Dave Heatley • Jul 01, 2019 •
“Machines take jobs” cry the headlines. A journalist friend once said the media only publish two stories: “it’s that terrible” and “isn’t that wonderful”. “Machines take jobs” is clearly “terrible”. But its logical opposite, “machines create jobs”, is unlikely to make the grade as “wonderful”. Such selection effects mean that bad news crowds out the good. Today I’m going to … Read More
Dave Heatley • Jun 24, 2019 •
Biotech. Nanotech. Cleantech. Gene tech. Cloud computing tech. Successive waves of technological change are the norm for those of us in the developed world. These waves typically rise, peak and ebb while barely raising a concern about wider labour market effects. Further, it seems strange to be worrying about unemployment – technologically induced or otherwise – when, according to The … Read More
Guest Author • May 20, 2019 •
Nik Green Many people worry about the impact of new and emerging technologies like robots and artificial intelligence on the number and quality of jobs. But we tend to overlook how frequently the labour market changes in the ordinary course of events, and the role that technology plays in this change. We can see these developments in a couple of … Read More
Guest Author • May 17, 2019 •
Predicting technology is the first step towards predicting the labour market impacts of technology. But history tells us that technology prediction is like a game of chance. Make enough predictions and you’re sure to get some right… and many wrong, sometimes spectacularly. The president of IBM, Thomas Watson, purportedly said in 1943 that “I think there is a world market … Read More
Robert Hickson • Apr 03, 2019 •
It’s easy to get momentarily excited about robots on the farm, particularly if they are close to home, picking apples or herding stock. Robots have been rolling out onto farms elsewhere for several years and the pace is picking up, so NZ is in … Read More
Robert Hickson • Mar 14, 2019 •
Like business and politics, futurism and foresight are susceptible to short-termism, shallow historical perspectives, and a focus on parts not the whole. That’s not necessarily bad, but you need to recognise what perspective you are taking. Good foresight needs to balance the tension between detail and distance. As one interviewee noted for the Thinking the unthinkable report: … Read More
Peter Kerr • Nov 23, 2015 •
There’s more than one way to bake the cake of “we don’t have enough developers”. Universities produce some, polytechs some others. Many are self-taught. Enspiral in Wellington through its Dev Academy has a fulltime nine week course that turns non-coders into people with digital development skills, ready for employment, open to much more learning. Industry Connect in Auckland has taken … Read More
Peter Kerr • Nov 17, 2015 •
Occasionally, you come across a piece of thinking that makes you go, ‘oh, right, that’s a very interesting point’. So it is with a recent article by Toby Ruckert, CEO and Founder of Unified Inbox, a platform to bring and display all your social media and email communications in one place. Toby Ruckert, CEO and founder of … Read More
Peter Kerr • Nov 04, 2015 •
Finance Minister Bill English, speaking at the Wellington launch of the 11thTIN100 report, gave Greg Shanahan and his team what amounts to a pretty nice endorsement. “You effectively invented this sector,” English said at the Thursday 29 October gathering at NZX’s relatively new presentation space. Which, as we’ve all come to habitually expect each October, is a reminder … Read More
Guest Author • Dec 12, 2014 •
by Laurent Lebreton, data scientist at dumpark A recent study on marine plastic pollution published in the journal PlosOne estimates that some 5.25 trillion plastic particles weighing more than 268.000 tonnes are floating on the world’s oceans. Over a six-year period, researchers from six different countries collected plastic density data from 24 expeditions into the five main oceanic basins … Read More