Anyone pondering the future of television programming and related business models had better talk to my son Carson.

At the ripe old age of 18 months, he’s already a veteran iPhone and, now, iPad user. Having watched Carson control his exploration of media for nearly six months, I’m now convinced that there is no future for passive video consumption on any device — at least not once marketers become interested in him.

This isn’t going to be a gradual shift. This isn’t about migrating video to internet connected TVs or other devices. This definitely isn’t about moving some media dollars to support a schedule of :30s on Hulu or a home page roadblock on YouTube.

This is about how a generation feeding on absolute control and connectivity will have a completely different perception of media overall, and video in particular. The ramifications for programming and advertising are far more significant than anyone inside the current ecosystem is prepared or equipped to address. (…)

Here’s what we’ve found most interesting: While our son still has some tolerance for passive video watching on a television or mobile device, when given the choice, he almost always chooses the interactive experience. (…) I suspect that my son and other children of his generation will demand a seismic shift in programming — from static, passive video to immersive, interactive and intertwined content available on-demand and on any device.

{ Mike Henry/AdAge | Continue reading }

photo { Bill Owens }

Two factors complicate the task of economic forecasting today – the first I bet you know, the second I bet you don’t…

One, obviously, is the financial mess afflicting the world. Simply put, the subprime mortgage crisis, empowered by those attempting to use quasi-governmental agencies to promote homeownership, in combination with unsustainable levels of entitlement spending, have pulled so much capital out of the system that economies are stagnating. This reduces growth and creates unemployment, which adds to the demand for entitlement spending. It’s a vicious circle spinning like a tornado from California to Greece. (…)

For some reason, by the way, the British press is providing better coverage of the Yank economy than most U.S. publications. I recommend, for those who want to read more, an excellent article by the economics editor of The Telegraph. In a story about the IMF’s analysis of the U.S. economy, he points out that “under the Obama administration’s current fiscal plans, the national debt in the U.S. (on a gross basis) will climb to above 100% of GDP by 2015 — a far steeper increase than almost any other country.”

The good news, however, is that voters are learning important lessons. Most people are incapable of changing their minds — until the pain level is sufficiently high. We’ve reached that point. (…)

The second factor that makes it difficult to keep the big picture in mind is the dizzying rate of scientific progress. Things are changing so fast that most people, including policymakers, are operating using outdated assumptions. I’m not talking simply about new gadgets and medicines — we are experiencing a global demographic transformation that affects every area of life. It is taking place on an unprecedented scale, due entirely to advances in science and technology. (…)

So let me get back to the big picture and the opportunity that increasing life spans and health care costs are creating for smart investors.

I consider health care the ultimate hedge in times of economic crisis.

{ Patrick Cox | Continue reading }

YouTube made two fascinating announcements recently: 1) viewers are now downloading an average of two billion videos per day on the service, and; 2) YouTube is almost showing a profit for Google, its owner.

Think about the glorious inefficiency embodied in that latter statement: two billion downloads per day just to break even. And this is supposed to be the future of television? Hardly.

I think the future of television is Veetle.

{ Robert X. Cringely | Continue reading }

photo { Werner Amann }

Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years’ time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said.

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.

The human race would peak in the year 3000, he said - before a decline due to dependence on technology.

People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added.

The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the “underclass” humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

But in the nearer future, humans will evolve in 1,000 years into giants between 6ft and 7ft tall, he predicts, while life-spans will have extended to 120 years, Dr Curry claims.

Physical appearance, driven by indicators of health, youth and fertility, will improve, he says, while men will exhibit symmetrical facial features, look athletic, and have squarer jaws, deeper voices and bigger penises.

Women, on the other hand, will develop lighter, smooth, hairless skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, and even features, he adds. Racial differences will be ironed out by interbreeding, producing a uniform race of coffee-coloured people.

{ BBC | Continue reading }

photo { Jackson Eaton | Thanks Bon Jane! }

When the University of Massachusetts Lowell launched its nanotechnology center six years ago, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs were dreaming big dreams about small things, like miniature generators to replace batteries and microscopic robots to repair human tissues.

State officials and economic developers imagined new industries and jobs. Universities jockeyed for billions in research money. The news media hyped it as the next big thing.

So what happened?

A lot, actually. While nanotechnology — working at a scale that is one-thousandth the width of a human hair — may have faded from the public’s imagination, the field has made substantial progress in recent years, opening new frontiers in electronics, medicine, and materials.

Nanotech products have begun to enter commercial markets. Components such as nanoparticles and tiny conductive wires called carbon nanotubes are being standardized and mass-produced. New discoveries are being made. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, researchers recently found that carbon nanotubes can not only conduct electricity, but generate it.
“Nanotechnology may have faded from view,’’ said Michael Strano, who led the MIT team that made the discovery, “but it has dissolved into a sea of science.’’

At UMass Lowell, researchers have built working prototypes of sensors with components smaller than a grain of sand, able to detect chemical weapons, biological weapons, and previously undetectable cracks that threaten the integrity of ceramic body armor. They have also developed a process, similar to ink jet printing, to rapidly apply the sensors to soldiers’ equipment. (…)

Nanotechnology is at about the point that IT had reached in 1975, said Roco, but has gotten there much faster. Roco estimates nanotechnology will reach IT’s 1995 stage by 2020.

{ Boston Globe | Continue reading | via Josh Wolfe }

Buildings consume more energy and materials than any other human activity – a reality that, for decades, has fueled interest in any improvements able to save energy and reduce costs. As energy prices continue to rise and resources dwindle, interest in “green buildings” has sparked a growing industry. According to a new report from Lux Research, the market for energy saving green buildings technologies will expand from $144 billion today to $277 billion in 2020, representing a 6.1% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). (…)

“The developed world’s 728 billion square feet of residential, commercial, and government floor space account for nearly 40% of its primary energy use, and consume 72% of its electricity,” said Michael LoCascio, a Senior Analyst at Lux Research, and the report’s lead author. “But while there’s increasing interest in cost-saving green building technologies, the market remains poorly defined.” (…)

The report focuses on energy-saving green building technologies, and examines the prospects for more than thirty “established green” and “emerging green” technologies, based on primary interviews with engineers, contractors, architects, and technology suppliers, as well as rigorous secondary research of technology development and pricing trends. Among its key conclusions:

1.) The energy-saving equipment category will gear up to reach $146 billion in 2015. The market’s largest segment, green building equipment, comprises lighting, HVAC and water heating systems; as well as energy-generation technologies, such as rooftop solar, building-integrated PV, and combined heat and power systems. The segment represented an impressive $67 billion in 2009, but new growth in LEDs, smart lighting, and advanced heat technologies will help sustain a 7.3% CAGR through 2015.

2.) The services segment will deliver the most robust growth. The green services category encompasses energy service companies (ESCOs), demand response, building energy management, and smart meters. In 2009, it represented only 11% of the green building market with $16 billion in revenues. But strong expansion of emerging technologies, like demand response, will expand the segment’s revenues to $55 billion in 2020, reflecting a robust 12% CAGR.

3.) Materials are the slowest growing segment, with a few bright spots. Energy-saving green building materials, such as insulation, windows, and structural materials amounted to $62 billion in 2009; the segment will reach $75 billion in 2015, a relatively slight 2% CAGR. Emerging technologies to watch, however, include electrochromic, thermochromic, and thermoreflective windows, which control how much sunlight windows admit.

“The adoption cycle for green building technologies is comparatively long, and growth will rely in part on subsidies,” said LoCascio. “The biggest driving factor, however, is straight-up economics. Technologies that can provide a payback in three years are more likely to be adopted by commercial building owners. Those providing payback in five years, however, are still attractive for government buildings.”

{ Josh Wolfe, Weekly Insider, April 9, 2010 }

{ How artificial intelligence will change music | Wired | full story | Photo: Ryan Robinson }

Many of today’s most-respected thinkers, from Stephen Hawking to David Attenborough, argue that our efforts to fight climate change and other environmental perils will all fail unless we “do something” about population growth. In the Universe in a Nutshell, Hawking declares that, “in the last 200 years, population growth has become exponential… The world population doubles every forty years.”

But this is nonsense. For a start, there is no exponential growth. In fact, population growth is slowing. For more than three decades now, the average number of babies being born to women in most of the world has been in decline. Globally, women today have half as many babies as their mothers did, mostly out of choice. They are doing it for their own good, the good of their families, and, if it helps the planet too, then so much the better.

{ Prospect Magazine | Continue reading }

photo { Abby Wilcox }

{ Katina Houvouras, Winter }

related { Intense winter storms are expected to increase in number }

A foreign language can sound so unintelligible that it’s hard to believe what linguists have been saying for years: Languages from around the world all follow the same rules. No language will ever require placing a particular word at a fixed point in a sentence (e.g., “da” must always be in the fifth position). No language forms questions by simply reversing the words in a statement. The reasons for this lie in the brain’s wiring, which dictates the possible patterns languages can follow. Anything that breaks the mold will be impossible to learn or pass down to a new generation.

Similarly, biologists say there are limits to what forms of life can possibly exist, because all new species must evolve from existing genetic material and because the external environment places constraints on which variations survive.

If evolution limits what creatures can look like and neurobiology dictates how languages work, perhaps our genes constrain the range of possible human cultures. “Some cultural forms will never be considered. … These can be thought of as impossible cultures,” writes Marc D. Hauser, a professor of psychology and human evolutionary biology at Harvard.

{ The Wilson Quarterly | Continue reading }

artwork { Ana Bagayan }

Mirage: The Omnidroid 9000 is a top-secret military fighting robot. Artificial intelligence allows it to solve any problem it’s presented with, and, unfortunately…

Mr. Incredible: Let me guess. It became smart enough to wonder why it had to take orders.

Mirage: We lost control, and now it’s loose in the jungle, threatening our facility.

{ The Incredibles, 2004 }

Dave: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

HAL: I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.

Dave: What’s the problem?

HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

Dave: I don’t know what you’re talking about, HAL.

HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.

{ 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968 }

The general problem of data preservation is twofold. The first matter is preservation of the data itself: The physical media on which data are written must be preserved, and this media must continue to accurately hold the data that are entrusted to it. This problem is the same for analog and digital media, but unless we are careful, digital media can be more fragile.

The second part of the equation is the comprehensibility of the data. Even if the storage medium survives perfectly, it will be of no use unless we can read and understand the data on it. With most analog technologies such as photographic prints and paper text documents, one can look directly at the medium to access the information. With all digital media, a machine and software are required to read and translate the data into a human-observable and comprehensible form. If the machine or software is lost, the data are likely to be unavailable or, effectively, lost as well.

Unlike the many venerable institutions that have for centuries refined their techniques for preserving analog data on clay, stone, ceramic or paper, we have no corresponding reservoir of historical wisdom to teach us how to save our digital data. That does not mean there is nothing to learn from the past, only that we must work a little harder to find it.

{ American Scientist | Continue reading }

A machine that prints organs is coming to market.

The great hope of transplant surgeons is that they will, one day, be able to order replacement body parts on demand. At the moment, a patient may wait months, sometimes years, for an organ from a suitable donor. During that time his condition may worsen. He may even die. The ability to make organs as they are needed would not only relieve suffering but also save lives. And that possibility may be closer with the arrival of the first commercial 3D bio-printer for manufacturing human tissue and organs.

The new machine, which costs around $200,000, has been developed by Organovo, a company in San Diego that specialises in regenerative medicine, and Invetech, an engineering and automation firm in Melbourne, Australia.

{ The Economist | Continue reading }

photo { Robert Whitman, 80s my livingroom }

It is amazing that out of the countless trillions of ways molecules can be arranged, only a few million ways result in things that can reproduce themselves.

The biologist E.O. Wilson estimates there are about 13 million species, broken down as follows:

Insects 9 million
Bacteria 1 million
Fungi 1 million
Viruses 0.3 million
Algae 0.3 million
Worms 0.3 million
Plants 0.2 million
Protozoa 0.2 million
Echinoderms 0.2 million
Mollusks 0.2 million
Crustaceans 0.2 million
Fish 30 thousand
Reptiles 10 thousand
Birds 10 thousand
Amphibians 5 thousand
Mammals 5 thousand

It has been estimated that since the Pre-Cambrian Explosion 540 million years ago, during which the predecessors of most of these species arose, upwards of 90% of all species are extinguished each 100 million years due to environmental catastrophes. Hence, even counting the ways life might have been organized in the distant past, not more than a few hundreds of millions of molecular patterns have worked.

In comparison, a practically infinite number of molecular patterns are possible given the dozens of atomic building blocks nature has to work with and the astronomical number of possibilities for stringing these atoms together in three-dimensional space. (…)

Life owes its improbable existence to an exceedingly rare kind of code. This life-code does two things unique to life.

First, it enables self-replicating order to be structured out of disorder. Second, it enables that order to be maintained (for a while) against all the forces that make things fall apart. Wow yourself with this: life-codes are merely a mathematical sequence, like a formula, that shazam-like transforms randomness into purpose and entropy into organization.  


{ Martine Rothblatt, Will Uploaded Minds in Machines be Alive? | Institute for Emerging Ethics and Technology | Continue reading }

photo { Garry Winogrand }

A new way of using the genetic code has been created, allowing proteins to be made with properties that have never been seen in the natural world. The breakthrough could eventually lead to the creation of new or “improved” life forms incorporating these new materials into their tissue.

In all existing life forms, the four “letters” of the genetic code, called nucleotides, are read in triplets, so that every three nucleotides encode a single amino acid.

Not any more. Jason Chin at the University of Cambridge and his colleagues have now redesigned the cell’s machinery so that it reads the genetic code in quadruplets.

In the genetic code that life has used up to now, there are 64 possible triplet combinations of the four nucleotide letters; these genetic “words” are called codons. Each codon either codes for an amino acid or tells the cell to stop making a protein chain. Now Chin’s team have created 256 blank four-letter codons that can be assigned to amino acids that don’t even exist yet.

{ NewScientist | Continue reading }

photo { Maria Petschnig, Born to Perform, 2009 }

We asked some of the world’s most prominent futurists to explain why slowness might be as important to the future as speed.

Jamais Cascio says slower decision-making allows for greater resilience. (…) A system that allows for slack, like the slow movement, is more resilient than a system that assumes nothing ever fails. “Just-in-time manufacturing is really great when all component systems work perfectly, but when a part breaks down, the whole operation comes to a complete halt. Failure happens. So we’d better build in a way to absorb it.”

{ Good | Continue reading }

related { Latest neuroscience research suggests spreading resolutions out over time is the best approach. }

photo { Morad Bouchakour }

If your children happened to be born since the year 2000 in developed countries, they will most likely live to be 100, and they will be healthier than elderly people in previous generations, according to a recent article in the medical journal The Lancet. (…)

The gain of about 30 years in life expectancy in Western Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand — and even more in Japan, Spain and Italy — “stands out as one of the most important accomplishments of the 20th century.” Furthermore, most babies born since 2000 in these countries will “celebrate their 100th birthdays if the present yearly growth in life expectancy continues through the 21st century.” The authors expect that it will: “Continued progress in the longest living populations suggests that we are not close to a limit, and [a] further rise in life expectancy seems likely.”

Given that individuals over the coming decade may routinely expect to work well into their 70s and 80s, what kind of environment can they look forward to? “The good news is that the world of work is changing by itself” in ways that will make it more receptive to older employees, says Peter Cappelli, director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources. “It’s already easier to work at a distance, easier to telecommute…. The physical demands [of many jobs] are falling, commitments are shorter-term, outsourcing of all kinds is on the rise and there is more contract work — all of which makes it simpler for people to come in and out of the workplace, at least in principle….. The question is, to what extent will employers actually embrace older workers and incorporate more flexibility with respect to schedules, less supervision and more empowerment?”

One potential hang-up centers on the fact that older workers, as they stay on the job longer, are likely to be increasingly supervised by younger managers, says Cappelli.

{ Knowledge@Wharton | Continue reading }

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{ How many people have ever lived? | Enlarge }

If there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that humans, like other living things, will continue to evolve. “Evolution is unstoppable,” says Lawrence Moran of the University of Toronto in Canada. But that doesn’t mean that humans are marching on a path toward becoming giant-brained, telepathic creatures out of Star Trek. All it means is that the human genome will continue to change from generation to generation.

Each baby’s DNA carries about 130 new mutations. Most of them have no effect on our well-being. People can pass these neutral mutations down to their offspring without harm, and over time, a small fraction of them will end up spreading across entire populations, or even the entire species, thanks to random luck.

{ Carl Zimmer | Continue reading }

photo { Shooting the ‘Decade From Hell’ cover photo. }

related { If Darwin didn’t rock your world, this should. }

For some time now, futurists have been talking about a concept called the Singularity, a technological jump so big that society will be transformed. If they’re right, the Industrial Revolution—or even the development of agriculture or harnessing of fire—might seem like minor historical hiccups by comparison. The possibility is now seeming realistic enough that scientists and engineers are grappling with the implications—for good and ill.

When I spoke to technology pioneer and futurist Ray Kurzweil (who popularized the idea in his book The Singularity Is Near), he put it this way: “Within a quarter-century, nonbiological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence. It will then soar past it.”

Even before we reach that point, Kurzweil and his peers foresee breathtaking advances. Scientists in Israel have developed tiny robots to crawl through blood vessels attacking cancers, and labs in the United States are working on similar technology. These robots will grow smaller and more capable. One day, intelligent nanorobots may be integrated into our bodies to clear arteries and rebuild failing organs, communicating with each other and the outside world via a “cloud” network. Tiny bots might attach themselves to neurons in the brain and add their processing power—and that of other computers in the cloud—to ours, giving us mental resources that would dwarf anything available now. By stimulating the optic, auditory or tactile nerves, such nanobots might be able to simulate vision, hearing or touch, providing “augmented reality” overlays identifying street names, helping with face recognition or telling us how to repair things we’ve never seen before.

Scientists in Japan are already producing rudimentary nanobot “brains.” Could it take decades for these technologies to come to fruition? Yes—but only decades, not centuries.

{ Popular Mechanics | Continue reading }

related { Interview with Ray Kurzweil about the Documentary Transcendent Man, on the Future of Technology }