It’s a job market revolution: an estimated 10.3 million Americans earned income through Web-based platforms like Uber and Airbnb between 2012 and 2015. That’s more people than reside in the entire state of Georgia and amounts to 6.5 percent of the total U.S. workforce.
So-called gig jobs, in which a person performs a task for another individual often through Web-based platforms, are often easier to land, and help generate additional income when regular earnings aren’t sufficient, according to a new study by the JPMorgan Chase Institute.
Participants in this economy are typically younger, with the 25 to 34 age group accounting for the largest part of the gig workforce. They are more likely to be male, live in the West and have an average median income of about $2,800 per month, according to the study.
The number of people earning income in the online economy over the three-year period of JPMorgan’s study increased 47-fold. Labor platforms, including ride-hailing service Uber, that connect customers with freelancers have grown more rapidly than capital platforms like Airbnb, which rent homes and assets or sell goods. Demand is also driving the growth as online service use becomes more common.
Now, “most people would know they can get their groceries picked up, they can get a ride from three or four different companies — things that only a year ago, only earlier adopters learned,” Diana Farrell, the institute’s founding president and chief executive officer, said in an interview. “It’s becoming more mainstream.”
Astra Taylor’s iPhone has a cracked screen. She has bandaged it with clear packing tape and plans to use the phone until it disintegrates. She objects to the planned obsolescence of today’s gadgetry, and to the way the big tech companies pressure customers to upgrade.
Taylor, 36, is a documentary filmmaker, musician and political activist. She’s also an emerging star in the world of technology criticism. She’s not paranoid, but she keeps duct tape over the camera lens on her laptop computer — because, as everyone knows, these gadgets can be taken over by nefarious agents of all kinds.
Taylor is a 21st-century digital dissenter. She’s one of the many technophiles unhappy about the way the tech revolution has played out. Political progressives once embraced the utopian promise of the Internet as a democratizing force, but they’ve been dismayed by the rise of the “surveillance state,” and the near-monopolization of digital platforms by huge corporations.
Last month, Taylor and more than 1,000 activists, scholars and techies gathered at the New School in New York City for a conference to talk about reinventing the Internet. They dream of a co-op model: people dealing directly with one another without having to go through a data-sucking corporate hub.
OCTOBER 23, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2015, 12:31 AM
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Print
Is technology helping or hurting in the classroom?
To the Editor:
As a district, we have enthusiastically embraced technology in our schools. And it is certainly understandable why. With technology came the promise of improved educational outcomes for our children, and a greater chance for success competing in the 21st century global economy.
But parents are beginning to question the validity of this promise: Are children really learning more? Is their reading comprehension improving? What about their math ability?
Now, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has published a 200-page study, concluding that investing heavily in classroom technology does not improve student performance, and, in fact, frequent use of computers is more likely to be associated with lower results. For math, the study found that almost any time spent on the computer leads to poorer performance.
Internationally, the best-performing education systems, such as those in East Asia, have been very cautious about using technology in the classroom. Countries with the highest level of Internet use in schools either experienced significant declines in reading performance or stagnated.
Because of my earlier career developing software for IBM, I am acutely aware of the limitations of technology and certainly not bedazzled by it. Now I tutor math for the SAT, so I get to hear unfiltered reports of students’ experiences with technology.
Some teachers, apparently, require students take notes on their Chromebooks, even though some prefer to take notes by hand, because they believe they learn better that way. Research supports these students’ preferences; taking notes by hand results in deeper learning.
Chromebooks in the classroom frequently cause distractions because some students play games during class.
Textbooks are increasingly online, even though many students would prefer to have good paper textbooks, because they are easier to read.
There also appears to be a tendency on the part of some teachers to delegate to the computer the task of teaching, so there’s less interaction between student and teacher. Students do best in close human-to-human contact. The research supports this.
It’s interesting: the students who complain most about technology in the schools are strong students, those most interested in learning.
I think we might want to consider why the executives and employees of the top Silicon Valley firms send their kids to schools that have no technology in the early grades, absolutely none, and when it is introduced in eighth grade, it is used sparingly. It should give us pause to hear that the innovators developing these products refuse to expose their own children’s minds to them. Their thinking is that technology interferes with creativity, and young minds learn best through movement, hands-on tasks and human-to-human interaction.
The OECD report now gives us solid data linking frequent computer use in school to declining academic performance. In September, we learned that – nationally – students in the high school class of 2015 turned in the lowest critical reading score on the SAT in more than 40 years. The average score on the math portion of the SAT was the lowest since 1999.
The Village of Ridgewood has partnered with Parkmobile the leading provider for on-demand and prepaid mobile payments for on- and off-street parking pay by phone. There will now be an easier effortless and innovative way of paying for parking transactions by mobile phone. The new partnership will allow pay by phone transactions so residents businesses and visitors will be able to conduct their parking transactions by mobile phone throughout Ridgewood.
Ridgewood NJ May 11 2015 – Parkmobile LLC announced today a new partnership with the Village of Ridgewood that will allow customers to use their mobile phones to pay for parking at all Village owned lots. This is the first step in expanding mobile payment transactions throughout the Village of Ridgewood. Parkmobile will be available for the on-street meters in the near future as well. Customers will be able to utilize their smartphones to pay for parking using Parkmobile’s mobile applications for iPhone Android Windows Blackberry and Amazon phones. After an exhaustive search Parkmobile was selected. Patrons may register in advance at www.parkmobile.com or download the mobile app in their phone’s app store.
“We are excited to work with Parkmobile pay by phone industry leader and implement a Village-wide pay by phone option. This partnership will expand current payment options and revolutionize the current parking operation as it has done for Glen Rock Summit Chatham and Montclair.”
“We are very happy to launch our mobile payment parking service in the Village of Ridgewood” said Cherie Fuzzell CEO of Parkmobile LLC. “This technology offers customers a new and better way to pay for parking and is truly beneficial to them as well as the city. Our service eliminates the need to swipe a card or feed coins to a meter and can make our lives easier and more efficient.”
Once registered customers may use the mobile app internet or call a toll free number to pay for parking. After setting up their account they can immediately start using the system with their registered mobile phone. This convenient service also provides customers the ability to receive alerts when their meter time is about to expire and use credit cards in locations that do not offer manual credit card payments. Meters accepting coins are still available except at the Chestnut Street Lot and some parking spaces at the Rt. 17 Park & Ride Lot.
MAY 10, 2015 LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, MAY 10, 2015, 10:47 AM
BY JOAN VERDON
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
Sixty years ago, when the first malls arrived here, they changed the landscape of North Jersey, replacing celery fields and woodlands with stores, food courts and parking lots. Now, new forces are at work altering the terrain of traditional suburban shopping centers.
The industry group International Council of Shopping Centers says America’s malls are undergoing the biggest transformation in their six-decade history. Next week, the council will unveil an initiative to examine and redefine the mall as developers, shopping center owners and the retail real estate industry gather in Las Vegas for their annual convention. The council will look at eight groundbreaking ideas, including using parts of shopping centers as distribution sites for filling online orders, as well as ways to bring residential, hotel and office uses into the mall.
“This is an industry that is constantly evolving,” said ICSC spokesman Jesse Tron. The shopping centers that will thrive in the future are those that are “willing to push the envelope to try what’s new,” he said.
As the industry grapples with change, two North Jersey malls find themselves at a crossroads, and the choices they make will affect their development for years.
When Bill Ochs was 21 and fresh out of Fairleigh Dickinson University with an electrical engineering degree in 1979, he landed a job with a local government contractor, Bendix in Teterboro. He soon found himself developing the software that would keep the Hubble Space Telescope pointed in the right direction for 25 years, providing unimaginably beautiful images of intergalactic space.
Hubble, which was intended to have a useful life of 15 years, hits the quarter-century mark today, and scientists expect its nearly 8-foot mirror to keep peering into deep space and providing spectacular sights for at least five more years. (Norman/The Record)
APRIL 19, 2015 LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, APRIL 19, 2015, 10:24 AM
BY HUGH R. MORLEY
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
What can New Jersey — once the home of storied inventors like Thomas Edison and the Bell and Sarnoff labs — do to get its innovation mojo back?
That question held center stage at a forum of business and civic leaders in Newark last week that outlined a way to jump-start New Jersey’s struggling economy by tapping into the traits that once made the state a thriving, innovation powerhouse.
The success of Bell Labs, created in 1925 with a staff of 4,000 scientists and engineers, has become a symbol of New Jersey’s former stellar, and now greatly diminished, technological prowess.
The laboratory’s string of groundbreaking discoveries, ranging from laser spectroscopy, cosmic microwave background radiation, the first orbiting communications satellite (Telstar), a solar battery cell and the UNIX operating system that transformed the Internet, garnered eight Nobel prizes and 32,000 patents — a daunting legacy that hangs over the state’s efforts to restore its reputation as a high-tech center.
Aye, robot? Amazingly lifelike humanoid that can react to facial expressions, engage in conversation and even make eye contact
Robot has been drawing crowds at Hong Kong electronics event this week It can recognise and respond to human facial expressions in natural way Known as Ham, the head was designed by US firm Hanson Robotics Made using soft-bodied mechanical engineering and nanotechnology
By JACK CRONE FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 12:14 EST, 18 April 2015 | UPDATED: 12:55 EST, 18 April 2015
With his lively eyebrows, winkled cheeks and eyes that follow you around the room – this state-of-the-art robotic head is menacingly lifelike.
The humanoid, known as Ham, has been drawing in crowds with his incredible range of facial expressions at an electronics event in Hong Kong this week.
The head, designed by American robotics designer David Hanson, is able to answer basic questions and can also be used in the simulation of medical scenarios.
Ham is currently on exhibit at the Global Sources spring electronics show at AsiaWorld Expo – the largest event of its kind in the world, with more than 4,000 booths displaying the latest gadgets.
The head is created with malleable material called Frubber using soft-bodied mechanical engineering and nanotechnology.
It contains realistic pores that measure just 4 to 40 nanometers across (there are 10million nanometers in one centimetre).
About one-quarter of the nation’s teenagers are online “almost constantly,” according to a new Pew Research Center study.
The study of Americans aged 13-17 found that 92 percent of teenagers go on the Internet every day, and 24 percent say they are “almost constantly” on the Internet, in a sign of just how central the Web is becoming for young people’s lives. More than half the nation’s teenagers — 56 percent — go online several times a day.
“Much of this frenzy of access is facilitated by mobile phones — particularly smartphones,” noted study author Amanda Lenhart.
About 73 percent of teenagers own or have access to a smartphone, the Pew survey found, while African-American teenagers were the most likely to own one.
Of those that use a mobile device to go online, 94 percent go on the Internet at least once a day.
Ridgewood NJ, The Stevens Institute of Technology awarded National Science Foundation certificates to students in Dr. Lillian Labowsky’s Chemistry Honors class for the students’ efforts to create a three-dimensionally printed periodic table of elements.
Dr. Labowsky’s class created the chart on a 3D printed model over three months and individually printed all 118 interlocking element pieces. The height of each piece corresponds to the element’s electronegativity and the radioactive element pieces were printed with glow-in-the-dark material.
A 3D printer uses an additive process to lay down successive layers of material in order to create a computer printed object.
Assembly Transportation Committee passes ride-share regulatory bill opposed by Uber
TRENTON – After all-day pushing and shoving between union taxi cab drivers and non-union drivers, the Assembly Transportation Committee this afternoon passed a thorny labor-backed bill aimed at protecting the safety of passengers who use Uber Technologies and similar ride-sharing services. (Pizarro/PolitickerNJ)
TRENTON -Cabs cluttered West State Street again this morning in a cabbie war with an Assembly Transportation hearing on the legislative horizon.
Screaming “No justice, no peace, no justice, no peace,” Communications Workers of America (CWA) members tramped around the statuary outside the Statehouse Annex in advance of a hearing for a bill that would impose restrictions on the smartphone-based ridesharing service company Uber. (Pizarro/PolitickerNJ)
Billionaire Mark Cuban Says Net Neutrality Will ‘Fuck Everything Up’
February 18, 2015, 6:26 PM PST
By Dawn Chmielewski
Billionaire investor and ABC “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban unloaded on the Federal Communications Commission’s plan to fundamentally change how it oversees the open Internet.
“That will fuck everything up,” said the voluble Cuban in remarks Wednesday at theCode/Media conference at The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel, Calif.
In early February, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed tough new rules for Internet lines that would prohibit wired and wireless broadband providers from collecting payment to cut to the front of the line, or blocking and throttling lawful content and services.
Cuban said this bid to significantly expand the agency’s authority to regulate broadband providers is nothing more than an attack on giant media companies like Comcast*.
“Net neutrality is just a demonization of big companies,” Cuban said.
Cuban, who parlayed his windfall from the 1999 sale of Broadcast.com to Yahoo into an array of ventures that include the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, AXS TV and the Landmark Theatres chain, said there is no evidence (beyond an isolated 2008 case) that Internet providers have throttled access to certain websites.
The head of the Federal Communications Commissionis urging his fellow commissioners to block state laws that would prevent cities and towns from building out their own government-run Internet services.
Chairman Tom Wheeler this week will circulate a draft decision to nullify laws in Tennessee and North Carolina, after receiving a request from towns in each of those states.
Cities across the country “should be able to make their own decisions about building the networks they need to thrive,” Wheeler said in a statement on Monday.
“After looking carefully at petitions by two community broadband providers asking the FCC to preempt provisions of state laws preventing expansion of their very successful networks, I recommend approval by the commission so that these two forward-thinking cities can serve the many citizens clamoring for a better broadband future.”
NJ TRANSIT ANNOUNCES EXPANSION OF MOBILE TICKETING TO BUS ROUTES BETWEEN NJ AND NYC
Convenient, Easy Monthly Pass Purchases Available through MyTix App on Interstate Bus Routes
January 28, 2015
NEWARK, NJ — As part of an ongoing effort to improve the overall customer experience, NJ TRANSIT today announced the expansion of its MyTixmobile ticketing app to interstate routes between New Jersey and New York City. Currently available on all rail lines and most South Jersey bus routes, beginning January 28 MyTix will enable bus customers on routes serving Port Authority Bus Terminal, Lower Manhattan and George Washington Bridge to purchase and display monthly interstate bus passes on their mobile devices.
“Following the successful rollout of this technology to our South Jersey bus customers last fall, we have been working to bring the MyTix app to bus customers riding between New Jersey and New York City as well, to make traveling on the NJ TRANSIT system even more convenient for them,” said Transportation Commissioner and NJ TRANSIT Board Chairman Jamie Fox.
The next phase of the rollout will include monthly passes via MyTix for intrastate (local) bus customers.
“With bus riders being our largest customer base, it’s critical that we roll this out gradually to ensure the technology keeps up with the demand, and we resolve any issues before taking the next step,” said NJ TRANSIT Executive Director Veronique “Ronnie” Hakim. “This expansion of the mobile ticketing app is another step toward giving all of our bus customers the ability to treat their smart phones as both a ticket vending machine and monthly bus pass all in one.”
MyTix is available for free download on any web-enabled iOS or Android device, via the App Store or Google Play. To purchase monthly bus passes via MyTix, customers must first install the app and then create an account, which will securely save customers’ profile information and purchase history for ease of use. Bus monthly passes self-activate at midnight on the first day of the calendar month for which they are valid and remain active throughout the entire month. Customers then simply display the monthly pass on their mobile device to the bus operator when boarding the bus.
NJ TRANSIT first introduced MyTix in April 2013 as a pilot program for rail customers on the Pascack Valley Line, as well as between Penn Station New York and the Meadowlands Rail Station for special events, to test the functionality of the app and determine the feasibility of expanding it to other rail lines. In September 2013, NJ TRANSIT expanded MyTix to the Main/Bergen County and Port Jervis lines, followed in October by the Montclair-Boonton and Morris & Essex lines, and in November to the North Jersey Coast and Raritan Valley lines. The rail systemwide rollout was completed in December 2013 with the inclusion of the Northeast Corridor and Atlantic City Rail Line. In September 2014, MyTix was first introduced to bus customers in South Jersey on 59 bus routes, serving communities throughout South Jersey, as well as Philadelphia.
Many improvements made to the agency’s MyTix app were the direct result of valuable feedback from customers using the app during the gradual rollout.
Since its 2013 introduction, MyTix has already become very popular among NJ TRANSIT customers. To date, customers have established nearly 400,000 accounts through MyTix and purchased over 3.7 million tickets.
For more information on MyTix, visit njtransit.com and go to “Ticket Options,” then click on “MyTix” from the drop-down menu.
In North Jersey, libraries of tomorrow are ready to turn the page
JANUARY 25, 2015, 9:24 PM LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, JANUARY 25, 2015, 10:05 PM
BY NICHOLAS PUGLIESE
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
It looks like a scene from Google headquarters. A group of young inventors darts around the room, tackling a new experiment each week: build a flying machine, print a 3D object, design a new instrument, make an explosion with Popsicle sticks. The energetic buzz is punctuated by the occasional exclamation, “That’s so cool!”
But this is no Google headquarters. This is the Hillsdale Public Library, and its dedication to hands-on collaborative learning exemplifies a movement by libraries nationwide to redefine themselves in the digital age.
“Rather than it being a solitary place to come on your own, we’re seeing it now as a place for people to come together and share their expertise,” said Dave Franz, the library director. While libraries were created to give people access to information, he added, now they are being expanded to include access to tools.
Franz was among the first in the state to dedicate a section of the library to do-it-yourself endeavors — what he calls a “makerspace.” In 2011, he cleared out an unused office — about the size of a walk-in closet — and jampacked it with the most modern, sexiest gadgets he could find: an iMac video-editing station, a stop-motion camera, a digital fabric-cutter, a 3D printer, robotics kits, soldering tools, and a dizzying array of craft supplies.
Warning: Undefined array key "sfsi_riaIcon_order" in /home/eagle1522/public_html/theridgewoodblog.net/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/libs/controllers/sfsi_frontpopUp.php on line 165
Warning: Undefined array key "sfsi_inhaIcon_order" in /home/eagle1522/public_html/theridgewoodblog.net/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/libs/controllers/sfsi_frontpopUp.php on line 166
Warning: Undefined array key "sfsi_mastodonIcon_order" in /home/eagle1522/public_html/theridgewoodblog.net/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/libs/controllers/sfsi_frontpopUp.php on line 177
