September 2009
37 posts
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Coming soon: A journalistic ‘state of nature’ « ... →
Interesting scenario thoughts about the future of journalism as a comment to Clay Shirky’s prediction about the death of print news media.
It starts with:
According to many…the perfect storm is approaching [regarding journalism and news media]. The winds have been whipping for a while. But there’s a problem. The Old King is dying… but the New King, apparently, isn’t quite ready yet.
The...
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The Singularity and Society | Open The Future |... →
Really good point, Jamais (again):
There’s too little discussion of how the social, cultural and political choices we make would shape the onset or even the possibility of a Singularity.
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Worldometers - real time world statistics →
If you wonder about the numbers about the current state of the planet enter this site. There is a risk that you will feel a little stressed by this though…
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Scenarios about Anarconomy (PDF) →
Really interesting scenarios from Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies/Instituttet for Fremtidsforskning about the future of our economy and the emerging business models which goes under the names of “anarconomy”.
(via @bruces (via @MoJoe))
Futures Thinking: The Basics | Open The Future |... →
Jamais writes about how to think about the future in general. I would have written it a bit differently, but since I haven’t written that (yet) I will happily recommend what Jamais is writing! ;-)
(I probably won’t stop when I have done that that either… I usually like what he writes even if I don’t always agree…))
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WatchHow Technology Is Changing the Face of Innovation - WSJ.com
Listen to Michael Schrage explain how managers should do to manage innovations in three minutes.
He is basically saying: don’t have your employees come up with suggestion which is converted into grand plans of implementation, but with business hypotheses that can quickly be tested directly on the market.
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How Technology Is Changing the Face of Innovation... →
By ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON And MICHAEL SCHRAGE:
We think the future of innovation and the future of experimentation will continue to evolve, thanks to the improving economics of digital technologies. As a result, the next decade of innovation in the global marketplace will be even more tumultuous than the last. That’s a great opportunity for innovators and even better news for customers and...
§ Google Book Search - What it means
infoneernet:
This past week Google and OnDemandBooks announced a partnership (video) to bring the growing collection (currently more than 1,000,000) of public domain books directly to OnDemandBooks’ Espresso Book Machine. The Google content joins more than 800,000 in-copyright titles from more than 8,000 publishers and approximately 1,500,000 public domain titles available from the Internet...
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At Your Fingers, an Oxford Don - NYTimes.com →
Today, though, 21st-century technology carries the potential to nudge mainstream education back toward the 16th-century vision of one-to-one tutoring. The Internet, high-speed networks, powerful and lighter computers, and clever software for video, collaboration and simulations on the Web all help. Equally important is a maturing understanding of how to use wisely the new digital tools in...
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“Students starting school this year may be part of the last generation for which...”
– A Virtual Revolution Is Brewing for Colleges - washingtonpost.com
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WatchA very interesting talk by Dr Anders Sandberg about Cloud Superintelligence, where he explains and elaborates on some of the mechanisms behind cloud intelligence and how collaboration of many mediocre agents can achieve greater intelligence when they collaborate.
Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » Presentation: Anders Sandberg - Cloud Superintelligence
To see this slides from his presentation...
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George Rebane: Workers and Work - The Coming... →
An interesting article with both an analysis and a proposal for action.
The bottom line is that fewer jobs will return, and on balance, these jobs will require smarter workers trained in new skills. This “creative destruction” of jobs will continue into the indefinite future. So what happens to the workers in developed countries, specifically in America? To attempt an answer, we have to review...
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The Consumerization of Corporate IT →
But IT departments are on the verge of repeating history. Indeed, IT managers, who felt the initial threat from PCs most keenly and led the charge against them, are now (perhaps unknowingly) standing in the way of what could be a second wave of consumerization in enterprise technology — and it’s costing their companies dearly.
'The Internet of Things' now includes a human... →
Modern communications technology is not just connecting our minds and dead things together anymore. Now it also connects living parts of our bodies.
WatchHans Rosling: Let my dataset change your mindset | Video on TED.com
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Predicting tipping points before they occur -... →
It is really interesting to notice that scientists and systems theorists are catching up and is generalizing the observations concerning that systems are signaling a coming bifurcation point by showing certain fractal patterns.
As a futurist I regularly use a similar explanation for why businesses and societies are currently showing so many extreme and contradictory phenomena at the same time:...
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Five million students going back to school are... →
infoneernet:
It’s always tough to bid farewell to summer and hit the books again, but for a few million students this back-to-school season, things are looking up. As of this fall, over five million students at thousands of schools in more than 145 countries have “gone Google” and are actively using Google Apps Education Edition on campus. Since this time last year the number of students using...
The ultimate hack: reverse engineering the human... →
While researchers have for years taken a similar approach to better understanding parts of our gray matter, neuroscientists now say that within a decade it will be possible to create a digital model that replicates all functions of the human brain.
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Fixers Aim to Fix Fixes With Another Phony Fix by... →
Bill Bonner comments on the the singularity wih saying something like: The smart people who tries to fix things for the better - and usually fail and and fix it again - will according to the singularity theory be accompanied by exponentially smarter computers to continue in that direction.
History of nanotechnology | NanomedicineCenter.com →
In 1974, Norio Taniguchi of the Tokyo Science University, defined the term nanotechnology for the first time. According to his definition, nanotechnology encompasses separating, processing, consolidating and deforming matter at atomic and molecular scales. Although the term nanotechnology got its definition in 1974, the actual concept was introduced way back in 1867, when James Clerk Maxwell...
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The Government Could Potentially Take Control Of... →
Interesting and not impossible chain of events. I have been thinking along these lines for some time and unfortunately see this as pretty likely.
Millions of people decide they don’t like the way the US government is handling a major issue–healthcare for example–they start protesting.
They use social networks to voice their concerns, Twitter almost buckles under the strain of the conversations.
...
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College for $99 a Month by Kevin Carey |... →
It is interesting to watch the emergence of new models which will facilitate higher and applied education of the future.
I think we ought to extrapolate this one more step. Yes, it is feasible to think that 20 year olds are taking classes over the web for a university on the other side of the globe.
But these models will probably also step by step go down in ages and also compete with schools on...
How much are you prepared to pay for an eReader →
Forrester have been asking an important question about eReaders. I am not at all sure the result corresponds to reality, but the result might inspire other players in the market to experiment with business models with ideas from other industries who already has solved the problem with spreading enough players or readers to create a content explosion.
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How Big Is the Apple iPhone App Economy? The... →
infoneernet:
If I were to tell you that Apple’s app economy was worth more than $2.5 billion a year, you would laugh hysterically, shake your head and walk out of the room, yes? Surf on over to some other web site? But here I am telling you exactly that! According to mobile advertising startup AdMob, there are some $200 million worth of applications sold in Apple’s iPhone store every month, or...
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The future of libraries, with or without books →
infoneernet:
The stereotypical library is dying — and it’s taking its shushing ladies, dank smell and endless shelves of books with it.
Books are being pushed aside for digital learning centers and gaming areas. “Loud rooms” that promote public discourse and group projects are taking over the bookish quiet. Hipster staffers who blog, chat on Twitter and care little about the Dewey Decimal...
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From home schooling to 'unschooling' --... →
Unschooling is picking up and will probably do so even more when e g
the value systems of parents and children are conflicting with government and school ideas of education, behavior and objectives
information and knowledge is more easily accessible everywhere via the Internet
the goal of attending an education for 16+ years have traditionally been a certain job, a position or at least...
August 2009
57 posts
Is Social Networking Changing Childhood? →
infoneernet:
According to the poll’s key findings, teens admit to many behaviors while using social networks:
22% of teens check social networking sites more than 10 times a day, while only 4% of parents believe kids are checking that much
51% of teens check social networking sites more than once a day, while only 23% of parents say their kids check more than once a day
28% have shared...
OLEDs Could Be as Cheap as Newspaper to Produce →
infoneernet:
Plasma televisions are already on the outs with consumers due to their energy-sucking tendencies, meanwhile LCD screens have closed the gap on picture quality and are more energy efficient. But as many TV buffs know, organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens are the future—if scientists can figure out how to produce them cheaply enough. Researchers at Japan’s RIKEN center think...
