Research Roundup: August 4

Tools for the Future

How useful will Twitter be as a tool in the future, when a new study says that 40.5% of messages published on Twitter are "pointless babble"? See the results from Pear Analytics and a background story from the Marketing Charts website.

The Near Future

Managing Tomorrow's Workforce: "How does demographic change affect companies? Dr. Thomas Fent, an expert on population economics at the Vienna Institute of Demography, explains how companies can prepare for a radically different future labor market." From the Allianz Group, an international finance and consulting firm.

Edward Tenner writes about The Future of "Statutory Senility" in The Atlantic. His conclusion: "Maybe the demographic and recessionary squeeze on pensions and the need to keep working will yield a health blessing in disguise for people delaying retirement. And those who do want to retire as early as possible are going to need a society in which other people work longer."

Blogger Walt Crawford muses on the future of physical media like books and CDs. "[S]ome hotshot futurists say Everything's Going Digital Real Soon Now," but he disagrees.

The Art Newspaper asks, America is changing—but are its art museums? When it comes to diversity, the answer seems to be "no."

Trends, etc.:

American students are middling, according to the latest results from international standardized tests. In reading, our fourth-graders came in 14th out of 45 developed nations (just behind). In math, our 15-year-olds ranked sixth form the bottom out of thirty countries (just ahead of). See the Washington Examiner for a breezy recap or the National Center for Education Statistics to see the hard data and analysis.

"Not all that long ago, when adults had trouble getting something working on a computer, they would sarcastically say that they needed a teenager to explain it to them. That was largely true of those of us who were teenagers in the 1980s and 1990s, but ... today you'd be better off finding a 30- or 40-year-old geek to help." Adam C. Engst at TidBITS asks, Have We Entered a Post-Literate Technological Age?

More on information overload from Basex: "We have created billions of pictures, documents, videos, podcasts, blog posts, and tweets, yet if these remain unmanaged it will be impossible for anyone to make sense out of any of this content because we have no mechanism to separate the important from the mundane. Going forward, we face a monumental paradox. On the one hand, we have to ensure that what is important is somehow preserved. If we don’t preserve it, we are doing a disservice to generations to come; they won’t be able to learn from our mistakes as well as from the great breakthroughs and discoveries that have occurred. On the other hand, we are creating so much information that may or may not be important, that we routinely keep everything. If we continue along this path, which we will most certainly do, there is no question that we will require far superior filtering tools to manage that information."

Other articles, essays, and recent items of interest:

"An invasion led by artificially intelligent machines..." New Scientist magazine asks, What's the worst that could happen? when AI (artificial intelligence) becomes more powerful and ubiquitous.

The latest Nonprofit Economic Survey from Guidestar indicates that things "didn't worsen dramatically for charitable organizations between March and May [i.e., the second quarter of 2009]"—but contributions are flat and organizations continue to lay off workers and reduce services. Take a look at the gloomy details.

A new report from Urban Institute explores the role of culture-makers and cultural opportunities in urban development. "Cities around the world are building urban cultural life as a way to develop local economies and revitalize urban centers. But they have done less to recognize and systematically promote the cultural lives of urban neighborhoods and their residents. This brief examines four characteristics of city cultural policy that affect cultural development and cultural life in neighborhoods." (Carole Rosenstein, "Cultural Development and City Neighborhoods." A summary is here and the full report here.)

The Wallace Foundation has published a new report on Engaging Audiences. Abstract: "In the midst of hard economic times, it is clearly more challenging for arts organizations to take the long view and continue to devote time and effort to building new audiences. But this report on a recent gathering of representatives from more than 50 Wallace-funded arts organizations in six cities concludes that participation-building efforts and the resulting lessons are more vital than ever to the long-term health of arts organizations and the entire arts sector. Especially in hard times, the report says, it’s essential for leaders of arts organization to take careful stock of the long-term influences and challenges affecting the arts sector such as demographic shifts and new technologies that are creating entire new “spaces” for people to come together and experience the arts. The report describes how organizations are responding creatively to those challenges using such means as market research, re-branding, and drawing audience-building lessons from other sectors such as professional sports." (Meanwhile, the blogosphere ponders, Are There Too Many Arts-Related Studies? And What If There Are?)

Refresh and Reflect:

In case you missed it, in July ABC News reported on the World's 15 Wackiest Museums.

What happens when Nature reclaims a shrinking city? James Griffioen tracks and photographs the feral houses of Detroit.

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