Sunday, September 18, 2005

Next Up: Take-Home Thoughts @ AC2005 The final panel discussion here at Accelerating Change 2005 had quite a line-up of people: George Gilder, Gilder Technology Report Joichi Ito, Neoteny Steve Jurvetson, DFJ Beth Noveck, NY Law School Rudy Rucker,Computer Scientist, Author Cecily Sommers, PUSH Steve Jurvetson is a local VC who has a lot of foresight and great analysis skills. Cecily Sommers talked breifly about the two constants that they watch - change and human nature - which seem to forever dictate how things occur in the future. She mentioned that collaboration is one way that we can escape our fixed beliefs of the world, and maybe see new possibilities emerge from these collaborative conversations. Joi impressed me with his thoughts yesterday, and he mentioned that he is very involved in non-profits. He really believes that the next phase of the growth of the internet is more and more growth from the edges ... not central authorities. He commented on the evolution away from the larger commercial players - from Microsoft, to the telcos, and even Hollywood - to continue to open things up. He commented on BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and how they are starting to do their own thing when it comes to the Internet. Beth had three core points (as "the lawyer") that she realized from the conference - the brain (understanding the individual brain, and also the collective brain - the mind of the group), inviting more people from the arts, and lastlyhow to better use technology to serve social justice. I'm a long fan of George Gilder and his ability to synthesize such a wide range of high-level topics. What he saw in the conference is that the growth curves that we are seeing - including Moore's Law - are actually learning curves. These are reflecting human progress, and learning is a core aspect of that learning. It's all about information. Rudy was the final panalist to comment. He commented on his new book The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul ... and how everything breaks down to computation. I like the subtitle: What Gnarly Computation Taught Me About Ultimate Reality, the Meaning Of Life, and How To Be Happy ... pretty good. There was a breif discussion about Intelligent Design ... and I feel that George had some good comments on this. As Rudy had suggested that the entire universe is one huge computation, George suggested that a computer is intelligence ... which would make the universe a form of natural intelligence. It was interesting to hear this discussed ... I know that I have not heard enough of the debate to truly understand the theories in depth. Of course Intellectual Property came up in the discussion, and I liked what Joi had to say which was that he is not against IP, but he knows that it has become very skewed from what the founding fathers had intended.  He added that places like Brazil and China might be screwing up now, but they have the opportunity to look at things fresh ... to think about new models, or resetting them back to where they make sense. There was a final discussion that explored the potential threats to all of humankind ... or a big portion of it ... by all of the technology that we are creating.  How do we ensure that it is not used for "bad" purposes.  Even the financial aspects of capitalism were debated ... even though it has brought huge gains to the countries that have embraced it.  That was a close.  I'm off to the airport! 5:33:35 PM      identity Building the Metaverse @ AC2005 (Part II) Philip Rosedale CEO of Linden Labs (the makers of  Second Life) is now presenting his company and virtual world.  He immediately went into a demonstration of Second Life ... walking around the virtual world, interacting with objects.  He pulled a kiosk out of his pocket, and had it play a life streaming video, and then wandered around until he found other users.  He quickly created some objects, took pictures, put the pictures on objects as a texture, and even showed some of the physics by linking objects and swinging them around. I have heard there are weapons in Second Life, and he showed his pistol and shot at some things.  The core server farm is 1200 machines, and they are using ~200Mbps of bandwidth.  He indicated that the average is 70-80kbps per client machine.  There are currently over 50,000 users, with ~10,00 unique users per day ... about ~3,000 at any one time. The top in world avatar in making ~$150,000/year in Second Life, with many people making ~$100+ per month.  I have to admit that I am very interested in these virtual worlds and the many potential revenue sourrces that might exist.  Hmmmm .... 4:32:17 PM      identity Building the Metaverse @ AC2005 I am intrigued by the growth of 3D virtual worlds, and this session is one that I have been looking forward to. David Smith of the Croquet Project started off in his demonstration of Croquet. Alan Kay and his Squeak project are both contributors to this work. Croquet is a peer to peer collaborative 3D world. Avatars within the Croquet world can interact with objects, and the lower level messages are replicated within the peer group. He demonstrated this by manipulating some windows in the world, along with more complex objects. He also demonstrated stepping through a window ... a portal ... into a moon/mars scape. Moving through these portals allows the avatars to enter into alternative worlds. They both went through a portal into a "water world" and immediately transformed into fish. As they swam around they came across a "text editor" white board thing ... and edited the text on it. Ok ... he just opened a paint panel and drew a fish, colored it, and then inflated the 2D fish as he dropped it into the world. Now both of them were able to manipulate and move the new fish around. He entered another portal and showed a interactive spreadsheet, with the inherent ability to graph the values contained in the chart. He also demonstrated using windows as filters to show a filtered view of anything behind it. He was able to move it around showing the wire-frame models beneath the textures mapped onto objects. All of this is written in Smalltalk, and uses Squeak ... completely cross-platform to Windows, Mac, and Linux. He indicated that they will have a Python, Ruby, and other language support soon. Expanding on his filter demo, he showed how he can open a new window and use it as a portal to create new objects in the virtual world through the new window. So the window become a palette through which you are able to create even more content. Of course, as a development environment, he is also able to add code that will add behaviors to the objects.  I'm downloading it! 3:54:46 PM      identity T. Colin Campbell @ AC2005 Just prior to lunch I'm in a session on diet and nutrition ... good timing.  What I really like about this conference is the multi-disciplinary sessions ... the accelerating future of  everything! This session is titled T. Colin Campbell, Cornell University.  Changing the World one Bite at a Time: The China Study and he is immediately jumping into the "common sense" knowledge.  I'm sure that he is about to throw out some curves.  He feels that good nutrition is being forgotten ... we just don't think abou tit, or the implications, on a daily basis.  Like every time that we eat.  Oh ... and he said that supplements are NOT nutrition in his view. One powerful statement was that he believes that nutrition can bring the responsibility of health back to the individual!  In our age of exploding health costs, this makes complete sense.  We know that good nutrition can prevent and cure disease, controls disease producing genes, and reduces toxicities and facilitates metabolism.  He expressed his frustration where in specialized groups - sports as an example - the value of nutrition is so well known ... but not communicated to the average person. He reviewed his research into high-protein diets ... 20%+ ... and the high-incident of cancer that they found.  Up to 10% ... no effect ... but above that they saw an increased rate of cancer in animals.  In addition, they have gathered a lot of data showing the effects of animal proteins vs. plant proteins ... and the impacts on a long list or diseases.  At the end of his presentation he pointed to Biosignia as a web site to check out.  Ok ... time for lunch!  :-) 1:58:04 PM      identity Rebuilding our Bypassing our Institutions? @ AC2005 This panel discussion really demonstrated the forward thinking schools ... from around the globe.  There are many new types of programs that are being introduced into traditional education. Right now, the speaker from Tamkang University in Taiwan, Dr. Shun-Jie Ji, is describing their requirements in Future Studies and STEEP - Society, Technology, Economics, Environment, Politics.  It's very cool to see the multi-disciplinary aspects of what they are teaching ... from sciences to health and medicine ... all forward looking and exploring the future.  He is committed to creating stronger leaders who have the ability to accomplish more in the future world. The next speaker, Sr. Denise Lawrence, Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual Organization, talked about The Role of Meditation in Intelligent Learning ... yet another new twist in education.  Their experience is that meditation alters the quality and process of thought.  These thought processes become influenced by inner stillness, intuitive clarity, creative insight, and innate moral wisdom.  Intelligent learning is then enhanced and able to emerge from this experience. The final speaker (I missed the first one!) was Robin Raskin, Digital Mom, Author, Raising Digital Kids, and her comments are around not forgetting many of the core values of life.  As technology continues to accelerate, we seem to be moving away from "responsible computing".  To her, it appears that children are learning from adults that things are more permissible in the virtual world that are not "ok" in the real world.  She gave examples of where it is no longer about children being exposed to "naked people", but instead people who - in one case - encouraged a teen age girl to commit suicide by providing not only the chat room encouragement, but the detailed instructions on how to do it!  She feels that in the current overly scheduled, overly competitive world ... children actually see cyberspace as the last place to escape their "helicoptor parents" and hectic lives. Most of the "guides to parenting" have fallen far behind in communicating about cyberspace.  Children have started to lose the distinction of what a "friend" is ... they claim a friend, but often don't really know who that "friend" is in the real world.  Robin feels that as corporate dollars are now flowing into Friendster, MySpace, and other social networking sites they are becoming the same as on-line bars.  The Pew Institute just released a study that showed that only 38% of people - old or young - can distinguish paid vs. unpaid content! Robin really had to rush to fit her presentation into the time allotted, however she had some very good points and statistics ... the impacts on children, and then blurring of lines in cyberspace ... have got to be causing long-term effects in society that we have yet to see. 1:11:39 PM      identity Daniel Amen, MD @ AC2005 Daniel started off with a very interesting story about what they have learned by brain scans. He talked about a patient where they did a brain scan - exploring some severe martial issues - and found what appeared to be a brain with bad "toxicity". He indicated this was equivilent to heavy drug abuse or alcohol abuse. The man, and his wife, indicated there was no way he did either of these. What he found after numerous conversations is that He has imaged numerous criminals including murderers, and to him there are obvious patterns. He is amazed at the ignorance demonstrated when brain imaging in not used to diagnose mental health. All of his clinics work is based on 9 very simple principals: The brain is involved in everything you do. When your brain works right, you work right. When your brain doesn't work right, you have trouble. Brain is the most complex organ - 100b neurons, trillion supporting cells Brain is very soft, housed in a hard skull - brain injuries matter! One size does not fit everyone - most problems are not single or simple disorders Brain imaging can be very helpful - how do you know unless you look? The brain can change - right interventions help, wrong interventions hurt! Myth of the perfect brain - we all need a little help ... Brain is not completely developed until age 25 - myelinization occurs to optimize operation SPECT - single photon emission computed tomography - is how they do their brain imaging.  What he has found is that once people get an image of their brain they begin to explore other ways to continue to improve their brain.  Many of these methods are alternative medicine and supplements.  He showed a series of amazing images of healthy brains, stroke victims, alzheimers, and various head injuries. He indicated the core value is the ability to specifically target treatments, explain behavior, and predict future issues.  It also removes the stigma of "mental illness" ... as it is now a physical medical condition that can be treated through known science. Psychiatrists are the only medical specialists who rarely look at the organ they treat. The odds are that if a patient is having serious problems with feelings (eg, depression), thoughts (eg, schizophrenia), or behavior (eg, violence), the psychiatrist will never order a brain scan. He or she will prescribe medication, psychotherapy, electroconvulsive therapy, or a host of other treatments that will change brain function—but will not know which areas of the patient's brain work well, which areas work too hard, and which do not work hard enough. In my opinion, the lack of brain imaging has kept psychiatry behind medicine's other specialties, reducing our effectiveness with patients and hindering our efforts to reduce stigma and improve compliance. He indicated that a brain scan costs ~$1000, with a full check up costing ~$3200.  He said there are other things that are also coming into this same space ... one example is Journey to Wild Devine ... another set are outlined on his web site - Seven Ways to Optimize your Brain. 11:32:29 AM      identity Dileep George @ AC2005 Dileep is now starting his talk on Understanding the Neocortex to Accelerate our Understanding of Intelligence. He is one of the founders of Numenta with Jeff Hawkins. He immediately started to explore the traditional thoughts behind AI. Ignoring biology was common place, even with neural network research. In the 1990's things began to change. Now there is a groundswell of reasearch into biologically accurate systems. Hierarchical Temporal Memory is one of these research areas. This is a focus on the neo-cortex. He explained that: if I opened the top of your skull, I would see your neo-cortex. If I pulled it out, it would really be a crumpled sheet, about 1mm thick, and you could spread it on the table. It would look like a big thin tortilla. All of your memories from childhood on would be stored in that tortilla. Ok ... so I have a tortilla in my head! :-) Supporting the talk from yesterday, there is a main stream belief that the entire sheet of the neo-cortex is based on the same replicated base pattern. A basic neural module. So what does it do? the neocortex is a memory system (hierarchical, stores sequences) through exposure, it creates a model of the world (discovers causes of sensory data and how they behave) recognizes inputs and predicts the future (by analogy to past events) behavior is a by product of prediction (behavior and prediction are the same) Reptilian brains do not have a neocortex. It was mammalian brains that gained the neocortex. Initially only on the sensory side ... in humans it went even further and took control of the motor skills. In addition it is hierarchically organized. The hierarchy implements a series of feedback loops ... each level stores sequences of patterns. It passes a recognized pattern "up" by name, and also predicts the next element. This prediction is then passed "down" towards the senses to provide a reinforcing feedback loop. Numenta is well along the way of creating artificial systems that provide the same sort of trainable memory systems ... amazing. His demonstration showed a series of trained images - very low resolution for now - and then he would draw on another screen and allow the software to predict/select which image he had drawn. He showed how the recognition was very resistent to noise, and able to easily distinguish between similar images. It was crude ... but very impressive. He expects to see commercial solutions within 3 to 4 years. 10:51:13 AM      identity Tom Malone @ AC2005 Tom is from MIT and is speaking on The Future of Work ... and I believe that I am really going to like this talk. He is really interested in organizations ... and how Intelligence Amplification could come from organizations of intelligent humans. I thoroughly believe this, and that he is on the right track. One of his first examples is the Wikipedia, and that the organization of so many people - however loose - was an amazing feat. His bottom line prediction is that technology is changing the whole world of organizations in a way similar to the revolution of democracy. He feels that the costs of communications are the core element, allowing the individual to have access to vast amounts of information which allows for individual choice ... over top down management. His next example was eBay.  Amazing stats: $3.3 Billion revenue in 2004 ~430,000 people make their living from selling on ebay If these were employees, they would be one fo the 5 largest employers What eBay has attained is to reinvent the right kind of infrastructure and community to invent a whole new kind of retailing.  He feels this is the next logical stage of a pattern that has been repeated throughout history.  These stages have been: Bands - decentralized, unconnected Kingdoms - centralized Democracies - decentralized, connected He feels that transitions between stages are based on the declining costs of communications.  The more that decision making information can be decentralized to the edges, the more efficient and valuable the organization becomes. He had some interesting examples of how democratic principals are slowly entering into leading companies: W.L. Gore - managers become managers by finding people who want to work for them Visa International - independent banks vote on policy questions Mondragon Cooperative Corp - employees elect the board of directors and vote on key issues Markets are another way that this revolution is taking place.  Outsourcing is one type of market ... creating the e-lance economy.  Funny that Elance is a web site that actually implements this idea.  I have friends who have used Elance teams to do software development ... from Sri Lanka and India.  Intel has apparently been exploring the use of futures markets within their manufacturing to manage manufacturing capacity. MIT developed a Process Handbook with over 5000 processes and activities that can be used for planning purposes within organizations.  They are looking to create an Open Source version. He showed the classic self-organizing humans demonstration ... the interactive media solution by Cinematrix.  It demonstrates - with the flight simulator example that he showed - that there is a real power in collective human organizations that have simultaneous access to the same data. 9:55:26 AM      identity Mark Finnern @ AC2005 Mark works for SAP and runs their developer program ... he's been there a long time, and is a long time futurist.  His Introduction to Intelligence Amplification started with a number of slides covering thoughts by John Taylor Gatto.  Gatto posits that there is a Fourth Purpose behind institutional education.  He feels that the current design of the system is flawed, and more interested in teaching consumerism than anything else.  All of this proposes that there is a better way to educate, and maybe different things that we ought to be educating about. 9:45:21 AM      identity John Smart @ AC2005 John wrapped up the evening (beginning his talk at 11:21pm!) on How to Be a Tech Futurist ... 1. Introduction 2. Universal Assumptions 3. Two Processes of Change:  Evolution and Development 4. Introduction to Accelerating Change 5. Prediction:  Expecting the Future 6. Management: Thriving with Change 7. Creation:  Making the Future His talk reviewed how "futurism" is slowly becoming a real science ... a real area of study.  With the current states of Future Studies (2 US Graduate Programs), Science and Technology Studies (30+ US programs), and Technology Roadmapping (5 US programs + 1 PhD) there is a growing movement in the right direction. There were a couple of very interesting references that I hadn't seen yet.  One of them was the Shell report on energy consuption called Energy Needs, Choices, and Possibilities:  Scenarios to 2050 ... a very interesting analysis showing the relationship between per capita income and energy consumption.  When combined with the flattening of population on earth (estimated by the UN in their 2002 revision) is seems that many of the fears of past decades ar not going occur. John is always amazing to hear ... too many facts and references ... I'll be reading for weeks! 1:26:50 AM      identity Jamais Cascio @ AC2005 I have to admit that I am geting tired, and really just wanted to listen to this presentation and not think about blogging.  The Participatory Panopticon was the theme ... and it was a great talk ... well presented ... on the future world of always on cameras.  Jamais is a very good presenter ... 12:21:15 AM      identity

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