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How a Decade-Old Game Helped Me Cope with Seasonal Depression | WIRED

During a bleary fall and winter, the open world of Skyrim gave me the motivation and joy I couldn’t find in the real world.
— Read on www.wired.com/story/skyrim-seasonal-depression/

About 10 to 15 percent of Maine’s population struggles with seasonal affective disorder, could we use a virtual primary and specialty care model and apply gamification staregies to reach more patients while balancing the warning signs of gaming disorder? As Martin’s Point next CIO, let me figure this out and reach the next generation of patients and provide care to our fellow Mainers and beyond.

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Digitalization did not increase productivity as expected

Digitalization did not increase productivity as expected
— Read on phys.org/news/2021-01-digitalization-productivity.html

Credit: Aalto University

Big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), the Industrial Internet and Industry 4.0 and later, 5G and artificial intelligence were presented as drivers of productivity, and experts predicted that the productivity of industry and services will increase significantly thanks to digitalisation. For example, Accenture predicted that artificial intelligence alone would provide an annual 2% rise in value added potential in Finland.

In reality, huge sector-specific differences are seen in growth leaps.

“Although the productivity of work in Finnish industry has improved by 22 percent over the past decade, the increase in the production of machinery and equipment has been just 4 percent in ten years and 8 percent in construction,” says Research Professor Heikki Ailisto from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. On the other hand, productivity has increased in the information and communication sectors by 38% and in the financial and insurance sector by 35%. The differences between companies in the same sector are also extensive.

The productivity benefits of digitalisation vary dramatically by sector

The Digital Disruption of Industry Consortium has researched the impact of digitalisation on Finnish society. Researchers found that the differences in productivity within sectors can be explained as follows:

The information, communication and financial sector are pioneers in the utilization of digitalisation that have been able to increase their productivity. International studies confirm the view that these differences are due to the ability of different sectors to utilize digitalisation: Banking operations are easier to digitalise than a construction site. A report published by the OECD classifies the information and financing sectors are those that are furthest in overall digitalisation. The utilization of digitalisation is also essential for the competitiveness of companies in these sectors, as the sectors are also subject to international competition and their competitors utilize digitalisation.

As a whole, construction and the manufacture of machinery and equipment are not at the forefront of digitalisation, even though many companies have already done a great deal in this respect. In its report, the OECD classifies construction as a low-digitalisation sector. Construction is a typical domestic sector in which international competition does not create any pressure to increase efficiency. Labor costs in the labor-intensive construction sector have been influenced by the entry of cheap foreign labor into the market, which has reduced the pressure to develop productivity.

Although the manufacturing industry has engaged in automation for numerous decades and in the 2010s, the Industrial Internet and investments in Industry 4.0 were expected to significantly improve productivity, the sector is no more than average in digitalisation, according to assessments by the OECD and McKinsey.

Productivity development will determine Finland’s future well-being

Increasing the amount of work done in society, for example, by increasing the employment rate or immigration, will certainly increase the GDP. However, growth in the employment rate will likely occur in low-productivity sectors and may even require government subsidies, for example in the form of wage subsidies. In other words, the net impact on central government revenue will be small or, at worst, negative.

The development of Finland’s well-being and Finland’s prosperity will depend on the ability of industry and other sectors to get the same amount of work done with less labor, especially as the population ages. For this reason, increasing the productivity of work is a necessity. Productivity increases by increasing the value of production, i.e. the value of a product or service, or by improving production efficiency. Digitalisation can have an impact on both. The value of the product to the customer may increase, for example, by integrating services produced with digitalisation into the product. On the other hand, the increase of efficiency is often achieved by integrating digitalisation into the production process to streamline it or by automating routines.

“The time is now ripe for the digitalisation of the manufacturing industry and construction, and through this for increasing productivity,” says Professor of Practice Timo Seppälä from Aalto University.

Researchers recommend that decision-makers undertake the following measures to increase productivity:

Analyze projects financed with public funds that have aimed at promoting digitalisation from the perspective of productivity development. The Government’s analysis, assessment and research activities are a good means for the implementation of an impartial analysis.

The launch of development and research projects that will aim at an increase in efficiency in manufacturing industry and the construction sector through digitalisation utilizing the lessons learned from the analyses completed by means of the first recommendation.

Develop digital features and services that increase the value of products in research and development projects to increase the value of manufacturing and construction products.

As digitalisation requires new skills, in particular continuing education that will focus on teaching digitalisation and skills for the use, application and implementation of new technologies also to those already in working life.

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2021 could be the year automation and AI truly accelerate the economy – Axios

Productivity growth has been stagnant for years, but new technologies are finally set to change that.
— Read on www.axios.com/productivity-growth-j-curve-automation-ai-23bf33a3-ebf9-4407-9668-006db8984497.html

Bryan Walsh  – Technology

The coronavirus pandemic hit the global economy hard in 2020, but the economy may be close to consolidating years of technological advances — and ready to take off in a burst of productivity growth.

Why it matters: Productivity is the engine that makes the economy grow for everyone. If long-gestating technologies like AI and automation really are ready to fulfill their potential, we’ll have the chance to escape the great stagnation that has choked our economy and poisoned our politics.

What’s happening: Hidden in part by the human and economic suffering of the pandemic, 2020 saw a collection of remarkable technological breakthroughs, including a mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 and advances in AI language generation.

Context: In a blog post published last month, the economist Tyler Cowen added in a few others, including affordable solar power and remote work, and asked whether total factor productivity (TFP) — a rough approximation of the effect technological and strategic progress has on economic productivity — in 2021 “will be remarkably high, maybe the highest ever?”

• Cowen’s musings matter because he literally wrote the book on “the great stagnation” — his term for the curious and persistent slowdown in wage and productivity growth in the U.S. over the past few decades, even as the internet and everything that grew out of it seemed to transform life as we knew it.

Flashback: After a few postwar decades of scorching growth, labor productivity began to decelerate sharply in the 1970s, and aside from a period of 3% growth in the mid-1990s to early 2000s — which economists attributed to the widespread effects of the computer — it’s stayed mired at about 1.2% a year ever since .

• Some experts have argued that conventional economic metrics fail to fully measure the productivity benefits of newer technologies like social media and the internet, but even so, they don’t compare to the advances of the past, like widespread electrification and antibiotics.

It looks increasingly possible that the last decade plus of sluggish productivity growth isn’t a sign that the benefits of new technology have permanently plateaued, but that businesses were using the time to invest in and adjust to those new advances — and that we may now be ready to reap the benefits.

• Economists like Erik Byrnjolfsson have argued that we’re experiencing a “productivity J-curve.”

• When powerful new technologies are introduced into the economy, productivity may flatten or even dip a bit as initial investments are made — the first part of the J. But once those technologies have been fully digested, productivity can swoop upwards — the second part of the J.

• That’s what we’ve seen in the past. Computers began to filter into the workplace in the 1970s and 80s, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that the productivity gains of all those PCs were finally felt.

What they’re saying: “Often times in the short term it can be costly to invest in new business processes and skills, and during that time you won’t see productivity rising,” Byrnjolfsson told me earlier this year.

• “But in the years after you’ll see the upwards part of the J, and COVID-19 has catalyzed the energy and creativity around this process.”

By the numbers: A survey by the World Economic Forum in October found more than 80% of global firms plan to accelerate the digitization of business process and grow remote work, while half plan to accelerate automation.

• About 43% expect those changes to reduce their workforces overall, which implies an expected increase in productivity.

The catch: If those gains don’t filter down to workers — or worse, end up eliminating jobs without replacing them with better ones — even a faster, more productive economy won’t ameliorate the inequality-driven political divisions that have dogged the U.S. in recent years.

The bottom line: As bad as 2020 has been, we may look back upon it as the year that finished the launchpad for a new Roaring ’20s.