Humans versus machines: Who will be employed in future?

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It doesnt have to be a situation where there are fewer jobs for humans in the future, says Ross Dawson

Are we heading towards a world where humans will have to compete with machines? Futurist Ross Dawson addressed this concern at the Australian Computer Society's YITCon event in Melbourne this week, and spoke about how to stay ahead of the game when it comes to jobs in the future.

Robots and artificial intelligence are getting better and better over time. So we have robot vacuum cleaners, we have robot dish washers [robots] being able to fold the laundry. Now this happens to be quite expensive machines... but we can have household robots do these kinds of tasks, said Dawson

Drivers are being challenged. Drivers may not exist. Mercedes just announced they have a semi-trailer, a big truck, which is going to drive around without a driver driving it.

More knowledge tasks are also being handed over to machines, he said. He used the example of IBMs Watson supercomputer assisting doctors by looking through hundreds of thousands of documents and data to come up with a suggested diagnosis to complex diseases such as cancer.

There is the risk that in 'outsourcing' to machines over time humans lose certain capabilities and will be unable to do some tasks manually if they ever need to in the future, Dawson said.

However, it doesnt have to be a situation where its humans versus machines and there are fewer jobs for people. He said jobs for humans are not necessarily being reduced, just changed, and its more about working together with machines to increase humans' capabilities.

A computer first managed to beat a chess grandmaster in 1997, Dawson said. Thats a long time ago and computers have come a long way since then; yet, the best computers at chess can still be beaten by humans and computers working together. The best chess in the world is played by humans and computers working together, the futurist said.

Again, doctors together with technology can be better [themselves] with the robots, the artificial intelligence.

Dawson said that the days where young people could just pass school to get a low-to-medium-skilled job and live comfortably for the rest of their lives are disappearing. With machines capable of doing many basic to complex tasks, it forces people to gain deeper expertise, become smarter in order to get work.

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Humans versus machines: Who will be employed in future?

The Best Albums Of September 2014

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When you get to October, its (sadly?) inevitable in this business to begin thinking about the best albums of the year. Theres plenty still to come, of course great albums, which will warrant considerable acclaim. But some minds are already set: whats been will factor in the year-end equation, and whats to be is likely to miss out.

Luckily for those already shaping their lists, September saw some truly special LPs make it into the wild. Here are just six favourites from the month but you can follow all of Clashs album reviews here.

Click the cover art to scroll through album sleeves

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Shellac Dude Incredible (Touch & Go, released September 15th)

From the twisting opening of the title track onwards, anyone with previous experience of Shellac is in no doubt as to the makers of this racket their primary characteristics are not front-page splashes, headline-generating wackiness, but expert musicianship honed over 22 years of togetherness, and more.

Read the full review

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Leonard Cohen Popular Problems (Columbia, released September 22nd)

Hes 80, but still sounds incredible. You can hear his age; he takes his time and his band gives him space, making this album, lucky number 13 for the Canadian singer, cool and utterly enchanting.

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The Best Albums Of September 2014

Lucie Greene Joins JWT as Worldwide Director of JWTIntelligence

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NEW YORK, NY (PRWEB) October 09, 2014

JWT announced today the appointment of Lucie Greene as Worldwide Director of JWTIntelligence. Greene will be responsible for driving JWTs consumer insights and trends-focused initiatives, adding bench strength to the agencys trends unit, JWTIntelligence. She will join the agency in October and be based in New York while reporting to JWT Worldwide Planning Director Guy Murphy.

Joining JWT from LS:N Global, the forecasting division of leading London-based trends consultancy The Future Laboratory, Greene brings more than a decade of experience exploring emerging shifts in lifestyle and consumer behavior for both international publications and brands. During her time at The Future Laboratory as the editor of LS:N Global, Greene led a team of researchers that forecast trends for clients including Google, Marks & Spencer, LVMH, Westfield, H&M, Nike, Pernod Ricard and Este Lauder, among others.

Lucies experience is a strong complement to JWTs longstanding and highly respected trends unit. She will deepen our understanding of cultural shifts and drive innovation possibilities for our client brands, said Murphy.

Greene is a well-respected journalist and editor. Prior to joining The Future Laboratory she was a regular contributor to titles including The Financial Times, Womens Wear Daily, Vogue UK, Elle Decor UK and The Telegraph, and worked with clients including LVMH, Richemont Group and Space NK on branded content projects. She started out as a reporter for Womens Wear Daily and still contributes to the Financial Times.

During her time at The Future Laboratory, Greene presented for leading international organizations including Este Lauder, FitFlop, Virgin, Rolls-Royce, Ralph Lauren, and Soho House Group on trends, and led strategic content partnerships with Retail Week Live and Cosmetic Executive Women. She has also consulted as an expert on various bespoke projects for The Future Laboratorys consultancy division.

She has also been featured as an expert on trends and consumer insights on CNBC and Brand Republic television, and quoted by CNN as well as The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Sunday Times, The Guardian UK and Newsweek, among others.

Commenting on the new role, Greene said, Im thrilled to be joining JWT at this exciting time. JWTIntelligence has established a culture of futurism, trends and consumer insight at JWT. Im looking forward to building on this even further, working with JWTs new and existing clients to create innovative, inspiring and future-facing platforms and strategies. JWT has always been regarded as a pioneer in its field and Im proud to be joining such an iconic company.

ABOUT JWT JWT is the worlds best-known marketing communications brand that has been inventing pioneering ideas for the past 150 years. Headquartered in New York, JWT is a true global network with more than 200 offices in over 90 countries, employing nearly 10,000 marketing professionals. JWT consistently ranks among the top agency networks in the world and continues a dominant presence in the industry by staying on the leading edgefrom producing the first-ever TV commercial in 1939 to developing award-winning branded content today. For more information, please visit http://www.jwt.com and follow us @JWT_Worldwide.

ABOUT JWTINTELLIGENCE JWTIntelligence is a center for provocative thinking that focuses on identifying shifts in the global zeitgeist. Its aim is to bring the outside into help inspire ideas beyond brand, category and consumer conventionsand to identify emerging opportunities so they can be leveraged for business gain. As a part of JWT, the worlds best-known marketing communications brand, JWTIntelligence has conducted trends research and analysis across categories and geographies for nearly a decade. For more information, please visit http://www.jwtintelligence.com and follow us @JWTIntelligence.

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Lucie Greene Joins JWT as Worldwide Director of JWTIntelligence

How to File a Freedom of Information (FOIA) Request in New York! – Video

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How to File a Freedom of Information (FOIA) Request in New York!
Find out how to file an IRS freedom of Information Act request below. Our experienced certified tax consultants can help you approaching IRS professionally. Read More @ http://goo.gl/xK48Zc.

By: Long Island Tax Resolution Services

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How to File a Freedom of Information (FOIA) Request in New York! - Video

Dread Scott Performs "On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide" – Video

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Dread Scott Performs "On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide"
A slow-motion video of a portion of Dread Scott #39;s performance of "On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide" (October 7, 2014, DUMBO Brooklyn)

By: NOWphotography NYC

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Dread Scott Performs "On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide" - Video

Freedom Summer of '64 activists gather in Oxford

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OXFORD, Ohio Fifty years ago, young volunteers trained in Oxford risked and, in three cases, lost their lives fighting for civil rights in Mississippi. This weekend, veterans of 1964's "Freedom Summer"willgather at Miami University to tell stories of those momentous days and send a clarion call to engage in today's civil rights struggles.

The conference and reunion, named, "50 Years After Freedom Summer: Understanding the Past, Building the Future,"will reunite 48 volunteers among the 800 who trained for a dangerous voter registration campaign and the establishment of Freedom Schools in Mississippi to educate African-American children who were denied equal access to a public education.

The activists' worst fears were realized on Sunday, June 21, 1964, when three volunteers James Chaney of Mississippi, and Andrew Goodman and MichaelSchwernerof New York failed to check in after investigating a recently fire-bombed church nearPhiladelphia,Miss. wherethey had planned to conduct a Freedom School.

Six more weeks would pass before the remains of the three men were found buried in an earthen dam inNeshobaCounty, Miss. They had been arrested in Philadelphia on a speeding charge, jailed and then released with a posse of Klansmen waiting for them. Another 35 years would pass before sevenKKKmembers would be prosecuted for the crime.

The training took place at Western College for Women, which merged into Miami in the1970s. Conference organizers created an iPhone appthrougha National Endowment for the Humanities grant. The app will debut this weekend andoffer an interactive tour of the Western campus and explain events like role-playing through which students learned to react nonviolently to violent racists trying to impede their work.

Become a WCPO Insider to see how conference organizers want to affect the events of today.

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Freedom Summer of '64 activists gather in Oxford

Freedom Summer volunteers return to Miami for commemoration

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Although summer 2014 has ended, the importance of summer 1964 still resonates with a new commemoration of Freedom Summer starting Saturday at Miami University.

Miami had already observed Freedom Summer with special tours of the campus and other events, but the commemoration continues this weekend and next week, as people who were there 50 years ago return to share their memories. Miami University will host the reunion and national conference, 50 Years After Freedom Summer: Understanding the Past, Building the Future, Oct. 11-14.

On Saturday, returning Freedom Summer volunteers will visit the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, where they will see a play by Miami theatre students depicting the 1964 Freedom Summer training in Oxford. At 1 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 12, Miami President David Hodge will unveil the new Freedom Summer Chimes at the Freedom Summer Memorial on Western Campus. The complete events schedule is at Miamis website.

Oxford resident Jane Strippel was part of a group called Friends of the Mississippi Summer Project, and she vividly remembers the nonviolence training that volunteers took as they prepared to travel to Mississippi to help black residents register to vote. Mississippi was known as a very dangerous place at the time, and the volunteers knew they would be risking their lives.

I saw this training where they were doing non-violent self-defense. They were outside on the ground. That was the one that really struck me deeply, the way there were doing different procedures. They were practicing what they might experience, with the conditions in Mississippi just the way their bodies were contorted and the way they made it look very real, it just struck me that I knew it was dangerous, but I felt even more anxious about it. It brought me very close to it. It made me realize the serious conditions theyd be under.

Three of the volunteers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were murdered in Mississippi after leaving Oxford. Strippel remembered when word of their disappearance got back to Oxford. A man named Robert Moses was one of the leaders of the training.

You can imagine how it must have been for the students that were going to go that next week. And it was so hard for the leadership the leaders had a pretty good sense they had been killed. When Bob Moses had to go before the group, he hesitated a long time before he spoke, looking down at his feet and trying to get his words together. He said, You dont have to go. But they realized it was an impact. They started singing one of the freedom songs that was so important to them freedom is a constant struggle. Some of the parents pulled out a few of them, but most of them went anyway, she remembered.

While honoring the past, Miami will be doing so in a modern, hi-tech way, with its Freedom Summer app that takes players around campus, showing them the locations of the training, along with archival video and audio clips. That will be tested at 10:30 a.m. Sunday at Peabody Hall, said the apps creator, Ann Elizabeth Armstrong.

We have been doing play test. We imagined the game, we wrote it own on paper, we play-tested it physically we had to translate the game we imagined into what this platform would do. So that was challenging and exciting, and it opened a lot of opportunities to start thinking more about how a location-based game works.

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Freedom Summer volunteers return to Miami for commemoration

Roots of Freedom Summer planted at Ohio college

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OXFORD, Ohio -- It wasn't supposed to happen here.

Training for 800 Freedom Summer volunteers in 1964 was supposed to take place 150 miles south, at Berea College in Berea, Ky.

But 50 years after the volunteers spread out across Mississippi in a pivotal call for civil rights, they're returning this weekend to Oxford ?? not Berea ?? to celebrate their roots.

The reunion of four dozen of the original Freedom Summer activists will be bittersweet with memories of registering African-Americans to vote, teaching in Freedom Schools ?? and working side by side with three young friends killed by angry segregationists.

Now old and graying, the returnees also will pay tribute to Oxford, the unlikely meeting place that nurtured their work and stirred their idealism to a fearless, fever pitch.

"This training, which generated international headlines, cements Ohio's place and the places of Western College and Oxford in the civil rights movement," said Jacqueline "Jacky" Johnson, interim archivist at Miami University, which merged in 1974 with Western College.

Why Oxford, Ohio?

Why then, June 1964?

How 800 college students, mainly from East Coast schools and mostly white, arrived in Oxford is a story cast in turbulent times that changed a nation.

Administrators at Berea College, founded in 1855 as the first interracial and coeducational college in the South, said they feared for the safety of Freedom Summer volunteers that summer of '64. Privately, according to other documents, administrators caved in to pressure from alumni not to house volunteers on campus.

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Roots of Freedom Summer planted at Ohio college