The Future of Learning: How will people learn the skills they need for academe, work and life? presented by Dan Russell, Google
Feb. 3, 2017
Edmon Low Library, OSU-Stillwater
9-10:30 a.m., Peggy V. Helmerich Browsing Room
General presentation open to OSU Library employees and our OCALD colleagues
10:45-11:45 a.m., Stringer Conference Room
OSU Special Collections Division faculty and staff meet with Russell
11:45-12:45 p.m., Stringer Conference Room
LEC meet with Russell
1 to 1:30 p.m., Break
1:45 to 2:45 p.m., Stringer Conference Room
Research and Learning Services faculty and staff meet with Russell
3-4 p.m., Stringer Conference Room
Library Operations Division faculty and staff meet with Russell
Abstract
What does it means to be literate in the age of Google? At a time when you can search billions of texts in milliseconds, we need to rethink what it means to be literate, and to be a learner. Although you might think that "literacy" is one of the great constants that transcends the ages, the skills of a literate person have changed substantially over time as texts and technology allow for new kinds of reading and understanding. Knowing how to read is just the beginning of it - knowing how to frame a question, pose a query, interpret the texts that you find, organize (and use) the information you discover, and understand your metacognition - these are all critical parts of being literate as well. In his talk Dan reviews what literacy means today and shows how some very surprising and unexpected skills will turn out to be critical in the years ahead.
The advent of the networked world changes our expectations from traditional learning behaviors to ways of learning that leverage the networked world and networked people. From his perspective as a MOOC instructor of more than 3M students (and as someone who spends considerable time teaching in K12 and public libraries), Dan will describe the changes in literacies that are taking place, how we are becoming perpetual students, and what this means for the future of learning.
Speaker Bio
Daniel Russell is the Uber Tech Lead for Search Quality and User Happiness in Mountain View. He earned his PhD in computer science at the University of Rochester (1985), specializing in Artificial Intelligence until he realized that magnifying human intelligence was his real passion. Twenty years ago he forswore AI in favor of HI, and enjoys teaching, learning, running and music, preferably all in one day. His MOOC (PowerSearchingWithGoogle.com) has had over 3 million students, which suggests there is a large interest and appetite for learning how to do research more effectively.
In our Feb. 8 blog post, we discussed how artificial intelligence could impact the library. The post's video "Humans Need Not Apply" argues that an economy built entirely on creative works could not exist, but in the age of social media could we see the beginnings of such a thing?
In his book, "Cognitive Surplus" Clay Shirky discusses the impact a globalized network has had on human efforts. The Industrial Revolution brought with it our modern work schedule, complete with time off and television to occupy that time. As Shirky observes, a good deal of our free time in the past had been spent gawking at this relatively new invention. However, the Internet has redirected that energy. The internet provides what Shirky describes as the "means, motive and opportunity" to put our energies into seeking, creating and sharing more personal and meaningful content.
Every time something is seen, enjoyed, or shared by us, we participate in a new content economy. Any time we make a modification, which can be something as simple as an accompanying caption or as transformative as a remix, we contribute to its gross domestic product. The new entrepreneurs in this economy are the ones who devote themselves to content creation. It's easy to view the surface of sites such as YouTube and Facebook and see just that sliver as a representative consensus, but the rabbit hole goes much deeper.
New movements within art, music, film and entertainment are being developed as you read this. Globalized genres of music such as vaporwave have emerged within just the last few years and already you can fill weeks' of continuous playlists and never repeat a single song. According to company data cited by the Wall Street Journal, as much as 12 hours of audio and music are uploaded to independent publishing site Soundcloud every minute.
Content creators in 2016 have the capability to publish exponentially more media than those of a just a few decades ago. You'll only ever have the opportunity to see a minute fraction of these publications. This blog happens to be a piece of it. If it exists, there's an audience for it.
For libraries this is a chance to be a hub for those who wish to engage in and expand their role in this content driven industry. Libraries already house many of the means of production. Computers, books, software, and peripheral hardware are all already in most of our libraries. Makerspaces are an example of this. These resources represent Shirky's means, motives, and opportunity for millions of creative people.
With an explosion of new art and culture occurring that is capable of rivaling that of the Renaissance, it is not unfeasible to imagine that a new generation of Rembrandts and Michelangelos are currently in their early youth, living near libraries that could give them the tools they need to discover their genius.
How do you view the library's role in this age of content? What services could the library provide to not only further the creative abilities of its users but also connect and engage with users beyond its doors?
A recent publication in the World Economic Forum titled “The Future of Jobs” asserts that over 5 million jobs may be lost to robotization by the year 2020. YouTube channel CGP Grey, a channel that specializes in discussing various concepts in depth, has created a fascinating video discussing just how technological advances can outpace human efforts:
This video raises many intriguing - and possibly unanswerable - questions. For those of us working in the library space some of those questions might include
How will robotization and digital intelligences affect the way library services are provided?
Where will the librarian fit in with all of this?
How will those people whose jobs have been phased out utilize a library?
As CGP Grey’s video posits, digital entities capable of learning, interacting, and producing creative output can accomplish quite a lot. It’s conceivable that even this blog post could someday be written by a well-educated computer intelligence rather than the intern with a penchant for procrastination. That said, it’s entirely possible these advances could see the creation of more effective libraries, more effective librarians and all around more effective learning experiences.
The path to creating smarter, stronger and more capable machines lies in replicating our own psychological learning needs. The conundrum this presents is that the human learning process is an innumerable sum of different ethereal mental mechanisms.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg describes a bulk of these processes as "unsupervised learning." Zuckerberg has invested a great deal of time and capital into the development of artificial intelligence, making it one of Facebook, Inc.'s largest development projects.
In a recent Facebook status update about his aspirations for artificial intelligence development, Zuckerberg said, “Unsupervised learning is learning how the world works by observing and trying things out rather than being told what to do... It's key to building systems with human-like common sense because it doesn't require a person to teach it everything they know. It gives the machine the ability to anticipate what may happen in the future and predict the effect of an action. It could help us build machines that can hold conversations or plan complex sequences of actions... We fundamentally do not understand how general learning works... Until we solve this problem, throwing all the machine power in the world at it cannot create an AI that can do everything a person can.”
This is to say that the human mind is a vast, complex and unique thinking machine that cannot be defined by sheer horsepower. Understanding all of the mechanisms in which it learns is the key to not only the creation of artificial intelligence, but also more effective learning and teaching practices. A thinking machine can not only learn from human teachers, but also teach human learners.
Imagine the impact such an entity could have on a library. Makerspaces, writing labs, research, database optimization, all manner of workshops, all could see a dramatic overhaul of how they're performed, delivered and absorbed by they're audience.
As for the librarians, certain functions librarians perform such as the analyzing, management and acquisition of materials or information and data processing could foreseeably be delegated to thinking computers in the future, but the more human functions of librarians - those directly involved with enlightening and educating the users of the library - need not be replaced because such functions are best fostered by human relationships.
For example, people like to use Siri, but no one really respects Siri as a person. "She" is not a mentor, or a teacher, or a researcher or a friend. "She" doesn’t recognize her user’s learning process or where it might be stumbling, and can only provide feedback in the form of suggestions of what "she" believes they might have meant based on her programming. Digital intelligence may be able to replicate operational functions, but the human capacity for learning requires a set of intangible qualities. A machine capable of learning and teaching may enhance a human's education to a degree, but it takes a human to best understand a human.
What does the development of artificial intelligence mean to you? How do you foresee it affecting your role in the library? How will education utilize intelligent technologies? Share your thoughts in the comments section.
Brewster Kahle is founder and director of the Internet Archive, a free service which steadfastly archives World Wide Web documents. Kahle is building a truly huge digital library
— every book ever published, every movie ever released, all the strata
of web history … It’s all free to the public — unless someone else gets
to it first.
In March 2013, Bonnie Cain-Wood attended a session on how
work spaces impact collaboration. Her notes, take aways and follow-up questions
are below.
Session Brief: The Allen Curve, a theory
developed by MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Tom Allen in the 1970s,
asserts that the physical distance between individuals directly affects their
levels of collaboration. This belief has begun to revolutionize space planning
around the world—especially the institution where the theory was developed.
Whether it is open office space, specially designed labs connecting typically
bifurcated groups, or the consolidation and co-location of related but fragmented
activities and programs, MIT is taking a revolutionary approach to driving
innovation and entrepreneurship through the creation of work spaces that
promote and enhance collaboration.
Take Aways:
·Making a place look "status" hinders
innovation. (Think corporate conference rooms)
·Old model: break up space, send people to work,
bring them together to share. Works well for efficiency, but not for
innovation.
·The coffee pot is a real and symbolic center
that brings people together.
·Communal Offices-sharing offices, when someone
is out, someone else uses the office.
Library Applications:
·Co-working: Could we have flexible working space
that employees could move in and out of so you work with different people and
in a different place? Can we do a pop-up co-work space to experiment with this
concept? As we begin to embed librarians, would co-working space within the
Library be a more efficient use of space?
·Enablers: do we have something, someone,
someplace that encourages interdepartment collaboration? What can we do to
create this?
·If the coffee pot is a real and symbolic center
that brings people together, what is our "coffee pot"?
Library employees may find the slides from Raynna's July 31 presentation to the staff and faculty can be found on the staff drive at U:LibraryFutures\Raynna2012_07_31.pdf or via Sharepoint.
Comments and questions on the presentation can be added to the comments section below.
