links for 2008-02-28
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social networking sites by country (in French)
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China Mobile's ag info service, can be delivered on mobiles or internet as well
About the Institute for the Future
- The Institute for the Future is an independent nonprofit research group. We work with organizations of all kinds to help them make better, more informed decisions about the future. We provide the foresight to create insights that lead to action. We take an explicitly global approach to strategic planning, linking macro trends to local issues in such areas as technology and society, health and health care, and global business trends.
About Future Now
IFTF's Future Now draws on research and forecasting at the Institute for the Future, a Palo Alto, CA think tank specializing in the future of technology, health, and organizational change. It began in September 2003.
Who is Future Now?
IFTF's Future Now is a group weblog, founded by Institute research director Alex Soojung-Kim Pang in September 2003. Its contributors include IFTF researchers interested in emerging technologies, the future of Asia, and the social and economic impacts on new technologies; IFTF corporate affiliates; academic partners; and members of the Innovation Lab, a Danish futures group with offices in Aarhus and Copenhagen. A complete list of contributors is available here.
The Future of Cities - A conversation about global urbanization in the 21st century
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24 posts from February 2008
February 28, 2008
February 27, 2008
February 26, 2008
The Candidates on Innovation and R&D
Neither I nor the Institute for the Future is endorsing anyone, but mulling through the websites of the final 3 last night (Clinton, Obama, and McCain). Here's what they have to say about innovation and R&D.
Clinton's site lays out a pretty detailed innovation agenda. Highlights include:
- A $50 billion fund for a new energy research agency, financed by taxes on oil companies. The emphasis is on energy independence first, and "alternative" (though specifically not clean or renewable) sources second. Read between the lines: NUCLEAR.
- 50% expansion of NSF, Energy Department and Defense Department research budgets. A very interesting proposal calls for an 8% earmark for "high-risk" research, in the spirit of DARPA. Presumably this could fund more "Grand Challenge" type science and engineering contests to broaden the innovation community.
- Triple the number and expand the size of NSF fellowship awards. This would bring the percentage of science graduates who get fellowships back to the relatively high levels of the 1960s.
Obama's innovation proposals are a bit harder to parse, scattered as they are across various issue categories. His research agenda is much bigger, calling for some $150 billion in energy research funding over the next decade (vs. Hillary's $50 billion and McCain's general lack of any statement on energy policy, let alone research), and doubling the overall federal research budget (vs. Hillary's 50% expansion).
McCain's site has a whole section on "Pro-Innovation Tax Cuts". As far as I can tell, the most relevant proposal is an R&D tax credit. This appears to be a permanent extension of the federal R&E tax credit established in 1981, though McCain only calls for a 10 percent credit, rather than the current 20 percent credit. While I'm not sure that its a lack of spending that is the problem for US R&D right now, rather the declining productivity in lead industries like pharmaceuticals and semiconductors. Still, while I suppose this credit is intended as an anti-offshoring effort, it might actually be just the thing to provide a few years of breathing room to figure out some solutions to the stagnation in R&D productivity. (Incidentally, both Clinton and Obama call for permanent extension of the R&E tax credit at the 20 percent level)
How any of this will be paid for, is indeed, something to deal with after the election.
Please point out corrections and omissions - we need to crowdsource this to keep up with the shifting political winds.
Technorati Tags: innovation, politics, public policy, R&D, science and technology
links for 2008-02-26
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IU psychologists discovered that "when information is freely shared, good ideas can stunt innovation by distracting others from pursuing even better ideas." Big connected groups are good at simple problems, but "small world groups" won on hard problems.
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GEEP is a system for understanding the emergent behavior of groups. In GEEP many individuals interact in real-time playing simple games through the web.
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"A global Biofuels Biopact between rich and poor countries can help alleviate poverty in the developing world while helping to solve the problems of global warming and energy security in the developed world."
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Review of carbon trading markets.
February 25, 2008
What Will We Learn From Emerging Maps of Social Networks?
Back in the heady days of the mid 1990s, when we were first starting to understand the linkages between the online world of the Web and the offline world of offices, homes, school, stores and entire cities, a number of scholars started trying to create maps of Internet infrastructure and the flows of data it carried. Martin Dodge, then at University College London's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, and now at the University of Manchester, compiled the best collection of these early maps at his Atlas of Cyberspace, now archived.
It seems that we're entering a similar phase of interest in the mapping of online social networks. Technology Review has published a gallery of the state of the art of social network graphs. What's interesting is that they are still largely non-geographic. If you look back at Dodge's Atlas you'll see this was the case with early web and Internet maps too. Only over time, as use diffused and techniques for geo-locating activity were developed, did we see maps of networks get embedded into geographic maps of the real world. Expect to see this soon as geo-data is harvested in these studies of the social web.
Those maps are going to raise a lot more questions than they answer though. A key assumption among a lot of the Silicon Valley crowd is that social networks transcend geography. Yet as people like Keith Hampton at MIT have shown, there's also a tremendous amount of new local, weak social ties growing on top of the Internet. Social theorists like to call these simultaneous, diverging trends "glocalization".
A good place to look for an early view of these maps is the New York Talk Exchange exhibit going on at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Based on AT&T IP network data analyzed and visualized by MIT's SENSEable City Laboratory, these images offer a glimpse into the grand-daddy of online social networks - the international telephone system. Glocalization indeed, as the maps illuminate clusters of calls from tightly-knit immigrant communities in Queens reaching across the globe to their homelands.
Look at the gallery in Technology Review: Between Friends
Technorati Tags: New York City, geography, social networks
links for 2008-02-25
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compilation of virtual mapping of Chinese cities
February 24, 2008
links for 2008-02-24
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Two mapping companies stand out as leaders in a crowded market but each have effectively taken a separate approach to attracting users.
February 23, 2008
links for 2008-02-23
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Jim Mielke's wireless blood-fueled display is a true merging of technology and body art. At the recent Greener Gadgets Design Competition, the engineer demonstrated a subcutaneously implanted touch-screen that operates as a cell phone display, with the po
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Gems of the Earth Brazilian rural telecenter--videoblogs. DIY villagers' videos.
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"Houseplant care as a timekeeping issue."
February 22, 2008
links for 2008-02-22
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The purpose of Argo is "to greatly improve the collection of observations inside the ocean through increased sampling of old and new quantities and increased coverage in terms of time and area." Its 3000 smart floats are spread around the world.
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"GOOS is a permanent global system for observations, modelling and analysis of marine and ocean variables."
February 21, 2008
links for 2008-02-21
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On the coworking space movement.
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This is beautiful. Go look at it.
February 20, 2008
links for 2008-02-20
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“Developers in Tijuana would build entire neighborhoods of generic 400-square-foot houses — miniature versions of suburban America,” Mr. Cruz said in an interview. “What I noticed is how quickly these developments were retrofitted by the tenants.
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Using the machine is more like watching television – a familiar experience for most Chinese peasants – than sitting in front of a computer.
February 19, 2008
links for 2008-02-19
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"The field of science communication is expanding rapidly. One of the main purposes of the conference is to bring different professional communicators together, to discuss [ways to] strengthen the dialogue between the research community and... society."
February 15, 2008
links for 2008-02-15
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"Human activities are affecting every square mile of the world's oceans, according to a study by a team of American, British and Canadian researchers who mapped the severity of the effects from pole to pole."
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1995 article arguing, "At this crucial juncture, a loose alliance of writers, hackers, capitalists and artists from the West Coast of the USA have succeeded in defining a heterogeneous orthodoxy for the coming information age: the Californian Ideology."
February 12, 2008
links for 2008-02-12
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ongoing compilation of ITU data, by OII research Hanteng Liao
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OII Chinese Wikipedia researcher (Taiwanese)
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abstract for paper on Chinese creative industries and datong
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blog on chinese internet, in chinese, by Wei He, The school of journalism & communication, Tsinghua University, China
Visiting Research Fellow,
The Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) & China Media Center (CMC), University of Westminst
"while a large majority of youth in both countries now feel dependent on digital technology, this attitude is especially pronounced in China. As many as 80 percent of Chinese respondents agreed that "Digital technology is an essential part of how I live,"
Henry Jenkins on fansubbing for Prison Break: "Web-based fan cultures were allowing rural youths to more actively engage with their urban counterparts and to become more fully integrated into online communities because they could consume the same televisi
Jenkins on impact of Chinese Internet for youth: "One might hypothesize that Chinese and American teens deal with the uncertainties of the digital environment in different ways: many American teens are unaware of the potential consequences of posting thei
Jenkins on serious games in China: "the industry representatives at this event sought to continually reassure participants that they were fully aware of their ethical and social responsibilities. These responsibilities operate at multiple levels -- not si
"More than a third of mobile phone owners in China, the world's largest mobile market, use their handsets to listen to music, more than in Britain or the United States, a study showed.Some 34.8 percent reported they listened to mobile music every mont
"Roland Soong, whose Zonaeuropa blog is one of the most respected sources of information about mainland websites, believes people in China have higher expectations of the internet."In other countries, there are other platforms for ordinary people to e
"This article will discuss the rise of mobile communication studies and the role of locality, then turn to one of the centres for mobile innovation, Seoul, to discuss the role of mobile media as a domestic new media."
translation of a conversation on the “socialized Web” between three Internet luminaries that was posted on the blog of Mai Tian, the host of this mini-salon. Xie Wen is a major shareholder in Ourgame.com, a popular casual gaming site; he served briefl
downloadable books, sms, and more for cellphones
February 11, 2008
The Big Mac, symbol of globalization
A Canadian and South African research team has studied the "phylogenetic distribution" of the human diet, using a Big Mac meal as a case study:
University of Calgary plant evolutionary ecologist Jana Vamosi, working with a team led by Serban Proches from Stellenbosch University in South Africa, found that humans likely stand alone when it comes to the spectrum of species we consume. Our ability to process food combined with an insatiable hunger for new tastes and international trade systems has also led to food becoming the ultimate product of a globalized society.
“Generally speaking, we eat very broadly from the tree of life,” Vamosi said. “Others have looked at the sheer number of plant species we consume but nobody has ever examined whether the plants we eat are clustered in certain branches. It turns out that they are not.”
In a paper published in the current issue of the scientific journal BioScience, the researchers examined more than 7,000 plant species commonly eaten by people to determine the origins and evolutionary relationships of the various plants that comprise humankind’s menu. In addition to confirming the incredible number of species that are regularly eaten, they found that we chow down on members of a remarkably high number of plant families known to biology.
As a case study, the scientists analyzed the ingredients of a simple fast food meal – a McDonald’s Big Mac, French fries and a cup of coffee – to illustrate how the average human diet in developed nations is more diverse than ever before. From potatoes that were first domesticated in South America to mustard that was developed in India, onions and wheat that originated in the Middle East and coffee from Ethiopia, they found the meal contained approximately 20 different species and ingredients that originated around the world.... This leads to the conclusion that “a Big Mac is an apt symbol of globalization.”
Technorati Tags: food, globalization
February 09, 2008
links for 2008-02-09
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Master's thesis by Nick Noe, founder of http://www.mideastwire.com/
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Op ed by Nick Noe founder of http://www.mideastwire.com/
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Translation and filtering service for Middle East and Arabic news services.
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With input from people around the world -- much of it on this website -- an international group of leading technological thinkers were asked to identify the Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century. Return here on February 15, 2007 at 2PM EST
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Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded.
February 08, 2008
links for 2008-02-08
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"I am interested in exploring the capability of computers to anticipate human behavior. Much of my research involves applying machine learning and network analysis techniques to large human behavioral datasets."
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"Since 2003, kiwanja.net has been helping local, national and international non-profit organisations make better use of information and communications technology in their work."
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A blog about technology, mobility, and Africa.
February 07, 2008
links for 2008-02-07
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"I was lucky enough to happen to be in Boston at the same time as an event titled Publishing in the New Millennium at which PLoS founder Harold Varmus and PLoS ONE Community Manager Bora Zivkovic were speaking."
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Move over, microscope. The most important tool for making new scientific discoveries may well be the computer.... Computational power, said [Thomas] LeBlanc... "has changed how we think about problems. It has changed how we think about science."
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"We're delighted that Geoff Oldham has joined us today for a look at both the past and the future of science and technology collaboration for development." Oldham was chairman of the UN Advisory Committee on S&T for Development.
February 06, 2008
Rival companies achieve musical harmony in my living room
I am always looking for new and different ways to use technology to consume media, and today a friend introduced me to a great way to bring together two proprietary technologies from competing companies.
I recently bought an XBOX360 because I wanted to Rock Band, and with the pledge of weekly downloadable content releases, my PS2 just was not going to cut it. So I broke down and made my largest "gaming" purchase in, well, ever. Since then, I've acquired three wireless controllers and a bunch of games, including Burnout Paradise, a driving game that encourages you to smash into things and drive off of ramps at ridiculous speeds. It's great fun and offers pretty fantastic online multiplayer action.
One interesting feature of this game is that while driving around Paradise City, a "radio" plays in the background. You are able to change the track, but the game obviously has a limited number of tracks, and only a handful of them are good. This made me want to find a way to play my own music while tearing up the "city" instead of what the game had to offer me.
I already knew from the first incarnation of XBOX that you can replace the game's music with yours, but the problem is that all of my music lives on a Mac. Microsoft makes it possible to stream from PCs running a Window OS, but not from Apple computers. Since I wouldn't really need to install Windows for any other reason, I thought I was stuck with the included music forever.
Today, however, my friend told me about Connect360, a program from Nullriver that costs $20, lives in System Preferences, and enables streaming from Mac to XBOX360. Quite frankly, it was easier to get the computers connected than using the Windows capabilities with a PC. Now, I'm streaming Bebel Gilberto—I am not playing the game, I'm working, this is not driving music—from my work MacBook on the couch to my XBOX360 connected to the stereo. And it works incredibly well.
Now if I could just send data from my XBOX to Last.FM...
links for 2008-02-06
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Richard Ackerman's "Thoughts on the use of technology and other issues for science libraries and science publishers." Ackerman is "a technology architect and information security officer at NRC CISTI, Canada's National Science Library and Publisher."
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Drexel chemistry professor working on "Open Source/Open Notebook Science using Blogs and Wikis; Cheminformatics and scientific knowledge management; The synthesis and testing of novel anti-malarial agents via a Ugi reaction."
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Jean-Claude Bradley's blog about "News about E-Learning in the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University."
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"As our population ages and needs more care, there will be fewer young people to provide it. But don’t expect to fill the personnel gap with humanoid robotic nurses, say a majority of the more than 700 IEEE Fellows."
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Nova's been thinking lately about whether or not it is possible to formulate a scale of universal cognitive capabilities, such that any intelligent system -- whether naturally occurring or synthetic -- can be classified according to its cognitive capacity
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"The Institute of Research Development and Commercialisation coordinates and supports the university’s academic community through services that facilitate their research, development, commercialisation and intellectual property protection activities."
February 05, 2008
links for 2008-02-05
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"How will technology change the way we shop, learn and entertain ourselves? How will it change the way we get news, protect our privacy, connect with friends? We look ahead 10 years, and imagine a whole different world."
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Conference at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, September 8-12, 2008.
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"Thomas Heinze’s research focuses on knowledge creation, transfer and innovation in science-based fields of technology, particularly nano S&T."
February 02, 2008
links for 2008-02-02
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The arrest of Red Diamond Empire has made it impossible for people to figure out the red line of Internet speech to the point where they didn't know whether they can discuss the weather anymore.
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"This paper examines factors that contribute to a well-performing tradable permit market." There are many "empirical analyses of individual tradable permit markets;" this paper "develops and employs an analytical framework for comparing across markets."
February 01, 2008
File Under Really Unexpected, Unintended Consequences
There's a lot of nasty chemical things in our world to be afraid of. We're increasingly aware of the risks from endocrine disruptors, and the toxicity of nanomaterials is a growing concern.
But I never thought I'd be afraid of sunscreen.
Why? Because there is new evidence that ingredients in the thousands of metric tons of sunscreen that washes off swimmers around the world each year is re-activating dormant viruses in the symbiotic bacteria that inhabit coral reefs.
Technorati Tags: aquaculture, unintended consequences
links for 2008-02-01
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