Although it is hard to get exact numbers, thousands of science students and professionals are thought to be among those seeking refuge. Now they are the focus of a documentary by Italian artist and film-maker Nicole Leghissa. Her Science in Exile recently premiered at the World Science Forum in Jordan, and will be shown globally in 2018.
What becomes of the scientists among those fleeing war and conflict in Africa and the Middle East, asks a documentary, Science in Exile.
Lots of futurists are in it. A 5-min section on my #transhumanism work, including the Transhumanist Bill of Rights (image of me below writing the first version on steps of US Supreme Court), is in the doc. My section starts about 45:30, and there are some YouTube versions out there too now (google the title Cyborgs Entre Nosotros) if there are issues to watch outside Spain: http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/la-noche-tematica/noche-t…s/4341838/
““Access to science is going to be a first-world privilege,” Geltner says. “That’s the opposite of what science is supposed to be about.””
Cancer can often evade the immune system by sending signals that fool it into thinking that the cancer cells are normal, healthy cells and that it should ignore them. Earlier this year, we reported on an approach to treating cancer in which the immune system can be taught to detect cancer by seeing past the cancer cell’s attempts to hide.
One of these attempts involves a signaling pathway that sends a “don’t Eat Me” signal to the immune system. Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered a second biological pathway that signals the immune system not to engulf and consume cancer cells.
The international authorities overseeing the creation of a unified standard for 5G mobile technologies are expected to release the initial specifications next year and the final phase in 2019, paving the way for the commercial deployment of 5G services by mobile network operators from 2020.
China is one step closer to achieving the reality of seamless, super high speed communications that will enable driverless cars, virtual reality education and nationwide health care services after a partnership comprising China Mobile, Qualcomm and ZTE accelerated efforts to finalise technical standards for the next generation of smartphones.
With the world’s largest population and most number of internet users, China is making a huge bet that the wide roll-out of 5G mobile infrastructure by the country’s three main telecommunications network operators would support the country’s rapid digital transformation – enabling a raft of advanced applications and services that were the stuff of science fiction just decades ago.
Shenzhen-based ZTE Corp and larger rival Huawei Technologies, two of the world’s biggest suppliers of telecommunications equipment used by mobile network operators, are currently leading the development and commercialisation of 5G-related technologies on the mainland.
Somehow, some way, someone paid $450 million, after buyer’s fees, for Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi at Christie’s last Wednesday. Believed to be the last work by the artist in private hands, the painting’s price smashed all previous records.
Since the price also seemed more on par with the education budget of a medium-sized country, Artsy asked a range of leaders from the arts, economics, bioethics, and development to tell us how they’d spend $450 million.
After last week’s recording-breaking sale of a Leonardo da Vinci painting, Artsy asked a range of leadersdevelopment how they’d spend $450 million.
Furthermore, with advancements in quantum computing and machine learning, many notable public figures, including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, have indicated a growing concern with the imminent threat of AI surpassing human intelligence (Gosset, 2017). For instance, Darrell M. West, a political scientist, has proposed a protectionist framework that appeals to transhumanism, in which he restructures socioeconomic policy to account for changes in technology-induced unemployment. In particular, he posits that “Separating the dispersion of health care, disability, and pension benefits outside of employment offers workers with limited skills social benefits on a universal basis” (West, 2015). Expounding upon this equivocation, a more viable solution to potential unemployment is the realization of a multi-faceted policy which advocates the improvement of STEM-related education on a broad economic base, with habituation programs for the unskilled workforce. That is, with the implementation of appropriate and reformatory policies concerning the future development of AI technologies, this sector provides an economic incentive for new job creation, compatible with industrial development.
Prompt: What are the political implications of artificial intelligence technology and how should policy makers ensure this technology will benefit diverse sectors of society?
In recent years, the rapid development and mass proliferation of artificial intelligence have had various sociopolitical implications. It is a commonly held belief that the emergence of this technology will have an unprecedented impact on policies and political agendas. However, such discourse often lacks a geopolitical and social dimension, which limits the breadth of analysis. Further, little consideration has been given to potential employment and public policy reform. Growing concerns have been raised regarding the potential risk inherent in the evolution of strong AI, which provides the basis for transhumanism, whereby it is conjectured that AI will eventually be able to surpass human intelligence. As such, it is incumbent upon the upcoming generation of policymakers to implement and adopt necessary measures, which will provide a careful, multilateral framework, ultimately achieving market-oriented technological advancement with respect to employment and public policy.
Machine learning, the interplay of computer science and neuroscience, is a rapidly developing field that has been a source of much political controversy in recent years. While emerging technologies have significantly improved production quality and efficiency across industries, they have also raised concerns such as job displacement and other unfavourable socioeconomic implications (Karsten & West, 2015). In particular, the growing shortage of job opportunities has furnished increasing levels of unemployment and has, in various instances, lead to unwanted economic stagnation. On the subject of potential future unemployment, many policymakers have proposed an increase in Earned Income Tax Credit, which provides a collateral basic income and encourages profit-sharing (West, 2015).
Why do Silicon Valley technology executives send their children to an almost tech-free school? Several authors have explored this question, including New York University professor Adam Alter. In his book “Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked” Alter explores the case of a San Francisco Steiner-Waldorf school where 75% of students are the children of Silicon Valley tech execs. How ironic.
In this piece I propose some additional reasons why imaginative education is becoming an approach of choice for parents wanting their children to become innovative, ecologically aware and even, as Whitehead suggests, to develop genius.
The three factors of genius are the habit of action, the vivid imagination, and the discipline of judgment. Alfred North Whitehead, 1916.
When we offer children a lifeless, stale education, we not only destroy their vitality, but we dumb them down. Through industrial era excesses we have altered the biosphere to the extent that our planetary homeland may in the foreseeable future become inhospitable for human habitation. Climate crisis is recognised as a global geo-political issue. How can young people be expected to contend with such catastrophic futures? How can we turn around dead, stale thinking, awaken ecological thinking and bring education back to life?
Evolution of consciousness research tells us that 19th century mechanistic thinking is giving way to more life enhancing thinking. In the early 20th century Whitehead’s process philosophy, Einstein’s relativity and quantum physics turned Newton’s building block universe on its head. Is education keeping up?
A few well-known educational pioneers made significant contributions to overhauling the factory model of education and breathing life into it. The ideas of Maria Montessori in Italy, Rudolf Steiner in Germany, John Dewey in the USA and Sri Aurobindo in India are still alive today globally. But they have remained relatively marginalised. How can the best of these ideas be spread?
Several contemporary educational approaches can help to shift static concepts to living thinking. One of the most important is Kieran Egan’s imaginative education. I first met Kieran at the “Imagination and Education Conference” (2009) in Australia, after completing my PhD on evolution of consciousness and its importance for education. I became particularly interested in his five developmental stages of imaginative education: somatic, mythic, romantic, philosophic and ironic. It synergised wonderfully with Jean Gebser’s structures of consciousness: archaic, magical, mythic, mental and integral.
Australian advocate of imagination in education, Bernie Neville, compared Egan’s stages with both Gebser’s structures of consciousness and psychologist Robert Kegan’s orders of consciousness. I discuss this in detail in Postformal Education, in Chapter 9: “Pedagogical Life: A Sustaining Force.”
Other contemporary educators who believe imagination plays a crucial role in transforming education include Jack Miller from Toronto, Ron Miller from the United States and Thomas Nielsen from Australia.
Life and its metaphors are also emphasised in ecological, environmental and sustainability education. David Jardine talks about developing “ecological imagination” in young people. Similarly, ecopedagogy grew out of the First Earth Summit in Brazil in 1992 under the influence of Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy. In addition to its home in Latin America, ecopedagogy is thriving in Bulgaria through the influence of young sociologist, Stefan Grigorov.
Futures studies and foresight education, with their links to sustainability and citizenship education, play a vital role in ecological awareness. They help develop a sense of responsibility for long-term futures of life on our planet, the survival of our companion species and life itself. Futures education with young people may involve workshops in which the young people imagine possible, alternative and desirable futures, before creating the action plans that empower them to create their preferred futures.
We can also encourage life-enhancing values and increase vitality through promoting pedagogical life in simple practical ways. We can ground children in nature through gardening, creative handwork, and following daily and seasonal cycles, rather than mechanical clock time. I share a couple of enlivening examples from the school I founded in the 1980s, when alternative energy was still a relatively new idea. With the help of a low-impact alternative energy expert from the local region, we designed and built a swing set that was like no other. When the children swung on the swings, once their kinetic energy built up to a certain degree, a light bulb installed in the frame of the swing set would light up. To the children, this was pure magic. And yet it was a magic that they had created with their own energy, while they were playing!
In a second project we built a large stone structure with a water wheel at the top and a series of sculpted clay-fired flow form basins through which water flowed down like a waterfall into a pond nestled into a sandpit beside a see-saw. When children rode the see-saw, the kinetic energy of their weight moving the see-saw up and down pumped water up, turning the water wheel and pouring water down through the flow forms. The children were empowered to experience their own kinetic energy transforming into another kind of energy—physics through imaginative play. Even these primary school children learnt important lessons in physics through their bodily kinetic activity, which they would only learn about conceptually in high school, when they studied physics.
Finally, creative school architecture is an increasingly popular way to stimulate children’s creativity and imagination – to help them to think outside the square. Creative school architecture is iconic to Steiner-Waldorf schooling, but more recently has become a benchmark for top international schools in Scandinavia, Japan and elsewhere. See below the colourful kindergarten in Tromso, Norway.
To read more about Jennifer’s idea on Imaginative Education:
The ideas in this blog are expanded and discussed in: Postformal Education: A Philosophy for Complex Futures (Springer, 2016).
An earlier version of this article was published on ImaginEd: Education that Inspires.
Posted in education, finance, robotics/AI
