Projecting Power and Influence

At the height of Rome's power they had more than 29 great military highways, 113 provinces were interconnected by 372 great road-links, and the whole road system comprised more than 400,000 km of roads, of which over 80,500 km were stone-paved.  This enabled the romans to flourish as a civilization for over 400 years and to project their power and influence to the ends of the known world.

The Roman roads offered value in many ways.  They enabled trade and supplies to move, cultural influences to expand, knowledge to be shared and the use of effective military strategies based on the predictable movements of Roman legionnaires who could march 24 miles in 5 summer hours when pressed for short amounts of time, and 20 miles a day indefinitely in all weather.  This was only possible because of the investment in and the quality of the roads.

Today the internet is the modern equivalent of the Roman road.  Products can be sold, tracked and delivered just about anywhere in the world because of the internet.  The internet, however, also enables those with nefarious intent to project power and influence on people around the world, and it is the place where information warfare is now fought.

Future of Warfare and Its Gamification

Technology is giving life the potential to flourish like never before - or to self destruct. ~ Future of Life Institute 

In the future, warfare will be fought increasingly by engineers, software developers, scientists, accountants and politicians, which is a historical anomaly and worth some consideration.

Historically war was conducted to compel a positive political outcome for the victor.  This was accomplished by diminishing an adversaries will, or resolve to fight by making them suffer.  Once an adversary suffered enough and they lost their will to continue - peace was achieved on the terms of the victor.  Here is where the entire twisted logic of war and violence breaks down.  In the future, warfare is likely to be increasingly fought between machines that don't suffer.  They just do it - as Nike advocated.

Reimagining Higher Education: The New-Age CFO with Expert Mike Gower of Rutgers University

In this backstage interview with Rutger University's Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Treasurer Mike Gower, we explore the importance of student retention, reducing student debt loads and using artificial intelligence to help alert staff that a particular student is struggling.  We also talk about making education more efficient by using a combination of in-person and digital classrooms and much more.  Enjoy!

 

To view the entire Reimagining Higher Education, The New Age CFO 60 minute virtual event click here.

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist at TCS

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Does Uncle Sam Really Want You?

Uncle Sam doesn’t really want a gangly 18-year-old soldier to stand guard outside the gate of a military base, rather he wants a wide-area motion imagery (WAMI) system that provides surveillance, reconnaissance, and intelligence-gathering using specialized software and camera systems to detect and track hundreds of people and vehicles all at the same time over a city-sized area.  

Uncle Sam doesn’t really want a blurry eyed, half asleep and distracted human pilot flying in circles trying to find camouflaged bad guys on the ground, rather he wants a multispectral system, that can see things invisible to human eyes, consisting of four high-definition cameras covering five spectral bands; a three-color diode pump laser designator and rangefinder; laser spot search and track capability; automated sensor and laser bore sight alignment; three-mode target tracker., and MTS sensors that offers multiple fields of view, electronic zoom, and multimode video tracking.

The Future of University Recruitment, Retention and Reimagining

If universities know what makes a good university student, then shouldn't they be sharing those details and helping to prepare more students in advance?  Why are universities mostly hands-off until application deadlines approach - when it's already too late to have an impact?  

I propose that limited spaces for on-campus students, plus a surplus in demand has kept universities from innovating and improving their recruitment processes.  It's time for a change.  Forbes reports, "For spring 2021, undergraduate enrollment dropped by 4.5% compared with 2020, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Community colleges experienced the steepest decline: Enrollment was down 9.5% this spring compared to the prior year, and it was down 9.5% in fall 2020, too.  Even before the pandemic the trends were pointing to lower enrollments.  These trends will have significant impacts on universities' priorities and future business models.

Universities have long complained about the poor quality of students coming out of high school, yet they have done little if anything to improve the quality.  As global competition increases from more online options and non-traditional players, universities must think differently about recruitment and outcomes.

Fewer enrollments now and in the future mean increased competition for new students.  Isn't it about time colleges started to seek competitive advantages by reaching out to potential student/customers earlier in order to assist them in getting better prepared for higher education? 

Now that we have survived and learned from our pandemic experiences, we understand how to provide digital education.  Once the digital transformation work and infrastructures are in place, extending online classes, programs and personalized educational experiences to potential future students doesn't cost that much.  These can be extended as a way to increase the number of students who want to enroll, plus it helps the university identify the best potential students early and enhances a university's brand value.  

What is certain, is that the way universities have operated for centuries is no longer adequate for surviving the future.  In the future, the ecosystems of higher education must reach out and embrace potential students much earlier, focus on improving student retention through personalized and automated help, and include all graduates and former students in lifelong learning relationships.

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist at TCS

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Future, Complexity and Human Thinking

Don't let me drive a motorized vehicle after writing a long article.  In fact, don't let me drive any vehicle motorized or not.  My brain is often deep down a rabbit hole pondering data, crafting logical arguments, analyzing research findings, storytelling, wordsmithing etc, and any remaining brain cycles are not enough to drive safely. If my brain capacity can be nearly consumed while just sitting at a desk, think about the brain cycles consumed by pilots flying modern fighter jets in combat!

Modern fighter pilots have a plethora of onboard sensors that collect and stream massive volumes of data every second. The object of so many sensors is to give our pilots more information at a faster rate in order to achieve competitive advantages over adversaries. Too much information, however, is debilitating.  That is the reason the task of flying will increasingly be handed over to robotic, AI-powered pilots, so humans can use their limited brain capacity to focus on assignments with a slower tempo - like accomplishing the overall mission.

In order for jet fighter pilots to understand all the data pouring in, special helmets and UXs were designed to dumb down and slow down the need for human analysis.  Even with simplified user interfaces, pilots reported they struggled with information overload.   That is why the role of future military pilots is quickly evolving away from flying aircraft to operating flying command and control centers.

The massive rivers of data that keeps an aircraft flying has reached the level where humans are incapable of processing it fast enough to be successful.  In fact the F-35 is said to be unflyable without AI.  We now have reached the human thinking version of the sound barrier.  To push through and beyond it we will need AI augmentation to expand and extend our mental processing power. 

The Future of Human Experiences (HX)

I have a confession.  Although my family would have been considered working poor (my dad worked odd jobs in construction, sawmills and factories), I was able to attend a university, pay my tuition by working on a dairy farm and graduate.  This ultimately opened doors to membership among the "elite" by way of a college degree and a job with a living wage.  

It is easy to forget the struggles of one's past when life has moved on.  It's easy to assume our personal experiences are representative of most.  My recent research, however, has revealed this to be untrue.  In many parts of America, there are macro and micro-economic forces and trends that are negatively impacting life opportunities, careers, hope and the quality of the human experience.

When a customer complains of bad customer service, how should the business respond?  Apologize, empathize and ensure it doesn't happen again.  If businesses ignore these complaints they will quickly suffer the results.  It's not too dissimilar when it comes to leading and/or governing constituents.  Citizens also have experiences on a spectrum of good to bad.  These human experiences make up a person's quality of life and are critically important to them.  

Businesses cannot thrive, if their customers aren't thriving.  Countries can't thrive, if their citizens are not thriving.  What follows is a look at the human experience from the perspective of the less educated and underemployed workers in America.

First, we cannot begin to understand the minds and actions of large numbers of American workers without first understanding there are two different Americas, one made up of a less educated or under-employed workforce suffering through deindustrialization, economic pain, reduced opportunities and community decay, while the other consists of highly educated, advantaged and elite individuals experiencing rapid wage increases and fortuitous and abundant career opportunities. 

For many Americans, deindustrialization has reduced the quality of their human experience.  Many experience delayed and strained marriages, broken and delayed families, poor physical and mental health, addictions, diminished local economies, and even a reduced sense of worth, status, purpose and hope.  What is causing these declines in fortune?  Let’s take a look at deindustrialization, technological innovations and some additional variables that have worked symbiotically to create these unfortunate human experiences.

Purpose Led Future

The future is not unexpected.  Yesterday’s future arrived today.  It’s an inevitable pattern.  I have been reading a lot about inevitability lately.  Last week I listened to Bill Gates and Rashida Jones on the Ask Big Questions podcast.  In this podcast Bill Gates shared that we have already damaged the earth and the negative consequences are inevitable.  

In my work over the past few months, I have written a series of articles under the title of The Future of Information, Truth and Influence.  Many of the articles address the negative and unanticipated consequences of social media on our society.  Many authors of the research I have been studying seem to have a fatalistic view.  We have let the genie out of the bottle and there is no going back.  It’s inevitable. 

Echo Chambers Involving Old and New Media

Twitter has been widely credited with influencing the 2016 US presidential election.  Not because lot's of voters read tweets, but because lot's of journalists do.  Many of these journalists work for traditional media, which includes TV, radio, newspapers, newsletters, etc.  The sheer volume of controversial tweets generated ensured that journalists looked no further than Twitter for topics to cover.  This kept the spotlight on those who understood how both traditional and social media works, and were skilled at exploiting it.

Journalists and their editors understand that controversy and outrage are good for business. CBS's executive Les Moonves was quoted in 2016 as saying, "the Trump phenomenon may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS." And by now we all know that social media algorithms thrive on engagement, and there is no better tool for engagement than tweeting outrageous things.  The cacophony of controversy fueled both traditional media's and new medias' business models.  A win for all media - if not necessarily for democracy.

The Vulnerable Targets of Social Engineering and Mind Manipulation

It is disturbing to learn that if social engineers identify you as older, prone to conspiracy theories, low-informed and/or less educated, working poor or black, they will target and bombard you with nonstop disinformation on social media at a level much higher than others.  Why?  To answer that question let's review the rules and strategies social engineers follow to bend the minds of the most vulnerable:

1. Research has shown that less-informed and less-educated voters are more likely to believe falsehoods.
2. Social engineers have found it is easy to mislead older people and those prone to conspiracy theories.  
3. Those that already have a bent toward conspiracy theories are most inclined to spread unverified rumors.
4. Social engineers understand that the most vulnerable to mind manipulation are the lower-middle class, working poor, elderly and blacks. These groups are driven by the insecurity of their place in society and in the economy. They’re easiest to influence by sharing stories that others are out to trick them and the world is out to get them.