Category Archives: Transhuman News

Test Run

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted Wednesday that the companys Starlink satellite network will come online for a public beta in about six months.

The network will still be incomplete Business Insider reports that SpaceX hopes to launch thousands more satellites in the coming years. But the beta will be the first attempt to test out whether Starlink can reliably beam internet service down from space. If it works, it could help improve access to broadband and close the digital divide thats only become more of a problem since people started isolating at home.

Private beta begins in ~3 months, public beta in ~6 months, starting with high latitudes

Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 23, 2020

Starlink has remained controversial among scientists who are worried that launching tens of thousands of satellites could prevent astronomers from conducting research or even become a minefield for spacecraft trying to leave the planet.

But SpaceX has made efforts to assuage those concerns by changing the altitude at which the satellites orbit and apply coatings that make them appear dimmer from the ground.

SpaceX has currently launched just 420 get it? of its Starlink satellites into orbit, but plans to have 12,000 up within the decade, Business Insider reports.

Because of that limited scale, the beta tests will only deliver broadband access to some parts of the world, according to Musks tweet. But no matter how well the test goes, it will still be a far cry from how the full network is expected to perform down the road.

READ MORE: Elon Musk announces that early access to the Starlink satellite-internet project will launch this year [Business Insider]

More on Starlink: Ominous Video Shows SpaceX Satellites Cutting Across Sky

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Elon Musk Says the Starlink Network Will Go Live in Six Months - Futurism

Back when artificial intelligence development company OpenAI created the text-writing algorithm GPT-2, it initially said it was too dangerous to release into the world.

Of course, it eventually did did release a full version of the neural network. By and large, it turned out that people were more interested in using GPT-2 as an AI dungeon master than churning out the endless torrent of fake news and propaganda that OpenAI had worried about.

But one evil genius slipped through the cracks: Tiago, a student whos getting his masters degree in business, told Futurism that hebeen using GPT-2 to write essays for his coursework.

He was willing to share his story and copies of his AI-generated essays on the condition that Futurism didnt share identifying information beyond his first name.

I dont know if it qualifies as plagiarism, Tiago told Futurism. I figure no, maybe, but thats not a gamble Id like to take right now.

Below is Futurisms conversation with Tiago, which has been lightly edited for clarity.

So, you used the AI algorithm GPT-2 to write one of your homework assignments. I have to say, thats an incredible move to pull off.

Tiago: Well, not that amazing. I would say, all my friends that work in tech and the STEM fields dont understand how poor the business school curriculum is in general. Its not as much a feat for GPT-2, Id say, as proof of the poorness of business schools curriculum.

You couldnt write an essay on science that could be anywhere near as convincing using the methods that I used. Many of the courses that I take in business school wouldnt make it possible as well. However, some particular courses are less information-dense, and so if you can manage to write a few pages with some kind of structure and some kind of argument, you can get through. Its not that great of an achievement, I would say, for GPT-2.

What was the actual assignment?

We did a presentation on some kind of business case, and then we had to do a follow-up essay. Three to five pages on that business case, and what it meant. Its weird to explain.

I would have to say also Im more pessimistic than the average business school student those courses that revolve around the business cases are not as fact-based as courses you might be used to. Because business cases are not like a theorem, theyre more like a parable.

It could be how innovation is important or something like that. You can take any conclusion that you want, and if it makes sense and if it fits in the more general narrative, you are assured a passing grade. Its very far from publishing an academic essay Id like to stress that point.

What gave you the idea to use GPT-2 for this assignment in particular?

I read an article about a student contest for essays on climate change. One of the entries was not a student, but a journalist at The Economist who used GPT-2 to write an entry. It was a very close experiment to my essay.

At that point, I started looking up how I could use GPT-2 to write essays in some of my classes. However, I do not have a technical background at all, so it was too much for me.

One thing that was made available between that time and the essay that I wrote was a tool, Talktotransformer.com, which makes GPT-2 accessible to everyone through a web browser. I dont know the details, but thats what made it possible for someone with a non-technical background like me to use GPT-2 to write my essay.

How did you actually write the essay? Did you have a game plan going in, or did you basically put some writing into TalkToTransformer and hope for the best?

Basically, I wrote the outline of my essay, with a few sentences or a paragraph per section, each with a point. And then I fed the first sentence of each paragraph that I wrote, fed it to GPT-2, and I got a full paragraph.

I had to iterate a few times to get something that was close to what I was looking for, and then I put it back in my word document and went to my next paragraph.

So you provided one sentence per paragraph, sort of like a topic sentence, and let the algorithm fill it out?

I wrote the structure and one sentence per paragraph. All the information that was in that final essay was in that structure, but the sentences were added by GPT-2. It added false quotes sometimes, or false information about the companies I was talking about. I found adding words like innovation, synergy,and stuff like that made the essay sound more suited for the course.

I did it for two essays in two different courses. What I figured as I was doing it was that if I write my first sentence in a certain way, it increases the probability that the paragraph will look how I want it to. So, if I use the words that are in a lot of business review articles, then the probability of similar words and similar points being made in the generated paragraph was increased.

What did you think of the output? Did it seem believable to you? Did you have to fix any errors?

I would write the first sentence of the paragraph, lets say the point of the paragraph is Starbucks has innovated by raising the quality of its coffee. I would write a sentence that encompasses the whole point, and then I would feed it to GPT-2, and then I would get a paragraph. I would generate again until I get something that I found more or less believable.

Some sentences would generate paragraphs indifferent tones. So, for instance, if I used some keywords, it would write a quote from the Starbucks CEO like what he would say in a shareholders meeting. But if I wrote it slightly differently, it might produce something about how to make coffee.

So you didnt change the paragraph at all once it looked about right?

There was light editing. Removing a sentence from a paragraph or adding it elsewhere. Sometimes GPT-2 would start a quote without ending it, so I would have to remove it.

Or it would make some bold claims that I was not comfortable with because they were factually false. Those I would remove.

And how was it received? Did the paper get a passing grade?

Both times I passed. But there was not much feedback on one of them, just a grade. And the second one, there was a grade on relationship to the subject, whether it got the point across.

It did get an okay grade. I dont have the grades for other students, but I think 80 percent of the class passed. Its hard to tell. I passed and some students didnt, but I was far from the best. I was clearly one of the worst ones that did pass.

It was okay for me because Im at the end of my masters and this was one of my last classes. For me, it was just pass or fail.

Were you nervous at all when you were submitting the work? Were you concerned that youd be found out?

I was confident enough to turn it in. However, I then was looking online and found out theres a really easy way to find out if an essay was written by GPT-2. Its to feed it to GPT-2 and if its able to predict the next words, then it was written by the AI. Its easier to find out than normal plagiarism.

I knew that the business school had software that they were using to look out for plagiarism in all the essays that are turned in to their online platform, which is how I turned in my essays. So I was slightly worried that the company that sold them the anti-plagiarism software would have made an update.

I dont think the professors even considered the possibility of GPT-2 writing the essays, but I was slightly worried that the company making the software added a module. But not that much.

Were you surprised when you passed?

Not really. I think its hard to get across to people who didnt study in business school how poor the standards are for essays that are turned in. I think the professors are too proud to think of the possibility of AI writing an essay. But it was really easy to do.

I think it will become an issue for business schools in the future, and unfortunately for students, its easily solved through anti-plagiarism software.

I know youre basically done with school. But if you had more ahead of you, would you do this again? Or was it more of a fun experiment for you?

Yeah, this is something Id do again. You just cant expect a good grade. The final essay is pretty poor, its just not poor enough for the professor to fail you.

More on GPT-2: Now You Can Experiment With OpenAIs Dangerous Fake News AI

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Automated Education This Grad Student Used a Neural Network to Write His Papers - Futurism

In 2019, astronomers made an incredible discovery: a comet from a different star system making a close approach to the Sun at an extremely unusual trajectory, which was later named 2I/Borisov after the amateur astronomer who discovered it.

Observations suggest that its home star system could resemble our own. NASA scientists have even suggested that the object may hold water.

Now, a new study by an international team of researchers led by NASA has revealed something highly unusual: gas emanating from the comet contained unusually high amounts of carbon monoxide up to 26 times higher than that of the average comet.

This is the first time weve ever looked inside a comet from outside our solar system and it is dramatically different from most other comets weve seen before, Martin Cordiner, astrochemist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Astronomy said in a statement.

The fact that they found any carbon monoxide isnt in itself unusual. Its one of the most commonly found molecules in space. But the extremely high concentration puzzled the researchers.

The comet must have formed from material very rich in CO ice, which is only present at the lowest temperatures found in space, below -420 degrees Fahrenheit (-250 degrees Celsius), Stefanie Milam, planetary scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and co-author of the study, said in the statement.

They believe the abundance of the gas could tell us about the comets home.

If the gases we observed reflect the composition of 2I/Borisovs birthplace, then it shows that it may have formed in a different way than our own solar system comets, in an extremely cold, outer region of a distant planetary system, said Cordiner.

Scientists suggest that 2l/Borisov couldve spent billions of years traveling through the extreme colds of interstellar space after being yeeted out of its host system as it came near a passing star.

But we still cant pinpoint what its home system looks like just yet.

2I/Borisov gave us the first glimpse into the chemistry that shaped another planetary system, said Milam. But only when we can compare the object to other interstellar comets, will we learn whether 2I/Borisov is a special case, or if every interstellar object has unusually high levels of CO.

READ MORE: Strange ingredient in interstellar Comet Borisov offers a clue to its origins [Space.com]

More on Borisov: NASA SCIENTISTS SAY INTERSTELLAR OBJECT MAY HOLD ALIEN WATER

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NASA: Something Is Off About This Interstellar Comet - Futurism

Peaky Blinders

Italian design company Avio Interiors has dreamed up with two airplane seat design concepts that could keep travelers safe or at least safer in a post-pandemic world.

The concepts, spotted by The Drive, could be one possible solution to the uncomfortable reality of somebody sneezing or coughing next to you on your next flight that is, if well ever experience air travel again.

The companys first Glassafe concept is a a kit-level solution that can be installed on existing seats to make close proximity safer among passengers sharing the same seat, according to the companys website. In other words, transparent blinders on either side of the seat.

The unusual transparent materials still allow passengers to avoid or minimize contacts and interactions via air, [] so as to reduce the probability of contamination by viruses or other.

The Janus Seat is a two-faced seat that could allow three passengers to be separated with a shield made of transparent material that isolates them from each other, creating a protective barrier for everyone, according to the website.

Unlike the Glassafe concept, the three-seat configuration would require a complete retooling as it isnt a simple add-on kit for existing airplane seats.

The concept comes after businessman Rick Pescovitz wore a personal, transparent tent in the window seat of a commercial airliner back in early February to avoid contracting the deadly virus.

READ MORE:Heres How Plane Seating Could Look After Coronavirus

More on air travel: MAN WEARS PERSONAL PLASTIC TENT ON FLIGHT TO AVOID DEADLY VIRUS

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This is What Air Travel Could Look Like After the Pandemic - Futurism

Health practitioners are noticing a strange new sign that patients could be carrying the coronavirus without symptoms such as a dry cough or fever.

The media and even some health experts are now referring to the condition as COVID toes mysterious blue or red discoloration in toes and sometimes fingers. It seems to only affect young people.

We dont know for sure if its related to COVID-19, but when its so common right now during a pandemic and is occurring in otherwise asymptomatic or mildly affected patients, it seems too much of a coincidence not to be a manifestation of the virus for patients in their teens and 20s, Amy Paller, the chair of dermatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said in a statement.

Luckily, the toes seem to turn back to normal quickly.

I think its much more rampant than we even realize, Paller added in the statement. The good news is it resolves spontaneously.

Sometime itchy, often times painful, Paller told Chicagos WGN9 News, these are individuals who are often without any other sign of viral infection. We are seeing this in unprecedented numbers.

Theyre typically painful to touch and could have a hot burning sensation, Ebbing Lautenbach, chief of infectious disease at the University of Pennsylvanias School of Medicine, told USA Today. Sometimes this might be your first clue that they have COVID when they dont have any other symptoms.

The news comes after doctors found that a loss of smell and taste could be a first symptom of COVID-19.

Luckily, COVID toes are seemingly not a sign of impending doom.

None of these teens or young adults have gone on to have any serious issues, Paller told WGN9.

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The Coronavirus May Be Doing Something Strange to Your Toes - Futurism

With each passing day it becomes more obvious how unlucky we are that one of the worst crises in American history coincides with Donald Trumps presidency. To get out of this crisis with the least loss of life and least damage to our economy, we need a president who can steer a science-based, nonpartisan debate through the hellish ethical, economic and environmental trade-offs we have to make.

We need a president who is a cross between F.D.R., Justice Brandeis and Jonas Salk. We got a president who is a cross between Dr. Phil, Dr. Strangelove and Dr. Seuss.

Sure, Trump isnt the only one sowing division in our society, but as president he has a megaphone like no one else, so when he spews his politics of division, and suggests disinfectants as cures, he is not only eroding our societys physical immunity to the coronavirus but also eroding what futurist Marina Gorbis calls our cognitive immunity our ability to filter out science from quackery and facts from fabrications.

As a result, the Trump daily briefing has itself become a public health hazard.

If we dont have a president who can harmonize our need to protect ourselves from the coronavirus and our need to get back to work as well as harmonize our need to protect the planets ecosystems and our need for economic growth we are doomed.

Because this virus was actually triggered by our polarization from the natural world. And it will destroy us physically and economically if we stay locked in a polarized, binary argument about lives versus livelihoods.

Here is why: When you listen to Trump, one of his consistent themes is that everything was just perfect with our economy until out of nowhere this black swan, called Covid-19, showed up from China and wrecked it all. Its true, this virus did come out of Wuhan, China, but it was anything but a black swan that no one could have expected. It was actually a black elephant.

The term black elephant was coined by environmentalist Adam Sweidan. Its a cross between a black swan an unlikely, unexpected event with enormous ramifications and the elephant in the room a looming disaster that is visible to everyone, yet no one wants to address.

Covid-19 was a black elephant. It is the logical outcome of our increasingly destructive wars against nature.

As Johan Rockstrm, chief scientist at Conservation International, explains: When you simultaneously hunt for wildlife and push development into natural ecosystems destroying natural habitats the natural balance of species collapses due to loss of top predators and other iconic species, leading to an abundance of more generalized species adapted to live in human dominated habitats. These are rats, bats and some primates which together host 75 percent of all known zoonotic viruses to date, and who can survive and multiply in destroyed human dominated habitats.

As we humans have become more numerous and concentrated in cities, and as deforestation has brought these generalized species closer to us and as countries like China, Vietnam and others in central Africa tolerated wet markets where these virus-laden species were mixed with domesticated meats were seeing ever more zoonotic diseases spreading from animals to people. Their names are SARS, MERS, Ebola, bird flu, and swine flu and Covid-19.

China, in particular, has a lot to answer for. It banned wet markets in one province after SARS in 2003, but then allowed them to reopen after SARS passed and that apparently brought us Covid-19 out of Wuhan. (Shamefully, China reportedly still has not shut down wet markets selling wildlife.)

Add globalization to this and you have the perfect ingredients for more pandemics. We need to find a much more harmonious balance between economic growth and our ecosystems.

The same kind of harmonic approach has to be brought to our current debate about reopening the economy. One way to get there was proposed by Graham Allison, a national security expert at Harvard.

Allison wrote that were having this important debate about our health and economic future in an incredibly uncoordinated way. Instead, we should have federal government experts on one team offering their approach and a Team B of independent medical, economic, public health, data and strategic analysts offering an alternative approach. And then go for the best synthesis.

For instance, Allison observed: If we concluded that an identified group of a quarter of the population face an unacceptable risk of death from coronavirus, but that for the other 75 percent, with appropriate precautions like social distancing and masks, face no greater risk than other risks of death we accepted before coronavirus, would it be possible to design a response that protected the most vulnerable while simultaneously reopening most of the economy for others?

Five weeks later and fresh off three days as a volunteer emergency room doctor in the Bronx Katz still believes that is possible. He explained to me why, starting with what he found in the emergency ward.

You might think that health professionals are at one extreme of opinion, concerned only about the virus and favoring locking everything down, but that was not the view I encountered, said Katz. The view was far more centrist: respect for the infection, but equal respect for the high cost of closing down everything to their patients, of course, but also to themselves and their families. Many were acutely concerned about layoffs, unemployment, and real desperation affecting siblings or close friends.

That is why, Katz insists, we have to avoid minimizing the degree to which mass unemployment, poverty, hunger and despair will devastate people if the economy remains virtually shut down. At the same time, we cant just submit to protesters demanding their governors open everything back up indiscriminately, without data or a comprehensive health strategy,

The moment you stop respecting this virus, it will kill someone you love, he said.

The best strategy, argues Katz, starts with what the numbers are telling us: More and more data are telling us that Covid-19 is two completely different diseases in different populations. It is severe and potentially lethal to the old, the chronically ill and those with pre-existing conditions. It is, however, rarely life-threatening, often mild and often even asymptomatic among those under 50 or 60 in generally good health.

We still dont yet have a perfect understanding of how the virus works for instance, if you get it, whether you are immune from getting it again. So, we need to corroborate the patterns were seeing through more random sampling of the U.S. population both for infection and immunity. But if these patterns are confirmed, then the proper strategy, argued Katz, is one of total harm minimization that saves the most lives and health through vertical interdiction.

That means sheltering the vulnerable, while allowing those who can return to the world most safely to do so thereby restoring the economy, supply chains, and services, while cultivating the collective protection of herd immunity that leads to the all clear, said Katz. Thats how we get our lives back without waiting on the long and uncertain timeline of vaccine development.

Of course, well need an army of public health workers to keep doing testing and contact tracing so we can adapt to new data, limit breakouts and protect those most likely to die or be badly harmed from Covid-19.

The bottom line is that Mother Nature has been telling us something huge in this crisis: You let everything get out of balance and go to extremes. You ravaged my ecosystems and unleashed this virus. You let political extremism ravage your body politic. You need to get back into balance, and that starts with using the immune system that I endowed you with.

Herd immunity, which kicks in after about 60 percent of the population is exposed to and recovers from the virus, concluded Katz, has historically been natures way of ending pandemics. We need to bend with her forces, while concentrating our health services and social services on protecting those most vulnerable who need to stay sheltered until there is a vaccine.

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We Need Herd Immunity From Trump and the Coronavirus - The New York Times

Tom Bennett is underwhelmed by a hotch-potch of futurist platitudes in the first episode of Alex Beards The Learning Revolution onBBC Radio 4

A little learning is a dangrous thing, wrote Alexander Pope in the 18th century. drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring. People writing about education often remind me of this. Once in a while someone looks at formal, mass education and asks, Hey, is this the best we can do? And often, in their breathless quest to reinvent education, they imagine they are the first to do so. In reality they are more than 100 years late to the party.

Alex Beard is one such pilgrim and The Learning Revolution part 1: Knowing is a perfect starry-eyed example of the genre. It asks many excellent questions that are worth considering: What is knowledge? How do we use it? Whose knowledge? And so on. But asking smart questions isnt enough, and this programme fails to do anything more than run excitedly around the art gallery pointing at a famous painting before racing off to the next.

This creates a blurred, disjointed journey through the philosophy of education. The argument isnt so much built as snuck in at the end of a confusing flick through the encyclopedia of education. Beard barely considers what knowing something might actually mean before deciding it must mean lots of different, shiny things. For something so central to the programmes concept, we get a very thin noodle soup without the noodles. Theres a cursory nod to the boring old idea that knowing something might mean actually knowing it in your head (Christodoulou and Birbalsingh pop up like hostages chained to the radiator), before we dash off into breathless speculative futurism and novelty.

Beard fails to challenge anything that is said

While doing so, Beard fails to challenge anything that is said; apparently merely stating something to be true makes it so, which is ironic considering the subject matter. Some of the ideas it platforms are interesting, but seem tangential: apparently because we can offload facts (ie write them down or store them somewhere for later reference), thats good enough to qualify as a new way of knowing. Which, if you take it to its absurd conclusion, means that I know everything if I know where to look it up. This is a great obfuscation of the reality that I really dont know it at all, I just know where I can find it out.

But what it misses most of all is that these questions have been asked for centuries specifically since the end of the 19th century and answered with the same vague, feel-good conclusions. The Learning Revolution seems to be reaching for a refocus on skills, cooperation, critical thinking, and all the other usual suspects. We need to learn how to care. We need a new relationship with the environment. Is this a reboot of schools or society? The line seems slyly blurred. We need to know others and how to co-operate and care. Schools dont teach this? That will be news to the many educators who do exactly this or try to.

And, of course, Covid-19 is shoehorned into this smorgasbord of 19th-century philosophy reheated as 21st-century innovation, to prove that which is already believed. We need new ways of knowing to defeat it, and future perils, apparently. But perhaps we dont. Perhaps we just need lots of children, carefully educated to understand a vast array of the best of what we already know, for them to develop the skills to innovate, create and build the future as they always have done. That wont be achieved by pretending were teaching children things directly (eg creativity) if it means we neglect the tools they need to achieve them.

This was an interesting, but deeply superficial piece of advocacy dressed up as investigation. One day someone who is already aware of the decades of work that precedes them will attempt to reimagine education. But this is not that day.

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The revolution will not be memorised - Schools Week

Type Oil Negative

For the first time in history, the price of crude oil has gone negative as a result of plummeting demand amid the coronavirus outbreak, Bloomberg reports. Oil traders are literally running out of space to store excess oil.

In a single day, the price of oil dropped far below the previous record, set in 1946, when the world was still recovering from World War 2.

So what does this mean?

Theres no storage left for oil, so extra oil becomes worthless, wrote author and climate advocate Eric Holthaus on Twitter.

Oil companies are storing extra oil every way possible: filling oil tankers and parking them offshore, putting oil into pipelines and turning them off. At this rate global oil storage will be full in a few weeks, Holthaus added.

Despite the record drops, investors are still pumping money into oil futures, according to Bloomberg.

Refiners are rejecting barrels at a historic pace and with U.S. storage levels sprinting to the brim, market forces will inflict further pain until either we hit rock bottom, or COVID clears, whichever comes first, but it looks like the former, Michael Tran, managing director of global energy strategy at RBC Capital Markets, told Bloomberg.

READ MORE: Oil Plunges Below Zero for First Time With May Contract Ending [Bloomberg]

More on the pandemic: THIS HEATMAP SHOWS SEVERITY OF COVID OUTBREAK IN EVERY US COUNTY

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For the First Time Ever, the Price of Oil is Now Negative - Futurism

COMMENTARY

The response across the economy and in government to COVID-19 has massively accelerated the future of work. The lofty talk about the future of work digital transformation, a remote workforce, distributed teams, telework is suddenly a reality in both the public and private sectors. Long-standing resistance and silos have been knocked down by a crisis that threatens the very continuity of organizations.

And what does real distance work look like? At NASA, a team of engineers is orchestrating maneuvers of the Curiosity rover on Mars from their computers in their living rooms and bedrooms.

Not long ago, futurists were predicting that changing employee expectations, shifting labor dynamics, and new technology would reshape work and the workplace. But the reshaping was driven instead by the coronavirus. Still, the insights of futurists, such as Josh Bersin, are relevant to understand what organizational leaders will face in the weeks and months ahead. In a 2016 Forbes article, he identifies three transformational changes that we face:

These changes already happened years ago in some pockets of the government. For example, in a recent op-ed for the New York Times, former general Stanley McChrystal and Chris Fussell wrote: Fifteen years ago, in the throes of our fight against Al Qaeda, the Joint Special Operations Command, where both of us served, needed to do this exact thing. We pivoted from being a centrally located, thousands-strong enterprise to a network of small teams spread around the world. . . . Digital leadership was not in the job description for our generation, but it became a critical skill for all of us to learn in the fast-moving and constantly changing fight.

Similarly, the Patent and Trademark Office began its transition to telework more than two decades ago, as one of the pioneers in the intensive use of telework in the government. Subsequently, it has touted the benefits of this approach as: increased employee satisfaction, work-life balance, and cost savings from reduced needs for office space. However, more importantly during the current pandemic, its webpage says that operations are expected to "continue as normal." In fact, they are helping their clients patent attorneys and inventors by easing some of the requirements they face in teleworking, as well.

A NewEra of Distance Work?

Not long ago, the trends were towards open office, gig workers, and the increased use of automation in the workplace. In fact, telework was declining in many public and private organizations, especially in the federal government. But the response to the COVID pandemic is ripping up the playbook on how work gets done. Every organization faces new ways of working, and even though there are plans to return to office-based work, the new approaches involve distributed locations and collaboration that likely wont be temporary.

A decade-old law requires federal agencies to incorporate telework into their continuity of operations plans. However, less than half of federal employees are authorized to work remotely. Shawn Skelly, a commissioner on the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, recently wrote: The challenges the nation is [sic] experiencing now should be a wake-up call for policymakers and federal agency executives alike.

Separately, a telework advocate, Kate Lister, writes that expanding federal telework would save taxpayers an estimated $14 billion a year as a result of reduced real estate, absenteeism, and turnover, and increase productivity and continuity of operations.

Many private sector companies have moved to almost all online operations. This includes Automattic (the company behind WordPress, which powers 35 percent of all websites on the internet and has no offices) and IBM, which has moved virtually all of its global operations to a digital presence. It shifted from about 30 percent of its 350,000-person workforce being distance workers earlier this year to well over 90 percent in a three-week period.

What Is Reality on the Ground Today?

As federal agencies started shutting their doors and directing employees to work from home, they began grappling with concrete issues such as the resiliency and security of their IT systems, the availability of laptops, and connectivity.

Many were concerned short-term about their continuity of business operations, and in the longer term, the culture shifts required to motivate and manage a distributed workforce. These issues, much like those workplace futurist Bersin raised, include:

The approach the IRS has taken in addressing these issues probably is not atypical. Federal News Networkchronicled its expanded use of telework during the COVID-19 crisis response effort. Commissioner Chuck Rettig told employees that they had the option of avoiding face-to-face contact with taxpayers. Empowering employees to choose gave them an unaccustomed freedom, and that freedom unnerved front-line supervisors.

According toFederal News Network: Chad Hooper, president of the Professional Managers Association, which represents supervisors at the agency. [Weve] never in our careers been in a situation where employees have been empowered to that extent, he said in an interview. In addition to this sudden culture shift in the middle of the 2020 tax filing season, employees found that working from home was sometime impossible because much of IRSs work is run on Windows 7 desktop computers, which tie people to their desks.

The reality of working from home affects federal agencies differently. Law enforcement, regulatory, and national security agencies obviously are concerned about security and systems access issues. Benefits, healthcare, and statistical agencies are concerned about privacy issues as processes to make decisions about benefits, services, and information move massively online as well. One model for addressing these challenges comes from the U.S. intelligence community, which has managed to create ways for some of its employees to work from unclassified facilities (e.g., from home) by addressing technical and policy options.

This Is All Part of a Longer-Term Shift.

Corporate telework advocate Lister recently told CNBC News: The coronavirus is going to be a tipping point. We plodded along at about 10 percent growth a year for the last 10 years, but I foresee that this is going to really accelerate the trend.

In a similar vein, transformation consultant Khyati Nayak writes in Federal Computer Week: The forced social experiment brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic is compelling the federal government to adapt culturally and technologically at a rapid pace. Federal workers have turned to government-approved technology such as Skype, WebEx, and Slack to meet, collaborate, and in many cases, just to commiserate . . . and she concludes that this crisis creates an opportunity to transform the federal workforce.

Whats Next?

Given this premise that distant work and distributed teams will be enduring even with a return to normal strategy being discussed -- the response to this pandemic may spark a permanent change in how government will work from now on. This change likely will occur along a spectrum of possibilities, which Ill explore in additional posts in coming weeks:

About the Author

John M. Kamensky is a senior fellow at the IBM Center for the Business of Government and a fellow at the National Academy of Public Administration. He can be reached at john.kamensky@us.ibm.com.

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The future of work is here: How 'distance work' is transforming the workplace - Washington Technology

Its great when you're young and free. Even if the town is empty or not. Big or small. Dying or growing. Its a town. Just to know people were here their stories, the tragedies, the miracles. Then to know what could be, what will be. A town has magic, sometimes it's sad because its dying or changing too fast for some. Then others want the change, hating tradition and the past. Theres no relation for some to the past.

If you're not growing you're dying some say. The more you control, regulate, eventually the less you grow. Everything in proportion. Sounds easy.

Then you have the futurist. The enlightened people that put their money into smart prospects that will generate returns. What happens to some towns, because of central planning, is they become dead while expanding. The magic that makes a town has to change, but if they change losses too much of the good stuff, watch out below.

And who is to say or who is to decide what the good stuff is. One thing if for certain, the economics must work to keep the magic going. Like a 10 year-old marriage, youve got to work on it. Stability in industry and business most be stable.

Stacey Alexander

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Living In The City - The Chattanoogan