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The Global Intelligram: Trotting Disruptive New Age Intelligence in a Limitless World
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Here is my piece from Edutopia: A Student Calls for a Learning...
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The 100-Year March of Technology in 1 Graph
- In 1900, <10% of families owned a stove or had access to electricity
- In 1915,...
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Why Collaborative Storytelling Is The Future Of Marketing
Full Story: FastCompany
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Phoenix Pro: New Guitar Plugin Turns Hacks into ShreddersHah! If only.
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Reimagining business with a social mindset – Deloitte Tech Trends 2012
Even today, business leaders may dismiss the potential of social business,...
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My prediction for the next 5 years: demand for renewable energies will grow even faster than demand for Internet access. This is one of my core...
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Mazda Envisions Creating Their Future Car Today
It’s a new bold design idea of a car that weighs less than 1,000 pounds, yet still packs a...
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The Missing 20th Century: How Copyright Protection Makes Books Vanish
The above chart shows a distribution of 2500 newly printed fiction books...
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Railroad Sensors Predict Derailments Wirelessly « Wireless Sensor Networks Blog
Union Pacific, the nation’s largest railroad company, says
Why Business Schools Don’t Breed Entrepreneurs
Stanford’s Steve Blank explains the history of the MBA and the difference between business startups and large corporations.
Resisting Knowledge Centralization
The internet has made things easier, faster, and within reach. The world has become flat and barriers to entry have reduced significantly. We are instantly sharing our likes, tastes, moods and interests. The process of discovery has become social and can be curated.
Now, we have to overcome centralization. Centralization can lead to price controls, censorship without due process, lack of reader privacy, and resistance to innovators.The podcast attached provides a concise yet crisp look into why we need to destroy oligopolies and how can we ensure universal access.
13 Plays
A generation crippled by payback terms; where education is secondary and payback is primary. This thought sounds depressing, but is very real. Student debt has surpassed $1 trillion and the average lifetime to payback has changed dramatically.
Back in 1993, only 45% of students borrowed loans for school. Today, that number has reached 94%. The average debt hovers around $24,000, with 10% owing more than 54% and 3% owing more than $100,000. If you are not responsible for your own payments, then this maybe something to overlook. But, for all those responsible for their own debt, this hampers not only their entrepreneurial spirit to take on more risk, but it has left them bitter as the terms for the loans have spiraled out of control.
Many anti-traditional revolutionists have called for the “higher education under microscope” treatment. Is all that debt really worth it? If tuition can rise by 8% YoY, but wages rise only 5% since 2001, there is a very real problem. Maybe these business models have become antiquated. Young speakers like Nikhil Goyal, at 16, have already expressed alternate methods to education, calling for a “learning movement”. Maybe, we can finally accept the dropout way of life; atleast then we can control all the terms.
Please click on the title to see an interactive data graph about how education has changed and affected us over time.
Leveraging Relationships Between Bulge Bracket Banks & Startups
The Wharton Entrepreneurs Workshop, developed jointly by Wharton | San Francisco and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, features Gary Johnson, Vice President at Credit Suisse, discussing the current and projected state of the U.S. public equity markets, the financial and business attributes of a startup that are essential for a successful IPO or acquisition, and investment areas that are attracting the most attention in the technology sector.
Johnson also outlines what startups can expect to gain by establishing early relationships with traditional investment banks and how those relationships evolve.
Teaching Teamwork Through Video Game Development
High school computer science teacher Ben Chun’s students gain programming literacy and collaboration skills as they work in teams to build video games for younger elementary school students.
EdX: The Future of Online Education
EdX is a not-for-profit joint venture between Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to offer online versions of their classes and those of other universities. At the same time, edX will support Harvard and MIT faculty in conducting research on teaching and learning on campus through tools that enrich classroom and laboratory experiences. The goal of this initiative is to create a global community of online learners while improving education for everyone.
Tuition vs Wages: Bittersweet Reality
College costs are rising and, with that, so is the cost of college loans. Currently, loan interest rates are 3.4% and may rise to 6.8%, if Congress does not act by July 1st, 2012. College tuition is rising by 8.3% on a YoY basis. Should the interest rates rise,
- 7.4 million students will see their college costs go up— about one out of every three college students in the country.
- The increase will cost the average college student about $1,000 more per year of school.
- As a result, the cost of college for the average borrower taking out full Subsidized Stafford Loans will increase by 20 percent next year.
Both sides agree that better financial aid mechanisms and loan provisions will make the economy stronger. Median weekly earnings for 25-34 year olds has fallen by 5% on a YoY basis since 2001. Based on the numbers, if the current situation continues, people will start questioning the value of higher education. We need a solution fast, not only for the 7.4 million students currently affected, but also for the 20 million overall student population.
MIT & Khan Academy Launch K-12 Video Channel to Combat Science & Engineering Shortfall
Less than 5% of all degrees awarded in the US are in engineering. Compare that with 21% in Asia and 14% in Europe. The US has been been trying to rise from its image as a service based economy, raising questions about the current predicament during congressional forums and leadership parlances.
Realizing Khan Academy’s milestones in the field of education could be a great way to motivate youth to join these fields, MIT has collaborated with them to get their current students to create 5 - 10 minute videos on anything, from flying robots to basic chemistry, based on feedback from their professors, K-12 students and fellow users. With 75 videos already created and hundreds more in the pipeline, MIT professors hope this will revolutionize online college education as well.
State of Create Study | Adobe
Are we creative at work? Are we unlocking our true creative potential? Which society is the most creative society in the world?
Adobe compiled a presentation based on research firm StrategyOne’s survey of 5000 adults across the US, UK, Japan, Germany and France. The complete study can be found by clicking on the following link.
A few interesting things to note within the study on a country by country basis:
1. All European nations considered Japan to be the most creative country, while their respective countries ranked number 2.
2. The US ranked itself as number 1, ranking Japan as number 2.
3. Japan ranked itself as number 2, ranking the US as number 1.
Purely based on the pie charts, we can assume that Japan is an inherently humble and less attention centric culture. Additionally, most nations will always have a hidden and innate bias towards their own culture’s creativity, due to their own exposures and education.
Rod Ebrahimi’s startup venture, ReadyForZero, was recently accepted into Y Combinator’s incubator, for its value proposition on offering individuals a portal to manage debt. Rod Ebrahimi and his girlfriend were struggling to manage his girlfriend’s student debt. As he dug deeper into the issue, he realized that more individuals face the same financial dilemmas and web 2.0 could be a way to help people through their problems.
The total US consumer debt in 2011 was $11.4 trillion. The total student loan debt passed $1 trillion in 2011. With national unemployment still in the process of being fixed, debt management and debt escalation mitigation measures are key. Polaris Ventures recognized this when they decided to invest in ReadyForZero, leading a $4.5 million Series A round. Cognizant of its strong management team, solid market and active user engagement level, Polaris believes its investment will not only be able to generate solid revenues, but also deliver a public service.
