Tales of ConQuesT (48)--The Art Part

My home science fiction group, the Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society, put on their annual convention this weekend. I always enjoy ConQuesT, held each ear in Kansas City on Memorial Day Weekend--but I must say that this year's ConQuesT 48 was even more fun than usual.

There are many reasons why it all came together so well for me, but here are a few highlights from the "Art Part." Always first and last, for me, there is the ConQuesT Art Show.

Literally first, because I was once again the "shipping address" for the show. A few years ago I was the Art Show Director, and although I've now gratefully handed that job over to a talented and responsible young man named Mikah McCullough, his apartment is a tad on the "small side" for a large pile of incoming boxes of art. Thus, on the first day of the convention I haul not only my own artwork, but also all the mailed-in work from all of the wonderful artists who participate from afar.

My "White Clematis" variations available so far.

I'm showing a collection of new multiple-original artworks at sf conventions this year, the "Guardians" series (four separate designs) and the "Clematis Collection," which so far consists of three Artist's Proofs of White Clematis Panel with Golden Dragons, (honored with a rosette as Art Director's Choice at DemiCon 28 earlier this month), and an edition limited to six smaller pieces titled White Clematis with Dragons. A one-of-a-kind original from this collection, featuring purple clematis flowers and titled Gold and Purple, should be ready to debut at SoonerCon 26 in late June.

I also had a new, one-of-a-kind original to debut at ConQuesT 48, Nose for a Rose. Here's a glimpse, along with a look at my display at the convention. This is all you'll see of it, however--it was purchased by a collector on its "maiden voyage."

It's always fun to show and sell my artwork, and to help put the Art Show up and take it down. But another joy for me is participating in panel discussions at science fiction conventions--and I was part of several at ConQuesT 48. They'll be the subject of my next post, coming soon!

IMAGES: Most of the photos on this post are mine. Since I'm the Communications Officer of KaCSFFS, I'm the one who put together the ConQuesT 48 banner. It features a logo design by Keri O'Brien and a photo of the lobby of our convention hotel, the Sheraton Kansas City Hotel at Crown Center, which provided the photo. All the other photos were taken by me, of my artwork (and other personal effects). The cat is my daughter's. Her name is Sora and she is Queen of the Universe (just ask her). All of the photos are available for re-posting, as long as you attribute them and provide a link back to this post or ConQuesT.

"When I am big . . . "

The Artdog Quote of the Week

A person could (people have and do) write many books about the value of outdoor play, the things children learn from it, and the reasons why "nature deficit disorder" really is a serious matter. We can't save what we don't value, but there are so very many reasons why we should and must value our natural environment, and cherish the many lessons nature teaches.

IMAGE: Many thanks to How Wee Learn on Pinterest, for this image. The board from which this was taken is loaded with other cool thoughts and ideas about teaching our children, too!

The balancing act: keeping them safe

The Artdog Image of Interest

As a parent, I know that delicate balance between letting kids explore and keeping them safe. It can be a dangerous world. A responsible parent can't disregard the hazards, even as we gradually expand kids' boundaries.

Playing in nature definitely presents a list of potential hazards, from sunburn to tick-borne illnesses (a particularly knotty problem this year!), animal bites, falls . . . a worried parent could go mad. I believe it's important to remember that our primary job as parents is to render ourselves unnecessary--to rear independent persons who are as healthy and well-adjusted as possible, equipped with the skills and judgment needed to succeed as fully-functioning adults.

But achieving that goal requires that they stay alive long enough to become adults.

So, where do we draw the line? And how do we adjust appropriately--because that line always keeps changing! Developmental stages flash by so fast, we have to work, to stay on top of "what's developmentally appropriate today?" I managed (with a lot of help) to shepherd two reasonably-functional human beings into adulthood, and for me the key always seemed to be information.

I have yet to meet the child who responds positively to "because I say so!" And they're RIGHT. That's an extremely unhelpful answer.

As appropriate for the developmental level, I always tried to take the time to explain to the child why certain restrictions had to apply, if I possibly could. Granted, sometimes there's no time. But that meant we needed a follow-up conversation. I discovered even the youngest child has the capability to be a rational human being (to the extent that someone can be, at any given stage of development). If we want them to grow into that capability as adults, we must treat them accordingly when they're kids.

As appropriate for their age, that means teaching kids how to prevent their own bad outcomes (wear sunscreen and bug repellent; know basic safety principles about approaching animals or walking on rotten branches or uneven terrain). They may ignore it, but at least they'll know why it happened, if they do.

It helps to remember the favorite saying of a friend of mine: "Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment." Giving them wide enough boundaries to explore and "push their envelope" means sometimes there'll be unfortunate results. That's why it's just as important to teach them what do do if something does happen. There's no emergency situation that can't be made worse by the victim's panic! The goal is not to terrify them, but to empower them.

It isn't easy, but it's worth the effort.

IMAGE: Many thanks to Citypages (Minneapolis, MN) for this image! (no info available, on who's the photographer).

Political correctness

Let’s talk about “Political Correctness,” since it's been thrown in my face recently. It came up at my writers’ group Saturday, when a fellow group member whom I normally respect brought a story that was riddled with ugly, offensive racial stereotypes directed toward a particular minority group. During the critique session I called him on this (I wasn’t the only one), and his defense was that he didn’t want to have his story “limited” by political correctness.

This quote cuts both ways in the "political correctness" debate.

I asked him what he meant by “political correctness” in this context, and he said he didn’t want to limit his range of expression. As if “artificial” rules of “correctness” constituted an intellectually narrow approach that fettered his freedom of expression. A story-critique session wasn’t the forum for a full-blown debate. The group’s leader very firmly changed the subject.

I probably wouldn't ever convince that particular fellow through direct confrontation, in any case. In my experience, when someone who already feels his privilege is under attack and whose area of greatest pride is his intellectual ability, is accused of intellectual malfeasance, his invariable reaction is to dig in his heels and prepare to die rather than yield to a different point of view.

I do, however, continue to challenge the validity of any “expressive freedom” that depends on not restraining oneself from employing demeaning stereotypes. My associate seemed to think that what he called “political correctness” was a kind of intellectual laziness, an unwillingness to “push the envelope” in certain directions, or to challenge social norms. Perhaps ironically, I see it as just the opposite. In my opinion, folks who decry too much “political correctness” generally don’t seem willing to exert themselves intellectually to stretch beyond their own comfort zones or seriously engage a different experience.

Which of those two approaches should one more accurately call an “intellectually lazy” attitude?

It’s a hallmark of privilege when a person sees the need to adapt to others’ viewpoints as an unwarranted inhibition. That’s a “take” on life and social discourse that  ignores or dismisses the fact that anyone from a non-dominant cultural group has to accommodate and adapt near-continually, just to survive and get along in the world. Yet the most blindly privileged folk are the ones who seem to complain the most aggrievedly about political correctness.

This is not to say that all members of minorities or persons of color are perfect. It isn’t even to say that sometimes the “sensitivity line” can’t be too narrowly drawn—although I’d say the most vulnerable among us probably have a better gauge of where to draw that line, and what’s offensive, than the most privileged among us. But it is to say that our art shouldn’t rely on the cruel crutch of cheap shocks at the expense of innocent bystanders. 

It is to say that vicious racial stereotyping is both a morally and intellectually bankrupt way to approach storytelling . . . or to anything else. For God’s sake, can’t we writers dig deeper? If we can’t be merciful, then at least let's be original.

There’s a truism that if a phrase or expression comes too easily to mind, it’s almost certainly a cliché. Using clichés is an obvious hallmark of weak writing, precisely because it betrays the author’s unwillingness to push past the easy or obvious, and explore new ideas.

What the apologists for ignoring so-called “political correctness” seem to overlook is that every offensive stereotype ever created is both mean-spirited and a cliché of the worst order. The only valid and original thing to do with any cliché is turn it on its head or expose its vacuity it in a fresh new way. That’s not easy, but then—isn’t that a given, if you’re trying to produce real, lasting, meaningful art?

IMAGES: Many (ironic) thanks to The Federalist Papers, for the Voltaire quote, and to Sizzle for the "Freedom to offend" meme. I am indebted to A-Z Quotes for both the Ian Banks quote, and the one from Toni Morrison. Many thanks to all!

A most important event

The Artdog Quote of the Week

Engaging kids with the natural world is serious business--but don't tell them that! Kids interact with nature in the way they do everything: with imagination and curiosity. Also, I'd like to hope, with spontaneous joy.

Getting kids out into the natural world is a matter of enormous importance--they won't save what they don't value--but we must couch it in children's native language, which is that of play.

IMAGE: Many thanks to the Natural Healthcare Store, for this image, which shares a page with some other great kids-and-nature quotes in the source.

4 Powerful benefits from a simple nature walk

The Artdog Image of Interest

Some folks will look at this photo and see nothing but weeds, potential sunburn, probable bug bites, an annoying tick-check later, and dirty feet in the making. Grab the sunscreen and the bug repellent! They've let the kids loose in the the woods again!

Others will realize that these kids are receiving many more benefits than they are facing potential hazards. What are the benefits of taking a walk in nature? Let me count out a few for you!

1. Walking in nature improves emotional well-being. Children today suffer from higher rates of depression and anxiety than past generations--yet walking in nature has been shown to counter "morbid rumination" (brooding on anxious or negative thoughts).

2. Walking anywhere promotes better fitness, but walking in nature is intrinsically satisfying. This makes it a more attractive activity than, say, walking on a treadmill or a track. The variations in terrain also can help foster greater agility.

3. The endless variety and movement in nature provokes a child's natural curiosity. Some experts suggest it may help foster greater focus and improve kids' attention span, while other folks have pointed out it can help improve listening and other cognitive skills. It's also true that things a child personally experiences in nature can make academic studies of topics such as biology, ecology and other sciences more relevant and understandable.

4. Exposure to nature can also improve the body's ability to function. While overexposure to the sun is a hazard, sunlight is essential to the production of Vitamin D in the body--a vital component for robust immune health. And speaking of the immune system, did you actually know that a little dirt is actually a good thing? A too-sanitized environment for children can actually backfire if the child's body has no chance to build up natural immunities. It's the same principle that applies to the immune-system benefits of household pets. Finally, being in nature can even improve kids' eyesight, if they spend sufficient time outdoors!

Nature walks provide so many powerful benefits, it's hard to overstate their value. So what are you waiting for? Grab the kids and get out there!

IMAGE: Many thanks to the writer/blogger Angela Amman for permission to use her photo "Walking in the Woods," posted on her Playing With Words blog.

To automate, or not to automate? Working with kids

A Glimpse of the Future?

In recent weeks many of my mid-week posts have focused on the contemporary trend among all kinds of industries to increasingly use robotics or other types of automation, rather than hiring extra workers.

It's a phenomenon that impacts all kinds of workers--in ALL socio-economic brackets, except maybe for that seemingly-impervious top 1%--and across widely-varied industries. Today, in the last of this series, I intend to address the topic that originally inspired me to look into it in the first place.

I am a retired teacher. Indeed, from its inception in 2009 through mid-2013, the title of this blog was Artdog Educator, and it focused pretty exclusively on education topics. Although both I and the blog have shifted our focus since then, I have been and always will be professionally interested in how people learn.

Thus, I was dumbfounded to read in Education Week recently that there actually are people in New York who think it's a good idea to save money by replacing substitute teachers with e-learning. What is e-learning? In case you couldn't figure it out, it's training conducted via the Internet.

Now . . . educators have anything but a stellar history in the use of digital media for teaching. For a variety of understandable but lamentable reasons, it has taken heroic efforts to get educators anywhere close to up-to-speed in this area. I examined that dynamic in some detail, in a 2011 series that kicked off with the post Teaching Like it's 1980.

Slowly and painfully, however, educators at all levels have finally--somewhat--in spite of all countervailing forces--embraced digital media. Given that, and the global movement to automate all possible jobs (whether it's a good idea or not), some brilliant genius, sooner or later, was going to come up with this.

As with the periodic call to "run education like a business," I can guarantee you that no one who has ever actually BEEN a substitute teacher came up with this plan. I, on the other hand, have racked up ten years' cumulative, hard-won substitute-teaching experience. 

A little boy and his teacher observe as a Nao robot (by Aldebaran Robotics) writes an equation.

First, let's backtrack a bit. In my research for this series I've run onto the idea that robots or automation could take over several different aspects of childcare or education, from babysitting through early learning, distance learning, and substitute teaching.

It's intuitive, right? I mean, kids seem inextricably attached to their digital devices, and, after all, parents have been parking their kids in front of the "electronic babysitter" (AKA television/videos) for years.

Great idea! The Trix Cereal Rabbit as your babysitter. What could possibly go wrong?

Sure. And if you think "Nao" or the TV could actually be a good babysitter in the total absence of parents or other supervising adults, just try it. See how quickly you come up on child endangerment charges!

A robot, at the current level of development, couldn't control the situation. The kid knows that thing isn't a real person, and has no authority. S/he would play with it for a while, get bored, and go wandering off unsupervised to face the myriad dangers of whatever the world threw at him/her.

Digital media present the same problem in the substitute-teaching scenario. Used in conjunction with a good lesson plan and alert (adult, human, in-charge) substitute teacher, they've gotten many a class through many a lesson with some actual learning and student engagement taking place.

E-learning can't replace an engaging, knowledgeable human teacher who's firmly in charge of things.

Absent the alert, adult, human, in-charge substitute teacher, you've got guaranteed chaos. No matter what the grade penalties, 99% of any class will do anything BUT the busywork on the computer. Any class I ever stepped into as a substitute was extremely reluctant to conduct "business as usual." They generally required a very firm hand and a lot of creative engagement to successfully establish a genuine learning environment. 

The intrinsic fascination with learning via the Internet has long since faded for digital natives; to them, it's old hat. They need to believe it's worth their time--AND more interesting than all the other things they could be doing--for any plan to "replace substitute teachers with e-learning" to actually work.

Digital natives are doing their own thing, when they're totally wrapped up in their digital media. Doesn't mean they'll do lessons unsupervised.

Substitute teaching, done well, is hard work (kinda like nursing! Or developing and writing news stories! Or . . . you get the idea, I hope). It requires a dedicated professional who knows the discipline s/he is to teach, if it's not to be a wasted "babysitting day"--and we haven't been able to afford those, for a long time.

If the Independent Budget Office of the City of New York (or any other bright-eyed bean-counters in a similar position) think otherwise, they should try it for themselves. I dare them.

Meanwhile, if they can't get enough qualified substitute teachers, maybe they should try offering them "combat pay."

IMAGES: Thanks yet again to Before it's News, for the "vision of the future" graphic. The e-learning photo is courtesy of UNITAR/UN ESCAP E-Learning. Many thanks to International Business Times, for the photo of the NAO robot in a south Australian classroom (note adult human teacher also in the picture), and to Frenzy Advertisement for the photo of the kids watching a Trix commercial on TV. Many thanks to TheSHRINKRap's post "Engaging teachers means engaged students," for the photo of the teacher with an engaged group of students, and to CathNews USA for the photo of the student with an iPad.

How to tell it's been a good day

The Artdog Quote of the Week

Do you remember feeling this way as a kid? Please make sure the children in your life get to have this same kind of wonderful feeling! They won't save what they don't value, and the stakes get higher every year.

IMAGE: Many thanks to the Children and Nature Network's Facebook page, for this image.

Let the children play

The Artdog Image of Interest 

There's a special magic that happens when kids play outdoors in an unstructured way. Last week's Image of Interest discussed NPAs, or Natural Play Areas in parks, and their value. But lower-case natural play areas don't just have to be in parks.

Lucky are the children with access to a farm or a big back yard that consists of something other than manicured grass and a plastic swing set--although kids tend to make do with whatever they've got. More varied terrain does tend to help get the creative imagination going.

Creative adults, especially those who grew up with access to interesting natural play areas, almost invariably get a smile on their faces when they think about kids playing outdoors--but in fact that's getting harder for children to do as years pass.

There's a record number of kids in developed nations--kids who seemingly have all possible advantages going for them--who suffer from depression and anxiety disorders. As Peter Gray has written in Psychology Today, "Rates of anxiety and depression among children and adolescents were far lower during the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and the turbulent 1960s and early ‘70s than they are today."

Gray and many others point to the decreasing amount of play time children are allowed, these days--especially unstructured play time--as a source of the trouble. Running wind sprints or practicing your pitching skills on a flat field--while possibly enjoyable and valuable--are WAY different from unstructured play in a natural play area.

But all too often we see parents or other caregivers worry more over the potential dangers of outdoor play--from overexposure to the sun to air pollution--than about the ill effects of too little outdoor play. "Supervise your child carefully," parents are warned. Supervise, certainly--and not all areas are equally safe for all ages. A little common sense, especially where toddlers are concerned, is well-advised.

But when they grow out of the toddler stage, don't forget that appropriate developmental needs change. And, believe it or not, there actually are physical and psychological benefits to doing things such as sledding, walking barefoot in the woods, or rolling down a hill. Even simply getting dirty can be good for the immune system. Of course, kids have known this for eons.

We adults should relax a bit, and let them do it.

IMAGE: Many thanks to CafeMom for this image. It's taken from the excellent article by Jacqueline Burt Cote, 6 Reasons Your Kid Should Play Outside, According to Science.

Authors, reading

I attended DemiCon 28 last weekend. It's a science fiction convention in the DesMoines, IA area (technically, Urbandale), where they had an art show, masquerade, panel discussions, parties--the full gamut of things I have learned to anticipate at sf conventions in my decades-long career of attending them.

Mark Van Name does a reading from his novel
No Going Back at Balticon in 2012.

And they had author readings.

In my experience, author readings at large conventions by "big name" authors can be standing-room-only events. Author readings by mid-list or relatively unknown authors tend to be the orphan stepchildren of convention programming. If anyone shows up for one, that counts as "wildly successful."

Some promoting, arm-twisting, and recruitment of friends and family to fill the audience may be required, for newbie writers. We may have loved listening to people read us stories in grade school, or be passionately attached to our audio books and podcasts as adults, but somehow getting people to attend readings at sf conventions continues to be kind of a heavy lift.

As some of my more persistent blog-readers may have noticed, I'm a writer who's poised on the brink of having a novel to release into the wild. It's gone through multiple drafts, been professionally edited, and I've done all I can to make it the best novel it can be. The time has come to start making people aware it's coming.

I asked for a reading at DemiCon. Better yet, I got one--although I wasn't scheduled for many other programming events where I could promote it. I made fliers (with advice from my son about copy writing), and invited everyone I could.

P. C. Haring read several interesting excerpts
from his novel Slipspace: Harbinger. 

I also was able to connect with a couple of other authors, who also had readings. One of them was P.C. Haring, who'd been scheduled for a reading that morning at 9:00 a.m.

Now, in the normal world, 9:00 a.m., even on a Saturday, is a fairly reasonable hour. At a science fiction convention--especially one with as many lively room parties as DemiCon 28 has, a 9:00 a.m. panel on Saturday might count as cruel and unusual punishment.

I'd noticed this scheduling earlier, and commiserated with him. Then, on an impulse, I offered him the second half of my scheduled hour from 4-5:00 p.m. This was not entirely altruistic on my part: my voice tends to give out after half an hour or so of reading. In any case, he accepted the opportunity. We had a nice attendance--the room was about half-full. I read my first chapter, then he read excerpts from his book. Before we knew it, the hour was over and we'd all had a pleasant listen.

Then we gathered up as many of the audience up as possible, and trooped across the hall to listen to Lettie Prell read from two of her short works. The first, "Emergency Protocol," is a flash fiction (very short) piece that will be published by Analog Science Fiction and Fact at a future date. It is wonderful: watch for it.

Prell then read excerpts from The Three Lives of Sonata James, a thought-provoking story that's been reprinted in Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2016, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Two, edited by Neil Clarke. Good stuff.

Did I gain anything by encouraging my audience to also listen to P.C. and Lettie?

Could/should I have filled my entire hour, all by myself? Well, certainly I had enough material to read (assuming my voice held up). And from comments I got later, the audience would have been game for listening to me. So maybe I made the wrong call. If you look at it from the point of view that all authors are in competition with each other, then I definitely did. Nice guys finish last, and all that.

But I don't see the world as a zero-sum game, and I especially don't look at writing that way.  I cannot possibly write fast enough to be the only author someone reads (unless they read ver-r-r-r-r-ry slo-o-o-o-o-o-owly, indeed!). Even much more prolific authors ultimately can't. Everyone's readers are also going to read other authors' work.

Therefore, I'd rather be a resource, a connector, a person who introduces people to others they may also like, in any given network. I fundamentally do not believe that any given group of writers (or artists) are competing, so much as conducting parallel enterprises. If we conduct our careers in friendly, cooperative ways, as far as I'm concerned, we all gain, and actually might expand our own networks a bit in the process.

IMAGES: Many thanks to the Balticon Podcast, for the photo of author Mark Van Name giving a reading from his novel No Going Back. There aren't very many photos of that particular activity (author readings at sf cons), so I was relieved to find a good one! The promo card for my novel, Going to the XK9s, is a combination of my copywriting and design, much improved by comments from my son Tyrell Gephardt, and an illustration I commissioned for promotional purposes, by Jeff Porter. The cover art for P. C. Haring's novel Slipstream: Harbinger is from his website. The illustration for The Three Lives of Sonata James is by Kevin Hong. It is posted here courtesy of Goodreads. Many thanks to all!

Laying sound groundwork

The Artdog Quote of the week 

Last month's Quotes of the Week centered on climate change and the denial thereof. This month's Quotes turn to the related topic of teaching children (and their parents) the important things that the natural world can tell us. As today's quote points out, we won't save what we don't value. Summer beckons. Let us make the most of it!

IMAGE: Many thanks to Dona Matthews and her wonderful blog post essay about the value of taking kids outdoors to learn.

A place for kids "gleefully doing their worst"

The Artdog Image of Interest

Welcome to Imagination Grove in McLean, IL, a place where more unsupervised play is allowed.

What if kids were allowed to pick flowers, build forts, break off branches, and carry away rocks from public parks? To make extra trails through the undergrowth, to dig holes? What's the worst that could happen?

If you're like a lot of grownups, you're probably envisioning hard-compacted soil, hillsides denuded of flowers, and desolation. In some settings, particularly the more fragile, endangered areas, you'd be right.

But a lot of the current kid-generation's parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents have memories of being at large and creatively free in wild or semi-wild places, where they did all of those things and came back from largely-undamaged natural places with a new and deeper appreciation for the natural world we live in.

Matthew Browning, a former Park Ranger, sought out an area in Sweden where he cold study natural play zones where kids were bound by very few rules. And no, these places did not escape unmarked. But Browning found that "after millions of kid-hours of use by children gleefully doing their worst, these play zones remain functioning natural areas. The damage wrought by kids was comparable to that from hiking or camping."

Grownups being grownups, they've now created an acronym for areas reserved in public parks for such use: NPAs, or Natural Play Areas. But it's a positive movement all the same. As Katherine Martinko of Treehugger writes, "It’s time we let the children play, let them cultivate relationships on their own terms with the beautiful forests around us."

We won't save what we don't value. A few beaten paths and play-forts are surely worth the fate of the planet, wouldn't you say?

IMAGE: Many thanks to Slate's article Let Kids Run Wild in the Woods, by Emma Marris, for the photo from Sugar Grove Nature Center in McLean, Illinois. 

Part of Janet's rock collection

Personal P.S.: The background image of rocks that I use for this blog is a photo of my late mother's rock collection. Wherever she went, even long after she became an adult, she'd bring back a pretty or interesting rock to add to her collection (much as kids of all ages are prohibited from doing in many parks today). They're such an expression of her creative personality that I've kept and enjoyed them ever since her death in 2006.

To automate, or not to automate? Writers, attorneys, and financial advisors on the line

A Glimpse of the Future?

My recent mid-week posts have focused on the phenomenon of automation in the contemporary workplace--that is, "machines taking over our jobs," and looking at trends for the future.

Last week, I tackled robotics and automation in the health care industry. Today I'm focused on the symbolic logic crowd, that is, people who mostly traffic in numbers and letters. Thus, I'm looking at writers, attorneys, and financial advisors.

They're all white-collar jobs, and aspects of each require judgement, creativity, and empathy--but other aspects "turn out to be routine and process-based." That's just the kind of thing computers do best.

But writing? Law? Higher-level financial analysis? Well, yeah. With caveats.

Writing 
This one kinda hurts, but certain types of data-heavy information can pretty readily be transformed into prose using a process Klint Finley of Wired describes as "a more complex version of Mad Libs meets mail merge." Two companies, Automated Insights and Narrative Science are the main contenders in the field at the moment.

The primary uses for this software so far have been in the areas of financial news, sportswriting, and industrial communications. Organizations such as the Associated Press and Fox News have discovered it is (big surprise, here) "considerably less expensive for us to go this route than for us to try to have our own beat reporters at each one of these games," (That's Michael Calderon, Big Ten's director of new media, speaking with Bloomberg Businessweek).

But of course it's expanding. As a science fiction novelist, I'm under no illusions. Some genres are more friendly toward "formulaic" plots than others (I'll leave you to judge which ones those might be), but I'm sure the day is coming soon when you'll be able to plug in certain character and plot elements and the software will crank out a complete "novel" or "short story."

On the other hand, we're still very far from a computer that can go into a war zone and make sense of the chaos, write a meaningful human-interest article, or build an exposé, piece by exacting piece. And so far we're still unable to distill that special "something" that transforms a novel into a mega-bestseller that strikes a chord in millions (if we could, they all would be). We still need human hearts and minds (and a lot of luck!) for that.

Legal Practice
Turns out there's a lot of mundane drudgery in the practice of law, and untold numbers of documents to review. Firms used to have no choice but to hire a fleet of lawyers and paralegals to review them, but now there's software to cover that angle. As attorney Bill Herr pointed out to the New York Times, "People get bored, people get headaches. Computers don’t."

As in the case of doctors, however, you needn't look for robots to start donning barristers' wigs or delivering closing arguments in court for a while to come, though I fear the pioneering efforts on that front may come in the form of legal-aid robots for the defense of low-income criminal defendants. Would that be found to be constitutional? (And what would the originalists think of it?)

But behind the scenes, computers are already hard at work. For now, they're probably cutting down the entry level jobs for lawyers, but their best potential is to save the efforts of the humans for the things that matter most.

Financial Industry Professionals 
Stock trading has forever been transformed by computer-based algorithmic trading, in which high volumes of stocks are traded "using automated pre-programmed trading instructions accounting for variables such as time, price, and volume." 

However, as you've probably extrapolated from the section above that discussed financial writing and business communications, automation has gone much farther since the first automated trading systems went online in the 1970s and '80s. With all the things they can plug into algorithms these days, have humans become superfluous?

Well, maybe not yet.

Assuming one is fortunate enough to need guidance for investment strategies, we're still short of a technological singularity, which would place a computer in possession of all the critical thinking, synthesis, and empathy needed to serve human laypersons who have other things to do with their time besides manage their stock portfolios.

Till then, I'd still advise checking with a well-trained, credentialed human.

IMAGES: Many thanks to Before It's News for the "future vision" graphic, to ResearchPedia.Info, for the "difference between stock market and stock exchange" photo montage, and to Sports Management Degrees for the graphic of the football with data behind it. I am grateful to the Criminal Lawyers and Attorneys organization for the courtroom photo, and to The Balance for the photo of the financial advisor with her clients.