Innovation Watch Newsletter - Issue 12.

10 - May 18, 2013

ISSN: 1712-9834

Highlights from the last two weeks...

David Forrest is a Canadian writer and strategy consultant. His Integral Strategy process has been widely used to increase collaboration in communities, build social capital, deepen commitment to action, and develop creative strategies to deal with complex challenges. David advises organizations on emerging trends. He uses the term Enterprise Ecology to describe how ecological principles can be applied to competition, innovation, and strategy in business.

California biohackers launch a Kickstarter campaign to create glow-in-the-dark plants... researchers find a blood hormone in mice that reverses heart aging... a new mobile app provides timely information without being asked... Google's quest to create an artificial brain... US Senate votes to tax Internet purchases... high-frequency stock traders build high-speed laser networks to gain a time advantage... Australian universities lose $3.8 billion to funding cuts... Stewart Brand is an icon for our changing world... we may be entering the age of cybersabotage... China's food consumption is growing exponentially... natural disasters have cost the global economy $2.5 trillion since 2000... more than half of common plants and a third of animals are at risk from loss of habitat due to climate change... Merrill Lynch looks at trends to 2031... technological innovation threatens jobs...

More resources ...

a new book by Jaron Lanier: Who Owns the Future?... a link to the MIT Community Innovators Lab... a video clip on SOINN, an AI program that uses the Internet to learn new things... a blog post by Sir Martin Rees on how post-humans could colonise other worlds...

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David is a member of the Professional Writers Association of Canada, the World Future Society, and other futures organizations. He is a member of the Advisory Committee of the Institute for Science, Society and Policy at the University of Ottawa.

David Forrest Innovation Watch

SCIENCE TRENDS
Top Stories: Biohackers Are Kickstarting Some Unregulated Experiments (Huffington Post) - Generally Kickstarter projects promote such innocuous products as comic books, and sensibly, Kickstarter even has its own ethical limits on what it will host: Guns, drugs, and porn are forbidden for obvious reasons. Rather more mysteriously, the selling of sunglasses is also deemed unethical. But as reported this week three biohackers from California have hijacked the Kickstarter machinery for something far more controversial than sunglasses. They have made Kickstarter the conduit for a nationwide release of untested, unregulated and unmonitored bioengineered organisms by mounting a Kickstarter funding project to use Synthetic Biology to engineer glow-in-the-dark plants. Blood Hormone Restores Youthful Hearts to Old Mice (Nature) - Researchers have identified a blood hormone that makes ageing hearts in mice look young again. The authors of the study say their finding offers therapeutic potential for the treatment of age-related heart disease, an increasingly common cause of heart failure. The protein, known as growth differentiation factor 11 (GDF11), circulates at high levels in the blood of young mice but declines with age. In a study published in Cell1, the researchers report that elderly mice treated with the protein experience a reversal of tissue ageing in the heart. More science trends...

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Previous issues

TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
Top Stories:

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With Personal Data, Predictive Apps Stay a Step Ahead (MIT Technology Review) - A new type of mobile app is departing from a long-standing practice in computing. Typically, computers have just dumbly waited for their human operators to ask for help. But now applications based on machine learning software can speak up with timely information even without being directly asked for it. They might automatically pull up a boarding pass for your flight just as you arrive at the airport, or tell you that current traffic conditions require you to leave for your next meeting within 10 minutes. The highest-profile of these apps is Google Now, which is a feature of the latest version of the Android mobile operating system and was recently added to the Google search app for the iPhone. The Man Behind the Google Brain: Andrew Ng and the Quest for the New AI (Wired) - There's a theory that human intelligence stems from a single algorithm. The idea arises from experiments suggesting that the portion of your brain dedicated to processing sound from your ears could also handle sight for your eyes. This is possible only while your brain is in the earliest stages of development, but it implies that the brain is -- at its core -- a general-purpose machine that can be tuned to specific tasks. About seven years ago, Stanford computer science professor Andrew Ng stumbled across this theory, and it changed the course of his career, reigniting a passion for artificial intelligence, or AI. "For the first time in my life," Ng says, "it made me feel like it might be possible to make some progress on a small part of the AI dream within our lifetime." More technology trends...

BUSINESS TRENDS
Top Stories: U.S. Senate Passes Bill Allowing States to Tax Internet Purchases (Globe and Mail) - The Senate aimed to help traditional retailers and financially strapped state and local governments Monday by passing a bill that would widely subject U.S. online shopping -- for many a largely tax-free frontier -- to state sales taxes. The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 69 to 27, getting support from Republicans and Democrats alike. But opposition from some conservatives who view it as a tax increase will make it a tougher sell in the House. President Barack Obama has conveyed his support for the measure. High-Frequency Stock Traders Turn to Laser Networks, to Make Yet More Money (Extreme Tech) - If you thought that stock traders made enough money, and wielded enough power over the global economy, think again: Financial traders are now

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turning to high-speed laser networks between stock exchanges, to decrease latency by a few milliseconds, to squeeze a few more trillion dollars per year out of high-frequency trading (HFT). If you haven't heard of high-frequency trading before, it's essentially the automated, algorithmic buying and selling stocks. More business trends...

SOCIAL TRENDS
Top Stories: Budget Cuts, Universities and Social Responsibility (Popenici) - Australian universities received the official confirmation that the last 6 months bring a colossal cut of $3.8 billion dollars to their funding. In a time of tremendous changes and the certainty about a very uncertain future, universities across the world should look at this story and see if there are not some important lessons to be learned. Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog, the Book that Changed the World (Guardian) - For nearly five decades, Stewart Brand has been hanging around the cutting edge of whatever is the most cutting thing of the day. Largely because he's discovered it and become fascinated with it long before anyone else has even noticed it but, in retrospect, it does make him seem like the west coast's answer to Zelig, the Woody Allen character who just happens to pop up at key moments in history. Because no one pops up like Stewart Brand pops up, right there, just on the cusp of something momentous. More social trends...

GLOBAL TRENDS
Top Stories: Beware: We May Be Entering the Age of Cybersabotage (Read Write) - Low-level cyberscuffles between nations may be about to escalate into more serious conflicts. U.S. government officials are reporting a new wave of attacks aimed at sabotage within the U.S., apparently originating from somewhere in the Middle East. The New York Times reported that saboteurs are using probes to look for ways to seize control of processing plants of mostly U.S. "energy companies" -- presumably oil and gas producers. Senior officials with the Obama administration said the attacks are aimed at the administrative systems of 10 major American energy companies, which the sources have refused to
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name. How China Will Eat Your Lunch (Forbes) - Chinese born in 2009 will consume 38 times more than those born in 1960, according to Boston Consulting Group's estimates. That's a lot of soybeans. In 1960, chicken and pork accounted for around 4% of daily caloric intake. But by 2020, they will account for 28%. The surge in demand for animal proteins is forcing China to become a net importer of chicken and pork. In a country with poor food standards, it means farmers are skimping on animal care to produce as much food as possible. It also means China will import more meat and that means food companies from Tyson to Brasil Foods will have to figure out ways to produce more from their livestock; livestock that's already going to feed their own locals More global trends...

ENVIRONMENTAL TRENDS
Top Stories: Natural Disasters Have Cost the Global Economy $2.5 Trillion Since 2000 (Business Insider) - Economic losses from disasters since 2000 are in the range of $2.5 trillion, a figure at least 50 percent higher than previous international estimates, according to a U.N. report. The U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction warned in the 246-page report that economic losses from floods, earthquakes and drought will continue to escalate unless businesses take action to reduce their exposure to disaster risks. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the report saying the review of disaster losses in 56 countries clearly demonstrates that "economic losses from disasters are out of control" and can only be reduced in partnership with the private sector. 'Dramatic Decline' Warning for Plants and Animals (BBC) More than half of common plant species and a third of animals could see a serious decline in their habitat range because of climate change. New research suggests that biodiversity around the globe will be significantly impacted if temperatures rise more than 2C. But the scientists say that the losses can be reduced if rapid action is taken to curb greenhouse gases. More environmental trends...

FUTURE TRENDS
Top Stories:

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Outlook 2031 (Merrill Lynch) - A handful of far-reaching and undeniable factors are reshaping our world, and are likely to continue to do so for decades to come: A global population on pace to exceed 8 billion by 2030. A rapidly growing emergingmarket middle class that will strain the world's food, water and energy resources. A global climate in flux, with increasing incidents of extreme weather. Aging populations in countries around the world that could threaten economic growth and test national fiscal stability. In the coming years, all these factors could present obstacles to global growth, but will also create opportunities for innovative thinking -- and new markets we haven't yet recognized. Man vs. Machine: Are Any Jobs Safe from Innovation? (Spiegel) - Past warnings about how technological innovation threatens jobs have proved exaggerated. Yet the digital revolution now has many scholars warning that this time things are different, and that the breakneck speed of automation could wreak havoc on the global labor market. The worldwide application of computer technology has become so much more cost-effective and efficient that people are no longer only replaceable in certain sectors -autoworkers on assembly lines, for instance -- but in entire occupational areas. Cashiers are being replaced by self-service check-out lines, airline employees by self check-in kiosks, financial traders by algorithms and travel agencies by online travel sites. More future trends...

From the publisher...

Who Owns the Future?

By Jaron Lanier Read more...

Trends and Futures... New Books - New and not-yet-published books on trends and futures. A Web Resource... MIT Community Innovators Lab - CoLab supports communities working on equitable, democratic, and sustainable development in the US and globally. It uses the planning discipline to connect MIT faculty, staff, and students with civic leaders and residents to co-create innovative solutions to complex challenges of urban sustainability. CoLab Radio, welcomes contributions from students around the world who are interested in sharing their stories of innovative projects and research in urban planning with an international audience dedicated to improving cities.

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Multimedia... SOINN Artificial Brain Can Now Use the Internet to Learn New Things (Diginfo News) - A group at Tokyo Institute of Technology, led by Dr. Osamu Hasegawa, has succeeded in making further advances with SOINN, their machine learning algorithm, which can now use the internet to learn how to perform new tasks. The system, which is under development as an artificial brain for autonomous mental development robots, is currently being used to learn about objects in photos using image searches on the internet. It can also take aspects of other known objects and combine them to make guesses about objects it doesn't yet recognize. (4m 2s) The Blogosphere... Star Trek: Sir Martin Rees: 'How Post-Humans Could Colonise Other Worlds' (Telegraph) - Sir Martin Rees "Scientific forecasters have a dismal record. One of my predecessors as Astronomer Royal said, as late as the Fifties, that space travel was 'utter bilge.' Few in the mid-20th century envisaged the transformative impact of the silicon chip or the double helix. The iPhone would have seemed magical even 20 years ago. So, looking even a century ahead, we must keep our minds open, or at least ajar, to what may now seem science fiction. Some proponents of the 'singularity' -- the takeover of humanity by intelligent machines -- claim this transition could happen within 50 years."

Email: future@innovationwatch.com

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