The Traits We Need For The Future We’re Entering

Over the last ten posts, we have been building a clearer picture of what it means to live in a world approaching a systemic turning point. We began by examining why today feels unusually active and uneven, then traced the deeper pattern behind major shifts in history. We explored how change accumulates, compresses, destabilizes, and eventually reorganizes life around new assumptions. We introduced the seven domains that shape every transition and showed why no single force ever moves a civilization forward on its own. We examined the three drivers that push societies across thresholds and built gauges that make systemic pressure legible. Using those gauges, we read four major transitions in the long arc of history: from hunter-gatherer life to agriculture, from agriculture to the Axial reorientation of ideas, from the Axial age to the Renaissance, and from the Renaissance into the Industrial world. We then applied the same lens to the present, showing why the 2020s feel dense, fast, and tightly connected. Most recently, we explored the possibility of another transition forming and the kind of governance required when intelligence itself becomes a shared utility. Together, these posts formed a simple arc: understand the moment, understand the mechanics, understand what may be forming next.

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Learning’s Next Phase, Captured On Video

Yesterday, I explored a powerful story: how human learning has evolved from vertical to horizontal, and now toward something even more transformative – ambient.

For most of history, learning was vertical, flowing down through families and traditions. The rise of schools, books, and digital platforms expanded it horizontally, allowing knowledge to move sideways across communities and institutions. But today, a new phase is emerging: ambient learning. In this model, knowledge doesn’t just pass down or across – it surrounds us. Supported by AI, sensors, and connected environments, learning becomes ever-present, context-aware, and seamlessly woven into daily life.

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A Different Kind Of Disruption: Skills, Invention, And The Future Of Work

As the world enters what may be the most transformative period since the dawn of industrialization, comparisons to past eras of great invention are both understandable and necessary. The steam engine, electrification, and mass production systems redefined economies, reshaped societies, and triggered massive employment shifts. Today, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and synthetic biology are poised to do the same. Yet beneath the surface of these historical parallels lies a crucial divergence – one that could reshape not just work, but the social fabric itself.

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Interview With Amanda Blyth – AIST Publications Manager

I had the pleasure of keynoting the AIME 150th anniversary event last week. In advance of that session, I did a short interview addressing five questions posed by Amanda Blyth, publications manager for the association of Iron and Steel Technology. The questions were in the areas of energy, digital transformation, sustainability, skills needed in 2030, and remote work. The interview can be viewed below. Note: I misspoke during the interview. When addressing the skillset question, I for some reason reversed our left and right brain characteristics. It is our right-brain that houses those characteristics that make us distinctly human.

The Future Of Jobs

Data gathered by LinkedIn, Coursera and the World Economic Forum was captured in a Future of Jobs Report recently published by The World Economic forum (WEF). A good summary is provided by senior writer Kate Whiting in her recent Article on the WEF website. Report content is showing up in varied places, with key finding.

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Accelerating Towards Automation

The acceleration of automation is not a direct outcome of the pandemic – it is simply more visible now. That visibility is one of the few bright spots in an otherwise horrible several months. The inequities that exist in the world are now more visible. The lack of preparation for a digital future has exposed those who did not see the need. In the case of automation, it was going to accelerate for a number of reasons, but the pandemic will Accelerate the Acceleration. One clear reason that this decade will see a massive investment in automation is the fall in Working Age population. Said another way, it is getting increasingly difficult to find skilled resources.

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What Skills Do You Need To Outsmart Robots?

What job skills do we need for the future? A popular question that comes up a lot. In a Recent Post, I listed several: emotional intelligence, creativity, flexibility, adaptability, data literacy, and technology savviness. This Tweet of a World Economic Forum video adds complex problem solving, critical thinking, people management, working with others, and decision making to the list.

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Jobs will be very different in 10 years

As many focus on the future of work, various different perspectives are presented. A common theme is emerging: Jobs will be there, but they will be very different within the next decade. This recent Article draws three conclusions:

  • In 10 years time, 50% of jobs will be changed by automation – but only 5% eliminated.
  • 9 out of 10 jobs will require digital skills.
  • Young, low-skilled and vulnerable people – all need help with up-skilling.

Several critical points are made by the World Economic Forum article:

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Future Hiring: Skills-Based or Credentials-Based?

An Article by IEEE Spectrum captured a dialog that occurred at a recent MIT conference. The topic: AI and the Future of Work. The conference discussion underscores the struggles between Techno-Optimism and Techno-Pessimism. Pessimistic when AI and automation are viewed as an industry-destroying path that takes jobs via self-driving technology,  smart law algorithms, and robots that continue to put factory and warehouse workers out of work. Optimistic when those same technologies are viewed as augmentation that improves the employee experience.

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The Hybrid Job Economy

The notion that a renaissance man is more important today than ever is presented in recent Research by Burning Glass Technologies. Perhaps the best renaissance man of all time was Leonardo da Vinci, who was highly esteemed for his broad knowledge of many fields. The research concludes that we must all become more da Vinci-like in our careers. Said another way: learning a single skill in isolation has a short shelf life. Learning complementary skills becomes critical in what the research describes as a hybrid job economy.

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The Five most Important Job Skills of the Future

In a recent Article, author Bernard Marr describes the five most important job skills of the future. A conversation that is tightly linked to the role of education, and a topic I have explored in Several Posts. Mr. Marr states that the pace of change is being driven by several factors. He paints a picture of an interconnected world that allows us to work remotely and with people from different cultures as easily as if they were in the office next door. The Healthy Extension of Life allows us to work longer, creating an age-diverse workforce. Combined with science fiction becoming reality, machines suddenly augment our skills and free us up to focus on higher-level activities.

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Future Capability Profile

Future Capability Profile

This recent Article describes how Sergey Brin and Larry Page founded Google on the conviction that STEM expertise was the dominant  piece of the capability profile – setting its hiring algorithms to look for computer science students with top grades from elite science universities. In 2013, they decided to test this hypothesis by analyzing the hiring, firing, and promotion data accumulated since their incorporation in 1998.

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