Big Think Blog

With the economy the way it is these days, you’re probably feeling lucky to have a job period. But if you are keen for a new gig that pays around eighty grand, CNN has just put out a list of ten jobs that pay a guaranteed of at least that much. With gas hovering around $2 a gallon and housing prices in the basement, eighty grand a year sounds like living large! The only drawback is that most of the jobs on the list either require a graduate degree—economist, veterinarian—or sound totally boring—compensation and benefits manager, associate actuary—or both (pharmacist). In fact, one of the jobs may cease to exist all together. The number five job, floor trader—someone who “bargains with other brokers over the price of stocks”—is quickly becoming obsolete with the advent of computer trading. While there’s no doubt that we’ll always need vets, pharmacists and economists, it seems like surviving in this economy is going to take some less conventional thinking in the job sector. We like Van Jones’—among others’—idea of creating green jobs. There’s no question that opportunities are out there, but we bet they’re probably not in the field of petroleum engineering. Well, not for long.

Last Thursday, MIT hosted a meeting between Nobel laureate Robert Solow and University Professor Greg Mankiw—both hotshot Cambridge economists—to discuss the future of the economy in the Obama administration. Confidence in the new president was shared. Agreement about what direction he should take, not so much. Solow, who offered that he “voted for Obama and…didn’t hesitate for a second,” acknowledged the “dire” economic situation and insisted that the recession be addressed first and foremost. He credited Ben Bernanke with creative loan-making and expressed confidence in the “productive power of the economy.” Mankiw, who supports Obama’s proposed cap-and-trade program among other policies, expressed some reservations about his international trade proposals, specifically the renegotiation of NAFTA and limiting the import of sugar-based ethanol from Brazil. He also emphasized the importance of moving away from an economy “where many top earners come from the financial sector.” The two economists were in agreement over one issue—lending to the auto industry. Both asserted that it could be a either a slippery slope or dead end. Below is a video of Greg Mankiw’s 10 Principles of economics


It’s encouraging that Obama seems to have opened the door to academics more so than recent administrations. But amidst so much advice and expert input, the burden of being decisive seems to rest even more heavily on the president-elect’s shoulders.

Why do university computer science labs look like Tupperware boardrooms circa 1955? That’s the question universities across the US are asking as they count less than 10 percent of their undergraduate students under the category of female. The geek factor is a prime concern; computer science just doesn’t have the same cache as a becoming a high-powered lawyer or doctor. The rise of hyper-violent action games like Mortal Kombat may be reducing the estrogen levels as well. Girls just don’t seem to respond the same way to aerial attacks and jump kicks as boys do. There is a Game Career Guide to which budding developers can refer to plan their trajectory from schooling to the lab. But no features are geared specifically to attract female prospectives. Stanford doesn’t like the gender gap, and the student-run Women in Computer Science is fighting back with awareness and recruitment efforts. Brenda Brathwaite, a SCAD design teacher, flipped the question on its head and started asking her male colleagues what it’s like to be a male in the gaming industry. Many seemed confused by the inquiry with one responding “I never really identify my penis with my game making at all. It doesn’t really occur to me.” Braithwaite does conclude however that ultimately the number of women in the industry is a non-issue. At Big Think, the paucity of women taking math and science seriously is certainly an issue for a number of our experts. Here’s Senior Space Science Institute Scientist Heidi Hammel talking about the challenges of making it in a boy’s club.

Mountains of motherboards, rolling hills of RAM, plateaus of platters. A messy side-effect of the world’s digital obsessions is the growing mass of waste from all our spent devices. They end up in landfills where they leach toxic chemicals into groundwater. Or, they are bundled up and shipped off to the developing world where they do the same in far more polluting conditions. Some environmentalists are adopting e-waste as their cause celebre and their warnings are being heeded. In developed countries, new legislation is mandating tech companies be much more vigilant about their products over their lifespans. The EPA forbids exporting non-biodegradable cathode ray monitors. The EU has gone a step further with the Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive Act mandating tech companies to dispose of or recycle their consumer products at the end of their lifespan. All a consumer has to do is request a pickup. For all the crap not covered there is still an earth-saving and income-generating solution: recycling. South Africa has so much e-waste the E-Waste Association of South Africa dedicates itself to creating partnerships between waste-holders and refurbishers and recyclers. Pilot projects are up and running in the Western Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. Lagos, whose roads we took a look at last week, does a thriving trade in aftermarket computers. Here’s VOA with the view from the city’s Computer Village where aftermarket is the only market and competition is fierce.

According to a new study at Cambridge University, a predilection for risk-taking may be an asset for entrepreneurs. This seems obvious–but it means that behavior traditionally considered abnormal, and even potentially harmful, may instead be beneficial, at least for those who combine it with more orthodox cognitive skills. Also interesting is the fact that there are drugs known to affect chemicals in the brain related to risk-taking, which raises the unusual possibility of engineering entrepreneurship. On the other hand, a penchant for risk-taking is also an indicator of potential drug addiction. I’m beginning to imagine a secret factory intending to pump out Richard Bransons, but instead leaving the world with thousands of Sarah Winehouses. Here’s Branson himself on growing up dyslexic. In a recent New Yorker article, Malcolm Gladwell pointed out the abnormally high number of dyslexic CEOs. Apparently, some people with disabilities over-compensate with leadership and delegation skills.

Amidst speculation surrounding President-elect Obama’s upcoming cabinet appointments, there have been murmurings that copyright guru Larry Lessig might be considered for the newly created position of Chief Technology Officer. Lessig is one of ten candidates submitted by technology blog ZDNet. Their list includes such tech monoliths as Eric Schmidt and Bill Gates. The prospect of a presidential administration composed of legal scholars and top university professors is enough to make me reach over my shared working space and paw at my editor’s wonderfully bald head. Still, there’s something refreshing about Lessig’s relative detachment from the political arena. Would a move like this serve to discredit his reputation as an intellectual authority? Big Think asked Nancy Pelosi, who represents Silicon Valley, about her ideas for America’s first CTO. Take a look. Also, here’s a post from Lessig’s blog on President-elect Obama’s technology initiative.

Who ever thought the big C on the periodic table would cause our planet so many problems? We can now store it, offset it, trade it, cap it and buy it. Add one more to the list: peridotite it. This igneous rock could be the solution to the our carbon-clouded future. The only problem is peridotite lies an average of 20 km beneath the Earth’s surface in the mantle or occasionally at surface level in places like the Omani desert and Croatia. Columbia University researchers recently came back from Oman where they have been studying peridotite over a Massachusetts-sized swath of land. Their findings, published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, report that peridotite is absorbing 10,000 to 100,000 tons of carbon a year, but that rate could be sped up 100,000 times by injecting heated water into the subsurface. Oman alone could absorb 4 billion tons of carbon annually. Oman could be the forefront in the planet’s war on carbon, but what about tackling emissions before they get into the atmosphere. Here’s EUX TV on catching carbon at the source.

Everyone’s planning. Actively. Here’s another agenda for the first 100 days—this one from the Council on Competitiveness. The folks over at the CC are concerned with “the crucial role of private sector demand in driving energy system transformation.” They argue that “the government has the power to greatly strengthen the business case for investment in innovation and sustainable energy solutions.” Some of their best ideas—including the creation of a green work force and fixing the energy grid, which echo the arguments of Van Jones and Michael Heller—are pulled out below.

1. Issue an executive order mandating that the federal government use the procurement process to lead the market toward efficient energy standards for goods and services, as well as in the construction and retrofitting of facilities, while reducing the carbon load.
2. Immediately develop and utilize all sources of energy in America in sustainable ways—including oil, gas, coal, nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal, laser fusion-fission and other advanced energy sources—and level the playing field on subsidies while creating incentives to discover and deploy new energy sources, consistent with environmental standards and safeguards.
3. Establish a $200 billion National Clean Energy Bank, modeled on the US Export-Import Bank and Overseas Private Investment Corporation, to provide debt financing and drive private investment in the development of sustainable energy solutions and supporting infrastructure.
4. Drastically ramp up investment in R&D and market commercialization to deliver secure, sustainable and affordable clean energy while generating well paying domestic jobs.
5. Create a “21st Century Clean Energy Leadership Initiative, ” a public-private partnership funded at $250 million and matched by state and private sector investments, to create regionally-based R&D test-beds and large scale commercial pilots, while leveraging the existing federal R&D infrastructure.
6. Direct the Secretary of Labor to create a $300 million “Clean Energy Workforce Readiness Program,” augmented by state and private sector funding, to foster partnerships between the energy industry, universities, community colleges, workforce boards, technical schools, labor unions and the US military to attract, train and retain the full range of skilled workers for America’s clean energy industries.
7. Require all federal agencies to commit 1 percent of their R&D budgets to competitive, portable undergraduate and graduate fellowships in energy-related disciplines for American students.
8. Create a seamlessly connected electrical power highway that is technologically capable of allowing both on and off ramps for all energy sources in the 21st century, while retaining and strengthening current consumer and worker protections.

Of late, lots of people have been eager to say that America needs to start doing things better, but Samuel J Palmisano, chief executive of IBM, came out last Thursday to declare that we simply “must” start doing things “smarter.” In a talk given at the Council on Foreign Relations, Palmisano called attention to the string of recent “wake up calls to the reality of global integration.” Making the argument that our world is in the process of becoming “instrumented,” “interconnected,” and increasingly “intelligent,” Palmisano wants to see our broken systems—transportation, energy, health care—improved through increased computerization. “The digital and physical infrastrcture of the world are converging,” said Palmisano. “Computational power is being put into things that you wouldn’t recognize as computers.” Of course, no one stands to benefit more from this shift than IBM, which might lead one to be skeptical of his argument, not to mention intelligent technology has been getting a bad rap. Take a look at the rest of Palmisano’s talk here.

The global marketing consultancy Futurebrand has released this year’s rankings of the world’s most brandable countries. Australia, with predictably hopping kangaroos and topaz waters lapping at white sand beaches, leads the top ten–all MDC’s (most developed countries). Futurebrand ranked the world in categories like authenticity, history, art & culture, resort & lodging, safety, and rest & relaxation, in short, categories that any upmarket traveler would hold dear. Why do marketers want to brand entire nations? Same reason marketers want to brand anything: money. Even the Economist was dubious concerning the utility of such a ranking. One user responded to the study concluding “There are no nations; there are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There is no third world. There is no west. There is only one holistic system of systems; one vast interwoven, interacting, multivariate multinational dominion of dollars.” Could we be witnessing an advanced case of obsessive branding disorder? We’ll let Lucas Conley, author of Obsessive Branding Theory, decide.