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Surfing or Drowning in an Ocean of Change?
Thor May
Preface:
This is a discussion paper, not a researched academic document. The reading
list at the end is mostly a collection of contemporary links from the
Internet and pretty accidental, not edited for quality. Where a topic is of
broad general interest comes up with friends, I have adopted the practice of
posting discussion starters like the present one on Academia.edu in the hope
that others might also find them worth thinking about.
1. Introduction
If
you type “managing change” into Google, it will claim to have 362,000,000
results. No doubt that is the usual Google hyperbole, but it does suggest
that the phenomenon of change has captured some attention. Indeed, Amazon.com
apparently also has around 83,000 book titles on the topic. After some
further digging however, it emerges that “change”, and especially managing
change, is sharply in focus for commercial and professional interests, and
for governments, but only of intermittent concern for individuals. For
individuals, change applies to particular things at particular times, often
as a matter of dumb luck. There is little popular interest in change as a
category of continuing experience which needs to be part of life preparation
and education, or built into the planning as we anticipate careers,
developing communities and countries themselves. 2.
Professional change management The main focus of these notes is
the ocean of societal change that we are all swimming in, but hardly notice
as something distinctive (it is hard
to see the water you are swimming in). However, we cannot avoid taking some
account of the specialized change management which has become so common in
commercial environments. By far the largest number of the indexed Google
links on “managing change” refer to changing the culture of commercial
companies. Changing markets, changing technologies, a continual flux of
businesses coming into being, expanding, contracting, or re-focusing all mean
that the people who work in organizational environments now tend to be faced
throughout their careers with demands to modify their own habits, plans and
professional roles. The leaders in such demands for
adaptation are usually managers of various kinds, most notably those involved
in so-called HR (human resources)
management. Demands for change are rarely popular. The efficiency of human
performance in occupational roles broadly depends upon well established routines and habits. If I have
to rethink how to re-tie my shoe laces each morning, then much time will be
wasted. It is not surprising therefore that demands for change are typically
resisted, and that the agents delivering those demands become widely
despised. Thus "managing change" is often interpreted as a semi
religious slogan in the HR lexicon of fraud. The question then arises for
management about how to “manage” the psychology of uncooperative human
employees. (Of course, managers themselves are amongst the most reluctant to
question their own way of doing things). Whole consultancy businesses are
built on voodoo promises to change the cultures of client companies. Ashkenas (Harvard Business Review 2013) proposes that that
the 60-70% failure rate of attempts to initiate change business practices is
mostly not about the desirability of the changes themselves, but the lack of
psychological preparation and commitment amongst human change agents, notably
managers. It might not be unreasonable to expect a similar resistance and
psychological failure to adapt when general populations face major demands
for change. On the wider national canvas,
politicians and their parties do have an interest in manipulating the outlook
of electors, though this is generally more about creating the impression that
current chaos is indeed being managed by the best possible leaders. On the
surface, the political contest is only occasionally about bringing a
population to accept that the world has changed and that they must somehow
change their habits as well in a managed way. The looming challenge of
climate change may be one instance of where there is a need for the careful
management of the general population’s understanding. 3.
Nudge Theory – a contemporary tool for change management Professional influencers in the
media, advertising, industry and government have an intense interest in the
mechanics of managing change. They even have various sets of tools to help
them. One of these sets of tools is broadly called Nudge Theory. Whole
government divisions and corporate departments are focused on this stuff. I
can recommend a very good (and rather long) explanation of Nudge Theory from
Alan Chapman in the links below. The original psychology behind
Nudge Theory technique was to gently push people in a desired direction by
making it easy to be good, as opposed to commanding them to do this or that.
It makes sense: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If
you smash me in the face, I’m going to smash you back. If you lure me with a
smile and a free beer you will probably get what you want. If healthy food in
a cafeteria is easier to reach than junk food, maybe people will eat in a
healthier way. In a slightly less obvious application, the British Government
claims to be saving £30 million a year by sending personalized text messages
rather than final warning letters for unpaid fines (Chalabi
2013). The authors of Nudge Theory claim
their intentions are to help humanity to save itself. As with fire or a knife
though, tools can be used for many ends. My impression is that something akin
to nudge theory has been the lifeblood of the advertising industry for many
years. Also, as a non-watcher of TV who occasionally stumbles into a room
full of zombie-conditioned TV viewers, my passing impression is always that
these people have been nudged into desired attitudes more effectively than
any leader of a religious congregation could hope for. The important point from these
examples is that the guys using Nudge Theory might be good or bad, while the
people being nudged to change perhaps don’t even realize that there is an
issue to discuss. At best, sooner or later on the turkey farm some of the
turkeys may have a vague sense that they are being manipulated. A suspicion
of this conspiracy feeling occasionally comes through in cinema themes of the
day: “somebody out there knows the truth..” 4.
Change influencers in plain sight When we think of “leaders” or
“rulers” or “managers” it is usually in terms of organization and control, or
keeping the trains running on time. We do not usually think of these role
types as arbiters of change even though change is often central to their
daily concerns. In fact change is the most dominant feature of our era.
Willy-nilly we must constantly adapt. If we pause to think, and remember a
little history (not a common habit), we might notice that adaptation to very
rapid change has been going on for a couple of centuries now. For example, a
whole caste system of modern occupations has emerged. It follows that
ascribed managers in big institutions are not the only people wanting to set
a change agenda. Interest groups of many types compete to slant benefits from
change to their own advantage. Note that although I refer to a
caste system because of the tenacity with which these self-sustaining groups
pursue their collective interests, as individuals we may find ourselves
participating in more than one “caste” (role system) and accordingly feel
rather conflicted. As a cultural aside, this is a dilemma not unfamiliar to
many in India as people juggle the historical caste system. Mechanisms and
institutions have arisen to negotiate the processes and rewards of change
amongst these occupational castes. Sometimes such attempts have failed,
perhaps resulting in revolt or war. One of the institutions for change
management which has emerged is democratic government, though it has many
flavours. The forums of democracy in most national domains have tended to an
imbalance of power over time. For example, the broad occupational caste to
which the greatest influence has accrued could be called “Rent Seekers”.
Modern rent-seekers embrace a broader category than the rather simpler 19th
Century world originally confronted by Karl Marx. In general rent-seekers are individuals or groups who seek to leverage their economic advantage in some way, above the value they might earn in a completely free market. Some leverage like this is not always a bad thing. For example, it can motivate people to divert effort or capital or improve standards in a field which might otherwise be neglected. At the simplest level, a householder might rent a spare room which would otherwise remain empty. Planning a career, a doctor might be motivated to seek and charge for specialized knowledge in a system that protected his status. At another level there are aggregators of resources who don’t actually produce anything but save other people time and inconvenience, then seek to monopolize their position. Wholesale middlemen have commonly adopted this model, including on the Internet (e.g. Amazon.com). Yet we know from multiple daily experience that protected economic advantage for a taxi driver, or tradesman, or degree issuing institution, or multinational business etc. will force us to pay more than we think many services are really worth. In addition to all of the above, the rent seeking from organized crime, protection rackets, corruption and the traditional parasites of inherited wealth are still with us in most nation states. The multiplying complexity of
modern economies is a kind of change which owes a great deal to the efforts
of rent-seekers to identify and quarantine a profitable niche from
uncontrolled competition. Once established, rent seekers are generally averse
to change, but also exploit the outcomes of change. The following diagram
gives some idea of the interests at work in a parliamentary democracy:
5. Evolving Roles and Perceptions For
any particular individual, the transitions through life from childhood to
adulthood, gender partnership, child raising, old age and then death is a
process of change. All societies mark these transitions in some way.
Traditionally it was done with community celebrations, after which the
expectations placed on that individual in the culture changed in carefully
specified ways. In
the society which I now inhabit, only a shadow of the traditional lifetime
transitions remain. They have been modified and compromised in a multitude of
ways. Nor are they universal amongst my peers. Australian society is host to
some 200 source cultures, dissolving and merging in unpredictable ways.
Growing up in this environment, I can honestly say that I was unable to
figure out what was expected of me. The unspoken rules seemed to change by
the day, and continue to do so. As a young adult, the process was less about
managing than surviving as the ground shifted underfoot. Yet many of my
cultural elders seemed unable to notice that the physical and social
frameworks which supported their own worldview had crumbled to dust. There
were those who claimed to plan a career instead of stumbling into it. I never
pulled that off. A
culture is a design for living. The original design for living appropriate for,
say, my mother who never saw a light switch until she was 12, has only
fragments of relevance to me as I type this document on a computer which can
store all the books ever written, and will project my scribbling potentially
to an impressive fraction of the planet’s population. By the time we are 12
we have mentally embedded a working model of the culture in which we find
ourselves. For most individuals, at most times in the history of our species,
that was sufficient. It is no longer sufficient. The mental models of our
younger life are stressed in a thousand directions daily as they confront
environments for which they were never intended. What happens to (or what can be
done about) people's psychology as they are machine gunned with futures their
grandmother never dreamed about? The nihilism of the so-called Islamic State
illustrates one outcome to the mental and physical violations which
torrential change inflicts on a culture and on individual psychology. In
fact, in this sense the Islamic State phenomenon is emblematic of many other
upheavals in recent history, from millenarian movements (e.g. the Taiping Rebellion which led to over 20 million deaths in
between 1850 and 1864), arguably to the World Wars of the 20th
Century, and certainly to the ground zero killing fields of the Khmer Rouge
in Cambodia. So wrenching change can cause violent social convulsions. How
can this effect by moderated? If we can imagine ourselves in
England or Europe as the industrial revolution accelerated out of the conservative
rural countryside with its feudal class divisions, the prospects must have
seemed overwhelming, confusing and at times terrifying. Firstly there were
planned changes by narrow interests, such as the Enclosure Acts in England,
benefitting the already well off, and soon casting the mass of the population
into chaotic urbanization. The aristocrats and privileged elites who thought
they were planning a change had expectations built on whatever knowledge of
the past they possessed. Occasional visionaries aside, there was no way these
individuals could have had even an approximate idea of what would unfold into
an ever-accelerating industrial revolution which would stand English culture
on its head, totally restructure systems of government, create the welfare
state, and unleash undreamed of technologies. They could not know that the
deep psychological disturbances caused by change, sweeping across millions of
lives, would lead to the huge systemic breakdowns of two world wars and
countless other conflicts. We are now standing on the cusp of social and technological changes even more giddy than those which engulfed our immediate ancestors. Will we do a better job of riding such dragons? The evidence so far doesn’t look promising, partly because “we”, the initiators, are no longer a small elite. We are a distributed network of billions with technologies of instant communication and miscommunication. The scale of vast, interlocking changes has become planetary. However, a read of the comments columns in any newspaper or journal, regardless of whether it is populist or elitist, will quickly show that there is little consensus or understanding of what is going on when the issues are complicated. Completely opposed camps will loudly state their version of the truth, and quote a selective menu of facts or research to support their position. The distortions are not always deliberate. The human faculty of reason most often begins with a desired outcome, then minds become alert to whatever supports that outcome, and dimmed to whatever contradicts it. This is called confirmation bias. Confirmation bias + the instant social media spread of mass outrage = dire political outcomes.
6. How we become who we are
The traditional job of a teacher has been to pass on learnable parts of an existing culture to new generations. This is pretty well what happens to this day, certainly in primary and secondary education, and also for the most part in tertiary education. University professors and researchers officially have a licence to synthesize new insights, processes and technologies which will take an existing culture to new levels of achievement. Only a very small percentage of them actually do this. For the most part they are clever people finding fashionable answers to dead questions. Like the average general, they fight the last war.
The preceding paragraphs suggest that ascribed positions do not
in themselves lead to effective change management. You can give people
whatever titles you like without enhancing outcomes. You can go through the
hoopla of elaborate personnel selection which keeps shoals of HR officers and
agencies claiming to select the very best candidates, yet somehow in the end
after fishing from the same pond they hire the same bottom feeding survivors.
You can put individuals through courses which claim to teach entrepreneurship,
creativity, adaptability, or whatever. This is perhaps reminiscent of courses
which aspire to train novelists. It is possible to graduate large numbers of
people who can tick all the boxes from an invented competency curriculum but
prove to be almost useless when faced with major challenges. The ordinariness of ordinary people (whatever their salary rank)
seems a discouraging indicator of survival prospects as whole populations are
dragged into a vortex of change where half of known occupations are expected
to disappear in less than a generation, the ever-widening gulf between wealth
and poverty suggests impending political upheaval worldwide, and the climate
of the planet itself slides towards some kind of catastrophic tipping point.
Yet the ordinariness of ordinary lives is a kind of anchor which will always
be with us while we survive as a species at all. There is a sense in which we have been here before. Throughout
their evolution, humanoid groups have faced extinction many times, and many
of those groups did indeed perish. Yet amongst the ordinary there were always
a few who were extraordinary, whether in technical adaptation, or beating
back threats, or in a kind of leadership which was somehow able to focus
those less gifted, more ordinary, and raise them up to pursue new and
unplanned destinies. History of course is awash with false prophets, and
there is little evidence that the class of professional managers who emerged
post World War II have been better at feeling the stones to cross the river
than our ancestors. The real leaders
in any organization or group or population may or may not have titles and
ranks. Yet it is these leaders in their own very individual ways who will
gather others about them when the time comes and lead us into the gathering
storm, as they have done from the beginning of time. 7. Why is change now so culturally dominant as a process, but submerged in awareness?
Given our natural conservatism, how is it then that change is
such a dominant fact of life in almost all countries and human communities
now? How is it that in spite of the natural laziness and fondness for
predictable routine which cacoons most people, no matter whether they are
clever or dumb, rich or poor, that we find ourselves engulfed in new technologies,
clinging by our finger nails to disappearing occupations, and wondering how
we can possibly plan 5 years ahead, let alone a lifetime ahead? Yet perhaps the question “Why is change so culturally dominant now?” also carries false
assumptions. I have already suggested that change as a phenomenon was
intensely interesting to industry and government leaders. Such ascribed
leaders we expect (often forlornly) to have some vision and plan to handle
larger issues. I also noted that change as a general issue in itself really
didn’t impact much on the public mind, and therein rests a dilemma. Let me draw an analogy here about the
limits of personal awareness. When I first went to work in China in 1998 I
had a better than average foreigner’s understanding of Chinese culture and
history (though still naïve of course). I was therefore very curious to get
the views of Chinese individuals on their experience with the Chinese
Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. This was a politically manufactured
decade of madness at the behest of an insane and degenerated Mao Zedong. It
had millions of people committing a kind of cultural suicide as children
betrayed parents, cultural heritage of every kind was vandalized or
destroyed, and socioeconomic life retreated to a primitive condition. (There
are some parallels with the contagious madness of the Khmer Rouge killing
fields in Cambodia, or the so-called Islamic State in Iraq). Surely this
searing experience would be branded as an object lesson into the minds of
every Chinese person? My acquaintances in Central China at first were
reluctant to discuss the topic at all, especially with foreigner. As
individuals came to know me, stories gradually came out. The stories were all
personal tragedies of families or friends lost or ruined. I probed for some
insight into the bigger picture. What would lead a whole nation of people
into this kind of thing? What really caused it? Why was responsibility put
aside on such a massive scale? The eyes of my new friends would shift out of
focus. They had no understanding or knowledge of the big picture, of patterns
and trends, of the diktats from Beijing. It wasn’t even interesting. Their
interests were entirely in individual events that had impacted people they
knew. History had no lessons for them. So
just as “cultural revolution” had no non-personal currency in the common mind
of Chinese people, today relentless “change” in societies and groups, or even
in individuals, as something which follows certain human patterns regardless of
particular examples, as something which can be prepared for at, say, the
level of child raising … this kind of
abstract analysis of change plays little part in dinner table conversations,
or in the loud opinions of drunk men in pubs and clubs. It is not headlined
in tabloid newspapers, or in the evening television news. When a car factory
converts to robot production lines, it is the personal misfortune of a
thousand workers who will struggle to find another job which makes headlines
for a day. There is no thought or education or funding put into an impending
change through automation which will throw whole populations out of work.
There is no awareness amongst ordinary people, regardless of intelligence,
that a wary social contract is crumbling away – the contract between the
owners of capital and the labour forces their production lines once had to
have. Nobody says in dinner parties that the owners industry may no longer
think they need to fund a welfare state when their workers are robots
(assuming the rich are dumb enough to forget that robots won’t buy the
products, when the poor can’t). 8. Conclusion to a beginning
9.
Postscript of unfinished ideas a) Possible themes ..
- Workplace change: casualization; startups; micro-entrepreneurs; disappearing professions; automation; innovation;(see Cadwalladr 2015 in the reading list below for a scary insight into what is just around the corner). - Educational change: educate for what kind of future?; competing venues for information and knowledge; will universities survive?; the destruction of TAFES - Population changes: in Adelaide; worldwide migration & refugee movements - Globalization: We often hear about the changes wrought by globalization. The word 'globalization' has many and confused meanings. At the level of large corporations it often means the creation of organizations that operate across borders, create an internal culture separate from any national or ethnic community, and owe loyalty to no nation state. International trade agreements (like the prospective TPP) are often disguised vehicles for the interests of these corporations. At quite different levels, globalization may refer to worldwide spread of the same products (e.g. cars, phones), education curriculums, the internationalization of music, sport, communications etc, and not least the international movements of peoples. All of these versions of globalization have brought massive changes to lifestyles, thinking and prosperity. We may think the trajectory these changes is irreversible. Maybe, maybe not. The 'globalization' enabled by empires of past centuries all collapsed into dust, followed by centuries of small, local, warring states, living in suspicion and ignorance. Huge amounts of earlier learning and technology were lost forever. - Cultural change; fashion, music, entertainment, religion, social networks - Political change; how can democracy cope? alternatives? - Changes in agriculture & ocean food sources - Climate and environmental change - Change driven by technology; communications; automation; 3D printing … - Psychological adaptation to change; sources of conflict; information overload; the challenge of complexity; retreat from engagement ..
b) Unifying threads in this torrent of change?
- All these changes are initiated by human ideas and actions - Dreams turning into nightmares. Once a steady state is lost, navigation is beyond the control or even beyond the imagination of most. - Only a tiny minority of humans will ever focus beyond immediate family & community - When life becomes too complicated or too wild, the popular reaction is always to seek “simple” solutions. These simple solutions include withdrawal at one extreme, and genocide at the other. Religion is a common vehicle and/or rigid adherence to faith/magic/ideological “solutions”. - A personal reaction to “the sky falling in” is often hedonism and a refusal to acknowledge the surrounding chaos. - One growing popular response to a culture of rapid, unpredictable change which is seen as threatening is a revival of traditional survival technologies at family level (see Dewey 2015 in the reading list below). Part of America's gun culture also has its roots in this kind of elemental survival mentality. Even the urban fantasy of huge 4 wheel drive SUVs might be a psychological projection of the wish for "independence" and a "simple" world. - Individuals are biologically programmed to seek personal safety and security above all as a hedge against unpredictable change. Often the apparent pathways to these are self-defeating. The most elemental solution is to seek opportunity through mating. (As an Australian academic in Fiji, each time I worked in China, and even in South Korea, on the last day of my contracts I was approached by barely known women, who had shown no prior interest in me, wanting to marry me … ) - There are always politicians, faith healers, preachers, carpet-baggers, opportunists… looking for short-term personal profit out of disruption - Tolerance and willingness to adapt are often the first casualty of stress brought on by change.
c) Solutions?
- Homo sapiens have survived against the odds precisely because some percentage of them had sufficient intelligence to innovate solutions - The pace of change on multiple fronts has become a major challenge to the species. Can managing this pace of change be somehow factored into our design for survival? - Can “change surfing”, a kind of psychological readiness to adapt, be taught as a way to optimize personal outcomes from the constant challenge of change?
Reading List About.com (2015) “Attitudes”. About.com online @ http://psychology.about.com/od/socialpsychology/a/attitudes.htm Adonis, James (September 4, 2015) “Do corporate values matter?”. [Organizations, like governments, run behind a shield of empty public slogans. When real challenge arrives, managers from the top down already lack the trust of their employees, and have no decent stratagem to manage change]. Brisbane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/small-business/managing/work-in-progress/do-corporate-values-matter-20150902-gjdbhl.html Agar, Nicholas (2 September 2015) “Let's Treat Robots Like Yo-Yo Ma's Cello -- as an Instrument for Human Intelligence”. Huffington Post online @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicholas-agar/robots-human-intelligence_b_8017704.html?utm_hp_ref=world&ir=Australia Ahmed, Nafeez (14 March 2014) “NASA-funded study: industrial
civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'?
- Natural
and social scientists develop new model of how 'perfect storm' of crises
could unravel global system”. The Guardian
online @ http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/14/nasa-civilisation-irreversible-collapse-study-scientists Ashkenas, Ron (April 16, 2013) “Change Management
Needs to Change”. Harvard Business Review online @ https://hbr.org/2013/04/change-management-needs-to-cha Boyd, Stowe (4 September 2014) “When Robots Take
Over Most Jobs, What Will Be the Purpose of Humans?”. Huffington Post
online @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stowe-boyd/robots-jobs-purpose-humans_b_5689813.html?utm_hp_ref=world Bright, Jim (August 22, 2015) “Your life is ruled by
chance, whether you like it or not”. Brisbane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/workplace-relations/your-life-is-ruled-by-chance-whether-you-like-it-or-not-20150815-gizyf7.html Cadwalladr, Carole (4 October 2015)"Is the dotcom bubble about to burst (again)? In Silicon Valley, millions of dollars change hands every day as investors hunt the next big thing – the ‘unicorn’, or billion-dollar tech firm. There are now almost 150, but can they all succeed?". [Scary article. Please read] The Guardian online @ http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/04/is-dotcom-bubble-about-to-burst-again Chalabi, Mona (13 November 2013) “Does a
government nudge make us budge?” The Guardian online @ http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/12/government-nudge-theory-budge Chapman, Alan (n.d.)
“Change Management”. Businessballs website, online
@ http://www.businessballs.com/changemanagement.htm
Chapman,
Alan (2012) “Fisher's process of
personal change - revised 2012”. Businessballs website,
online @ http://www.businessballs.com/personalchangeprocess.htm
Chapman, Alan (n.d.) “Nudge Theory”. Businessballs website, online @ http://www.businessballs.com/nudge-theory.htm Cook, Chris (26 October 2011) “Dark
inventory and the death of markets”. Asia Times online @ http://atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MJ26Dj02.html Dewey, Caitlin (September 5, 2015) “Prepper Pinterest: Inside the fascinating, bizarre world of Doomsday survivalists”. [One response to a culture of unpredictable change is a revival of traditional survival technologies] Brisbane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/prepper-pinterest-inside-the-fascinating-bizarre-world-of-doomsday-survivalists-20150905-gjfrn1.html#ixzz3kusqGgSc Grabianowski, Ed (25 March 2010) “Extinction Events That Almost Wiped Out Humans”. i09 The Future blog, online @ http://io9.com/5501565/extinction-events-that-almost-wiped-out-humans Gray,
Richard (April 1, 2013) “How a 3D printer gave a man his face
- and his life – back”. Brisbane Times
online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/technology/sci-tech/how-a-3d-printer-gave-a-man-his-face--and-his-life--back-20130401-2h2a4.html
Greber, Jacob (10 Dec 2014) “Up to 500,000 [Australian] jobs threatened by rise of robots, artificial
intelligence: report”. Australian Financial Review online @ http://www.afr.com/p/national/report_to_jobs_threatened_by_rise_mr0g5CI1rEbvRKMcBFTzJJ Hatch, Patrick (September 8, 2015) “Nescafé feels the heat over instant coffee recipe change”. [Resistance to change in marketing used to be mute. Social media can now face companies with some hard questions about their own culture] Brisbane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/retail/nescaf-feels-the-heat-over-instant-coffee-recipe-change-20150907-gjgvf3.html Hughes, James (2004) “Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond To The Redesigned
Human Of The Future”. Basic Books. Amazon reviews online at http://www.amazon.com/Citizen-Cyborg-Democratic-Societies-Redesigned/dp/0813341981/changesurferradi
Hurley, Dan (March 12, 2014) “The
US military's quest for new technology to boost IQ”. [Irony: a quest to
change humans so they can kill each other more efficiently] Sydney Morning
Herald online @ http://www.smh.com.au/world/the-us-militarys-quest-for-new-technology-to-boost-iq-20140312-hvhkb.html#ixzz2viLGSTwP
IEET (n.d.) Institute for Ethics and Emerging
Technologies. Collected articles at http://ieet.org/ Ker, Peter (September
11, 2015) “Chile and Australia ponder life after the boom together”.
Brisbane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/mining-and-resources/chile-and-australia-ponder-life-after-the-boom-together-20150908-gjhkuw.html Kirby, P (2012) "Educating for Paradigm Change". Policy & Practice: A Development Education Review, Vol. 14,
Spring, pp. 19-32. Centre for Global Education website, online @ http://www.developmenteducationreview.com/issue14-focus1?page=show
Long, Christine (September 1, 2015) “Accountants and lawyers have big problems”. Brisbane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/small-business/trends/accountants-and-lawyers-have-big-problems-20150820-gj3mcs.html May, Thor (1987) “Super-Culture And The Ghost In The Machine”. online @ Academia.edu http://www.academia.edu/3653431/Super-Culture_And_The_Ghost_In_The_Machine or Thormay.net @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/skeptic/philos7.html May, Thor (2000) “Teaching as a Subversive Activity”. Thormay.net online @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/teachers.html May, Thor (2001) “Student Activism : Truth and False Prophets”. Thormay.net online @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/student.html May, Thor (2002) “The paradox of scholarship: pissing on every lamp post”. Academia.edu online @ https://www.academia.edu/2227990/The_paradox_of_scholarship_pissing_on_every_lamp_post or Thormay.net @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/scholarship.html May, Thor (2007) “Managing Downward Spirals - Getting from Here to There”. Thormay.net online @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/getting_here_to_there.html May, Thor (2010) “Cultural Operating Systems - Thoughts on Designing Cultures”. online @ Academia.edu http://www.academia.edu/1869052/Cultural_Operating_Systems_Thoughts_on_Designing_Cultures or Thormay.net @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/cultural-operating-systems.html May, Thor (2014) “The Problem of Work and the Rise of the Precariat”. online @ Academia.edu https://www.academia.edu/8682789/The_Problem_of_Work_and_the_Rise_of_the_Precariat or Thormay.net @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/WorkProblem.htm May, Thor (2014b) “The Purpose of Education - a hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy?”. online @ Academia.edu http://www.academia.edu/7976327/The_Purpose_of_Education_-_a_hitchhiker_s_guide_to_the_galaxy or Thormay.net @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/EducationPurpose_Hitchhiker.htm McGeough, Paul (September 4, 2015) “Charity founder says Afghanistan 2015 is 'as bad as 2002'”. [Why official “aid” rarely works as a real agent of change. Bonus: here are some photos I took in Afghanistan in 1971/72]. Brisbane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/charity-founder-says-afghanistan-2015-is-as-bad-as-2002-20150831-gjbitz.html Miles, Kathleen (1 October 2015) "Ray Kurzweil: Nanobots In Our Brains Will Make Us 'Godlike'. Once we're cyborgs, he says, we'll be funnier, sexier and more loving". Huffington Post online @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/ray-kurzweil-nanobots-brain-godlike_560555a0e4b0af3706dbe1e2?utm_hp_ref=world§ion Neiva, Elaine, Maria Ros and Maria das Gracas Torres da Paz (2005) “Attitudes towards organizational change: validation of a scale”. Psychology in Spain, 2005, Vol. 9 . No 1, 81-90, online @ http://www.psychologyinspain.com/content/full/2005/full.asp?id=9010 Newman, Bruce (December 26, 2014) “Stanford University students create 'gecko gloves'
that allow humans to scale glass walls”. Brisbane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/technology/sci-tech/stanford-university-students-create-gecko-gloves-that-allow-humans-to-scale-glass-walls-20141226-12dx31.html O'Chee, Bill (September 16, 2015) “What does the
future hold for our children?”. Brisbane Times online@ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/comment/the-hermit/what-does-the-future-hold-for-our-children-20150915-gjnitj.html Rapoza, Kenneth (July 20, 2015) “What will become of China’s Ghost Cities?”. Forbes Magazine online @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/07/20/what-will-become-of-chinas-ghost-cities/ Rohrer, Finlo (23 December 2010 ) “Futurology: The tricky art of knowing what will happen next”. BBC News Magazine online @ http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-12058575 Simons, Margaret (22 August 2015) “Coming, Ready or Not”. The Saturday Paper, online @ https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/opinion/topic/2015/08/22/coming-ready-or-not/14401656002280 Smith, Warwick (9 January 2015) “Repeat after
me: the Australian economy is not like a household budget”. The Guardian online @ http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/09/repeat-after-me-the-australian-economy-is-not-like-a-household-budget Strake, David (n.d.) “The Psychology of Change”. Changing Minds website, online @ http://changingminds.org/disciplines/change_management/psychology_change/psychology_change.htm Ting, Inga and Maher Mughrabi (August 14, 2015) “Migrant crisis: How the world's forcibly displaced refugees add up”. [War, crisis, population pressure … the makings of uncontrollable change]. Brisbane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/how-the-worlds-forcibly-displaced-add-up-20150813-giyg57.html Universitat Tuebingen ( 22 March 2013) "First migration from Africa less than 95,000 years ago: Ancient hunter-gatherer DNA challenges theory of early out-of-Africa migrations." online in ScienceDaily @ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130322114856 Waldron, Jeremy (October 9, 2014 ) "It’s All for Your Own Good". [about Nudge Theory]. New York Review of Books, online @ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/oct/09/cass-sunstein-its-all-your-own-good/ Waterford, Jack (September 11, 2015) “Tony Abbott's conversion to becoming a good guy was painfully slow”. [The political
architects of chaos, East, West and Centre, Australian and International, all prove
incapable of managing the changes they unleash, or even offering constructive
help to the victims] Brisbane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/comment/tony-abbotts-conversion-to-becoming-a-good-guy-was-painfully-slow-20150910-gjjc2q.html White, Elliott (1993) Genes, Brains, and Politics: Self-selection and Social
Life. Greenwood Publishing.
Interesting Google Books extract discussing clusters of individuals as agents
of change at: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ua6Q5XIQ-cYC&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=Mead+%22small+group+of+individuals%22&source Wikipedia (2015) “Attitude Change”. Wikipedia online @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attitude_change Wikipedia (2015) “Futures Studies”. Wikipedia online @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_studies Wikipedia (2015) "Nudge Theory". Wikipedia online @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory Wikipedia (2015) “Multifunction Polis”. [ Adelaide’s city of the future which turned into a real estate agent’s nightmare]. Wikipedia online @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multifunction_Polis Wikipedia (2015) “South Australian Housing Trust”. [This history of Playford’s SAHT is a fascinating
example of the planned change which played a large part in the creation of
modern Adelaide]. Wikipedia online @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Australian_Housing_Trust Wikipedia (2015)
“Confessions of an Economic Hit Man – John Perkins”. Wikipedia online @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man
Williams, Kate (Sunday 6 September 2015) “The Queen’s record-long reign has seen Britain’s greatest time of
change”. [End of an era. Empires come and go. Was this a well managed
change?] The Guardian online @ http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/06/queen-record-reign-change
Zappone, Chris (September
11, 2015) “Migrant crisis spilling into domestic politics around the world: report”. [Since humans moved from East Africa tens of thousands of years ago,
one of the largest drivers of change has been the adaptation forced by mass
migration]. Brisbane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/migrant-crisis/migration-crisis-spilling-into-domestic-politics-around-the-world-report-20150910-gjjeua.html Zheng, Jinran (2015-05-05) “57-floor building goes up in 19 days”. China Daily online @ http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015-05/05/content_20621886.htm Zhou, Christina (July 13, 2015) “World-first robot brickie 'Hadrian' can build a house in two days”. Fairfax real estate blog, online @
Professional bio: Thor May has a core professional interest in cognitive linguistics, at which he has rarely succeeded in making a living. He has also, perhaps fatally in a career sense, cultivated an interest in how things work – people, brains, systems, countries, machines, whatever… In the world of daily employment he has mostly taught English as a foreign language, a stimulating activity though rarely regarded as a profession by the world at large. His PhD dissertation, Language Tangle, dealt with language teaching productivity. Thor has been teaching English to non-native speakers, training teachers and lecturing linguistics, since 1976. This work has taken him to seven countries in Oceania and East Asia, mostly with tertiary students, but with a couple of detours to teach secondary students and young children. He has trained teachers in Australia, Fiji and South Korea. In an earlier life, prior to becoming a teacher, he had a decade of finding his way out of working class origins, through unskilled jobs in Australia, New Zealand and finally England (after backpacking across Asia to England in 1972). Surfing or Drowning in an Ocean of Change? ©Thor May August 2015
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