If you’re a weekend Twitter user, you may already know about #Saturdayschool. Douglas Williams wrote a great piece profiling Professor Rhonda Ragsdale, and how she’s created a new kind of digital teach-in.
What’s Going On in the Workforce
“…we should be working to ensure that a future without jobs is a future where we all get to enjoy the benefits of free time.” Amen, Sarah.
And what better way to enjoy our free time than with sex robots? Which might also lead to technological unemployment for sex workers.
You may have seen that the NY Times Magazine wrote about the inequality-erasing benefits of worker-owned co-ops last Sunday…but did you also know that they can increase their workers’ life expectancy?
Are happier workers more productive? This study, by economists in the UK, says yes. If anyone wants to drop off some chocolate to me at work, I promise to be more productive.
Reputation, Reputation, Reputation
Most car insurance companies already give a “good driver” bonus. Will we change the way we feel about that, when they’re getting real time data on our driving habits from our cars?
Microsoft has announced that they are adding player reputation to each user’s Gamercard—and the reputation score is being crowdsourced from other players. If you want a pretty good explanation of the perils and potential improvements that come from such a system, check the comments to this post.
Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability
Are you interested in the sharing economy, but not quite sure how to start? Why not participate in Global Sharing Day on June 1st?
What if you could turn trash into electricity?
Smart cities work more efficiently, saving money & other resources. Here’s how Boston has been working to use the GPS tech that exists in many cars, to map road hazards.
From Partners
Want 8 simple (ok, not really) ideas about how to increase income equality? Check out this long read by Harold Meyerson.
Organizing Theory
Do you want a better way of crowd-sourcing decisions by your volunteers or spread-out staff? Loomio is a new, open-source decision making tool inspired by Occupy—and it’s free.
No one can guarantee that they can make content viral—but here’s a good slideshow of Greenpeace’s best practices for making it more likely, when you’re doing non-violent direct actions.
Got an idea about how to use social media for engagement of people in under-represented communities? Check out this competition that’s making micro-grants for just that purpose.
Are you hacking your way to a better world, or just complaining about the one we’ve got?
Geeking Out
Want to read some crazy predictions about what the short-term (30 years off) future might hold for humanity? Here you go. My personal favorite is from Karen Wickre, editorial director of Twitter (wait, that’s a job?). “I love what access to technology can do—I just want it to be evenly distributed. That would blow my mind, and I bet I’m not alone.”
And while we’re on the crazy prediction train—do I get to look like Molly Millions, now that Facebook has bought Oculus Rift?
Final Thoughts
“Economically there was no reason why a laborer named, say, Mickey, should dislike a laborer named, say, Mihal; the Mihals did not lower the wage rates of the only kind of jobs they were able to get. Nor did they take others’ jobs away from them; the steel industry was in its period of greatest expansion, building new mills & furnaces & hiring new men by the hundred. That the company openly preferred foreigners as laborers that immigration from wester Europe had fallen off, that the hours were long, the work hard and the opportunities for advancement rare, helped explain why the unskilled labor force was predominantly foreign by the beginning of the new century. For the English-speaking peoples’ unconcealed racial prejudice, their attitude that it was a disgrace to work on a level with Hunkies, there was no rational excuse. But it was a fact, a large & not pretty fact which marked, stunted & embittered whole generations.”
Thomas Bell, Out of This Furnace