Login
The positive benefits of youth interacting with technology are often ignored while the negatives are emphasized. It’s time for that to change. In a commitment to this effort, the Connected Learning Alliance, along with the Connected Learning Lab at the University of California, Irvine, are excited to share the new Connected Wellbeing Initiative with the... Read more »
The post The Connected Wellbeing Initiative: Building Understanding and Action Regarding Teens’ Technology Use and Their Mental Health appeared first on Connected Learning Alliance.
Image: Portland State University, Oregon MESA InventTeams In 2019 I stumbled upon the field of invention education when I joined a Lemelson-MIT (LMIT) research project examining how high school teams were using computer science to create technological solutions that would improve the lives of others. As part of the research, I attended EurekaFest, where I... Read more »
The post When Learning is Irresistible: An Invitation to Foster Inventive Mindsets appeared first on Connected Learning Alliance.
“As a child that’s one thing that my parents really instilled in us as children is to know who you are and identify with what is most connected to you…We are Black people. We are of African descent. That is the culture. That’s how I was raised. That’s what I know. That’s who I am.... Read more »
The post Timbuk2 – Anchored in a Historical Legacy of Care and Spirituality appeared first on Connected Learning Alliance.
On behalf of the Connected Learning Summit Conference Committee, we are pleased to announce the publication of the Proceedings of the 2022 Connected Learning Summit. It is our honor to share with you a proceedings that celebrates participatory, playful, and transformative learning. In 2021, the Connected Learning Summit became a fully online event, supporting inclusive,... Read more »
The post Proceedings of the 2022 Connected Learning Summit Released appeared first on Connected Learning Alliance.
I’ve been researching technology’s role in child development for nearly twenty years. For most of that time, whenever a non-researcher asked me for the verdict – is tech good or bad for kids? – I dutifully replied that it’s complicated, because it is. And as research continues to accumulate, one could argue things have only... Read more »
The post Technology’s Child: Making the Complex More Concrete for Research on Kids and Tech appeared first on Connected Learning Alliance.
The first and second authors of this blog post were teens in the the middle 2010s and the early 2000s, respectively. We experienced a media landscape vastly different from each other as well as the present day. Media devices were more limited, Internet connections were constrained; user-generated content or social media was barely on the... Read more »
The post Mobilizing Teen-Centered Research Findings for Teen-Oriented Storytelling appeared first on Connected Learning Alliance.
Call for proposals now open for the sixth annual Connected Learning Summit, which will run entirely online from October 26 to 28, 2023. Submissions open: March 6, 2023 Deadline for submissions: June 23, 2023 Notifications: August 2023 We invite submissions of Research Papers and Showcases that focus on digital technologies for learning, educational and commercial... Read more »
The post Call for Proposals Now Open for the Sixth Annual Connected Learning Summit appeared first on Connected Learning Alliance.
Like nearly every other sector, deep tech faced significant headwinds in 2022. As interest rates skyrocketed, deep tech deals, which inherently take more capital than other kinds of software businesses, became less attractive to many VCs and their LPs than lower-risk investments.
For instance, even though quantum computing suddenly became popular in the public markets as D-Wave, Rigetti and IonQ listed in the last year, private investment declined significantly — the sector received just over $600 million in venture capital in 2022, down from $800 million in 2021, according to Crunchbase.
Seasoned investors and operators in different segments of deep tech have been adapting to these changes in real time as the cheap money days dwindle in the rearview. For instance, in this environment, space tech startups would never have been able to raise the kind of money they did in 2021 to be able to deploy the technologies they’re working on today. As Delian Asparouhov, a principal at Founders Fund and the founder of Varda Space Industries, shared last month, it would be impossible to raise the $42 million his startup did in 2021 for its space factory “idea” in today’s market climate.
While some investors will continue to sit on the sidelines as we kick off 2023, it’s important to note that many funds are still sitting on amounts of dry powder like they’ve never had before. That doesn’t mean they or their LPs will be in a rush to deploy that capital, but money will be available to startups that can demonstrate current demand and are realistic about their valuations. As it becomes increasingly difficult to realize big exits in the years ahead, the technologies within deep tech that are transforming entire industries offer some of the only paths to “10x exits.”
These are positive signs for deep tech founders preparing to raise money this year. Another positive note is that some of the logic driving VCs to stay away from deep tech startups in down markets may be unfounded. Our team recently analyzed recent deep tech unicorns to understand how much money it took for them to get to the $1 billion mark. The results reinforced what we knew from experience: Deep tech startups’ capital and time requirements are on par with companies in other sectors. In fact, the median deep tech startup took $115 million and 5.2 years to become a unicorn.
While the space economy will continue to provide numerous opportunities to invest in atoms, there will also be an opportunity to invest in the bits moving atoms across our skies.
With that as a backdrop, let’s look at a few areas where deep tech will find interest from investors in 2023.
While Delian noted correctly that funding for long-term “moon shots” will be tough to find in the current market, I still believe investors will look for startups that are closer to commercialization in the sector. To date, 99% of the total investment in the space tech market has gone to the satellite and launch industries. Now is the time to focus on moving objects around in space rather than just getting them there.
For instance, investors are increasingly interested in solutions that tackle astrodynamics or propulsion to guide the motion of satellites and other spacecraft — for example, AI startups working on ways to simulate scenarios and generate maneuver plans for operators so they can avoid space collisions. Investors are also interested in future machine learning and neural networks use cases for astrodynamics, such as orbit predictions and spacecraft flight modeling.
Space missions also call for hardened software and hardware. As we look toward edge solutions for space-bound vehicles and objects, startups that can create radiation-safe applications will be in demand. So while the space economy will continue to provide numerous opportunities to invest in atoms, there will also be an opportunity to invest in the bits moving atoms across our skies.
Software alone will never solve the multitude of issues contributing to our climate crisis. Hardware solutions and engineering-led innovations in deep tech are needed to solve our most significant climate challenges.
A VC’s perspective on deep tech fundraising in Q1 2023 by Ram Iyer originally published on TechCrunch
How has the 2022-23 philosophy job market looked so far?
In the following guest post, Charles Lassiter (Gonzaga) takes a look at the data, sharing information about trends in the number and types of jobs on offer, and about which areas of specialization are most sought after by hiring institutions.
(A version of this post previously appeared, in two parts, at Professor Lassiter’s blog.)
[photo by J. Weinberg]
Hey friends. We’re going to take a look here at the primary cycle (July 1 – December 30). This is when most job posting happens. Here’s a look at postings across all job types:
Remember 2020? Oof da that was a rough year. Anyway, we’re trending a bit higher than usual on junior posts relative to previous years. In fact, the trend for junior posts over the last seven years has been more jobs. Open rank, postdoc, and senior posts are down slightly but still within a normalish range historically. Visiting fellowships are up slightly, but still within a normal range. In case you want the numbers for junior, postdoc, open rank, and non-academic, here are those:
Let’s zoom in on junior positions:
This one is tricky to interpret. Trend lines (not included) suggest that the TT market has been trending downward over last 7 years, but that includes 2020, which is an outlier. Excluding 2020, we find that the market is trending towards having more jobs. Even so, it’s not a huge trend. The NSF’s Survey of Earned Doctorates reports that there were 399 new PhD’s in philosophy in 2021. So even though it’s an upwards trend, it’s not moving fast enough to accommodate all the new PhD’s.
So there you have it. The job market isn’t looking all that different from pre-2020 levels. Some slight increases but none significant enough to breathe a sigh of relief heading into the market. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the American Philosophical Association and grad programs need to put more time and energy into non-academic career paths.
What about areas of specialization (AOS)? Here’s the big picture:
A note on method: In cases where multiple areas were listed, I’ve counted those separately. So this isn’t a tally of all jobs on the market. Rather, it’s a tally of all the jobs advertised in one of the five main categories on Philjobs. So (e.g.) there are a hair under 50 jobs in metaphysics/epistemology. But some ads listed meta/epist or history of phil as the AOS they were looking for. Here, each of those was counted separately. I opted for this method of counting because I’m assuming that any disjunctions in AOS’s for job ads can draw from two different applicant pools: that is, that AOS pools are exclusive. (I know this isn’t always true but go with it as a simplifying assumption for the model.) For (for instance) a job ad looking for an epistemologist or an ethicist gets listed here as a job for an epistemologist and as a job for an ethicist. So if Jack is an epistemologist and Jill is an ethicist, the job ad counts as a listing for Jack and for Jill individually. In a nutshell, I’m counting jobs by AOS from the point of view of job seekers under the assumption that multiple AOS’s have mutually exclusive candidate pools.
Let’s zoom in on a few of these, starting with value theory:
Ethics dominates, followed by social and political philosophy. We’ll get to “other” in a moment. Sadly, phil of art is at the bottom with two ads.
Value_other is a catch-all for specific areas that don’t fit neatly into any of the other categories. It was a hodgepodge of seemingly grant-specific areas, e.g. citizenship, media ethics, etc. But there were 3 ads for AI ethics and 2 for ethics and tech. So there are more job ads for ethics and tech/AI than there are for phil of art or phil of sex and gender.
Let’s take a closer look at history and traditions to see what’s up there:
Carving up this data was a bit trickier. Some ads just had “history of philosophy” without any detail. Others said “non-Western”. For the former, I listed ancient, medieval, and modern as covering a generic “history of philosophy.” And for non-Western, I listed Asian, Africana, Indigenous, Indian, and Latin American as proxies. So again, keep in mind that these aren’t total job counts but rather (roughly) jobs for which one could apply if one were an expert in (say) ancient or Latin American phil. Given these assumptions, ancient is in greatest demand.
Non-western traditions are on the map, but not in huge demand. “Africana” showed up in 13 ads while “indigenous” showed up in four. Though it’s worth noting that Africana is in higher demand than a number of subcategories in value theory.
Now science, logic, and math:
Philosophy of science is leading the way with relatively few opportunities for other subfields. What’s up with the other category? This is a grab bag of: history of science or medicine or technology; AI; the metaphysics of science; postdoc ads that are too specific to classified anywhere else (e.g. a project on episodic memory).
Lastly, metaphysics and epistemology:
Seven jobs for philosophers of mind? Nine for epistemologists? Yeesh. what’s in the “other” category? Five philosophy of technology positions, a social epistemology, and a couple of animal cognition.
What’s interesting about this from my view is when there are repeated instances in the “other” category. This suggests the emergence of an important subfield that isn’t yet counted among the standard options, or at least not in any obvious way. Decision theory has a subcategory on Philjobs, but philosophy of technology doesn’t. Nor does history of science/STS, even though phil tech and history of science each had more ads than decision theory. I’d say that history of science/STS and phil tech are established subfields. A colleague of mine who works in phil tech once described it as fringe. Kirby, if you’re reading this, I don’t think it’s fringe any more.
Let’s now filter AOS by junior positions and post-docs. Here’s what that looks like:
So trends for junior positions largely follow that of all positions. Most are in value theory, followed by open and history/traditions. Things are a bit different for postdocs, with the greatest number of positions being advertised as open.
In talking with my friend Nader Shoaibi, I wonder if digging into the details makes the picture a bit drearier than the numbers here say. I’ll use myself as a test case. If I were going on the market, I’d apply for open jobs and jobs in philosophy of mind. I’d apply for everything but would really be looking at tenure-track jobs—that’s where the security is at. Filtering for those values, there are 36 jobs: 33 open and 3 in philosophy of mind. I got my PhD at Fordham, so let’s be realistic about my job prospects. I know, I know… that one person went from Oklahoma to Harvard. Fantastic for them but clearly an outlier. At a non-prestigious university, I can cut the Ivies and lots of R1s from the list. And let’s take jobs outside the US off the table because I’m not a superstar and a university outside the US is unlikely to pay for the costs of hiring a foreigner. That leaves me with 16 openings, all advertised as open.
That’s all to say that the numbers don’t look great in the big picture and things only go downhill when getting into the weeds.
I’m hoping to get some help soon for looking at AOS trends since 2015. It’s a lot of data to clean. But I’ll be sure to let you know when that’s available.
As always, if there are any other analyses you’re interested in, please let me know!
FreshRSS 