IFTF's Future Now

links for 2008-02-28

• Tapping The Source: The Power Of The Oceans
  (tags: energy alternativeenergy oceans oceanpower)
• Le Monde.fr : Réseaux sociaux : des audiences différentes selon les continents
  social networking sites by country (in French)
  (tags: socialnetworking Internet culture maps)
• textually.org: Mobile phone radiation might alter protein expression in human skin
  (tags: mobile cellphones health radiation)
• 农村信息网－－中国第一农业门户网站
  China Mobile's ag info service, can be delivered on mobiles or internet as well
  (tags: China rural Internet cellphones agriculture)

links for 2008-02-27

• Technology Futures, Inc.: Publications: Technology Forecasting Guides
  (tags: futures forecasting technology)

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

• Deepwater Wind: Turbines are eyesores. So why not put them out on the high seas?
  (tags: oceans energy alternativeenergy ocean wind)
• The downside of a good idea
  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.
  (tags: cognitive collaboration creativity decision-making innovation networks)
• Welcome To GEEP: The Group Experiment Environment Project
  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.
  (tags: decision-making collective_intelligence collaboration games groups online psychology X2)
• Global Biopact on biofuels can bring benefits to both rich and poor nations
  "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."
  (tags: biofuel sustainability globalization X2 development environment environmental_services)
• On-Line Publications by John Law, Lancaster University
  (tags: STS sociology academic X2)
• LRB · Donald MacKenzie: The Political Economy of Carbon Trading
  Review of carbon trading markets.
  (tags: carbontrading climate_change economics environment X2 environmental_services markets)

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

• Virtual China－－not the blog!!
  compilation of virtual mapping of Chinese cities
  (tags: China maps mapping Internet location)

links for 2008-02-24

• Mapping Success in China at BV Capital
  Two mapping companies stand out as leaders in a crowded market but each have effectively taken a separate approach to attracting users.
  (tags: China mobility cellphones mapping location)

links for 2008-02-23

• Electronic tattoo display runs on blood
  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
  (tags: phone transhumanism displays body bodyhacking xpeople)
• Rede Gemas da Terra de Telecentros Rurais
  Gems of the Earth Brazilian rural telecenter--videoblogs. DIY villagers' videos.
  (tags: Brazil video blogging rural Internet telecenter)
• Situationally Appropriate Solutions
  "Houseplant care as a timekeeping issue."
  (tags: ubicomp design learning smart_home X2)

links for 2008-02-22

• TU Delft - Corporations and Cities: Sympoisa
  (tags: cities corporations real_estate nl netherlands)
• Argo - part of the integrated global observation strategy
  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.
  (tags: environment ocean sea sensors science instruments observatory X2)
• Global Ocean Observing System
  "GOOS is a permanent global system for observations, modelling and analysis of marine and ocean variables."
  (tags: oceans oceanography X2 observatory ubicomp)

links for 2008-02-21

• A conversation with Chris Anderson, Curator of TED Conference - Charlie Rose
  (tags: ted conference future technology California video)
• 2008 Index of Silicon Valley
  (tags: SiliconValley California economic_development cities regional)
• Scientists without borders to launch May 12 2008
  (tags: science X2 NYAS)
• Brooklyn Museum: Exhibitions: Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition
  (tags: art crowdsourcing media brooklyn museum)
• Japan: Google's Real-Life Lab
  (tags: japan jp search google mobility)
• Brainwave NYC
  (tags: brain Neuroscience nyc art meditation mental health)
• U.S. Universities Rush to Set Up Outposts Abroad
  (tags: education globalization nyu UAE AbuDhabi)
• Inside the Multimillion-Dollar Battle to Host the Air Force's New 'Cyber Command'
  (tags: cyberspace cyberwar military internet)
• They're Working on Their Own, Just Side by Side - New York Times
  On the coworking space movement.
  (tags: business community coworking work)
• ZuiPrezi
  This is beautiful. Go look at it.
  (tags: ZUI interface internet presentation collaboration)