We are leaving the Information Age and transitioning into the Shift Age, a time of transformation and change that offers both great risk and incredible opportunity. In Entering the Shift Age, David Houle identifies and explains the dynamics and forces that have shaped our world and will continue to reshape our world for the next 20 years. He shows how the Shift Age means a world fully global yet focused on the individual, where the speed of change is so fast that change itself is the new norm. He also comments from the front lines of the Shift Age on issues and topics that affect our lives, from business and technology to environment, media and global culture. eBook 12 discusses the changing and declining influence of nation states as it pertains to the global stage of human evolution. David Houle predicts that we are entering the greatest time of human migration in history. Part 4: The Future of the Shift Age Introduction Chapter 26: Nation States? Chapter 27: The Global Age of Migration
We are leaving the Information Age and transitioning into the Shift Age, a time of transformation and change that offers both great risk and incredible opportunity. In Entering the Shift Age, David Houle identifies and explains the dynamics and forces that have shaped our world and will continue to reshape our world for the next 20 years. He shows how the Shift Age means a world fully global yet focused on the individual, where the speed of change is so fast that change itself is the new norm. He also comments from the front lines of the Shift Age on issues and topics that affect our lives, from business and technology to environment, media and global culture. eBook 7 looks at the profound changes soon to occur at all levels of education—more in the next two decades Age than in the last two centuries. Part 4: The Future of the Shift Age Introduction Chapter 19: Education
Praise for David Houle "Houle breaks down big ideas into easily digestible, entertaining small bites...Crack this book open whenever globalization's gotten you down."—Slate.com. "The Shift Age lifts us out of the rapids of techno-change and helps us see the course of the river we've been rafting on."-Howard Bloom, author of the GOD PROBLEM and GLOBAL BRAIN "[The Shift Age] is must read for anyone who is interested in where humanity is headed in coming generations. This book provides an overview of how our progeny will live, work, and play in coming decades."—Bob Citron, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Foundation for the Future "David Houle's Shift Age offers an astounding proposition: the Information Age is ending with emergence of an age of constant change. Read this book!"—Reese Schonfeld, Cofounder of CNN, CNN Headline News, and Food Network "America needs a new educational vision. Shift Ed provides a clear vision that emphasizes the essential ingredients of a twenty-first-century education based upon creativity, collaboration and critical thinking. Houle makes a great case that nothing less than transformation will be enough."—Daniel H. Pink, author of A WHOLE NEW MIND: WHY RIGHT-BRAINERS WILLL RULE THE FUTURE and DRIVE: THE SURPRISING TRUTH ABOUT WHAT MOTIVATES US "The New Health Age offer a succinct primer on how we got here and where we should be taking the health of our nation" —Mehmet Oz, M.D., host of The Dr. Oz Show The Information Age? Think again. Change is everywhere: how we communicate, what we do for a living, the values we hold, the way we raise our children, even the way we access information. Thanks to a global economy, the force of the Internet, and the explosion of mobile technology, we have—almost imperceptibly—been ushered into a new era, the Shift Age, in which change happens so quickly that it's become the norm. Man-made developments—such as tools, machines, and technology—defined previous ages, but the Shift Age will be defined by our own power of choice. In Entering the Shift Age, leading futurist David Houle argues that we are going through a major collapse of legacy thinking, eroding many of the thought structures that have defined the last two hundred years of humanity. Houle identifies and explains the new forces that will shape our lives—including remote workplaces, the cloud, "24/7" culture, speed-of-light connectivity, creativity, and the influence of Millenials and Digital Natives—for the next twenty years. In this eye-opening book, Houle navigates this pivotal point in human history with clarity and anticipation, focusing on the power of human consciousness and the direct influence we can impart on everything from healthcare to media to education. According to Houle, we are more independent than ever before. We are in control. There's no "going back" to the way things were. Reality is changing ever faster, and ENTERING THE SHIFT AGE is your guide to keeping up.
"America needs a new educational vision. Shift Ed provides a clear vision that emphasizes the essential ingredients of a 21st-century education based upon creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking. Houle and Cobb make a great case that nothing less than transformation will be enough." —Dan Pink, Author "As an educator, I highly recommend this book on the transformation of K–12 education. Old ways, repeating the past, and no change are hallmarks of a broken system? Shift Ed outlines the case for building a new system of K–12 education." —Jerry Ice, President and CEO, Graduate School, Washington D.C. "The strength of this book is the strong case the authors make for change. They point out how our nation is falling behind in the quest for global supremacy and outline the changes needed to correct that problem." —Randel Beaver, Superintendent, Archer City ISD, TX A comprehensive guide to transforming American schools Futurist David Houle and educational strategist Jeff Cobb issue a "call to action" to everyone who is concerned about education in America. The book begins with a helpful background on the roots of American education, the current landscape, and the forces that are driving transformation. This background supports the author′s case that reinventing our system is inevitable and we already have the information and capabilities to make the necessary changes. Shift Ed challenges us to ask the right questions, expand our vision, and take action now. The book includes an overview of the educational system and expert opinions on key areas, including: Technology and connectivity Organizational behavior Curriculum Learning and the brain Infrastructure and the physical plant Shift Ed is more than a book for educators. Its message is critical for policy makers, school superintendents, education foundation executives, and parents who want to know the facts and be prepared to take the decisive action our children deserve.
Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West? - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions? Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.
"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.
In our default state, our brains constantly get in the way of effective communication. They are lazy, angry, immature, and distracted. They can make a difficult conversation impossible. But Andrew Newberg, M.D., and Mark Waldman have discovered a powerful strategy called Compassionate Communication that allows two brains to work together as one. Using brainscans as well as data collected from workshops given to MBA students at Loyola Marymount University, and clinical data from both couples in therapy and organizations helping caregivers cope with patient suffering, Newberg and Waldman have seen that Compassionate Communication can reposition a difficult conversation to lead to a satisfying conclusion. Whether you are negotiating with your boss or your spouse, the brain works the same way and responds to the same cues. The truth, though, is that you don't have to understand how Compassionate Communication works. You just have to do it. Some of the simple and effective takeaways in this book include: • Make sure you are relaxed; yawning several times before (not during) the meeting will do the trick • Never speak for more than 20-30 seconds at a time. After that they other person's window of attention closes. • Use positive speech; you will need at least three positives to overcome the effect of every negative used • Speak slowly; pause between words. This is critical, but really hard to do. • Respond to the other person; do not shift the conversation. • Remember that the brain can only hold onto about four ideas at one time Highly effective across a wide range of settings, Compassionate Communication is an excellent tool for conflict resolution but also for simply getting your point across or delivering difficult news.
This book argues that the last four decades have seen profound and important changes in the nature and social location of religion, and that those changes are best understood when cast against the associated rise of consumerism and neoliberalism. These transformations are often misunderstood and underestimated, namely because the study of religion remains dependent on the secularisation paradigm which can no longer provide a sufficiently fruitful framework for analysis. The book challenges diagnoses of transience and fragmentation by proposing an alternative narrative and set of concepts for understanding the global religious landscape. The present situation is framed as the result of a shift from a National-Statist to a Global-Market regime of religion. Adopting a holistic perspective that breaks with the current specialisation tendencies, it charts the emergence of the State and the Market as institutions and ideas related to social order, as well as their changing rapports from classical modernity to today. Breaking with a tradition of Western-centeredness, the book offers probing enquiries into Indonesia and a synthesis of global and Western trends. This long-awaited book offers a bold new vision for the social scientific study of religion and will be of great interest to all scholars of the Sociology and Anthropology of religion, as well as Religious Studies in general.
Ever since the Industrial Revolution energy has been a key driver of world politics. From the oil crises of the 1970s to today’s rapid expansion of renewable energy sources, every shift in global energy patterns has important repercussions for international relations. In this new book, Thijs Van de Graaf and Benjamin Sovacool uncover the intricate ways in which our energy systems have shaped global outcomes in four key areas of world politics: security, the economy, the environment and global justice. Moving beyond the narrow geopolitical focus that has dominated much of the discussion on global energy politics, they also deftly trace the connections between energy, environmental politics, and community activism. The authors argue that we are on the cusp of a global energy shift that promises to be no less transformative for the pursuit of wealth and power in world politics than the historical shifts from wood to coal and from coal to oil. This ongoing energy transformation will not only upend the global balance of power; it could also fundamentally transfer political authority away from the nation state, empowering citizens, regions and local communities. Global Energy Politics will be an essential resource for students of the social sciences grappling with the major energy issues of our times.
