What If?  Latest Edition of the MIT Technology Review

The MIT Technology Review March / April edition has arrived in my mailbox!  (Yes, I know there’s an irony that a magazine about cutting edge technology comes by snail mail, but I still  enjoy reading hard copy magazines or books.  No need for wifi or batteries. The thrill of thumbing through paper.  Easily skipping around to different articles.  )

Some of you may be thinking, “But, Eva, I thought you focused on leadership.  Why are you subscribing to the MIT Tech Review?”

Leadership for Technical Experts

Yes, I focus on leadership, but specifically for technical experts.  And while that could apply to a wide variety of fields, since experts are everywhere, I think of my niche as being the hardware / software industry.  People who do amazing things with electronic stuff.  So I subscribe not only to the Harvard Business Review to get the latest on management and leadership, but also to the MIT Tech Review, because I want to keep in touch with my peeps.  I want to know where the industry is headed, and what the people issues are.

Because people issues are still the issues in technology.  Solving human issues is the core reason why most technology exists.  And these tech solutions often create additional unintended problems.

Those Luddites

Starting on pg. 8, there’s an article about the transition to AI and how humankind isn’t ready for it, for the upheaval and inequality it has the potential to create.  The historian in me immediately thought of the Industrial Revolution and the change from “cottage” industry to the big factories in the north of England.  We’ve lived there and I’ve toured the museums made from those factories. The size of those looms, the noise, the dirt, the danger, are almost incomprehensible to us today.

Those factories did more than change people’s employment, how they made money to live on.  It changed the entire fabric of their lives.  We need to learn the lessons from those times and see how we can ease this transition.

For someone like me, well-educated and inclined to embrace change, AI sounds fascinating.  This article is a good reminder that AI will create significant leadership issues for many industries, not just tech.

Smart Cities – and the Homeless?

On page 60 is an article about Sidewalk Labs and its project in Toronto to create a smarter “smart city.”  It mentions that driverless cars “will navigate more precisely and obey traffic laws more consistently than human drivers, so it wants to put narrower lanes and carve out more room for sidewalks and parks.”  More sidewalks and parks sound great!

But will more people be sleeping on those sidewalks and in those parks?  Where I live in Denver, I see a lot of homeless people.  They’re a part of my community.  They pet my dog, even offer him their food.  I saw so many that I volunteer at a homeless shelter, offering a class on “Workplace Survival Skills.”  How can AI benefit that community?  How is a smart city going to connect with and serve its poorest citizens?

Why I love the MIT Technology Review – gives me hours of thinking about “what if?” and “what about.”