Meyers' Twilight series: warning, it's deeper than it appears

Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series was called "downmarket" in the April 20 Newsweek. Why am I 5 weeks behind in my Newsweeks? Because I was, yes, deep into the Twilight series!

The Twilight series is full of ponderable questions about the human condition. Consider: How can the "good" vampires stand to live with us regular humans, when a vampire's strongest desire is to rip out our throats and drink our blood?

Similarly, how can so many of us regular humans operate powerful machines of potential death and destruction each day, and be frequently tempted by a few obnoxious idiots to kill and maim them, yet not do so?

The "good" vampires make it quite clear: Once they've experienced the life-enriching joy of living among humans, subduing their taste for human blood becomes a worthy trade-off.

Maybe they're not that different from most of us, after all.

First Bottles, then Bento Boxes

Perhaps you’ve seen, or ordered, a “bento box” in a Japanese restaurant. Until they were replaced by polystyrene, as here, the personal re-usable bento box was a common container for Japanese to take their lunches to work in (school children had been getting universal school lunches since after WW II.)

Here’s my vision of the next eco-advance, after using one’s own water bottle and coffee mug: the personal re-usable bento box. Initially a personal statement for trendy young econistas, the bento box will eventually be adopted by all the environmentally conscious. Rather than accept our food in disposable containers, we will insist on having it put into our own containers, from which we will eat it or take it out, to wash it at home. Initially this will conflict with municipal health regulations and vendor convenience, but those will quickly adapt to suit the changing market. To accommodate servings that are charged by weight, each container will have its tare weight embossed on the handle, and that weight will be deducted at checkout.

At purchase, those using their own containers will sign a release of vendor liability should they get sick from an unclean container. This has obvious risks, if the sickness might also have come from the food itself. An alternative might be for arriving customers to use a fast, automated steam sterilizer designed for that purpose.

All Is Connected

You’ve probably seen this shape: It's a circle, with a bunch of evenly-spaced dots drawn on it, and lines drawn that connect every possible pair of dots. It's often drawn with lots of points, then the lines filled in to create a fine mesh of connections, to show how complex the relationships can get between multiple things.

Now that you have that shape in mind, consider it representing this:
In the real world, all phenomena are connected.
If a technological race such as ours is to have a sustainable presence (read: long-term survival) in this world, we are responsible for understanding how everything we do impacts everything else, and all the relationships.
While the challenge may seem impossibly complex, the responsibility to take it on is no less ours.
We have the sensing technology to monitor, reveal, and measure the influences and outcomes, and the analytical tools to identify and assess the impacts, and locate the causes.
We must accept the responsibility to understand and act on what we learn.

Leveraging Disadvantaged Digital Natives into the Workforce

In my work in corporate IT and training, I’ve noticed that a vast number of young adults, even many from disadvantaged backgrounds, use technology in their everyday lives in ways that most multiple-degreed fifty-somethings can’t even imagine. I've envisioned a way to help these young people leverage their competitive advantage as “digital natives” into long-term success in the mainstream workforce.

My vision is for an interactive network that provides just-in-time learning, guidance, monitoring, and reinforcement, to help workers and teams stay on-target, on-task, and on-track. This network would reflect and take advantage of the rich and complex cognitive networks that already exist in the minds of digital natives. It is this thinking that makes them fundamentally well-suited to thrive in the twenty-first century.

The Green Collar Workforce is an ideal place to start implementing this network. While Green Collar Jobs are often characterized as re-tooled blue collar jobs, they are far from the “skilled labor” of old. The old model, in which management thinks, plans and directs, while labor carries out their mandates, has had disastrous consequences for our planet and for many of us as workers. Almost too late, we've discovered that the web of life is so intertwined that not even one worker can afford to be out of the loop and unaware of the consequences of one's decisions and actions.

Some short term advantages to a connected workforce of Green Collar Digital Natives include:
- accelerated ramp-up from trainee to skilled worker
- cost-efficient transfer of critical knowledge from aging baby-boomers to new workers
- learning, guidance, and collaboration provided in a familiar, comfortable, and non-threatening format
- expert monitoring and real-time, as-needed intervention, for positive reinforcement, spirit-boosting, and correction
- learning and skill acquisition customized, at little additional cost, to the individual and the work task
- highly efficient work teams, in which members collaborate, share learning and motivation, and build group effectiveness and esprit de corp.

In the long run, a connected workforce will be an always-thinking, always-connected, always-learning collective entity. But, while it may in some ways resemble The Borg in Star Trek - The Next Generation, the individuals in this entity will retain and apply their individuality, visions, and consciences. Such an evolutionary step is imperative, to enable the survival of our species in a complex, delicate, and interconnected world.

To move this concept forward, I need expert input about the problems and opportunities that it might address, as well as about current and planned initiatives with which it might either connect, or conflict. Input is sought from experts in:
- workforce education and performance support technology
- online and mobile tools for learning, work-life, and collaboration
- job training or workforce support for disadvantaged and post-incarceration young adults.

For more on this topic, read the fourth posting before this one, that begins "Performance Support for launching the Green Collar..."

Sustainability Resources in the Philadelphia area

This is a list-in-progress. You can add links to additional resources in a Comment, and I'll add them to the list if appropriate.
Note caveat at the end.

Sustainable Business Network of Phila- http://sbnphiladelphia.org/

B-Corp, pledge to use the power of business to solve social and environmental problems- http://www.bcorporation.net/

This blogger's Plastisaurus blog, where you can click the 2007 link to read the tale of the Plastisauri- http://plastisaurus.blogspot.com/

Delco Alliance for Environmental Justice - http://www.ejnet.org/chester/

Green For All, Van Jones' magic trick: stir in environmental justice with green jobs, and, Voila! One issue! And amazingly, it works. http://Greenforall.org

PennFuture, for Environmental Action in PA- http://PennFuture.org

Promoting alternative fuels and efficient fuel use in cities- http://www.phillycleancities.org/

Green Jobs Philly, a garden of hidden local treasures- http://greenjobsphilly.org/

PA Resources Council- http://www.prc.org/

For eco-entrepreneurs- http://www.greenbusiness.net/

Delaware Valley Green Building Council- http://www.dvgbc.org/

Clean Water Action- http://cleanwater.org/pa

Clean Air Council- http://cleanair.org/

We Can Solve the Climate and Energy Crises- http://www.wecansolveit.org/

The blogger and contributors to the list are not responsible for the accuracy, content, or existence of the websites linked to here. Anyone who follows these links is solely responsible for the results and outcomes of that use.

That's what I get for not looking it up online, like a normal person

This is good for a chuckle—

I had looked up the number of my local appliance parts dealer in the phone book, then set my cell phone down on the page while I wrote the number on a piece of paper. I then closed the phone book and put it away— with the cell phone in it. Not seeing my cell phone around, I used my desk phone to make the call. When I realized my cell phone was missing, I called it. Since I had the phone on vibrate, not ring, all that paper cushioned the vibration nicely.

Fortunately, I did eventually think to look in the phone book.

When SMEs create their own instructional materials, beware

Here are 2 caveats to observe, when letting Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) create their own learning materials. These rules equally apply to web content, user guides, comedy sketches, and anywhere else the quality of the writing may affect the outcome.

1. Be sure to point out to management the likely differences in outcomes between "better than nothing" and actual designed instruction. The IDL (instructional design) literature is full of metrics for identifying desired learning outcomes, and how well various examples achieved them. Even if you're not responsible for creating the content, you are responsible for having gone along with the decision. And, if heaven forbid something goes drastically wrong because somebody didn't learn something they needed to know to do their job, you don't want to end up the goat.
   
   
2. Exercise editorial control over all content, be sure it is included among your deliverables, and that your time is budgeted to do it. And, BTW, templates are only useful if their use requires instruction in how to use them. Otherwise they'll be applied ignorant of their purpose; or, worse, dismissed as bureaucratic nonsense.