prohibition, only the second country in the world, after Uruguay, to do so. How will cannabis change the country’s culture you ask? Well, since Canadians already smoke a lot of pot, probably not much. But it should address that disproportionate conviction rate for cannabis possession that’s historically been handed down to blacks and poor people. (NYT)

Additional watch: “Jay Z (Shawn Carter): ‘The War on Drugs Is an Epic Fail’ (NYT Video). All we know is that the war on drugs has been going on longer than the war in Afghanistan and both can be classified as Forever wars. And just looking outside my window in San Francisco I can definitely say we are losing the war on drugs.

The Blues Finally Get Some Green: Democrats aren’t usually known for their well financed campaigns. However, it seems as though this midterm election is an exception. Democratic candidates are receiving unprecedented donations and funds from grassroot campaigning. Andrew Janz, a Democrat from Fresno California, has raised $4.1 million. Democrats are claiming that this dramatic increase in campaign funds is due to the party’s desperate attempt to unseat any Republican with close ties to Trump. (NPR)

The Right To Craft Arms: In other neighborhoods and garages around the country, gun enthusiasts concerned about the national debate over tighter access to firearms, and legislative efforts to regulate the unfettered sale of bullets and shells, are becoming part of a growing online community of avid do-it-yourself gunsmiths and homemade ammunition fabricators. (NYT)

– “All the president’s men: what to make of Trump’s bizarre new painting:The artwork hanging in the White House depicts the US president drinking with his Republican predecessors” (Guardian)

– “Members Of A Far-Right Men’s Group Violently Beat Up Protesters And Weren’t Arrested. New York Police Won’t Say Why.” (Buzzfeed)

– “The World of 2045: In which we, the 2018 staff of Popular Mechanics, asked the smartest engineers and futurists for their visions of future cities, and built a handbook to navigate this new world.” (Popular Mechanics)

– “Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot: We predicted cell phones, but not women in the workplace.” (Nautilus)

– “Blue And Red Companies: How CEO Activism Is Reshaping Workforce Politics” (NPR)

– “UN Says Climate Genocide Is Coming. It’s Actually Worse Than That.:You now have permission to freak out.” (NY Mag)

– “How An Amateur Rap Crew Stole Surveillance Tech That Tracks Almost Every American” (Forbes)

– “Kanye’s Love For Trump Actually Makes Perfect Sense: Trump and the MAGA lifestyle seem to offer a safe haven to people — like Kanye — who pride themselves on being outsiders and are distrustful of establishment politics.” (Buzzfeed)