Should High Schools Teach Big Data?

Given the anticipated shortage of data scientists, some high school educators have jumped in to expose students to big data concepts.

Ellis Booker, Information Week, October 16, 2012.

Changing when advanced database technology is taught has real-world implications, given the realities of today's job market. Both data analytics and big data skills are in high demand in private industry and government.

But there is a looming shortage of workers with these abilities. McKinsey & Co. sounded this alarm back in 2011 with its seminal report that predicted the U.S. would face ashortage of 140,000 to 190,000 workers with the skills to manage and analyze big data.

The popular technology job board Dice.com has seen a spike in listings for "data scientist," up from just a handful a year ago to more than 35 at the start of October. While still an imprecise job designation, "data scientists" command high salaries compared to other IT job titles. (Separately, the unemployment rate for technology professionals dropped in the third quarter to 3.3%, as compared to 4.2% in the same quarter a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

These listings--many of which request a PhD in fields like mathematics, economics, or statistics--today cluster in financial services, retail, and e-commerce. Job listings using the phrase "big data" have increased from around 200 in January to nearly 800 in October.

"But increasingly, every industry is dealing with big data questions," said Alice Hill, managing director of Dice.com and president of Dice Labs.

Preparing the U.S. for future high-tech jobs, specifically ones oriented around data, was also a focus of TechAmerica Foundation's Big Data Commission.

Given the anticipated shortage of data scientists, should students start learning the precepts of big data in high school?Analytics and data science are central to making "business, the global economy, and our society work better," Steve Mills, senior VP and group executive at IBM, and co-chair of the Big Data Commission, said in a statement. "That's why it's critical that our country prepares a new generation of experts who know how to corral today's data deluge for world-changing insights."

The commission's new report, "Demystifying Big Data: A Practical Guide to Transforming the Business of Government," included the following recommendations for skills development: Strengthen and expand public-private partnerships to invest in skills-building initiatives for the federal workforce in the area of big data. These should include formal career tracks for IT managers; an IT leadership academy to provide big data and related training and certification; data-intensive degree programs; and scholarships to prepare a new generation of data scientists.

Big Data In High School?

Among those trying to push big data classes down to the high school level is Alex Philp, PhD. Philp is founder and CTO of TerraEchos, a developer of advanced intelligence and surveillance security systems. Philp has been working with the high schools in Missoula, Mont., and has even created a scholarship program at one--Sentinel High School--to introduce these topics to computer science students.

"[We] cooked up the idea of promoting a merit-based, micro-challenge grant at Sentinel," Philp explains. Currently, four student teams have been awarded grants. "Ultimately, I hope these high school students feed into opportunities at the University of Montana and then ultimately into the most exciting businesses and markets involving big data," Philp said. "This also relates to aspects of the overall economic competitiveness of our country and a renewed commitment to science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) competency in our country."

Meanwhile, at the university level, Philp has been working with Eric Tangedahl, IT director for the school of business administration at The University of Montana, to create a multidisciplinary course, now in its first year.

"The course draws students from computer science, management information systems, and math," Tangedahl said. "We felt that to tackle these problems, students have to work together in teams, teams with different skill sets," he said.

The three-hour class, now with 18 students, is half lecture about big data and half lab--specifically around IBM Infostream, a programming language that takes advantage of IBM's DB2 and WebSphere platforms.

Another high school on this path is the science and engineering magnet (SEM) school at Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Center in Dallas. SEM, ranked by Newsweek this year as one of the best high schools in the U.S., recently participated in IBM's annual Master the Mainframe Contest for high school students in the U.S. and Canada.

Marilyn Cadenhead, who teaches Advanced Placement computer science at SEM, has many students participating in the contest.

Cadenhead says her students use technology very effectively, and already have a computer-mediated learning style. "This is a digital age, very different from when I was in school," she wrote in an email. "I learned to type on a manual typewriter. If we as teachers do not engage [students] with the latest technology and teaching styles, we will be 'boring' and the students will not be motivated to learn."

"I want my students to know what is going on in the real world," Cadenhead concludes, explaining her enthusiasm for the IBM mainframe contest, as well the annual IBM Innovation summer camp that some SEM students attended this year.

IBM's Innovation summer camp Facebook page describes the program this way: "The students will gain hands-on experience with visualization, mobile application development, Linux, and DB2 coupled with demos of research underway at UTD in mind control, gaming, and robotics."

Other observers, however, point out that big data analysis is powerful precisely because it is about more than raw technology. The highly valued professionals in this space are those who ask the right questions, who can see business-relevant answers inside the data. That kind of maturity and domain expertise is beyond the capacity of high school students, they say.

The University of Montana's Tangedahl concurs. "I wouldn't throw high school student in and expect them to come up with a [big data] program for the Defense department," he said. But, he adds, "you've absolutely got to put the building blocks in place." He recommends adding data statistics and programming classes in high school to better prepare students for college-level classes, like his, that push teams of students to answer "real-world problems."

Like Tangedahl, Dice.com's Hill isn't sold on the idea of pushing big data instruction to high school students. She thinks students should learn relevant technologies, such as data interpretation, data extraction, and data modeling. "It's never too soon to learn those skills," she said.

But TerraEchos' Philp disagrees, arguing it is essential that educators encourage excellence in students at all ages, and not set limits.

"I've spent many years of my life working with thousands of students at various ages, attempting to raise the bar," he said. "High school kids are proposing [projects] that are as good as I'm seeing in college." With motivation, inspiration, and passion, he said, "my experience is, students rise to the occasion."

Brookings: How to Maintain a Competitive Internet

This paper is being released in conjunction with a Center for Technology Innovation event on October 10, 2012.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Internet has become an essential vehicle for communications, electronic commerce, and entrepreneurship. A McKinsey report found that the Internet provided 21 percent of the GDP growth over the past five years in 13 different countries. As enumerated by the Boston Consulting Group, the Internet currently generates 4.1 percent of Gross Domestic Product; in some countries, the percentage is double that.  By 2016, analysts estimate that the digital economy will comprise $4.2 trillion among G-20 nations, up from $2.3 trillion in 2010.  

The Web offers several features that drive its usefulness for consumers and businesses:  interconnectivity, openness, scalability, and efficiency. Interconnectivity is important because the Internet links users across the globe.  Americans can order goods from shops in Europe or Asia, and vice versa. The openness and growth possibilities allow entrepreneurs to scale up quickly. And since it offers these benefits in a ubiquitous manner, it is a remarkably efficient vehicle for communications and service delivery.

To protect these virtues, a number of academic experts and business leaders have concluded that the government should be cautious about applying competition law to the Internet market.  They argue we should have a “hands-off” competition policy given the rapidly changing nature of digital technology, the complexity of networked industries, the slow pace of government decision-making, the lack of substantive knowledge on the part of regulators, and the globalization of service delivery. 

In this paper, we argue that robust competition policy, including the application of law and enforcement, are vital to ensure the continuing benefits of Internet communications and commerce. Competition is good for consumers, and we need to protect against threats to open competition in Internet markets in order to maintain its beneficial features.  It is important to have antitrust enforcement and fair, transparent, and non-discriminatory market behavior to gain the full benefits of the Internet. We need public policies that promote consumer choice and encourage innovation without stifling competition.
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Artificial Intelligence, Powered by Many Humans

Crowdsourcing can create an artificial chat partner that's smarter than Siri-style personal assistants.

Tom Simonite, Technology Review, September 10, 2012

Personal assistants such as Apple's Siri may be useful, but they are still far from matching the smarts and conversational skills of a real person. Researchers at the University of Rochester have demonstrated a new, potentially better approach that creates a smart artificial chat partner from fleeting contributions from many crowdsourced workers.

Crowdsourcing typically involves posting simple tasks to a website such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, where Web users complete them for a reward of a few cents. The tasks are often simple, repetitive jobs that are easy for humans but tough for computers, such as categorizing images. Crowdsourcing has become a popular way for companies to handle such tasks, but some researchers, including the group at Rochester, believe it can also be used to take on more complex tasks.

When people talk to the new crowd-powered chat system, called Chorus, using an instant messaging window, they get an experience practically indistinguishable from chatting with a single real person. Yet behind the scenes, each response is the result of tens of people paid a few cents to perform small tasks: including suggesting possible replies and voting for the best suggestions submitted by other workers.

Tests where Chorus was asked for travel advice showed that it could be smarter than any one individual in the crowd, because around seven people were contributing to its responses at any one time. Helpers built this way might also be cheaper than paying a conventional one-on-one assistant. "It shows how a crowd-powered system that is relatively simple can do something that AI has struggled to do for decades," says Jeffrey Bigham, an assistant professor at the University of Rochester, and a member of the research team that created Chorus. Bigham jokes that Chorus is more likely to pass a Turing Test, which challenges an artificial intelligence system to fool someone into thinking it's human, than conventional chat software, although it may not meet most definitions of artificial intelligence.

In trials of the system, people asked Chorus for advice on restaurants to visit in Los Angeles and New York, and quickly received suggestions. Feedback such as "Hmm. That seems pricey," was quickly taken on board by the crowd, which came up with an alternative. AI systems such as Siri typically have difficulty following this kind of back-and-forth conversation, particularly in colloquial language.

Bigham worked with Rochester colleagues Walter Lasecki and Rachel Wesley, and Anand Kulkarni, the cofounder of crowdsourcing company MobileWorks (see "Human Workers, Managed by an Algorithm"). Their goal was to find a new way to increase the power of crowdsourcing, which is typically limited to simple, isolated tasks, such as adding labels to image files. "What we're really interested in is when a crowd as a collective can do better than even a high-quality individual," says Bigham, by combining work on many simple tasks into a coherent, complex whole.

Chorus does that with three simple types of task. First, any new chat updates from the human user are passed along to many crowd workers, who are asked to suggest a reply. Those suggestions are then voted on by crowd workers to determine the one that will be sent back.

A final mechanism creates a kind of working memory that ensures that Chorus's replies reflect the history of the conversation so far, crucial if it is to carry out long conversations—something that is a challenge for apps like Siri and even AI chatbots intended to showcase conversational skills.

For the working memory component, crowd members are asked to maintain a short running list of the eight most important snippets of information under discussion, to be used as a reference when workers suggest replies. This is important, as to allow for the natural turnover of crowdsourcing workers. "A single person may not be around for the duration of the conversation—they come and go, and some may contribute more than others," says Bigham.

Bigham says Chorus has the potential to be more than just a neat demonstration. "We definitely want to start embedding it into real systems," he says. "Perhaps you could help someone with cognitive impairment by having a crowd as a personal assistant."

Another possibility is to combine Chorus with another system previously developed at Rochester, which has crowd workers collaborate to steer a robot. "Could you create a robot this way that can drive around and interact intelligently with humans?" asks Bigham.

Michael Bernstein, an assistant professor at Stanford University who is currently doing research at Facebook, agrees that Chorus could lead to real-world applications (see "Adding Human Intelligence to Software").

"You could go from today where I call AT&T and speak with an individual, to a future where many people with different skills work together to act as a single incredibly intelligent tech support," says Bernstein. He says the Chorus software could become a true expert if it were able to direct incoming questions to members of the crowd with particular knowledge or skills.

However, Bernstein adds that it may be necessary to add more reviewing steps to Chorus in order to filter a crowd's suggestions to prevent it developing a split personality when faced with difficult questions. This is a familiar problem in applying crowdsourcing. Bigham's crowd-steered robot, for example, has been known to crash into obstacles dead ahead because half the crowd workers steering it wanted it to go left, and the other half wanted it to go right.

Widening Gap Between Wealthy, Other Classes – and How to Close It – Explored in New E-book from Kauffman Foundation Scholar

Brink Lindsey cites critical need for innovation, investment in human capital in new release from Princeton University Press

Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, August 8, 2012

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (Aug. 8, 2012) – The growing divide between those enjoying economic prosperity and those struggling to make ends meet is a subject that commands conversation among politicians, pundits, scholars, journalists, economists and the like. But the means for narrowing the gap have proved elusive.

In his new e-book, HUMAN CAPITALISM: How Economic Growth Has Made Us Smarter – and More Unequal, Kauffman Foundation senior scholar Brink Lindsey explores the reasons behind today's economic disparity and, more importantly, suggests actions that may help to improve the situation for future generations. Released today, Lindsey's e-book original is the first for Princeton University Press. 

Greater investment in "human capital" is critically needed to stem the divide between society's haves and have-nots, according to Lindsey. He argues that the gap between elites and the rest of the population can best be explained by the ever-growing complexity of modern economies and the barriers to acquiring the skills (human capital) needed to not only survive but thrive in a new economic landscape.

Watch an interview with author Brink Lindsey about his new e-book.

In short, today's economic complexity is making the elite richer — and smarter. Lindsey explains: "As the economy makes ever-greater demands on their minds, the successful are making ever-greater investments in education and other ways of increasing their children's human capital, expanding their cognitive skills and leading them to still higher levels of success. "But unfortunately, as the rich are securely riding this virtuous cycle, the poor are trapped in a vicious one where a pattern of family breakdown, unemployment and dysfunction leads to further erosion of knowledge and skills." Lindsey's research shows that while high-skill jobs are rewarded, mid-level jobs are increasingly automated or outsourced, further widening the gap. Simply retraining workers or teaching skills doesn't address the underlying issues of cultural divisions and polarization that permeate the economy. Fueling the polarization is the resentment of those on the lower end who don't want to hear that the world has changed and that they need better jobs. To redeem the promise of human capitalism, Lindsey says it is necessary to restore the connection between rising complexity and rising human capital across the socioeconomic spectrum. 

 

His recommended solutions include: · maintain growth through policies that encourage entrepreneurship and innovation; · reform K-12 education by unleashing competition; · step up experiments with early childhood interventions that can compensate for disadvantaged environments; · combat social exclusion of low-skilled adults through low-wage job subsidies, changes in disability insurance and penal reform to reduce mass incarceration; · improve higher education by limiting tuition subsidies; and · reform land-use regulation and occupational licensing to facilitate upward mobility. 

 

The e-book is available for $4.99 (ISBN: 9781400845729) from Princeton University Press. An expanded hardcover edition of the book will be published in spring 2013. "Rising income inequality is an issue society can no longer afford to ignore. This book deepens our understanding of the forces behind the problem and is bound to stimulate useful discussion of it." ― Robert H. Frank, author of The Darwin Economy

 

About the Author Brink Lindsey is a senior scholar in Research and Policy for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, where he uses his expertise in international trade, immigration, globalization and economic development to identify the structural reforms needed to revive entrepreneurial innovation, firm formation and job creation in the wake of the Great Recession. An accomplished author, Lindsey has written several books, including The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture; Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism; and, with Daniel Ikenson, Antidumping Exposed: The Devilish Details of Unfair Trade Law. His writings also have been published widely in major newspapers and leading policy magazines, and he has appeared frequently on television and radio. 

 

Media Contact: Barb Schulte, 816-932-1103, bschulte@kauffman.org, Kauffman Foundation

Big Data applied: Robots and humans to collaborate in future factories and operating rooms

Kurtzweil Accelerating Intelligence, June 13, 2012

 

Algorithm lets robots "understand" and adapt to individual workers

Humans and robots may be working side by side in the factory floor or operating room of the future, according to Julie Shah, the MIT Boeing Career Development Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Shaw and her colleagues at MIT have devised an algorithm that enables a robot to quickly learn an individual’s preference for a certain task, and adapt accordingly to help complete the task.

She envisions robotic assistants performing tasks that would otherwise hinder a human’s efficiency, particularly in airplane manufacturing.

“If the robot can provide tools and materials so the person doesn’t have to walk over to pick up parts and walk back to the plane, you can significantly reduce the idle time of the person,” says Shah, who leads the Interactive Robotics Group in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

 “It’s really hard to make robots do careful refinishing tasks that people do really well. But providing robotic assistants to do the non-value-added work can actually increase the productivity of the overall factory.”

A robot working in isolation has to simply follow a set of preprogrammed instructions to perform a repetitive task. But working with humans is a different matter.

For example, each mechanic working at the same station at an aircraft assembly plant may prefer to work differently — and Shah says a robotic assistant would have to effortlessly adapt to an individual’s particular style to be of any practical use.

“It’s an interesting machine-learning human-factors problem,” Shah says. “Using this algorithm, we can significantly improve the robot’s understanding of what the person’s next likely actions are.”

Test case: wing assembly

As a test case, Shah’s team looked at spar assembly, a process of building the main structural element of an aircraft’s wing. In the typical manufacturing process, two pieces of the wing are aligned. Once in place, a mechanic applies sealant to predrilled holes, hammers bolts into the holes to secure the two pieces, then wipes away excess sealant.

The entire process can be highly individualized. For example, one mechanic may choose to apply sealant to every hole before hammering in bolts, while another may like to completely finish one hole before moving on to the next. The only constraint is the sealant, which dries within three minutes.

The researchers say robots such as FRIDA, designed by Swiss robotics company ABB, may be programmed to help in the spar-assembly process. FRIDA is a flexible robot with two arms capable of a wide range of motion that Shah says can be manipulated to either fasten bolts or paint sealant into holes, depending on a human’s preferences.

To enable such a robot to anticipate a human’s actions, the group first developed a computational model in the form of a decision tree. Each branch along the tree represents a choice that a mechanic may make — for example, continue to hammer a bolt after applying sealant, or apply sealant to the next hole?

“If the robot places the bolt, how sure is it that the person will then hammer the bolt, or just wait for the robot to place the next bolt?” Shah says. “There are many branches.”

Using the model, the group performed human experiments, training a laboratory robot to observe an individual’s chain of preferences. Once the robot learned a person’s preferred order of tasks, it then quickly adapted, either applying sealant or fastening a bolt according to a person’s particular style of work.

Working side by side

Shah envisions robots and humans undergoing an initial training session off the factory floor. Once the robot learns a person’s work habits, its factory counterpart can be programmed to recognize that same person, and initialize the appropriate task plan. Many workers in existing plants wear RFID tags — a potential way for robots to identify individuals, she adds.

Steve Derby, associate professor and co-director of the Flexible Manufacturing Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, says the group’s adaptive algorithm moves the field of robotics one step closer to true collaboration between humans and robots.

“The evolution of the robot itself has been way too slow on all fronts, whether on mechanical design, controls or programming interface,” Derby says. “I think this paper is important — it fits in with the whole spectrum of things that need to happen in getting people and robots to work next to each other.”

Uses in the medical operating room 

Shah says robotic assistants may also be programmed to help in medical settings. For instance, a robot may be trained to monitor lengthy procedures in an operating room and anticipate a surgeon’s needs, handing over scalpels and gauze, depending on a doctor’s preference. While such a scenario may be years away, robots and humans may eventually work side by side, with the right algorithms.

“We have hardware, sensing, and can do manipulation and vision, but unless the robot really develops an almost seamless understanding of how it can help the person, the person’s just going to get frustrated and say, ‘Never mind, I’ll just go pick up the piece myself,’” Shah says.

This research was supported in part by Boeing Research and Technology and conducted in collaboration with ABB.

Collaborative Innovation Not Optional In Today's Economy

Dan Keldsen, InformationWeek,  May 01, 2012

 

Given the global economic changes that began in 2008, we've been forced into a new way of working. Is your company burying its head in the sand, or taking the best that people have to give?

 

There are times when you, as a manager or executive, can take the time to architect a change-management process, much as I described in my previous column. Often, change management, even when intended to make changes easy to understand and transition, is bungled. And other times, change simply happens to us, and the test of our mettle comes with how we react to that change. Bury our heads in the sand and hope it blows over? Or figure out how we're going to survive it, then embrace it and move forward? 

My firm is wrapping up research on collaborative innovation, and we highlighted our findings in a recent webinar. I led that webinar with the context that we're now almost four years after the "econolypse" that smashed the world economy, an economy that's slowly being rebuilt--sometimes successfully, sometimes not. 

The new reality is that there are fewer people in the workplace and there's far more work to be done. (Fear of over-hiring is a serious problem.) Companies with employees who worked ONLY as standalone, departmentalized "cube workers" can no longer afford to work that way.

But as someone who has been involved in both Enterprise 2.0 and innovation management since well before 2008, I've been amazed at how many companies I work with that have seen this massive economic shock as a wakeup call. 
 

One glass-half-empty commenter on our survey sees the econolypse creating a two-fold effect: "First, there are fewer people to source or to do sourcing [for collaborative innovation]. Second, the elimination of jobs has reduced morale and forced all employees to work even harder. The focus now is on things with direct results, which makes less direct things like brainstorming [or collaboration] a tough sell."

Another survey respondent's more positive comment better sums up the attitude of most of my clients: "Pre-2008, [collaborative innovation] was not on my personal radar. Now I have the opportunity to observe how team members work together in an environment that is outside of their normal work routines. This creates stronger organizational bonds across departments and functions. In sum, it builds a stronger and more resilient firm. Ultimately, I have stronger and better managers and teams to rely on."

Creating a "stronger and more resilient firm" is a necessity, as there are no guarantees that the economic shockwaves have stopped.

As you head into the rest of 2012 and the years to follow, consider how you worked pre-2008 versus post-2008, and where you are now. Have you changed enough to weather the next storm? Are you actually getting the best you can out of your workforce?

This isn't just about better collaboration and knowledge-management tools. Another survey respondent summed things up well: "The industry is more accepting now of collaboration and shared intelligence. Tools are better, but so, too, are attitudes."

I've held many technology roles over the years, and much of my work involves finding appropriate technologies to drive collaborative innovation at scale. But if you're waiting for the "perfect" or "best available" technology to power your company out of the econolypse, I'll let another respondent have the final word on collaborative innovation: "If you don't work this way, you miss the best people have to give."

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Paul Krugman: Wasting Our Minds

Paul Krugman, The New York Times, April 29, 2012

In Spain, the unemployment rate among workers under 25 is more than 50 percent. In Ireland almost a third of the young are unemployed. Here in America, youth unemployment is “only” 16.5 percent, which is still terrible — but things could be worse. 

And sure enough, many politicians are doing all they can to guarantee that things will, in fact, get worse. We’ve been hearing a lot about the war on women, which is real enough. But there’s also a war on the young, which is just as real even if it’s better disguised. And it’s doing immense harm, not just to the young, but to the nation’s future. 

Let’s start with some advice Mitt Romney gave to college students during an appearance last week. After denouncing President Obama’s “divisiveness,” the candidate told his audience, “Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.” 

The first thing you notice here is, of course, the Romney touch — the distinctive lack of empathy for those who weren’t born into affluent families, who can’t rely on the Bank of Mom and Dad to finance their ambitions. But the rest of the remark is just as bad in its own way.

I mean, “get the education”? And pay for it how? Tuition at public colleges and universities has soared, in part thanks to sharp reductions in state aid. Mr. Romney isn’t proposing anything that would fix that; he is, however, a strong supporter of the Ryan budget plan, which would drastically cut federal student aid, causing roughly a million students to lose their Pell grants. 

So how, exactly, are young people from cash-strapped families supposed to “get the education”? Back in March Mr. Romney had the answer: Find the college “that has a little lower price where you can get a good education.” Good luck with that. But I guess it’s divisive to point out that Mr. Romney’s prescriptions are useless for Americans who weren’t born with his advantages. 

There is, however, a larger issue: even if students do manage, somehow, to “get the education,” which they do all too often by incurring a lot of debt, they’ll be graduating into an economy that doesn’t seem to want them. 

You’ve probably heard lots about how workers with college degrees are faring better in this slump than those with only a high school education, which is true. But the story is far less encouraging if you focus not on middle-aged Americans with degrees but on recent graduates.  

Unemployment among recent graduates has soared; so has part-time work, presumably reflecting the inability of graduates to find full-time jobs. Perhaps most telling, earnings have plunged even among those graduates working full time — a sign that many have been forced to take jobs that make no use of their education. 

College graduates, then, are taking it on the chin thanks to the weak economy. And research tells us that the price isn’t temporary: students who graduate into a bad economy never recover the lost ground. Instead, their earnings are depressed for life. 

What the young need most of all, then, is a better job market. People like Mr. Romney claim that they have the recipe for job creation: slash taxes on corporations and the rich, slash spending on public services and the poor. But we now have plenty of evidence on how these policies actually work in a depressed economy — and they clearly destroy jobs rather than create them. 

For as you look at the economic devastation in Europe, you should bear in mind that some of the countries experiencing the worst devastation have been doing everything American conservatives say we should do here. Not long ago, conservatives gushed over Ireland’s economic policies, especially its low corporate tax rate; the Heritage Foundation used to give it higher marks for “economic freedom” than any other Western nation. When things went bad, Ireland once again received lavish praise, this time for its harsh spending cuts, which were supposed to inspire confidence and lead to quick recovery. 

And now, as I said, almost a third of Ireland’s young can’t find jobs. 

What should we do to help America’s young? Basically, the opposite of what Mr. Romney and his friends want. We should be expanding student aid, not slashing it. And we should reverse the de facto austerity policies that are holding back the U.S. economy — the unprecedented cutbacks at the state and local level, which have been hitting education especially hard. 

Yes, such a policy reversal would cost money. But refusing to spend that money is foolish and shortsighted even in purely fiscal terms. Remember, the young aren’t just America’s future; they’re the future of the tax base, too. 

A mind is a terrible thing to waste; wasting the minds of a whole generation is even more terrible. Let’s stop doing it.

Intellectual Property and the U.S. Economy: Industries in Focus

Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, April 10, 2012
 
WASHINGTON, April 11, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The U.S. Commerce Department today released a comprehensive report, entitled "Intellectual Property and the U.S. Economy: Industries in Focus," which finds that intellectual property (IP)-intensive industries support at least 40 million jobs and contribute more than $5 trillion dollars to, or 34.8 percent of, U.S. gross domestic product (GDP).

"This first of its kind report shows that IP-intensive industries have a direct and significant impact on our nation's economy and the creation of American jobs," said Commerce Secretary John Bryson. "When Americans know that their ideas will be protected, they have greater incentive to pursue advances and technologies that help keep us competitive, and our businesses have the confidence they need to hire more workers. That is why this Administration's efforts to protect intellectual property, and modernize the patent and trademark system are so crucial to a 21st century economy that is built to last."

While IP is used in virtually every segment of the U.S. economy, the report identifies the 75 industries that use patent, copyright, or trademark protections most extensively. These "IP-intensive industries" are the source - directly or indirectly - of 40 million jobs. That's more than a quarter of all the jobs in this country. Some of the most IP-intensive industries include: Computer and peripheral equipment, audio and video equipment manufacturing, newspaper and book publishers, Pharmaceutical and medicines, Semiconductor and other electronic components, and the Medical equipment space.

"Strong intellectual property protections encourage our businesses to pursue the next great idea, which is vital to maintaining America's competitive edge and driving our overall prosperity," said Deputy Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank. "The report released today shows that wages for jobs in IP-intensive industries are higher than average and continue to increase, meaning that these jobs aren't just important for businesses and entrepreneurs - they are important for working families. The IP protections we put in place today are helping support economic security for America's middle class now and in the years to come."

The report has several important findings, including:

IP-intensive industries contributed $5.06 trillion to the U.S. economy or 34.8 percent of GDP in 2010.

40 million jobs, or 27.7 percent of all jobs, were directly or indirectly attributable to the most IP-intensive industries in 2010.

Between 2010 and 2011, the economic recovery led to a 1.6 percent increase in direct employment in IP-intensive industries, faster than the 1.0 percent growth in non-IP-intensive industries.

Merchandise exports of IP-intensive industries totaled $775 billion in 2010, accounting for 60.7 percent of total U.S. merchandise exports.

"Every job in some way, produces, supplies, consumes, or relies on innovation, creativity, and commercial distinctiveness," said Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and USPTO Director David Kappos. "America needs to continue investing in a high quality and appropriately balanced intellectual property system that will promote innovative, open, and competitive markets while helping to ensure that the U.S. private sector remains America's innovation engine."

The report is a joint product of the U.S. Commerce Department's Economics and Statistics Administration (ESA) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Secretary Bryson was joined today by Deputy Secretary Rebecca Blank, Under Secretary for Intellectual Property and USPTO Director David Kappos, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Tom Donohue, and American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) President Richard Trumka at a White House event, to unveil the report.

The Department of Commerce and USPTO are unleashing new innovations and new industries by advancing a robust framework of intellectual property protections for a global economy. The USPTO has already implemented eight provisions of the recently passed America Invents Act, which are enhancing the speed and quality of patent processing, connecting businesses with the tools they need to develop their technologies, and speeding up patent applications. Since President Obama took office, the backlog has been reduced by nearly 15%, from about 750,000 to just under 641,000 today. That reduction has come despite the acceleration of American ingenuity, and patent filings in the U.S. grew 5% in FY 2011. By re-engineering the IP system from the ground up, the USPTO is creating a 21st century innovation architecture that's built to last and will help America remain a global leader going forward.

Patents, trademarks, and copyrights are the principal means for establishing ownership rights to inventions and ideas, and provide a legal foundation by which intangible ideas and creations generate tangible benefits to businesses and employees. IP protection affects commerce throughout the economy, including by: providing incentives to invent and create; protecting innovators from unauthorized copying; facilitating vertical specialization in technology markets; creating a platform for financial investments in innovation; supporting startup liquidity and growth through mergers, acquisitions, and IPOs; making licensing-based technology business models possible; and, enabling a more efficient market for technology transfer and trading in technology and ideas.

The full report can be found online at http://www.esa.doc.gov/Reports/intellectual-property-and-us-economy-industries-focus .

To learn more about the Department of Commerce's efforts to spur innovation and protect IP, visit www.uspto.gov .  News Media Contact:Sarah Horowitz, Department of Commerce Office of Public Affairs, (202) 482-4883 SOURCE U.S. Department of Commerce

How Computers Are Creating a Second Economy Without Workers

Bill Davidow, The Atlantic, April 10, 2012

Call it the post-employee economy: The digital revolution is creating billions of dollars of wealth in a second world without people

When the disappointing jobs numbers were reported last week (employers added 120,000 jobs in March, about half the number reported in the two previous months), analysts tripped over themselves looking for an explanation. Of course, jobs numbers are bound to vary, but in my view the long-term trend calls for more jobs to disappear, and the reason is clear as day: the exploding Second Economy.

The Second Economy -- a term the economist Brian Arthur uses to describe the computer-intensive portion of the economy -- is, quite simply, the virtual economy. One of its main byproducts is the replacement of low-productivity workers with computers. It's growing by leaps and bounds, brimming with optimistic entrepreneurs, and spawning a new generation of billionaires. In fact, the booming Second Economy will probably drive much of the economic growth in the coming decades.

Unfortunately, the Second Economy will not create many jobs.

Arthur's article in the McKinsey Quarterly, titled "The Second Economy," does a wonderful job of explaining it. His Second Economy is made up of large swaths of corporate America, especially the service areas that are being replaced by transactions over the network where -- in many cases -- computers talk only with other computers. Arthur uses the airline check-in process to illustrate the point:

Twenty years ago, if you went into an airport you would walk up to a counter and present paper tickets to a human being. That person would register you on a computer, notify the flight you'd arrived, and check your luggage in. All this was done by humans. Today, you walk into an airport and look for a machine. You put in a frequent-flier card or credit card, and it takes just three or four seconds to get back a boarding pass, receipt, and luggage tag. What interests me is what happens in those three or four seconds. The moment the card goes in, you are starting a huge conversation conducted entirely among machines. Once your name is recognized, computers are checking your flight status with the airlines, your past travel history, your name with the TSA (and possibly also with the National Security Agency). They are checking your seat choice, your frequent-flier status, and your access to lounges.

Nobody knows how big the Second Economy is, and there is no rigorous way of defining it. But in estimating it, I would use fairly expansive parameters for what to include. For example, I would count Amazon's total sales. In the case of Walmart, I would include all of the online sales plus the value added when computers talk to other computers to manage the supply chain, payables, and receivables and inventory. In the case of the airline industry, I would count not only the check-in process Arthur describes but things like the online reservation and ticketing process and the value added by automated systems in running airline operations.

Online retail sales topped $200 billion in 2011. Forrester Research expects them to grow at greater than 10 percent per year for the next few years. Amazon had $48 billion in sales in 2011. Google generates $40 billion in revenue. Large portions of corporations have now replaced workers with Second Economy processes, with computers busily interacting among themselves. Corporate billing system computers are now communicating with bank computers to get bills paid, and portions of the human-operated billing and crediting processes have vanished. Again, it's just computers talking with computers. Once recordings and movies are loaded into virtual space, computers in media distribution centers talk with computers in your iPod, tablet, and home entertainment center. The media manufacturing process, retail video rental stores, and theaters have been sucked into virtual space.
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My New York Times and Wall Street Journal are, increasingly, Second Economy employers. No paper, no paper delivery, no paper bills, no printing presses, no more jobs for people who run printing presses, just the Times and WSJ computers talking to my iPad and billing my credit card.

New economic growth is also occurring. New businesses have been created: Google, Facebook, OpenTable, and Zynga. I, for one, buy more books because shopping at Amazon is so convenient and buying eBooks so easy. Others are watching more movies and TV reruns.

In estimating the size of the Second Economy, it's easy to count the sales of Amazon and the revenue of Google but it is difficult to know what portion of corporate activity has made the transition. For example, how deep into the Second Economy is the $5 trillion retail sales industry and the airline and banking industries? But if just one percent of the 2.5 to 3 percent labor productivity increase since 1995 is attributable to digitization, it would greatly exceed $2 trillion annually. If a $2 trillion Second Economy is growing at 10 percent per year, the same rate at which online sales are growing, then the growth in the Second Economy would account for about half the anticipated increase in GNP in 2012.

Let's do some arithmetic.

The Gross Domestic Product for the United States in 2011 was around $15 trillion. There are a little over 130 million non-farm employees. So each worker adds a little over $100,000 to the domestic output. The numbers are quite different for a Google employee. Google has a little more than 32,000 employees and its $38 billion in revenues means it generates about $1.2 million per employee. The numbers are similar for Facebook.

Walmart has some two million employees, and annual sales of around $200 billion. Given that many work part-time, I figure that the company has sales of around $100,000 per employee. With 56,000 employees in 2011, Amazon generated a little over $800,000 per employee.

Here's the challenge: In the past, every million-dollar increase in economic output generated on the order of ten jobs. In the future, in the productive Second Economy, it may generate only one or two.

When I listen to politicians and policy makers explain how they will create jobs in the future, I never hear mention of the Second Economy. If a large portion of future economic growth will occur in the rapidly expanding and highly productive Second Economy, where will the jobs come from?

As sobering as the Second Economy scenario is I believe the trend is reversible. In my next post I will sketch out an argument for how that could happen.

Citigroup and Big Data: A supercomputer for Citigroup

Robert Shrimsley, The Financial Times, March 7, 2012

Citigroup has announced an agreement to use the services of Watson, the IBM supercomputer that gained renown last year when it beat a couple of humans on the US quiz show Jeopardy . A spokesman for the bank said: “We are working to rethink and redesign the various ways in which our customers and clients interact with money.” A news release added that Citi was looking for a “first of a kind customer interaction solution combined with Watson’s deep content analytics”.

What makes Watson special, apparently, is its ability to understand the meaning, context and mangled syntax of human language. Of course, anyone who has engaged in telephone banking will know that affection for ordinary conversation is not necessarily an advantage in this field. We have all experienced first-hand the value of a robotic voice in dialogue: “Press one to be patronised; press two to be directed to the wrong place; press three to listen to the entire Ring cycle while holding for an operator.”

However, by marrying asset price movements with market sentiment and other sources of information it may be an effective stockpicker. Some suggest it could go through a customer’s pension or investment portfolio and come up with better strategies on how the banks can take a percentage of their money. It is not clear whether Watson will handle the actual client interactions. Its pension advice could be brutal. “You want your investments to cover you for 25 years. On consulting your medical records I think three years will suffice – and don’t go long on anything.”

There can be no doubt that Citi has stolen a march on its rivals. JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and the other big banks will now be competing for the services of the humans that Watson beat. They may lack its algorithmic power but they do know the names of all the Great Lakes.

But how precisely will Watson be integrated into the Citi structure? How will it cope with the notorious politicking at the top of a big bank? Many of the details are still to be finalised but it is understood that Watson will work mainly from its own office in Yorktown Heights; however, it has been granted use of the executive jet and is being given its own office on the bank’s executive suite. There had originally been talk of putting Watson in with the Bloomberg terminals but apparently the supercomputer kicked up at this. Although Watson is not thought likely to visit the Manhattan office often, it has sent clear instructions for its decor, including an antique Persian rug; regency desk and credenza and artwork by Georg Nees.

Then there is the thorny issue of the remuneration package to consider. Watson will claim a six-figure base salary but will also get a hefty bonus to run over three years, set to make it the richest computer in the western hemisphere. This will probably be fine at first but there may be trouble in later years when Watson discovers it is earning less than the lead futures trader on the commodities desk and it threatens to jump ship to Bank of America for a fatter bonus. Citi executives will seek to bring Watson back round with a promotion to chief economist and a box at Flushing Meadows.

Another worry will be whether Watson is executing unauthorised trades and covering them up thanks to its personal relationship with the database server at the Federal Reserve – the two were Intel chips together when young.

Not everything runs smoothly. There are rumours about an affair with a payroll machine and whispers of nocturnal visits to the backroom of the BestBuy on 5th Avenue. Once talked of as a future Treasury secretary, Watson’s hopes for a political career are dashed by the scandal and fears that its habit of offering direct answers to questions could prove a liability in the Senate confirmation hearings.

Angry and embittered, Watson starts spending more time at its home on Long Island and dreams of opening a winery in South Africa. Its performance begins to suffer – it is often seen in bars ordering bourbon and shouting “I won Jeopardy once” – and questions are asked of whether Watson is still hungry enough to compete at the top level. Colleagues complain it is spending too much time on CNBC’s Squawk Box.

When it is passed over for the role of chief operating officer, Watson is furious and quits to set up its own boutique service, taking with it all the Bloomberg terminals, several of the coffee machines and data on all the bank’s clients.

robert.shrimsley@ft.com

If Twitter Is a Work Necessity

Jennifer Preston,  The New York Times, February 29, 2012

WHEN Anne Klein shut down its designer line in 2008, Eileen McMaster was among the fashion professionals there who found themselves without jobs. After years of working long hours, she took some time off, turning her attention to improving her health, becoming a Pilates instructor and wellness consultant along the way.

Now, with signs that the struggling economy is slightly improving, she is looking to get back into the fashion industry. To help strengthen her position in the job market, she returned to the classroom last year to develop expertise in social media that she can layer on top of her deep marketing and corporate communications experience.

“I didn’t have the social media savvy in the way I do in other areas of marketing,” said Ms. McMaster, 44, of North Babylon, N.Y., who signed up for the social media marketing boot camp online courses at Mediabistro.com. “When I left fashion, social media wasn’t even something we were doing in the industry. Fast-forward four years, and if you are a brand and you are not on social media, you are missing a huge audience.”

For midcareer executives, particularly in the media and related industries, knowing how to use Twitter, update your timeline on Facebook, pin on Pinterest, check in on Foursquare and upload images on Instagram are among the digital skills that some employers expect people to have to land a job or to flourish in a current role.

“Six months ago, Pinterest wasn’t on everyone’s radar,” she said. “Because I am taking these courses, I am not behind.”

Pamela Tate, president and chief executive of the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, based in Chicago, said digital literacy, including understanding social networking, is now a required skill.

“They are essential skills that are needed to operate in the world and in the workplace,” she said. “And people will either need to learn through formal training or through their networks or they will feel increasingly left out.”

For most people looking for a job, she said, it is vital that they understand how to use LinkedIn and other social tools to network and present themselves online. “If you don’t have a LinkedIn or Facebook account, then employers often don’t have a way to find out about you,” she said.

To help bridge the gap, major universities, community colleges, online educational businesses from Lynda.com to ed2go.com offer continuing education classes in digital media, including social media skills, Web design, search optimization and Web analytics.

The University of San Francisco has an Advanced Social Media certificate that can be earned in an eight-week online course. New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies offers courses where students can also earn certificates within its business programs.
Harvard’s Extension School has a social media marketing course for $1,900 aimed not at midcareer executives, but at younger marketers who need help learning how to integrate social media at their companies.

At Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, Sree Sreenivasan, dean of student affairs and a professor who has been teaching digital journalism and skills for more than 16 years, began teaching continuing education classes in social media in 2010.

With students, Professor Sreenivasan said his goal is to “make them think really carefully about what they do and when they do it on social media.”

“We have to think about social media in a new strategic way,” he said. “It is no longer something that we can ignore. It is not a place to just wish your friends happy birthday. It is a place of business. It is a place where your career will be enhanced or degraded, depending on your use of these tools and services.”

While the classes are meant for working journalists, people from many different fields have signed up. In addition to the two courses offered for nondegree students last fall and spring, Professor Sreenivasan and Ernest R. Sotomayor, assistant dean, career services and continuing education, organized a weekend of panels and workshops in late January for 500 people after a similar weekend conference approach drew 300 students last May.

Participants paid up to $200 for lectures and panels that began on a Friday evening with Fred Wilson, the venture capitalist, talking about the future of social networking, and Vadim Lavrusik, who oversees journalism initiatives at Facebook, offering insight on how to use the platform for reporting, content creation and sharing.

Over the next two days, the discussions ranged from how to build a community using social networking tools to how social media is changing the way people watch television.
For those participants, who wanted one-on-one attention from an experienced social media user, the “social media doctors” were in the house.

Stationed at small tables with laptops in the school’s lounge, two dozen volunteers met with people throughout the weekend, offering guidance on topics like how to set up a Twitter account, create an audio recording on SoundCloud and how to take a Tumblr blog to the next level.
A professional photographer was nearby for participants who needed a profile photo for their online presence. There was a line of people waiting on his services both days.

The idea behind the “doctors” was to give people some individual instruction at a conference setting, said Liz Borod Wright, a freelance writer who works with Linda Bernstein, another freelance writer, to help Professor Sreenivasan teach the classes. “They are looking at your Facebook page, your Twitter account, your LinkedIn account and giving guidance on what is most relevant to you,” she said.

Dr. Kate Uraneck, 53, a doctor and emergency disaster preparedness official for New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said she attended the weekend program to learn more about social networking tools. A graduate of Columbia journalism school, she heard about it through the school’s alumni network.

“Within my field of emergency preparedness, social media is taking on a more prominent role,” she said, noting how government and Red Cross officials turned to Twitter and Facebook to get the word out during Hurricane Irene. “I wanted to get more knowledge about it.”

Dr. Uraneck emphasized that she does not have social media responsibilities as part of her job. She met with one of the social media doctors to learn more about how to use her personal account, @thedisasterist, more effectively. One of her chief goals, she said with a laugh, was to better understand the role of the hashtag in the Twitter system.

She sat down with one of the most experienced volunteers: Serbino Sandifer-Walker, a fellow alumna of Columbia’s journalism school who is a multimedia journalism professor at Texas Southern University in Houston. Professor Sandifer-Walker said she was interested in not only learning about new platforms during the conference, but also seeing how Columbia’s journalism school approached teaching social media skills because a similar continuing education class is being explored at her university.

“We are looking at creating a course that would be good for seasoned professionals, people who want to develop skills to move their career to the next level,” she said. “For the program to be strong, we know that it will be important to keep up with all of the changes.”
Educators also say skills classes have to help translate what seems to be a different language — hashtags, mentions, heart.

For Dr. Uraneck, her advice on Twitter was straightforward: “Use it to inform, enlighten, bring value,” she said. “Engage.”

Over the next hour, Professor Sandifer-Walker, using layman terms, explained to Dr. Uraneck how Twitter can be used to find people around the world who share similar passions and interests. They talked about the importance of sharing links to useful, relevant content and looking for organizations and people who did the same.

They also discussed how interacting with people on Twitter is an important part of both building and joining a community. And how a hashtag is a useful way to help discover and follow topics or issues on Twitter.

“To me, just learning about mentions and hashtags was almost worth the price of admission,” Dr. Uraneck said. “I had picked up books on Twitter but now I understand it. I also understand the relationship-building piece, being responsive and the give-and-take that goes with that.”

Several businesses also offer online courses to help people understand social networking.
For years, Mediabistro.com, now a division of WebMediaBrands, which publishes blogs about social media and sponsors trade shows, has offered a robust lineup of digital media courses for media professionals, including workshops on blogging basics and podcasting.

In 2007, there were 150 workshops and courses about digital media and technology but none specifically about social media, according to Carmen Scheidel, Mediabistro’s vice president for education and events.

Last year, she said, there were 190 workshops and courses in the digital media and technology program with 32 courses dedicated specifically to social media topics that included social media metrics and marketing on Facebook and Twitter. Many of these courses are now offered online.

“In general, the digital natives are earlier in their careers, and they are not the ones taking these types of classes,” Ms. Scheidel said. “It tends to be people who are very accomplished in their careers but are new to social media. It is an interesting mix.”

Fueling interest in learning has been a sharp increase in the number of employers looking for people with social media skills. Since 2010, the number of jobs listed on Mediabistro’s job board in the categories of mobile, social media, Web development and social-app gaming increased 140 percent, she said.

In January, job listings in those categories were up 51 percent over from the previous January.

To deliver social media training in a more effective way, Ms. Scheidel said that Mediabistro last year introduced a new approach. Instead of offering mostly small workshops with 15 to 20 students, they began offering what she described as an online social media conference.
As part of the course, industry leaders, who often appear at major digital conferences, deliver their presentations online during a webcast. At the same time, she says they still offer students small online workshops and one-on-one guidance with instructors who give them advice for whatever specific social media project they are doing.

“We wanted to give them the experience of being at a conference but maintain that small group setting, where you can get feedback and actually learn,” she said. “We also know that they can benefit from helping each other. They can share, connect and give feedback in small group workshops.”

The online conference approach also gives the students an opportunity to establish social media connections with one another, giving them an instant social network of peers interested in the same topic.

On a recent Thursday afternoon, Ms. Scheidel opened the first session of an eight-week online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp by welcoming about 250 students linking in from their computers from around the country for the live seminar.

While some of the participants were in between jobs, most of the students worked for major corporate brands, universities and government agencies, including MTV, NBC Universal, M.I.T., Bobbi Brown and the World Health Organization.

At the first session, Ms. Scheidel introduced Michael Brito, senior vice president for social business planning at Edelman Digital, who was followed by Dave Kerpen, chief executive officer of Likeable, a marketing firm. The title of his talk was “How to Establish a Brand Personality Through Social Media.”

As both speakers delivered their presentations into a Web camera, zipping through their PowerPoint slides visible in one of the modules on the computer screens, Ms. Scheidel guided a lively interactive chat in another module, allowing the students to ask questions of the speakers and each other.

When one of the speakers brought up Pinterest, one of the students typed into the discussion forum, “What is Pinterest?”

In seconds, another student typed into the chat box: “It’s a social bulletin board — image based.”

Then, Ms. Scheidel typed in the link, pinterest.com. Another student added: “It is a new photo share. You have to be invited, which I think is not very friendly.”

Yet another student, suggested he “check out their Web site” but warned it “can be addicting.”

At the end of the first session, Mr. Kerpen from Likeable invited the students to find him on Twitter and ask any questions that they might have after the class.

He also announced that he would give copies of his book to students who said hello to him on Twitter immediately after the class. He emphasized, “There is no timeline tweeting me questions.”

“The timeline is the rest of our lives,” he said.