Innovation is about finding a better way of doing something. Like many of the new development buzzwords (which many of them are over-used on many business documents), the concept of innovation originates from the world of business. It refers to the generation of new products through the process of creative entrepreneurship, putting it into production, and diffusing it more widely through increased sales. Innovation can be viewed as t he application of better solutions that meet new requirements, in-articulated needs, or existing market needs. This is accomplished through more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments and society. The term innovation can be defined as something original and, as a consequence, new, that “breaks into” the market or society.
Innoveracy: Misunderstanding Innovation article points out that there is a form of ignorance which seems to be universal: the inability to understand the concept and role of innovation. The way this is exhibited is in the misuse of the term and the inability to discern the difference between novelty, creation, invention and innovation. The result is a failure to understand the causes of success and failure in business and hence the conditions that lead to economic growth. The definition of innovation is easy to find but it seems to be hard to understand. Here is a simple taxonomy of related activities that put innovation in context:
- Novelty: Something new
- Creation: Something new and valuable
- Invention: Something new, having potential value through utility
- Innovation: Something new and uniquely useful
The taxonomy is illustrated with the following diagram.
The differences are also evident in the mechanisms that exist to protect the works: Novelties are usually not protectable, Creations are protected by copyright or trademark, Inventions can be protected for a limited time through patents (or kept secret) and Innovations can be protected through market competition but are not defensible through legal means.
Innovation is a lot of talked about nowdays as essential to businesses to do. Is innovation essential for development work? article tells that innovation has become central to the way development organisations go about their work. In November 2011, Bill Gates told the G20 that innovation was the key to development. Donors increasingly stress innovation as a key condition for funding, and many civil society organisations emphasise that innovation is central to the work they do.
Some innovation ideas are pretty simple, and some are much more complicated and even sound crazy when heard first. The is place for crazy sounding ideas: venture capitalists are gravely concerned that the tech startups they’re investing in just aren’t crazy enough:
Not all development problems require new solutions, sometimes you just need to use old things in a slightly new way. Development innovations may involve devising technology (such as a nanotech water treatment kit), creating a new approach (such as microfinance), finding a better way of delivering public services (such as one-stop egovernment service centres), identifying ways of working with communities (such as participation), or generating a management technique (such as organisation learning).
Theorists of innovation identify innovation itself as a brief moment of creativity, to be followed by the main routine work of producing and selling the innovation. When it comes to development, things are more complicated. Innovation needs to be viewed as tool, not master. Innovation is a process, not a one time event. Genuine innovation is valuable but rare.
There are many views on the innovation and innvation process. I try to collect together there some views I have found on-line. Hopefully they help you more than confuze. Managing complexity and reducing risk article has this drawing which I think pretty well describes innovation as done in product development:
8 essential practices of successful innovation from The Innovator’s Way shows essential practices in innovation process. Those practices are all integrated into a non-sequential, coherent whole and style in the person of the innovator.
In the IT work there is lots of work where a little thinking can be a source of innovation. Automating IT processes can be a huge time saver or it can fail depending on situation. XKCD comic strip Automation as illustrates this:
System integration is a critical element in project design article has an interesting project cost influence graphic. The recommendation is to involve a system integrator early in project design to help ensure high-quality projects that satisfy project requirements. Of course this article tries to market system integration services, but has also valid points to consider.
Core Contributor Loop (CTTDC) from Art Journal blog posting Blog Is The New Black tries to link inventing an idea to theory of entrepreneurship. It is essential to tune the engine by making improvements in product, marketing, code, design and operations.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Investigating the Complexity of Academic Writing
http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/10/28/160250/investigating-the-complexity-of-academic-writing
While the general public might expect that researchers should want to maximize comprehension of their work, academic writing tends to follow an opaque style permeated with professional jargon and complex syntax.
The Needless Complexity of Academic Writing
A new movement strives for simplicity.
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/10/complex-academic-writing/412255/
“Persistence is one of the great characteristics of a pitbull, and I guess owners take after their dogs,” says Annetta Cheek, the co-founder of the D.C.-based nonprofit Center for Plain Language.
The idea that writing should be clear, concise, and low-jargon isn’t a new one—and it isn’t limited to government agencies, of course. The problem of needlessly complex writing—sometimes referred to as an “opaque writing style”—has been explored in fields ranging from law to science. Yet in academia, unwieldy writing has become something of a protected tradition.
A disconnect between researchers and their audiences fuels the problem, according to Deborah S. Bosley, a clear-writing consultant and former University of North Carolina English professor. “Academics, in general, don’t think about the public; they don’t think about the average person, and they don’t even think about their students when they write,” she says. “Their intended audience is always their peers. That’s who they have to impress to get tenure.” But Bosley, who has a doctorate in rhetoric and writing, says that academic prose is often so riddled with professional jargon and needlessly complex syntax that even someone with a Ph.D. can’t understand a fellow Ph.D.’s work unless he or she comes from the very same discipline.
Academics play an elitist game with their words: They want to exclude interlopers.
A nonacademic might think the campaign against opaque writing is a no-brainer; of course, researchers should want to maximize comprehension of their work. Cynics charge, however, that academics play an elitist game with their words: They want to exclude interlopers. Others say that academics have traditionally been forced to write in an opaque style to be taken seriously by the gatekeepers—academic journal editors, for example. The main reason, though, may not be as sinister or calculated. Pinker, a cognitive scientist, says it boils down to “brain training”: the years of deep study required of academics to become specialists in their chosen fields actually work against them being able to unpack their complicated ideas in a coherent, concrete manner suitable for average folks. Translation: Experts find it really hard to be simple and straightforward when writing about their expertise. He calls this the “curse of knowledge” and says academics aren’t aware they’re doing it or properly trained to identify their blindspots—when they know too much and struggle to ascertain what others don’t know.
Some research funders, such as National Institutes of Health and The Wellcome Trust, have mandated in recent years that studies they finance be published in open-access journals, but they’ve given little attention to ensuring those studies include accessible writing. “NIH has no policies for grantees that dictate the style of writing they use in their research publications,”
Indeed, there are an increasing number of academics taking it upon themselves to blog, tweet or try other means to convey their research to wider audiences. The news site TheConversation.com, for example, sources authors and stories from the academic and research communities. Academics get the byline but are edited by journalists adept at making complex research clear and writing palatable, according to the outlet’s managing editor, Maria Balinska. “We see a real interest among academics across the board in what we’re doing,” Balinska says. “Our editing process is rigorous, but they still want to learn how to communicate their research and reach more people.”
Will this kind of interest in communicating about research by some academics help change status-quo academic writing? “Believe it or not,” when compared to their peers in other parts of the world, “U.S. academics are probably the most open to the idea of accessible language,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Virtual Reality as a Diagnostic Tool
http://www.medgadget.com/2015/10/virtual-reality-diagnostic-tool.html
The buzz surrounding virtual reality is reaching a fevered pitch since the successful Kickstarter campaign for the Oculus Rift headset in 2012. Developers and hardware manufacturers are experimenting with a myriad of different application to see how this new paradigm can be applied to entertainment, training, marketing, medicine, and numerous other avenues.
In the world of medicine, virtual reality related research has been ongoing for sometime.
What has been a fascinating application of VR technology is the diagnosis of various disease states, from mental conditionsVirtual-reality-test-could-pre like schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, and traumatic brain injury to eye conditions such as glaucoma. Patients with early Alzheimer’s utilize different regions of the brain for navigating 3D virtual environments, something that can be detected using fMRI. Schizophrenic patients also have changes in the areas of the brain used when perceiving their environment. Researchers at Toronto Western Hospital are performing pilot studies to detect early changes in peripheral vision in glaucoma patients using the Rift which have had promising results. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison a team found the headset can even be used to measure the range of motion of the cervical spine to detect any abnormalities.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google wants to monitor your mental health. You should welcome it into your mind
The use of technology to track and treat mental illness is deeply worrying but sadly necessary
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/11961415/Google-wants-to-monitor-your-mental-health.-You-should-welcome-it-into-your-mind.html
Next week, Dr Tom Insel leaves his post as head of the US National Institute of Mental Health, a job that made him America’s top mental health doctor. Dr Insel is a neuroscientist and a psychiatrist and a leading authority on both the medicine and public policies needed to deal with problems of the mind. He’s 64 but he’s not retiring. He’s going to work for Google.
More precisely, he’s going to work for Google Life Sciences, one of the more exotic provinces of the online empire. He’s going to investigate how technology can help diagnose and treat mental health conditions. Google doesn’t just want to read your mind, it wants to fix it too.
It’s not alone. Apple, IBM and Intel are among technology companies exploring the same field.
Wearable technology has been a hot topic in medical innovation for several years now. A growing number of people choose to track their own physical condition using FitBits, Jawbones and other activity trackers, tiny wearable devices that monitor your movements, pulse rate, sleep patterns and more. Once the preserve of obsessive fitness fanatics, “self-monitoring” has the scope to transform healthcare. The ever-increasing number of people with chronic conditions can track and electronically report their symptoms, reducing the number of routine (and expensive) consultations they need with medical staff and ensuring a quicker response to changes that do require direct professional attention.
Self-monitoring will also surely play a bigger role in preventive public health.
Dr Insel is part of a school of thought that suggests this technology is even better suited to mental health. The symptoms of depression, for instance, are inconstant, ebbing and rising without obvious pattern. A short consultation with a doctor once every few weeks is thus a poor means of diagnosis. But wearable technology allows continuous monitoring. A small portable device might monitor your tone of voice, speech patterns and physical movements, picking up the early signs of trouble. A device such as a mobile telephone.
Yes, we now live in a world where your phone might observe you to help assess your mental health. If you don’t find that prospect disturbing, you’re either fantastically trusting of companies and governments or you haven’t thought about it enough.
But that feeling of unease should not determine our response to technology in mental health
Because, simply, existing healthcare systems are failing and will continue to fail on mental health.
We pour ever more billions into dealing with the worst problems of physical health, and with considerable success.
Even as the NHS budget grows, NHS trusts’ spending on mental health is falling.
Technology will never be a panacea for mental illnesses, or our social failure to face up to them. But anything that makes them cheaper and easier and more mundane to deal with should be encouraged.
Tomi Engdahl says:
US Law Can’t Keep Up With Technology — and Why That’s a Good Thing
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/11/02/0127217/us-law-cant-keep-up-with-technology—-and-why-thats-a-good-thing?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
Now Kevin Matley writes in Newsweek that thanks to political gridlock in the US, lawmakers respond to innovations with all the speed of continental drift. New technologies spread almost instantly and take hold with almost no legal oversight. According to Matley, this is terrific for tech startups, especially those aimed at demolishing creaky old norms—like taxis, or flight paths over crowded airspace, or money. “Drone aircraft are suddenly filling the sky, and a whole multibillion-dollar industry of drone making and drone services has taken hold,” says Matley. “If the FAA had been either farsighted or fast moving, at the first sign of drones it might’ve outlawed them or confined them to someplace like Oklahoma where they can’t get in the way of anything too important. But now the FAA is forced to accommodate drones, not the other way around.”
The Law Can’t Keep Up With Technology…and That’s a Very Good Thing
http://www.newsweek.com/government-gets-slower-tech-gets-faster-389073
Tomi Engdahl says:
Coding Academies Are Nonsense
http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/23/coding-academies-are-nonsense/
Coding as a profession has recently catapulted from the dark rooms of nerdom into the shining light of mainstream appeal, and few people are better off for it. In 20+ years of professional coding, I’ve never seen someone go from novice to full-fledged programmer in a matter of weeks, yet that seems to be what coding academies are promising, alongside instant employment, a salary big enough to afford a Tesla and the ability to change lives.
It’s an ingenious business model. There’s a dearth of skilled coders in the marketplace to fill the five million computing jobs available in this country. For somewhere between free and $36,000, you learn to program computers in less than a year. If you’re one of the lucky few, you will hit your aha moment with programming and develop a personal passion for it, as well land a real job.
In 15 years, those hard-won skills will be obsolete — if they ever stuck in the first place. Despite their promises, coding academies don’t manufacture coders. They cast wide nets to discover new talent that has not yet been exposed to code. Most people don’t find coding enthralling or interesting enough to continue to pursue it as a career. Given the changing nature of software, they probably shouldn’t.
Perishable And Full Of Promises
I see coding shrinking as a widespread profession. Not because software is going away, but because the way we build software will fundamentally change. Technology for software creation without code is already edging toward mainstream use. Visual content creation tools such as Scratch, DWNLD and Telerik will continue to improve until all functionality required to build apps is available to consumers — without having to write a line of code.
Who needs to code when you can use visual building blocks or even plain English to describe intent? Advances in natural-language processing and conceptual modeling will remove the need for traditional coding from app development. Software development tools will soon understand what you mean versus what you say. Even small advances in disambiguating intent will pay huge dividends. The seeds are already planted, from the OpenCog project to NLTK natural-language processing to MIT’s proof that you can order around a computer in your human language instead of code.
ROI Is In The Eye Of The Beholder
Running an academy is a wonderful short-term business idea. Not only is coding a ready new career option, but it appeals to the human desire to build stuff. Coding lets you build interactive digital content, and, as such, folks are enamored by the idea of it.
The Boring Truth About Learning To Code
In more than 20 years of personal experience with coding, interacting with kids trying to learn code and observing users learning GameSalad, I’ve noticed that the vast majority of folks hit a wall early in the process. Academies like Code Academy boast 24 million+ users, but have few success stories, likely for the same reason. Most people fall off the wagon because they don’t understand the mind of the computer and, as such, find translating their intent into programming language hopelessly difficult.
Put succinctly, coding is writing text files in foreign languages containing instructions suitable for an absolute idiot to follow. Unlike human readers, computers cannot infer meaning from ambiguous text. So, to code, one must become very good at deconstructing problems into their most basic steps and spelling them out for the idiot box.
Try Before You Buy
Line by line, a programming language is nothing but a list of excruciatingly detailed instructions suitable for the computer to follow. Before signing up for a coding academy, let alone a free class, aspirants should ask themselves these questions:
Would I like to type text files for hours a day?
Do I enjoy decomposing problems into detailed lists of instructions?
Am I good at abstract conceptual thinking?
Am I comfortable being a digital construction worker?
Those who answer yes to the above questions might want to try coding. It is a skill that anyone with intelligence and determination can learn — which is why the profession has so many autodidacts. But programmers are a natural resource. Only so many people have the will and ability to do it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Robodoc, heal me
A variety of half-hearted doomsday prophecies about the disappearance of jobs, and jobs have grown commendably media in the coming years. Curiously, doctors are rarely collected a list of investments.
If a standard health center physician work is cleaved into basic components, such as this was an explicitly extremely easy to machine and replaced with artificial intelligence mission. Listening to the patient’s symptoms -> selected suitable tests -> provides the test results the appropriate medication or other treatment.
Technological development in medicine field has taken competent strides: For example, the price of a complete genome sequencing has dropped to just over 10 years to 100 million dollars to over a thousand dollars. It allows developing targeted medicines for different people.
Future doctor visit business is much faster than it is today. Instead of room waiting for medical analysis device, which removes blood or skin sample, and make an accurate diagnosis, a number of target specific medicines. If you require complex surgical operations, they also run by the robot.
Technology that is ready much faster than a human being.
It does not matter, though robot doctor will turn out out to be 100 times safer than human competitors. The first dead robot in the hands of a patient who received an enormous outcry at the time and only movement – and the next generation to wonder how anyone could be so stupid that was opposed to 100 times better treatment.
Probably in the future even visits to the health center is required as your different devices have already collected permanent record of the different values of the body to prevent diseases.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/blogit/robodoc-paranna-minut-6062161
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Innovator’s Dilemma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma
First published in 1997, Christensen’s book suggests that successful companies can put too much emphasis on customers’ current needs, and fail to adopt new technology or business models that will meet their customers’ unstated or future needs.
As the title states, the innovator’s ‘dilemma’ comes from the idea that businesses or organizations will reject innovations based on the fact that customers cannot currently use them, thus allowing these ideas with great potential to go to waste. It goes into great detail the way in which ‘successful’ companies adhered to customer needs, adopted new technologies and took rivals into consideration, but still ended up losing dominance in their market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is Open Source Open to Women?
http://www.toptal.com/open-source/is-open-source-open-to-women?utm_source=outbrain&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=womenopensource
Women are underrepresented in tech. This realization is nothing new. Just look at numbers released by Facebook, Google, Intel, Slack, and many, many more. But the numbers might be even worse than these reports imply.
At a recent tech event, I overheard a side conversation about the lack of gender diversity in tech. The small group was discussing the fact that even though women make up about 30% of the workforce in tech, higher level engineering teams rarely have more than a few women.
One of the participants in this conversation commented that this was because male developers are just generally more talented than female developers. No one in the group objected.
Hmm…
From personal experience at Toptal and my university experience in engineering at Princeton, which was nearly 50/50 male vs. female, I know this is false.
Open Source Is Dominated by Men
Even before getting into any further analysis, it was obvious that the percentage of women was extremely low. Of the 20,000 profiles, genderize.io was able to confidently determine the gender of 15,374. Of those, just 6.0% (926) were women. The disparity gets more severe once you start taking a look at user activity.
Just 5.4% of GitHub users with over 10 contributions from our random sample are female.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi teams up with Google, Nesta and Samsung up to expand Code Club
Together the firms hope to boost computer skills
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2433137/raspberry-pi-teams-up-with-google-nesta-and-samsung-up-to-expand-code-club
A COMING TOGETHER of big business, the government-backed Code Club and the Raspberry Pi Foundation is promising to bring technology learning and digital skills to the whole world in easy to grasp, but very informing, community-based projects.
Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, told The INQUIRER that it is perhaps the most exciting thing to happen to the outfit since it launched. This feeling is felt across the organisation, and Philip Colligan, chief executive of the Foundation, said that the merger will bring many more young people into digital programing and production.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Huge Survey Shows Correlation Between Autistic Traits and STEM Jobs
http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/11/04/0513208/huge-survey-shows-correlation-between-autistic-traits-and-stem-jobs
A survey of more than 450,000 people in the UK has shown there is a significant correlation between a higher score on the Autism Quotient and being a scientist or engineer. AQ scores are also higher for men than for women. “On average, the male AQ score was 21.6, compared to a female score of 19.0. People work in a STEM-related job had an average AQ score of 21.9 compared to a score of 18.9 for individuals working in non-STEM jobs. This suggests autistic traits are linked to both sex and to having a ‘systems-thinking’ mind.”
Study of half a million people reveals sex and job predict how many autistic traits you have – See more at: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/study-of-half-a-million-people-reveals-sex-and-job-predict-how-many-autistic-traits-you-have#sthash.DCkirdjM.dpuf
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Facebook plans to more or less build a teleporter
http://uk.businessinsider.com/facebook-oculus-plans-teleporter-by-2025-2015-11?r=US&IR=T
Facebook’s chief technical officer, Mike Schroepfer, says that when the company thinks about where it wants to be by 2025, it aims to “effectively build a teleporter.”
“Facebook wants to build a device that allows you to be anywhere you want, with anyone, regardless of geographic boundaries,” Schroepfer added at a press event on Tuesday morning before his appearance at the Dublin Web Summit.
The company is already heading toward that with the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, which will come out early next year.
To get there, Facebook is working on closing three gaps that make virtual reality feel fake today.
Seeing yourself and others. One of the biggest challenges with making virtual reality feel real is allowing people to see themselves
Imitating the environment. Oculus is also making strides with the second challenge: mimicking the actual environment.
Letting people create their own worlds. For the third challenge, Oculus needs to give normal people without a lot of money or training a way to create their own VR content.
When the Touch controllers ship, they’ll come with a program called Medium that will let people shape 3D objects.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why is hi-tech Japan using cassette tapes and faxes?
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34667380
Japan has a reputation for being fascinated by robots and hi-tech gadgets – a nation at the forefront of manufacturing innovation.
But the technological reality in many offices is strikingly different.
This is a country that uses people to do the work of traffic lights and where big-name companies running 10-year-old software is the norm.
There are even tape cassettes for sale in the ubiquitous convenience stores for office use, along with fax machines – remember them? Even tech visionaries like Sony still use a fax.
“Japanese companies generally lag foreign companies by roughly five-to-10 years in adoption of modern IT practices, particularly those specific to the software industry,” says Patrick McKenzie, boss of Starfighter, a software company with operations in Tokyo and Chicago.
“The pace of development is glacial.”
It’s a curiosity for any observer of a country that developed the world’s first contactless payments system; the Bullet train; and the Sony Walkman.
You can pay for things with your phone in Japan, but nobody really uses their e-wallets here; ditto for Skype in the office, or other now-ubiquitous cloud storage tools, such as Dropbox.
Yet Japan has some of the best internet infrastructure in the world.
Yoji Otokozawa, president of Tokyo-based IT consultants Interarrows, says Japan Inc. is poor in digital literacy because small businesses, not multinationals, rule the country.
“The hub of the matter is that you have to understand how SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] dominate the Japanese business landscape,” he says
SMEs account for 99.7% of Japan’s 4.2 million companies
These SMEs are often conservative, if not downright Luddite, says Mr Otokozawa.
“They usually use postal mail, or fax for their communications. We sometimes receive a fax, written by hand which means such firms don’t even use word processing software like Word.”
“Eventually you accept that a company whose pride is its cutting-edge tech image makes employees use an email service that looks circa 1997,” goes a recent anonymous tweet from an employee of a well-known blue chip Japanese technology firm.
Burning data onto discs and delivering them through the post, accompanied by a data submission form “filled out by hand,” was encouraged by managers.
An “overzealous approach to problem prevention was typically to forbid new software from being installed,” he adds.
‘Remorselessly conservative’
If such alleged behaviour is typical, it could explain Japanese firms’ productivity crisis, says Rochelle Kopp, founder of Japan Intercultural Consulting, an international training and consulting firm focused on Japanese business.
“Japanese IT departments are remorselessly conservative and hate to connect their computers to the outside world. They fear data theft and hacking, which also makes them fear abroad.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
According to the study in career selection should listen to his heart and vocation.
Many people wonder whether a better career choice to do with reason or calling and basic to their interest following. According to a recent research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology magazine, the latter option is preferred.
The study showed that people with a strong vocation, to take more sensitive to the risks, stick to their intentions and eventually find employment in your chosen field. At the same time his personal and professional needs are saturated.
The result was even more convincing if the human passion was oriented to the sector in spite of the teen years. It was not so much matter how much he had a natural tendency to the sector.
In spite of this, for example, a majority of Americans working in the field of research, which they are not keen on, and which they have not committed.
Too bad, because it seems that the passion should be followed instead of making efforts alone behind a secure life.
The economic realities are driving people sensitive to the situation of having to choose between feeling and intellect.
Source: http://www.iltalehti.fi/pinnalla/2015110320601556_iq.shtml
Tomi Engdahl says:
Follow your heart as you pursue your career
Study finds talent is less important than passion when it comes to professional success
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151029134256.htm
Tomi Engdahl says:
Emerging technologies and the future of humanity
http://bos.sagepub.com/content/71/6/29.full
Emerging technologies are not the danger. Failure of human imagination, optimism, energy, and creativity is the danger.
Why the future doesn’t need us: Our most powerful 21st-century technologies—robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech—are threatening to make humans an endangered species. —Bill Joy, co-founder and at the time chief scientist, Sun Microsystems, 20001
Although it was not clear at the time, Bill Joy’s article warning of the dangers of emerging technologies was to spawn a veritable “dystopia industry.” More recent contributions have tended to focus on artificial intelligence, or AI; electric car and space technology entrepreneur Elon Musk has warned that AI is “summoning the demon” (Mack, 2015), while physicist Stephen Hawking has argued that “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race” (Cellan-Jones, 2014). The Future of Life Institute (2015) recently released an open letter signed by many scientific and research notables urging a ban on “offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control.” Meanwhile, the UN holds conferences and European activists mount campaigns against what they characterize as “killer robots” (see, e.g., Human Rights Watch, 2012). Headlines reinforce a sense of existential crisis; in the military and security domain, cyber conflict runs rampant, with hackers accessing millions of US personnel records, including sensitive security clearance documents. Technologies such as uncrewed aerial vehicles, commonly referred to as “drones,” are highly contentious in both civil and conflict environments, for many different reasons. A recent US Army Research Laboratory report foresees genetically and technologically enhanced soldiers networked with their battlespace robotic partners and remarks that “the presence of super humans on the battlefield in the 2050 timeframe is highly likely because the various components needed to enable this development already exist and are undergoing rapid evolution” (Kott et al., 2015: 19).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Slide Rules were the Original Personal Computers
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/05/slide-rules-were-the-original-personal-computers/
Unless you are above a certain age, the only time you may have seen a slide rule (or a slip stick, as we sometimes called them) is in the movies. You might have missed it, but slide rules show up in Titanic, This Island Earth, and Apollo 13. If you are a fan of the original Star Trek, Mr. Spock was seen using Jeppesen CSG-1 and B-1 slide rules in several episodes. But there was a time that it was common to see an engineer with a stick hanging from his belt, instead of a calculator or a cell phone. A Pickett brand slide rule flew to the moon with the astronauts and a K&E made the atomic bomb possible.
Slide rules are a neat piece of math and history. They aren’t prone to destruction by EMP in the upcoming apocalypse (which may or may not include zombies). Like a lot of things in life, when it comes to slide rules bigger is definitely better, but before I tell you about the 5 foot slide rule in my collection, let’s talk about slide rules in general.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Y Combinator’s Sam Altman Is Bullish on Biotech Startups
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/y-combinator-sam-altman-interview-on-investing-in-biotech-startups/
Hah, well just wait. Synthetic biology startups have raised a record $560 million this year. Why are investors so interested in synthetic biology now?
The two areas we look at are cost and cycle time. Because of tech changes like DNA sequencing, the cost and cycle time have crossed under the startup threshold. Roughly, you can make meaningful progress on single-digit millions of dollars and can you have an iteration speed that is measured in weeks or months, not years.
It’s remarkable how much the willingness to write checks on the order of tens of millions of dollars just blossomed in the last year.
Is the public perception of genetically modified organisms something you worry about? How does that factor into your investment strategy?
I don’t talk about this publicly, but I guess I will now. We make so much money on stuff that is relatively certain that we can take significant risk on the long game on other stuff.
How do you know which ideas people can actually pull off, then? Ginkgo, the first synthetic biology startup you funded, has five MIT PhDs among its founders, including the father of synthetic biology.
We always bet on the people, whether or not they have the resumé. The resumé matters less to us the more we know about a space
Tomi Engdahl says:
7 Smart Ways to Design Housing That’s Actually Affordable
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/7-smart-ways-to-design-housing-thats-actually-affordable/
There’s a big difference between affordable housing and housing that is affordable.
Affordable housing is the government-subsidized kind. The latter, on the other hand, describes the “ways that architects or engineers have reduced the cost of owning a house, renting a house, or constructing a house,” says Marc Norman, who recently curated an exhibit on the subject at The Center for Architecture in New York City. It’s distinct from affordable housing, which he says “is not always cheap to build.”
With Designing Affordability: Quicker, Smarter, More Efficient Housing Now, Norman contends that this niche area of interest isn’t so niche anymore. Rather, he says, it now seems to be something “lay people are talking about all over the country.” In big cities, especially, those discussions are happening out of necessity.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IndieGoGo Project Offers DNA Editing For The Home
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/08/indiegogo-project-offers-dna-editing-for-the-home/
CRISPR is the new darling of the genetics world, because it allows you to easily edit DNA. It is far more effective than previous techniques, being both precise and relatively easy to use. According to this IndieGoGo project, it is coming to your home lab soon. Genetic researchers love Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) because it allows you to very precisely edit a DNA strand. Using a protein called CAS9, CRISPR can find a very specific sequence in a DNA sequence and cut it. It occurs naturally in cells as part of the immune system: by finding and remembering parts of virus DNA, a cell can recognize and attack it when infected. For the genetics researcher, this allows them to insert new DNA sequences at specific points in the genes of any living cell.
The IndieGoGo project is set up by Dr Josiah Zayner, who works as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the NASA Ames Research Center. In his spare time, he runs a site called The ODIN (or the Open Discovery Institute)
DIY CRISPR Genome Engineering Kits – From The ODIN
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/diy-crispr-genome-engineering-kits-from-the-odin#/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Biomedicine News
To Study the Brain, a Doctor Puts Himself Under the Knife
How one of the inventors of brain-computer interfaces ended up getting one himself.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/543246/to-study-the-brain-a-doctor-puts-himself-under-the-knife/
Last year, Kennedy, a 67-year-old neurologist and inventor, did something unprecedented in the annals of self-experimentation. He paid a surgeon in Central America $25,000 to implant electrodes into his brain in order to establish a connection between his motor cortex and a computer.
Along with a small group of pioneers, Kennedy had in the late 1980s developed “invasive” human brain-computer interfaces—literally wires inside the brain attached to a computer, and he is widely credited as the first to allow a severely paralyzed “locked-in” patient to move a computer cursor using her brain. “The father of cyborgs,” one magazine called him.
“This whole research effort of 29 years so far was going to die if I didn’t do something,” he says. “I didn’t want it to die on the vine. That is why I took the risk.”
The surgery took place in June 2014 at a 13-bed Belize City hospital a thousand miles south of his Georgia-based neurology practice and also far from the reach of the FDA. Prior to boarding his flight, Kennedy did all he could to prepare. At his small company, Neural Signals, he fabricated the electrodes the neurosurgeon would implant into his motor cortex—even chose the spot where he wanted them buried. He put aside enough money to support himself for a few months if the surgery went wrong.
To some researchers, Kennedy’s decisions could be seen as unwise, even unethical. Yet there are cases where self-experiments have paid off.
After returning home to Duluth, Georgia, Kennedy began to toil largely alone in his speech lab, recording his neurons as he repeated 29 phonemes (such as e, eh, a, o, u, and consonants like ch and j) out loud, and then silently imagined saying them.
Kennedy says his early findings are “extremely encouraging.” He says he determined that different combinations of the 65 neurons he was recording from consistently fired every time he spoke certain sounds aloud, and also fired when he imagined speaking them—a relationship that is potentially key to developing a thought decoder for speech.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amino’s Cool Bio Kit Is Like the Easy-Bake Oven of Bioreactors
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/aminos-cool-bio-kit-is-like-the-easy-bake-oven-of-bioreactors/
Most people wouldn’t consider themselves biological engineers. In fact, most people have never worn a lab coat in their lives. Biology is complicated, and often restricted to a lab environment. But at an increasing rate, biology—and our ability to manipulate it—is becoming democratized, to the point that it’s now possible to hack DNA in your own home.
A new kit, called Amino, is like the Easy-Bake Oven of bioreactors. The pretty set of modular parts is a small-scale bio lab that enables you to grow organisms and bend bits of DNA to your will.
You could think of Amino as a beginners guide to biological engineering. The kit (starting at $700) comes with everything you need to grow and tinker with a microorganism: the main bacterial culture, DNA, pipettes, incubators, agar plates and various sensors for monitoring the growth and health of your culture. All of this is built into a color-coded, design-centric plywood dashboard.
it’s the role of a designer to make a complex subject like synthetic biology more accessible and understandable to the general public
In that way, Amino is a lot like tinkering with an Arduino, only instead of playing with wires, circuit boards, and programming languages, it’s bacteria, DNA, and incubators. The Amino kit centers around “apps,” which are step-by-step guides to making certain products with DNA
The goal is to make synthetic biology feel less like a science experiment shrouded in mystery and more like something that even the most science-averse person can take part in. Because as insular as the world of biological engineering might seem today, Legault believes it’s only a matter of time before it’s as common in our everyday lives as electronics.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What Computational Physics Is Really About
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/what-computational-physics-is-really-about/
I would like to address the following question:
When you use a computer to solve a problem (I would call this a numerical calculation), is it an experiment or theory? Or is it something else?
It’s a very common question. One that comes up often—usually when drinking beer with scientists from a variety of fields. I think it’s an important topic to discuss in order to help everyone understand the nature of science.
Here are some examples of scientific models:
A lump of clay in the shape of an amoeba.
A chart showing the transfers of energy as a block slides along a table.
The idea that forces change the velocity of objects.
The equation for the gravitational force between two objects.
A differential equation describing the motion of a mass on a spring.
Oh, and a computer program that calculates the motion of a baseball with air resistance, this is a model too.
So, a model can be many different things. It doesn’t have to be a mathematical model—but that’s often what we see in science.
Now for a conversation with this computational physicist. Here are some key points that will be brought up.
Computers are very important in science.
We create some code and then run it. It produces data which is then analyzed.
Since a computer program produces data, it is very much like an experiment that produces data.
Oh, but the computer program is also theoretical because we created it.
Computational science bridges both theory and experiment. It’s sort of like the third kind of science (with the other two being theoretical and experimental).
A Computer Program Is a Model
When you write a computer program, it does indeed give you some numbers in the end. Also, it is true that you don’t always know what these values will look like until you actually run the program. This doesn’t mean it’s like a real experiment. In the end, the program was made by a human and not real life.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wanna bet? Gambling could reveal which scientific studies are worth their salt
http://news.sciencemag.org/scientific-community/2015/11/wanna-bet-gambling-could-reveal-which-scientific-studies-are-worth
Gambling is frowned upon in many circles. But what if the gamblers are researchers betting on how each other’s experiments will turn out, and the results are used to improve science itself? A group of psychologists has found that their collective gambling—with real money—predicted the outcome of attempts at replicating experimental results better than their own expert guesses. They propose that this type of gambling setup, known as a prediction market, could become part of how science gets done.
Science is inefficient. By most estimates, about half of the results that get published in peer-reviewed journals are false positives—the main findings turn out to be a fluke. The best way to reach consensus on which results to trust is to replicate experiments in different labs. The problem is that few scientists want to spend their time directly replicating each other’s work. If only there was a way to gauge which experiments were more likely to be false positives.
That’s where prediction markets come in. The “wisdom of the crowd” can be a powerful tool for estimating an unknown measurement, but a motivated crowd is even sharper.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Most developers have never seen a successful project
CD Guru: You’re doing it all wrong, again and again
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/11/most_developers_never_seen_successful_project/
Most software professionals have never seen a successful software development project, continuous delivery evangelist Dave Farley said, and have “built careers on doing the wrong thing”.
Farley, kicking off the Continuous Lifecycle conference in Mannheim, said study after study had shown that a small minority of software development projects could be judged successes.
One study of 5,400 projects, by McKinsey and Oxford University, showed that 17 per cent of projects were so catastrophically bad they had threatened the very existence of the company.
Given these sorts of statistics, Farley argued, individuals could plausibly spend their whole career in software development without ever encountering, never mind running, an unequivocally successful development project.
“I think the vast majority of people in our industry have spent the vast majority of their careers not knowing what a successful software project looks like,”
Farley traced the sorry state of software development practices to a fundamental misreading of the 1970 Winston Royce paper (PDF) considered as a defining the waterfall method that has shaped traditional software development practices.
“This paper was a description of what not to do,” said Farley.
Royce was “arguing in the 1970s for iterative development” Farley claimed. Instead, Farley continued, we have a situation where taking an entirely ad hoc approach to software arguably leads to more successful outcomes than traditional waterfall approaches.
To improve their chances of producing successful development Farley advised his audience to automate as much as they could, especially testing, config management, and slash cycle times.
Tomi Engdahl says:
With TensorFlow, Google Open Sources Its Machine Learning Resources
http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/11/10/1922229/with-tensorflow-google-open-sources-its-machine-learning-resources?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
The code is available at GitHub under an Apache 2.0 license. “Deep learning, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are all some of Google’s core competencies, where the company leads Apple and Microsoft. If successful, Google’s strategy is to maintain this lead by putting its technology out in the open to improve it based on large-scale adoption and code contributions from the community at large.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nice innovation to increase sales:
Alibaba’s Singles Day Blowout Racks Up $5B in Sales in First 90 Minutes
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/alibabas-singles-day-blowout-racks-up-5b-in-sales-in-first-90-minutes/
The world’s biggest shopping day is happening right now, and you probably don’t even know it.
In China, it’s already November 11, or 11/11, and the massive e-commerce event known as “Singles Day” is well under way. Launched by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba in 2009, the idea is that for a full 24 hours, shoppers who are unmarried and unattached should go online and splurge on a nice gift for themselves.
How big a deal is Singles Day? This year, during Alibaba’s four-hour television event the night ahead of Singles Day (yes, this year they celebrated “Singles Day’s Eve”), Alibaba trotted out a parade of Chinese pop celebrities and movie stars.
In short, no expense was spared in the bonanza. And no expense will be spared in Alibaba’s execution of the event, either.
“When Singles Day becomes a national shopping celebration, competitors might enjoy the same or stronger growth in that day, too,” Jane Zhang, a principal research analyst for market research firm Gartner, who is based in China, tells WIRED. “So in a sense, the sales of the Singles Day does indicate the growth momentum of Alibaba and its competitors.”
We have yet to tally how much Alibaba makes on Singles Day this year, but Bloomberg says total sales could reach 87 billion yuan, or $13.7 billion, citing research from market research firm IDC. That’s enormous, but not overly surprising
Tomi Engdahl says:
What Do Bertlmann’s Socks Mean to the Nature of Reality?
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/11/what-do-bertlmanns-socks-mean-to-the-nature-of-reality/
One can be reasonably certain that when the title of an article includes the phrase “The Nature of Reality”, thought provoking words must surely lie ahead. But when that same title seems to inquire about a gentleman’s socks, coupled with an image of said gentleman’s socks which happen to be mismatched and reflect very loud colors , one might be moved in a direction which suggests the article is not of a serious nature. Perhaps even some sort of parody.
It is my hope that you will be pleasantly surprised with the subtle genius of Irish physicist [John Bell] and his use of socks, washing machines, and a little math to show how we can test one of quantum physic’s most fundamental properties. A property that does indeed reside in the very nature of the reality we are a part of. Few people can say they understand the Bell Inequality down to its most fundamental level. Give me a little of your time, and you will be counted among these few.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackathons: Don’t try them if you don’t like risks
Rules and tools to get the most out of your pizza-replete staff
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/12/hackathon_risks/
When organisations grind to a halt, weighed down by their own bureaucracy, inertia and politics, they flail about for something to give a short, sharp shock to their vitals. Something to get them moving again.
The techniques used to get things humming along again have varied over the years – a rogue’s gallery of specious business trends and fads. Twenty years ago, it might have been role playing. Ten years ago, an offsite with those cringeworthy trust-building games.
Today, we turn to hackathons.
Until quite recently, hackathons were the exclusive preserve of the tech startup community, thriving on the 48-hours-locked-in-a-room-together intensity followed by the near-orgasmic release of a great pitch. Suddenly, both big business and big government, in a collective penny-drop moment, have adopted the hackathon methodology to inspire employees and capture innovative ideas.
That should be making us suspicious. The purpose of a hackathon is to create a space so unconstrained by conventional wisdom as to be truly disruptive. Owing nothing to anyone, participants can be free to ‘think different’.
That’s the theory, anyway – but I doubt anything would be more terrifying to a big organisation.
Big bureaucracies – whether corporate or government – are at odds with hackathons, so they try to have it both ways: they stack the deck of the hackathon, then complain if they don’t get the promised results.
One: You can establish the questions – but not the answers
The most common defensive strategy in any hackathon is an attempt to control outcomes. That’s often done by framing the questions so narrowly only one answer is possible, or by limiting the terms of discussion, or limiting the range of proposed solutions.
Two: Conflict resolution skills are key
One recent hackathon saw one team split by an irreconcilable impasse. Half the group wanted to go in one direction, half in another – but they were only given one pitch. Their solution? Clumsily glue the two pitches together, doing a disservice to both.
Three: Meta-moderation
Every hackathon needs a meta-moderator whose sole purpose is to keep each team of hackathoners moving smoothly toward their goal. Meta-moderators check in regularly with each team, observing group dynamics, and stepping in with tweaks as needed, using their own conflict resolution skills to keep the teams coherent, focused, and productive – while passing those skills along to the team.
They’re the ultimate arbiters, and use their powers to help each team achieve the best possible outcome.
Four: Expect mixed results
Hackathons will never produce uniformly excellent results. The mixture of personalities and ideas and organisation is too variable to provide any guarantee of success. Instead, every hackathon will likely produce a few standouts, a few good efforts, and a few disappointments. That’s as it should be: even the most disappointing pitches will teach you something you didn’t know before.
Five: Don’t expect anything to stick
Throwing a group of individuals into a crucible may produce an excellent pitch, but everything after that is left to the organisation supporting those individuals.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Boot Camps Introducing More Women To Tech
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/11/12/2234250/boot-camps-introducing-more-women-to-tech
A new study from Course Report suggests that boot camps are introducing more women to the tech-employment pipeline. Data for the study came from 769 graduates from 43 qualifying coding schools (a.k.a. boot camps). Some 66 percent of those graduates reported landing a full-time job that hinged on skills learned at the boot camp. Although the typical “bootcamper” is 31 years old, with 7.6 years of work experience, relatively few had a job as a programmer before participating in a boot camp.
Boot Camps Introducing More Women to Tech
http://insights.dice.com/2015/11/12/boot-camps-introducing-more-women-to-tech/
A new study from Course Report, a guide to tech boot camps, suggests that boot camps are introducing more women to the tech-employment pipeline.
Data for the study came from 769 graduates from 43 qualifying coding schools (a.k.a. boot camps).
Some 66 percent of those graduates reported landing a full-time job that hinged on skills learned at the boot camp. Although the typical “bootcamper” is 31 years old, with 7.6 years of work experience, relatively few had a job as a programmer before participating in a boot camp.
Bringing more women and underrepresented groups into the tech industry is a stated goal of many companies. Over the past few years, these companies’ diversity reports have bemoaned how engineering and leadership teams skew overwhelmingly white and male. Proposed strategies for the issue include adjusting how companies recruit new workers; boot camps could also quickly deepen the pool of potential employees with the right skills.
The federal government has even explored the possibility of using boot camps to help alleviate a general need for tech talent. Earlier this year, the White House unveiled an ambitious plan (known as “TechHire”) to boost technology education and employment via coding boot camps and accelerated training programs. In theory, those intensive regimens would quickly render candidates technically proficient enough to land a job.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Thus the founder of Flickr to identify promising entrepreneurs – Sisu said
“The company’s founders are the most important people. Company traits come from the founder of the team, ”
Caterina Fake says that he recognized quickly the entrepreneurs, which he himself believes.
“As such, the entrepreneur sees that if he promises something, he takes it to the end. He’s got guts. ”
“Amount of innovation there is no shortage. Funding is available. It’s just that inject a contractor. ”
“Silicon Valley, everything is organized for you. Everyone understands what you’re doing. The entire ecosystem is built for entrepreneurs. ”
“If you do not know how to program, yes you will learn how to program,” Fake encouraged.
“The first startup is the most difficult. Things go easier, when to consolidate your position be eligible as an entrepreneur. ”
Finally, at the Fake advise startups to entrepreneurs is simple:
“Build something to feel the passion.”
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/nain-flickrin-perustaja-tunnistaa-lupaavat-yrittajat-sisu-mainittu-6064771
Tomi Engdahl says:
Disney is using Star Wars: The Force Awakens to teach JavaScript to kids
http://mobile.geek.com/latest/258493-disney-is-using-star-wars-the-force-awakens-to-teach-javascript-to-kids?origref=
https://code.org/starwars
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Open-Sourcing TensorFlow Shows AI’s Future Is Data, Not Code
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/google-open-sourcing-tensorflow-shows-ais-future-is-data-not-code/
When Google open sourced its artificial intelligence engine last week—freely sharing the code with the world at large—Lukas Biewald didn’t see it as a triumph of the free software movement. He saw it as a triumph of data.
In open sourcing the TensorFlow AI engine, Biewald says, Google showed, when it comes to AI, the real value lies not in the software or the algorithms but in the data needed to make it all smarter. Google is giving away the other stuff, but keeping the data.
“As companies become more data-driven, they feel more comfortable open sourcing lots of [software]. They know they’re sitting on lots of proprietary data that nobody else has access to,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
America Doesn’t Do Enough to Protect Its Innovative Designs
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/america-doesnt-do-enough-to-protect-its-innovative-designs/
American innovators are known the world over for their design capabilities. If you mention the Apple iPhone, the Ford Mustang, or the Microsoft Xbox practically anywhere on the planet, images of those iconic products instantly leap to mind. All are distinguished by their technical excellence, but also by their brilliant designs.
What makes a design brilliant? Outstanding design not only appeals to the aesthetic, but cuts through the clutter and enables people to use products intuitively and effectively. Simplicity is a hallmark of great design.
As the world becomes increasingly complex, well-designed technologies and products that reduce user complexity become critically important.
But simplicity is not simple to achieve. “It takes a lot of hard work,” Steve Jobs once said, “to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions.” Simplicity takes more thought, more time, more work—and more investment.
Our laws and policies covering design patents play an important role in promoting and protecting that investment.
In a 2013 report on design-driven innovation, the European Commission observed “companies that strategically invest in design tend to be more profitable and grow faster.
Given the increasing importance of design in the international economy, we should be wary of proposals that would weaken design protections.
Changing the current framework would decrease innovation incentives and place design innovators at significant risk.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Automotive Future: Success with Services, Not Cars
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328269&
Decision makers in the automotive industry should be alert: The digitization will radically change development processes and business models, a study from consulting company Kugler Maag states. The main challenge: product oriented business models will be displaced by service oriented models, thinking in terms of product will give way to thinking in services – following the example of the IT. Even the classic vehicle architecture is challenged.
Digital competency will decide over the success of the enterprise, this is a first common denominator among 42 top executives polled by Kugler Maag. The study, created in the context of the European research project Scalare in cooperation with BMW Car IT, Bosch, Fraunhofer SIT and the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) examined how digital competency at enterprise level can be shaped and how the enterprises can achieve the required degree of digital literacy.
Digitization will increasingly challenge the business model of the automotive industry that has been established and refined over decades.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chris Dixon / Medium:
What media firms can learn from the PC video game industry’s embrace of freemium models, remixes, mods, and crowdsourcing
Lessons from the PC video game industry
The future of media is here — it’s just not evenly distributed
https://medium.com/@cdixon/lessons-from-the-pc-video-game-industry-3350bb7713de
The success or failure of tech and media products depends on complicated interactions between products, economics, technology, and culture. It’s very hard to predict what will work and what won’t. Today, billions of people carry internet-connected supercomputers in their pockets, the largest knowledge repository in the world is a massive crowdsourced encyclopedia, and a social network is one of the 10 most valuable companies in the world. Ten years ago, someone who predicted these things would have seemed crazy.
The subtitle to this post is a variation of William Gibson’s famous remark: “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” An obvious follow up question is: if the future is already here, where can I find it? There is no easy answer, but history shows there are characteristic patterns. For example, it’s often useful to look at what the smartest people work on in their free time, or things that are growing rapidly but widely dismissed as toys.
Another clue to the future is to look for communities that embrace rapid, Darwinian experimentation. Entrepreneurs are in the business of running experiments (and VCs are in the business of funding experiments). Experiments are how we collectively navigate through the startup idea maze to discover products and business models that work.
Even if you have no interest in video games, if you are interested in media, you should be interested in PC gaming. Over the past decade, PC gaming has, for a variety of reasons, become a hotbed of experimentation. These experiments have resulted in a new practices and business models — some of them surprising and counterintuitive — that provide valuable lessons for the rest of the media industry.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Harry McCracken / Fast Company:
How Facebook is betting its future on artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and bringing Internet to 4B people not yet connected
Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Bold Plan For The Future Of Facebook
Facebook is firing on all cylinders. Now Mark Zuckerberg is looking to the decade ahead, from AI to VR to drones.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3052885/mark-zuckerberg-facebook
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jacob Demmitt / GeekWire:
Microsoft and Code.org will use Minecraft to teach kids the basics of computer programming
http://www.geekwire.com/2015/microsoft-is-using-minecraft-to-teach-kids-basics-of-computer-programming-with-code-org-partnership/
Microsoft wants to turn kids’ love of Minecraft into a love of computer programming through a partnership with Code.org, announced on Monday morning.
They’ve built a tutorial that students across the world can use during Code.org’s annual Hour of Code event in December. Microsoft knows how much kids love the wildly popular game, which the company bought through its $2.5 billion Mojang acquisition in 2014, so it volunteered Minecraft for the cause.
The tutorial, which is available now for free, walks students through 14 levels. It looks and feels like the Minecraft game that kids are so familiar with, but they have to use basic computer science principles to play.
https://code.org/mc
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Hollywood’s Hedy Helped Heighten Handhelds
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/15/11/16/2319246/how-hollywoods-hedy-helped-heighten-handhelds
Hedy Lamarr is a household name for the wrong reason. Her name is known as a Hollywood actress, but her legacy is in your pocket and reaches far more people than her movies. She was a brilliant thinker who plied her skills during World War II, developing technology that could help to win the war. Her patent wasn’t used at the time, but is a foundation of spread-spectrum
Citizen Scientist: Hedy Lamarr
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/16/citizen-scientist-hedy-lamarr/
For all the destruction and human misery unleashed during World War II, it was also a time of incredible creativity and ingenuity. In America, it was a time when everyone wanted to pitch in. Young men and women enlisted and were shipped overseas, and those left behind kept the factories running full tilt. Even Hollywood went to war, with its steady output of films that gave people a little glamour and provided an escape from the horror and loss of the war. Hollywood stars lined up to entertain troops and raise money for the war effort, and many joined up and fought too.
But one Hollywood star made an unconventional contribution to the war effort, and in the process proved that beauty and brains are not always mutually exclusive. This is the story of Hedy Lamarr, movie star and inventor.
“The Most Beautiful Woman in the World”
By the time she was 23 in 1937, Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler was a genuine film star in her native Austria.
After fleeing one night for a quick French divorce, Hedy ended up rubbing shoulders with MGM Studios head Louis B. Mayer on a cruise to the USA. By the end of the trip she had secured a studio contract and was soon wowing American audiences as the renamed Hedy Lamarr. The studio hype machine branded her as “The most beautiful woman in the world,”
Like most inventors, most of Hedy’s ideas never made it off the drawing board (literally; she had a well-used drawing board and T-square in her Hollywood home).
Hedy resolved to find a way to help the Allies deal with the U-boat threat.
Chance favors the prepared mind, they say, and Hedy was prepared. She began puzzling over the problem of remotely controlling torpedoes.
Still, something was missing. Hedy knew that radio signals could be jammed, so countermeasures against a radio controlled torpedo would be trivial. From her contacts through her ex-husband, she may also have known that German glide bombs used 18 different frequencies for control, manually selected before the bomb was released; any one frequency could be jammed, but in a full salvo of 18 bombs, at least a few would likely get through. But what if the bomb’s receiver and the transmitter in the launch plane could switch frequencies together? That would reduce the chance of jamming.
Hedy coined the term Frequenzsprungverfahren for her idea – literally, “frequency-hopping process.”
Hedy’s idea now had a name, but she had no idea how to build it.
When George heard Hedy’s idea in 1940, his mind turned to Ballet Mécanique.
Hedy and George refined their idea, coming up with ways to keep the two rolls in perfect synchronization, and adding extra transmit frequencies to send false signals to defeat countermeasures. In 1941, George and the recently remarried Hedy filed for a patent, and on August 11, 1942, US Patent number 2,292,387 was issued to “H.K. Markey et al” for a “Secret Communications System.”
Sadly, Hedy and George’s invention did not make it into any wartime weapons systems. Developed as it was under the auspices of the National Inventors Council, a wartime outfit set up to vet ideas with possible military application, their patent was classified, and the Navy, still reeling from Pearl harbor and trying to prosecute the war in the Pacific, was in no mood for innovation.
Today, you don’t have to look any further than your phone to see Hedy’s legacy – Bluetooth, GPS, and cell phone networks all depend on variations of the spread-spectrum system Hedy first conceived.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Next Big IT Projects From the University Labs
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/11/16/1956236/the-next-big-it-projects-from-the-university-labs
From unstructured data mining to visual microphones, academic labs are bringing future breakthrough possibilities to light, writes InfoWorld’s Peter Wayner in his overview of nine university projects that could have lasting impact on IT. ‘Open source programmers can usually build better code faster’
9 research projects that could transform the enterprise
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3004876/application-development/9-research-projects-that-could-transform-the-enterprise.html
From unstructured data mining to visual microphones, academic labs are bringing future breakthrough possibilities to light
If you take a look at the list of trending repositories on GitHub, you’ll see amazing code from programmers who live around the world and efforts for firms big and small. But one thing you don’t often see is work that comes from the university labs. It’s rare for the next big thing to escape from an academic computer science department and capture the attention of the world.
That’s not a knock on university research. But competing with open source projects that enjoy broad support across the industry and around the world is challenging for a handful of academics and grad students. Sure, many of the top computer science schools are well off, but that doesn’t mean the money is pouring into research. Open source programmers, on the other hand, can usually build better code faster, often because their have bosses who pay them to build something that will pay off next quarter, not next century.
Yet good computer science departments still manage to punch above — sometimes well above — their weight.
DeepDive
Big data is one area where academia’s focus on mathematical foundations can pay off, and one of the more prominent packages to gain attention of late is DeepDive, a tool for exploring unstructured text
ZeroCoin
Bitcoin may be many things, but it is not as anonymous as many assume. The system tracks all transactions
ZeroCoin wants to change that.
Burlap
Finding the best route or the optimal answer can be harder than looking for a needle in a haystack. Many problems have billions, trillions, or even quadrillions of possible solutions, and finding the best one takes plenty of computing power.
Burlap lets you define the problem as a network of nodes with vectors of features or attributes attached to it. The algorithms can search through the network using a combination of brute-force searching and statistically guided exploration.
SpiroSmart
The smartphones may let us talk, text, and even watch cat videos, but their greatest contribution to society may be as mobile doctors, ready to track our health, day in and day out.
Halide
As digital photography becomes more common, it’s only natural that people will want to do more to their images than merely look at them. Some want to filter the colors, others want to edit the images, and still more want to use the images as input to some algorithm, perhaps for steering an autonomous car.
Halide is a computer language for image processing designed to abstract away these decisions for you. It will worry about the loops and GPU conversions for you.
Visual Microphone
Cameras have traditionally been used to take static photos of things to save for the future.
Now that superfast cameras can capture hundreds or thousands of images per second, researchers are discovering that the cameras can do more than imitate the eyes. They can also do what our ears and skin can do by sensing sound or vibration using light alone.
Drake
Robots and drones are becoming more and more common in the enterprise as they move from the labs and take on crucial roles. Controlling these machines requires a good grasp of the laws of physics. Drake is a collection of packages that makes it a bit easier to write the code controlling these machines.
R
Anyone who’s spent time with big data or data scientists knows that they rely, more often than not, on a language called R to chew through the numbers and deliver the kind of statistical insights that make managers happy.
Education
Now, saving the best for last, is the one thing that universities do better than anyone: teach.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What you need to know about sales innovation: Tiffani Bova, Gartner distinguished analyst
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3001222/digital-transformation/sales-innovation-tiffani-bova-vp-distinguished-analyst-gartner.html
Tiffani Bova, VP and distinguished analyst at Gartner, is passionate about helping her clients grow and increase competitiveness through sales innovation. She discusses that and why she believes the most disruptive thing in the market today is not technology, it’s the customer
Her current emphasis is focused on improving sales methodologies, processes and performance. She is passionate about helping her clients grow and increase competitiveness through sales innovation. She is constantly on the lookout for transformative sales models with the potential for profound impact on the way products and services are brought to market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tanya Lewis / Business Insider:
Andreessen Horowitz has raised $200M for a new fund for health software startups, focusing on digital therapeutics, cloud biology, and computational medicine
A top Silicon Valley VC firm is investing $200M in health software startups
http://uk.businessinsider.com/andreessen-horowitz-to-invest-in-health-2015-11?op=1?r=US&IR=T
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft:
‘Future Visions’ anthology brings together science fiction – and science fact — Download your free copy authored by luminaries, inspired by the work of Microsoft researchers.
http://news.microsoft.com/futurevisions/
Tomi Engdahl says:
JetPack takes flight around Lady Liberty
http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2015/11/12/jetpack-statue-of-liberty.cnnmoney/index.html?iid=surge-story-summary
JetPack Aviation takes a flyer around the Statue of Liberty. CNN’s Jeanne Moos has the amazing test flight right out of the Jetsons.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Military Targets Wearables, Bioelectrics
DARPA programs target bio feedback
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328313&
Members of the U.S. Armed Forces may be the toughest consumers of all, especially when it comes to wearables. The demand for precision technology that isn’t clunky and has a long battery life far exceeds that of the traditional wearable market.
“When it comes to wearables in the military, the calculus is very different,” said Pae Wu, a scientific consultant to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which commissions advanced research for the Department of Defense. “Ultimately, it must be able to support and advance a warfighter execute on his or her mission.”
The U.S. military makes great use of smartphones, Wu said, noting that she is not a representative of DARPA. The move to wearables requires significant “situational awareness” and “actionable data” beyond tracking vital signs like heart rate.
“Nobody in the military cares if a technology is neat if it doesn’t provide data that allows [fighters] to take a decision [in combat],” Wu said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
10 Early Stage Technology Innovations Point to Future
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328320&
The electronics industry is evolving quickly, with innovations in emerging technologies, including printed electronics, wearable technology, 3D printing, sensors, energy harvesting, electric vehicles and new advanced materials, appearing at an astonishing rate. Last week, at the IDTechEx Show! in Santa Clara, CA, ten such startup companies showcased their tech as part of IDTechEx Launchpad.
“The show will have over 200 exhibitors.” Raghu Das, chief executive officer of market research firm IDTechEx told EBN in an interview before the show. “However, there are many young companies who raise money on Kickstarter or come out of a university, and we wanted to be able to put them in front of the 3,000 or so people who will be at the show,” Das said. “They probably couldn’t do that on their own. So we decided to take the 10 most exciting embryonic technologies and let people see what they can do. All of them are bringing prototypes.”
At the showcase, which is sponsored by global semiconductor maker Qualcomm, ten early-stage companies will share prototypes and demonstrations of products. In addition, Qualcomm will announce and demonstrate its printed electronics-enabled golf performance sensor.
Some of the most exciting include new ways of thinking about electronic components. For example, some new technologies allow circuits to be printed or drawn using special ink, which allows for the creation of larger surface areas and more affordable price points. Others are stretchable or transparent.
Tomi Engdahl says:
80/20 Extrusion Goes Main Stream
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/23/8020-extrusion-goes-main-stream/
We had to do a double take when we saw this kickstarter campaign video – and we bet you will too. It seem as if some company called [Infento Rides] took generic 80/20 aluminum extrusions and built a viable commercial product out of it – that’s not something you see everyday. 80/20 is meant to be something that engineers use to build things like test rigs and manufacturing fixtures. It’s not exactly an item designed for the consumer or end user. But we think the DIY/teaching aspect of this idea really has legs wheels.
If you’re old enough you may remember Erector Sets (they were mechanical equivalent of the 200-in-1 electronics kits) back in the day. Well, this type of product brings back memories of both. It’s a perfect tool for getting kids interested in making – sure, they aren’t “making” much, but we all start somewhere.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Laser Cut Mechanical Logic Gates
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/23/laser-cut-mechanical-logic-gates/
When you create logic circuits using ICs or FPGAs, you can’t easily visualize their operation without special tools. But if you’ve ever seen a mechanical computer (like the Computer History Museum’s Babbage engine) operate, you know you don’t have that problem. Just like it is fascinating to watch a 3D printer or CNC machine, watching a mechanical logic gates work can be addictive.
[Anthony] wanted to build some mechanical logic gates and set out designing them using Inkscape.
Rod Logic and Mechanical Computation
http://anthony-zhang.me/blog/rod-logic/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Uber Will See You Now
Uber-delivered flu shots are just the beginning.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniemlee/heres-how-uber-wants-to-shake-up-health-care#.xdB5BGA87
Someday, an Uber — not an ambulance — could appear at your door and whisk you to the hospital. Or to a doctor’s appointment. Or it could bring the doctor to wherever you are, whenever you want.
Uber doesn’t have immediate plans to do any of this, but it appears to be laying the groundwork to serve up health care at the tap of a button, just as it has rides and, more recently, food, drugstore necessities, and even kittens.
For four hours on Thursday, Uber customers could summon nurses to administer flu shots for $10; the company hoped to vaccinate as many as 10,000 people across 36 U.S. cities.
More significantly, the company announced this week that it’d hired its first-ever health adviser: John Brownstein, director of the Computational Epidemiology Group at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Flu shots are a major public health intervention, but “it’s still not necessarily convenient,”
a study published Tuesday in Annals of Internal Medicine. Of the 486 who responded to a follow-up survey, 70% said they were somewhat or definitely unlikely to get a flu shot in a traditional way — like in a doctor’s office — and about 80% said the program’s convenience was a significant reason they got vaccinated.
Those figures inspired Uber to expand the service this year. Ten bucks bought patients a “wellness” bag with flu prevention supplies (tissues, hand sanitizer, an Uber water bottle) and the option to request up to 10 free flu shots (for other people on-site, like relatives or co-workers) administered by registered nurses with Passport Health, a travel medicine clinic. Patients had to fill out consent and waiver-of-liability forms, just as they would at a pharmacy, Uber said.
Brownstein has big plans for Uber’s foray into health care: He said Uber’s drivers, which now number around 400,000 in the U.S., could someday shuttle patients to clinical trial centers or doctor’s offices, especially for scheduled, repeat visits — or vice versa.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Telemedicine: The State of Telepresence In Healthcare
http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/11/23/0015230/telemedicine-the-state-of-telepresence-in-healthcare
Telemedicine can let doctors and nurses check in on patients who might be recovering at home, or monitor people in remote locations where it’s hard to access physician services. This article gives an overview of the different systems that are out there, what are some of the legal obstacles, and how various countries are investing in the technology. From the article: “The Japanese government has allocated about $23M USD to the core technology market in an effort to develop products for its aging population.
South Korea is estimated to be allocating nearly $6B USD to their own robotics research.
The state of telepresence: Healthcare and telemedicine
http://robohub.org/the-state-of-telepresence-healthcare-and-telemedicine/
As the number of humans age 65+ grows throughout the world, many will look to stay at home, rather than in assisted living or nursing homes, and telepresence robots could be an important ingredient in helping them to achieve that independence. While the telepresence market is relatively small right now (less than $200M USD), it does provide a means of entry for companies that are looking to get into the assisted care market, estimated to be nearly $4B USD.
The Japanese government has allocated about $23M USD to the core technology market in an effort to develop products for its aging population. Toyota, for example, is focusing on home living assistance robots that will allow those with limited mobility the opportunity to live at home. While Japan might have the largest market in the world of 65+ citizens (over 30 million as of 2014), South Korea is estimated to be allocating nearly $6B USD to their own robotics research. The Koreans are taking a different approach, using robots for mundane tasks of delivering food, allowing humans to provide care.
It will be up to our social and legal systems to keep the pace if we are to allow the technology a chance to provide the solution.
Tomi Engdahl says:
We need to invent something new after antibiotics:
A Post-Antibiotic Future Is Looming
http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/11/22/0335243/a-post-antibiotic-future-is-looming?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
A gene enabling resistance to polymyxins, the antibiotics of last resort, has been found to be widespread in pigs and already present in some hospital patients.
“Our results reveal the emergence of the first polymyxin resistance gene that is readily passed between common bacteria such as Escherichia coli and Klesbsiella pneumoniae, suggesting that the progression from extensive drug resistance to pandrug resistance is inevitable.”
Work on alternatives is progressing
Antibiotic resistance: New gene found in China heralds breach in last line of defence
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/antibiotic-resistance-gene-found-china-final-breach-humans-last-line-antibiotic-defence-1529529
A new gene has been discovered that allows bacteria to become resistant to our last line of antibiotic defence. The gene, MCR-1, was found to be widespread in pigs and patients in south China, with some strains having epidemic potential.
MCR-1 was found to enable bacteria to become resistant to polymyxins; the colistin and polymyxin B. These were the last classes of antibiotics in which resistance could not spread from cell to cell, said Jian-Hua Liu, from South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou.
“These are extremely worrying results. Until now, colistin resistance resulted from chromosomal mutations, making the resistance mechanism unstable and incapable of spreading to other bacteria,”
MCR-1 was found during routine testing for antimicrobial resistance in China.
“Our results reveal the emergence of the first polymyxin resistance gene that is readily passed between common bacteria such as Escherichia coli and Klesbsiella pneumoniae, suggesting that the progression from extensive drug resistance to pandrug resistance is inevitable,” Liu said.
The team found the rate of transfer between different bacteria was extremely high between e-coli strains.