Incentivizing innovation by funding play: “Creative Grants” instead of UBI “The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.”Stephen Hawking, Dec. 1 2016Tweet There has been a lot of serious talk about implementing UBI (universal basic income), especially now in the wake of the pandemic and rising automation. But already since the early 2010s there has been a divergence between productivity and employment – between wealth and work – in what…
As a classically-trained musician, I grew up listening to Tchaikovsky, Handel and the piano music of Debussy, because their beauty drew me in as a teenager. Sure, my childhood was heavily influenced by the hallmark Disney movies and popular musicals of the time, and somehow I didn’t live “under a rock” COMPLETELY unaware of pop culture (although many of my high school and college friends would argue otherwise!)… but those kinds of influences were somehow subconsciously put in a separate drawer as “unserious music,” to be rather ignored by my developing professional self. A couple of decades later I teach…