Shift to the Future

My new iPhone and Surface laptop both provide a facial recognition (let’s call this FACE) method of identifying myself for access (logon).  I use Keeper, a password and other confidential information manager and it too leverages FACE.  When I need to log into an app or website, I am offered Keeper as a source for the username and password and when I choose that, Keeper uses my face to login and look up the app or website, and offer the credentials to fill in.  Super convenient!  FACE is or will be used to customize customer experiences. For example, you walk into your home, it welcomes you by name, adjusts the heat and lights, and perhaps it pushes your favourite digital pictures and art to the wall frames, and selects your favourite streaming station to pipe through the house A/V system.  Or, you walk into a mall, and the screens, which are everywhere by now, start presenting ads to you based on your social media behaviors and past shopping activities.  FA...

It is so easy to be busy in our jobs.  You know, doing email, returning phone calls, and having meetings.  Some days on my commute home I wonder what happened during the day.  Busy does not equate to progress and most definitely isn’t strategic.  What does it mean to ‘be strategic’?  Why is this important to making positive progress?  Is strategic planning still a relevant business function in this ever fast changing world? My wife and I visited Greece this past year and saw amazing examples of architecture and focused energy in creating complex structures and infrastructure.  When you think of the resources they had at their disposal, it seems impossible that they could have done the things they did 1000’s of years ago.  Take the Isthmian Canal for example. It was created to replace the more difficult method of rolling ships across land on logs.  But, it took incredible focus and resources to complete.  It was a very strategic goal d...

I received an email from a teacher friend yesterday referring to an article in the Vancouver Sun with the title “ Pope: Technology without God is dangerous ”.  In this article the Pope said: “technological progress, in the absence of awareness of God and moral values, posed a threat to the world” My friend asked “ what happens if we have technological progress WITH moral values, BUT in the absence of an awareness of God; how will the world fair then? ”  I think this is a great question.  With full disclosure that I am a believing Christian (not Catholic), I’ll try to answer this question as it fits my blogs purpose to write about about the future and technology.  I should be clear about my understanding of what morality is and where it comes from.  This Wikipedia article sums it up: “Morality (from the Latin moralitas ‘manner, character, proper behavior’) is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good (o...

I am increasingly aware of the complexity of “the system”.  Think about your place in the world and then consider the layers and walls around you that have been built up over time in “the system”.  Those of us that work for “the education system” would view things differently then say a plumber, electrician, or politician might.  Regardless, we all encounter complexity whether we choose to or not.  I’m primarily thinking about organizational complexity here.  Organizations tend to naturally become complex over time.  They become very difficult to work within, to accomplish things through, and become very expensive to operate. “Few things can doom a “system” faster than excessive complexity, which then collapses into chaos.”, Is America in Danger of Collapsing (Feb. 5, 2012) I probably read to broadly, too many obscure articles and books, but I see a pattern emerging: complexity is making our systems unsustainable.  Think of the costs of health...

I was recently invited to go see the movie Courageous .  A key theme for this movie is how important it is that fathers step up and seriously commit to their role in supporting and leading their families.  The film is Christian based but even if you have a different belief system, the values and the challenge expressed in the movie are pretty powerful for dads.  This article advocates for fathers deep involvement but ultimately both parents are critical to support and train up their kids regardless of marital status.  When times are difficult, solid family life becomes even more important for all members of the family.  I think you would agree that we are in increasingly difficult times… The key themes I read, think, and write most about within this blog are education, technology, and the future.  I also read a lot of material dealing with economy, history, and government as I think these significantly influence the outcome for education, technology, and...

I seem to have an intellectual interest in conspiracy theories and stories.  I will “dip” into that “field of inquiry” from time to time but not so long that my thinking becomes irrational...  Last night for fun I watched Disney’s National Treasure , a seemingly endless search for ancient treasure “ once protected by the Knights Templar and hidden by the Freemasons during the early years of the United States ”.  A friend recently gave me a set of videos to watch, documentary-style, on various strands of this topic.  I watched one that aims to convince the listener that 9/11 was intentionally arranged by various individuals and organizations attached to the US and other governments.  I watched a second video that painted a bleak picture of coming world domination, the new world order so to speak.  Why am I writing about this you might ask?  Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about whether our technology empowers us or has the potential for enslaving us (i...