The Future of the Professions

Author(s):  
Richard Susskind ◽  
Daniel Susskind

This book predicts the decline of today's professions and describes the people and systems that will replace them. In an Internet society, according to Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, we will neither need nor want doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, the clergy, consultants, lawyers, and many others, to work as they did in the 20th century. The Future of the Professions explains how 'increasingly capable systems' -- from telepresence to artificial intelligence -- will bring fundamental change in the way that the 'practical expertise' of specialists is made available in society. The authors challenge the 'grand bargain' -- the arrangement that grants various monopolies to today's professionals. They argue that our current professions are antiquated, opaque and no longer affordable, and that the expertise of their best is enjoyed only by a few. In their place, they propose six new models for producing and distributing expertise in society. The book raises important practical and moral questions. In an era when machines can out-perform human beings at most tasks, what are the prospects for employment, who should own and control online expertise, and what tasks should be reserved exclusively for people? Based on the authors' in-depth research of more than ten professions, and illustrated by numerous examples from each, this is the first book to assess and question the relevance of the professions in the 21st century.

Author(s):  
Andrey Rezaev ◽  
Natalia Tregubova

At the turn of the 21st century, sociology as a science has become an object of criticism both from inside and outside the discipline. At the same time, the late-20th and early 21st centuries endorse an unprecedented splash of technological development, specifically the advancement of artificial intelligence technologies. The paper tries to show a relation between these two tendencies. For the authors, two questions are in the spotlight: (1) how have evaluations of the professional sociologists on what is happening to the discipline changed over the last 20 years? and (2) how could these evaluations be related to the research questions that the development of AI technologies brings to social sciences? In the first part of the paper, the authors examine and compare the participants' positions in the discussion about the future of sociology organized by the journal Contemporary Sociology in 2000. The second part of the paper examines two articles published in 2019 where it was proclaimed “the end of sociology.” The paper discusses why the debates about the crisis of sociology have shifted towards radical criticism during these years and how new arguments refine and supplement the previous discussions. In conclusion, the authors propose one way out of the crisis in sociology. They suggest the radical renewal of sociological science into a-typical and anti-disciplinary social analytics with the central orientation into “artificial sociality” inquiries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 100206
Author(s):  
Connie A. Woodhouse ◽  
Rebecca M. Smith ◽  
Stephanie A. McAfee ◽  
Gregory T. Pederson ◽  
Gregory J. McCabe ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
pp. 95-110
Author(s):  
Mónica Martínez Vicente

Los cambios que se están produciendo en la sociedad actual también manifiestan nuevas necesidades en la manera de despedirnos y recordarnos, lo que afecta directamente a la arquitectura funeraria de tanatorios y sobre todo de cementerios. A través de la «arquitectura emocional» se puede intervenir en los cementerios existentes para mejorar la percepción que transmiten a los usuarios y naturalizar los procesos de pérdida. En las futuras ampliaciones o construcción de nuevas instalaciones y/o cementerios deben tenerse en cuenta todas estas cuestiones de la arquitectura que conecta con las personas. The changes that are taking place in today's society also show new needs in the way we remind ourselves, which directly affects funerary architecture of funeral parloursand especially in cemeteries. Through the «emotional architecture» we can intervene in existing cemeteries to improve the perception which they transmit to users and thus naturalize loss processes. All these issues of the architecture that connects with the people must be taken into account in the future enlargements or construction of new facilities and/or cemeteries.


Author(s):  
Thomais Kordonouri

‘Archive’ is a totality of records, layers and memories that are collected. A city is the archive that consists of the conscious selection of these layers and traces of the past and the present, looking towards the future. Metaxourgio is an area in the wider historic urban area of Keramikos in Athens that includes traces of various eras, beginning in the Antiquity and continuing all the way into the 21st century. Its archaeological space ‘Demosion Sema’ is mostly concealed under the ground level, waiting to be revealed. In this proposal, Metaxourgio is redesigned in light of archiving. Significant traces of the Antiquity, other ruins and buildings are studied, selected and incorporated in the new interventions. The area becomes the ‘open archive’ that leads towards its lost identity. The proposal aims not only to intensify the relationship of architecture with archaeology, but also to imbue the area’s identity with meanings that refer to the past, present and future.


Author(s):  
Kathrin Deventer

Festivals have been around, and will always be around; no matter the political context they are embedded in, supported by, or hindered by. Why? Simply because society develops, it transforms, it is dynamic and it needs space for reflection and inspiration. Festivals are platforms for people to meet, and for artists to present their work, their creations. This gives festivals an enduring, quite independent mission and reason to exist: as long as festivals strive to offer a biotope for artists and audiences alike and point to questions which concern the way we live and want to live, they will be a fertile ground for a meaningful development of society – and an offer for serving the public wellbeing. What are the challenges festivals are facing today? There are a series of very complex questions related to festivals’ positioning us as human beings in an interconnected, global society, our relation to nature and the immediate surroundings, our stories of life so that as many citizens as possible can be part of the societal discourse, can be enriched, can be touched, can be heard, can be moved. Individuals, interest groups, nationalities, countries, even continents are interconnected. What does this mean for a festival? Travelling across Europe for work and pleasure and meeting citizens from all walks of life has taught me that citizens, a term that connects individuals to some larger constructed community, are just people, everyday people, going about their lives. People connect with other humans and their human stories, real life encounters. Abstract theory and jargon are meaningless when they lack real life connections. Meaningful festivals of the future will offer possibilities for new connections among people: they invite people to travel in time and in space; they inspire to connect human stories, enriching them with new, unexpected, colourful stories!


2019 ◽  
pp. 254-263
Author(s):  
Alan J. McComas

This chapter considers the question of whether or not nonliving systems can acquire consciousness. It explores contemporary advances in technology, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence. The chapter also considers whether or not consciousness can be performed if inorganic matter replaced the components with which organisms experience consciousness. These and similar questions on nonhuman intelligence and consciousness are fleshed out with scenarios and thought experiments proposed throughout the 20th century, such as John Searle’s Chinese room argument and the archangel paradigm proposed by C. D. Broad. The chapter concludes with reflections on the human being’s inability to truly experience consciousness in the same way as nonhumans.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3-2019) ◽  
pp. 180-197
Author(s):  
Marianne Kristiansen ◽  
Jørgen Bloch-Poulsen

This is not an ordinary article. It was written in response to some questions that the current and the former IJAR editors-in-chief asked us to reflect on. We did so gratefully, because this was a good opportunity to look back on 25 years of doing AR in organisations. The article describes four challenges of future organisational action research. Firstly, in the future an increasing number of skilled employees will make it necessary to move from co-influence of how to implement goals, to a greater degree of co-determination. Secondly, the article argues there is a need for an increased focus on documenting AR processes. Thirdly, the article calls for more selfcritical reflections on the concrete ways action researchers exercise power. Fourthly, questioning the possibilities of doing AR in organisations will become important in the future, due to socio-economic conditions such as lack of time. The article is based on a four-year research project that we carried out on various American and European approaches to action research in organisations in the 20th century. It includes, too, a description of our different personal ways into AR and some of the AR concepts we developed along the way.


Author(s):  
Ray Kurzweil

I have been involved in inventing since I was five, and I quickly realized that for an invention to succeed, you have to target the world of the future. But what would the future be like? To find out, I became a student of technology trends and began to develop mathematical models of different technologies: computation, miniaturization, evolution over time. I have been doing that for 25 years, and it has been remarkable to me how powerful and predictive these models are. Now, before I show you some of these models and then try to build with you some of the scenarios for the future—and, in particular, focus on how these will benefit technology for the disabled—I would like to share one trend that I think is particularly profound and that many people fail to take into consideration. It is this: the rate of progress—what I call the “paradigmshift rate”—is itself accelerating. We are doubling this paradigm-shift rate every decade. The whole 20th century was not 100 years of progress as we know it today, because it has taken us a while to speed up to the current level of progress. The 20t h century represented about 20 years of progress in terms of today’s rate. And at today’s rate of change, we will achieve an amount of progress equivalent to that of the whole 20th century in 14 years, then as the acceleration continues, in 7 years. The progress in the 21st century will be about 1,000 times greater than that in the 20th century, which was no slouch in terms of change.


Author(s):  
Jennifer (Jenny) L. Penland ◽  
Kennard Laviers

Of all the technologies emerging today, augmented reality (AR) stands to be one of, if not the, most transformational in the way we teach our students across the spectrum of age groups and subject matter. The authors propose “best practices” that allow the educator to use AR as a tool that will not only teach the processes of a skill but will also encourage students to use AR as a motivational tool that allows them to discover, explore, and perform work beyond what is capable with this revolutionary device. Finally, the authors provide and explore the artificial intelligence (AI) processors behind the technologies driving down cost while driving up the quality of AR and how this new field of computer science is transforming all facets of society and may end up changing pedagogy more profoundly than anything before it.


2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
Robert Foster

Abstract Reading the book of Zechariah as a whole for its theology requires giving special attention to the way that the historical narratives in 1:1-6, 7-8, and 11:4-17 shape the discourse. The opening narrative, 1:1-6, delineates the movement of the book as YHWH returns to Zion and so calls for the returning exiles to return to their god. Chapters seven and eight clarify what it means for the people to return to YHWH, in line with the earlier prophets’ call to pursue justice. 11:4-17 narrates the failure of especially the leaders to enact justice and the consequences of this failure. Nevertheless, the book affirms the promise of YHWH to do good to Zion, even if modified and cast into the eschatological future.


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