What would you have done to stop catastrophic events if you knew in advance what you know now.
We have the moral obligation to take action in every way we can.
The future is in our hands. The stakes are the highest they have ever been. The Large Hadron Collider developed by the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) is a dangerous instrument. The start-up April 5 has initiated a more reckless use of LHC’s capabilities.
CERN-Critics: LHC restart is a sad day for science and humanity!
These days, CERN has restarted the world’s biggest particle collider, the so-called “Big Bang Machine” LHC at CERN. After a hundreds of Million Euros upgrade of the world’s biggest machine, CERN plans to smash particles at double the energies of before. This poses, one would hope, certain eventually small (?), but fundamentally unpredictable catastrophic risks to planet Earth.
Basically the same group of critics, including Professors and Doctors, that had previously filed a law suit against CERN in the US and Europe, still opposes the restart for basically the same reasons. Dangers of: (“Micro”-)Black Holes, Strangelets, Vacuum Bubbles, etc., etc. are of course and maybe will forever be — still in discussion. No specific improvements concerning the safety assessment of the LHC have been conducted by CERN or anybody meanwhile. There is still no proper and really independent risk assessment (the ‘LSAG-report’ has been done by CERN itself) — and the science of risk research is still not really involved in the issue. This is a scientific and political scandal and that’s why the restart is a sad day for science and humanity.
The scientific network “LHC-Critique” speaks for a stop of any public sponsorship of gigantomanic particle colliders.
Just to demonstrate how speculative this research is: Even CERN has to admit, that the so called “Higgs Boson” was discovered — only “probably”. Very probably, mankind will never find any use for the “Higgs Boson”. Here we are not talking about the use of collider technology in medical concerns. It could be a minor, but very improbable advantage for mankind to comprehend the Big Bang one day. But it would surely be fatal – how the Atomic Age has already demonstrated — to know how to handle this or other extreme phenomena in the universe.
Within the next Billions of years, mankind would have enough problems without CERN.
Kyle VanHemert — WiredJaanus Kase isn’t sure we should teach every kid to code.
Wait, don’t grab your pitchfork just yet. He thinks it’s a perfectly noble idea, just that it ignores a basic fact: Programming as it exists today is tedious and a highly specialized skill—one that, frankly, not everyone is well-suited to. “Saying that everybody is a programmer, everybody must code, it’s dangerous,” he says. “It trivializes the art of programming. And it is an art—a craft.”
Rather than teach everyone to code, maybe it makes more sense to build tools that let some people side-step programming altogether? Read more
Ever wondered how the technology we use every day came into existence? Sure, an engineer designed it, a manufacturer produced it, and some savvy marketing helped sell you the product, but where did the ideas come from? Many famous inventions and household name technologies originated from research done by physicists, either as byproducts or direct application of their ideas. How does it all happen?
“So as a physicist, what do you actually do?”
Many people outside of academic physics departments often have this question, due to a lack of communication between general public and researchers. Read more
I read all the news about SpaceX’s Falcon 9 latest “failure” to land on an autonomous spaceport drone ship aka barge. I view these as trials to success. Here’s why.
1. Grasshopper Successes: The two videos below show that the early landing trials aka Grasshopper from several heights between 250m and 1,000m.
The lessons here are:
a) Pinpoint landing of a 1st stage rocket is technologically feasible.
b) This 1st stage rocket has to attain zero vertical velocity at a minimum 250m above the barge.
Video of 250m test
Video of 1,000m test
2. Falcon 9 1st stage crash landing — 1st attempt: SpaceX tells us that the failure was due to a hard landing (see video below) but at 0:03 minutes into the video one can see that the 1st stage has substantially tilted before it hit the deck i.e. the 1st stage did not tilt because it hit the deck.
The lessons here:
a) A wobble — a dynamic instability — occurs before landing.
b) The guidance systems are unable to cope with new wobble.
Video of 1st attempt
3. Falcon 9 1st stage crash landing — 2nd attempt: The video of the second attempt (below) confirms that indeed a wobble has been introduced before the stabilization fins are deployed. Further, this deployment exacerbates the wobble, and the guidance systems is unable to handle this exacerbated wobble.
The lessons here:
a) 1st stage vertical velocity needs to be zero by at least 250m above deck.
b) The stabilization fins need to be redesigned to alleviate exacerbation.
c) Like the Space Ship One’s shuttlecock approach, the 1st stage upper fins need to be deployed before the lower fins are.
d) Upgrade the landing guidance system to account for more severe wobbles.
If at a minimum, SpaceX achieves zero velocity at 250m before deployment of landing gear it will be successful. The other recommendations are good to have.
I expect SpaceX to be successful by their 3rd try.
‘New Narratives: Innovation for Jobs’ is a series by i4j (Innovation for Jobs) and the GPA exploring perspectives on important topics that will impact the future of work, jobs and employment.
About i4j: (iiij.org/i4j) Innovation for Jobs conferences bring together individuals from the public and private sectors to discuss the changing economy. “We engage in initiatives creating structures for developing shared language across silos. The starting point for any innovation is the creation of shared language, enabling stakeholders and change agents to interact horizontally.”
This film was created at the Mountain View 2015 i4j Conference. What are your hopes and fears about the future of meaningful work?
Vint Cerf at i4j: Employment Disruption Does Not Need to be Destruction
About Vint Cerf: Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google. He contributes to global policy development and continued spread of the Internet. Widely known as one of the “Fathers of the Internet,” Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. He has served in executive positions at MCI, the Corporation for National Research Initiatives and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and on the faculty of Stanford University. Vint Cerf served as chairman of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from 2000–2007 and has been a Visiting Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory since 1998. Cerf served as founding president of the Internet Society (ISOC) from 1992–1995. Cerf is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, and American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Engineering Consortium, the Computer History Museum, the British Computer Society, the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He currently serves as Past President of the Association for Computing Machinery, chairman of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), chairman of StopBadWare and recently completed his term as Chairman of the Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology for the US National Institute of Standards and Technology. President Obama appointed him to the National Science Board in 2012. Cerf is a recipient of numerous awards and commendations in connection with his work on the Internet, including the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, US National Medal of Technology, the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, the Prince of Asturias Award, the Tunisian National Medal of Science, the Japan Prize, the Charles Stark Draper award, the ACM Turing Award, Officer of the Legion d’Honneur and 21 honorary degrees. In December 1994, People magazine identified Cerf as one of that year’s “25 Most Intriguing People.”
David Nordfors and Vint Cerf at i4j: Innovation Ecosystems Disrupting Unemployment
About David Nordfors:
David Nordfors is CEO and co-founder of IIIJ and the chair of the i4j Summit. He was previously co-founder and Executive Director of the Center for Innovation and Communication at Stanford University. He was one of the World Economic Forum Innovation 100 in 2009, and has served on WEF Global Agenda Councils. He serves on advisory boards of the Poynter Institute, Discern Investment Analytics and Black & Veatch. He is an adjunct professor at IDC Herzliya in Israel, a visiting professor at Tallinn University, the Tecnologico de Monterrey, and the Deutsche Welle Akademie. He was advisor to the Director General at VINNOVA, the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems, where he co-initiated the national Swedish Incubator System and set up a bi-national R&D fund between Sweden and Israel for mobile applications. He was Director of Research Funding of the Knowledge Foundation, KK-stiftelsen, administering an endowment of $300MUSD, building a funding framework underwriting over a hundred innovation initiatives between universities and industry. He initiated and headed the first hearing about the Internet to be held by the Swedish Parliament. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the Uppsala University and did his postdoc in Theoretical Chemistry in Heidelberg, Germany.
Marjory Blumenthal at i4j: Our Blindspots in Forecasting the Future of Work
About Marjory Blumenthal:
Marjory Blumenthal is the Executive Director of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). She joined PCAST after a decade combining academic leadership at Georgetown University with research and advisory activities (including as a RAND adjunct) aimed at understanding Internet and cybersecurity technology trends and policy implications. At PCAST, she manages the Council and its program of analyses yielding policy recommendations to the President and the Administration, and she fosters the implementation of PCAST recommendations. This work spans the broad landscape of science and technology, addressing implications for the economy, society, and government programs. It engages PCAST’s approximately 20 distinguished scientists and engineers from industry and academia plus hundreds of experts consulted for study-projects and the Council’s regular meetings. Working under tight time constraints, in May 2014 she produced the PCAST report, Big Data and Privacy: A Technological Perspective. Between July 1987 and August 2003, Marjory was the Executive Director of the National Academies’ Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, producing over 60 influential reports that frequently addressed the evolution of the Internet and/or cybersecurity. Marjory did her undergraduate work at Brown University and her graduate work at Harvard University.
John Hagel at i4j: The (Painful) Big Shift to Meaningful Work
About John Hagel:
John Hagel is a consultant and author who specializes in the intersection of business strategy and information technology. In 2007, Hagel, along with John Seely Brown, founded the Deloitte Center for the Edge, a research center based in Silicon Valley. Hagel is also involved with a number of other organizations, including the World Economic Forum, the Santa Fe Institute, and the Aspen Institute. He is credited with inventing the term “infomediary” in his book, NetWorth with Marc Singer, published by the Harvard Business School Press in 1999. He has published a series of seven books including the best-selling business books, Net Gain, Net Worth, Out of the Box, The Only Sustainable Edge and, most recently, The Power of Pull.
Esther Wojcicki at i4j: Educating for the Unforeseen Jobs of the New Economy
About Esther Wojcicki:
Esther Wojcicki is an educational innovator using journalism courses as a vehicle for training youth in problem-based project-oriented learning, developing skill sets for the innovation economy. Applying this method, she has headed the development of what has become the largest high school journalism program in the U.S involving 600 students, at the Palo Alto High School. She was the 1990 Northern California Journalism teacher of the year, the 2002 California State Teacher Credentialing Commission Teacher of the Year, was recognized for inspiration and excellence in scholastic journalism advising by the National Scholastic Press Association in 2008, and was awarded the Gold Key Award by Columbia University Scholastic Press in 2009. She has served on the University of California Office of the President Curriculum Committee. She served as the Google educational consultant, co-designing the Google Teacher Academy and Google Faculty Institute. She holds a B.A. degree from UC Berkeley in English and Political Science, and a M.A. in Educational Technology from San Jose State University. She also has a Master’s from the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley and an advanced degree in French and French History from the Sorbonne, Paris. She has worked as a professional journalist for multiple publications and now blogs regularly for HuffingtonPost.
Curt Carlson at i4j: The Practice of Innovation
About Curt Carlson:
Curt Carlson was SRI’s President and CEO from 1998 to 2014. During this time SRI’s revenue more than tripled and SRI became a global model for the systematic creation of high-value innovations, such as HDTV, Intuitive Surgical, Siri (now on the iPhone), and other world changing advances. Mayfield Ventures partner, David Ladd, said, “SRI is now the leading company in the world at converting its technology into commercial value”. Carlson is a pioneer in the development and use of innovation best practices and an evangelist for innovation, education, and economic development, sharing best practices with government agencies, businesses, and foundations around the world. His insights on R&D and value creation led to creation of the Five Disciplines of Innovation process, used by companies, universities, and government agencies in the United States, Sweden, Finland, Chile, Malaysia, Japan, Brazil, and Taiwan. They are applying these innovation practices for growth, prosperity, and job creation. Before joining SRI, Carlson worked at RCA, GE, and the Sarnoff Corporation, which became part of SRI in 1987. In 1977 he started and helped lead the high-definition television (HDTV) program that became the U.S. standard and won an Emmy Award in 1997. Another team started by Carlson won an Emmy for satellite broadcast image quality in 2001.
He has helped form more than two-dozen new companies. Carlson was named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2012. In 2006, Carlson won the Otto Schade Prize for Display Performance and Image Quality from the Society for Information Display with Roger Cohen. He served on President Obama’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Singapore National Research Foundation and Taiwan’s Scientific Advisory Board. In addition he serves on the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Engineering Advisory Council and has served on the Air Force Science Advisory Board, the Defense Science Board, various National Laboratory Review Panels, and the National Academy of Engineering Committee on Manufacturing, Design, and Innovation. He has been on numerous commercial boards, including Nuance Communications, Pyramid Vision Technologies, Sensar, and Sarif. He was a member of the General Motors’ Science and Technology Advisory Board. Carlson has received honorary degrees from the Malaysian Technical University (MTU), Stevens Institute of Technology, Kettering University, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he is a trustee. With William Wilmot, Carlson wrote Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want, published by Random House and selected by BusinessWeek as one of the top 10 business books for 2006. Carlson received his B.S. degree in physics from WPI and was named in Who’s Who Among Students. He is a member of Tau Beta Pi and Skull. His M.S. and Ph.D. degrees were from Rutgers University. Carlson has published or presented numerous technical publications and holds fundamental patents in the fields of image quality, image coding, and computer vision.
Robin Chase at i4j: New Labor Systems can Save the Climate
About Robin Chase:
Robin Chase is a transportation entrepreneur. She is founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the largest carsharing company in the world; Buzzcar, a service that brings together car owners and drivers in a carsharing marketplace in France; and GoLoco, an online ridesharing community. She is also Executive Chairman of Veniam, a vehicle communications company building the networking fabric for the Internet of Moving Things. She is on the Boards of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, the World Resources Institute, and Tucows. She also served on the National Advisory Council for Innovation & Entrepreneurship for the US Department of Commerce, the Intelligent Transportations Systems Program Advisory Committee for the US Department of Transportation, the OECD’s International Transport Forum Advisory Board the Massachusetts Governor’s Transportation Transition Working Group, and Boston Mayor’s Wireless Task Force. Robin lectures widely, has been frequently featured in the major media, and has received many awards in the areas of innovation, design, and environment, including Time 100 Most Influential People, Fast Company Fast 50 Innovators, and BusinessWeek Top 10 Designers. Robin graduated from Wellesley College and MIT’s Sloan School of Management, was a Harvard University Loeb Fellow, and received an honorary Doctorate of Design from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Mikko Kosonen at i4j: A Vision for Sustainable Wellbeing
About Mikko Kosonen:
Mikko Kosonen has been the President of the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra since 2008. He worked for Nokia between 1984 and 2007, his last two positions being Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Infrastructure and Senior Advisor. Kosonen has served as a board member with a number of companies and institutions, including Itella Corporation, Kesko, Kuntien Tiera Oy, Telia-Sonera, Fifth Element Oy, Technology Academy Finland and the Foundation for Economic Education.Mikko Kosonen completed his PhD in International Business at the Helsinki School of Economics in 1991. He was awarded Honorary Professorship of Budapest Business School in 2012. He has published several books and articles on strategic management, most recently Fast Strategy – How Strategic Agility will help you stay ahead of the game (2008) and New Deal at the Top – Harvard Business Review (2007), both with Professor Yves Doz.
Steve Jurvetson at i4j: Going Long on the Future of Work?
Steve Jurvetson is a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a venture capital firm. He was the founding VC investor in Hotmail (MSFT), Interwoven (IWOV), Kana (KANA), and NeoPhotonics (NPTN). He also led the firm’s investments in other companies which were then acquired for $12 billion in aggregate. Current Board positions include SpaceX, Synthetic Genomics, and Tesla Motors (TSLA). Previously, Steve was an R&D Engineer at Hewlett-Packard, where seven of his communications chip designs were fabricated. His prior technical experience also includes programming, materials science research (TEM atomic imaging of GaAs), and computer design at HP’s PC Division, the Center for Materials Research, and Mostek. He has also worked in product marketing at Apple and NeXT Software. Steve also holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford. He received his MBA from the Stanford Business School, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar. He also serves on the Advisory Boards of SRI International, STVP, and the Stanford Engineering Venture Fund and is Co-Chair of the NanoBusiness Alliance. He was honored as “The Valley’s Sharpest VC” on the cover of Business 2.0 In 2005, Steve was honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and a Distinguished Alumnus by St. Mark’s, where he was the 2010 Commencement Speaker.
Astro Teller at i4j: Innovation Requires Inspired Workers (Systematizing Innovation)
About Astro Teller:
Dr. Astro Teller currently oversees Google[x], Google’s moonshot factory for building magical, audaciously impactful ideas that can be brought to reality through science and technology. Before joining Google, Astro was the co-founding CEO of Cerebellum Capital, Inc, an AI-based investment management firm. Previously, Astro was the co-founding CEO of BodyMedia, a leading wearable body monitoring company. Prior to BodyMedia, Dr. Teller was co-founding CEO of SANDbOX AD, an advanced development technology incubator. Dr. Teller holds a BS in computer science and an MS in symbolic and heuristic computation, both from Stanford, and a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence from Carnegie Mellon, where he was a recipient of the Hertz fellowship. Through his work as a scientist, inventor and entrepreneur, Dr. Teller holds many U.S. and international patents related to his work in hardware and software technology. Astro is also a successful novelist and screenwriter, with a new book out entitled “Sacred Cows.”
Astro Teller at i4j: Innovation that Works Can’t Wait for Miracles
Modern machines, powerful and clever, have enabled us to attempt seemingly impossible tasks, like traveling to the moon. Now, mere decades after Apollo’s computers guided us to the lunar surface, millions carry vastly more processing power in their pockets. What once seemed science fiction—it’s possible today.
The incredible acceleration and exponential development of machines is driven by our unsatisfiable curiosity and constant drive for progress. And there is little doubt the rate of change will continue as our curious minds push into the unknown. Read more
Quoted: “DNotes can best be characterized, as a second generation Bitcoin alternative digital currency. It objectively studied Bitcoin’s strengths and weaknesses as well as threats and opportunities. DNotes was created on February 18, 2014 with an objective to meet the full functions of fiat currency as a unit of account, store of value and medium of exchange within three years. It decided to take a very different path since day one in building a trustworthy stable digital currency with reliable long term appreciation.
Central to DNotes long term strategic plan is the creation of highly scalable building blocks, as the foundation of its own ecosystem. Those strategic building blocks include CryptoMoms; a currency neutral site dedicated to encourage women participation, DNotesVault; a free secure storage for DNotes’ stakeholders with 100% deposit guarantee with verifiable funds, and CRISPs; a family of Cryptocurrency Investment Savings Plans for everyone worldwide. The core mission of CRISP is to make the savings opportunity available to everyone; from the unborn to the most senior; from the unbanked to the super rich. The opportunity for anyone to participate irrespective of financial standing, coupled with combined charity efforts will bring about much needed financial freedom for millions worldwide.”
Read more here > http://www.pressreleaserocket.net/bitcoin-alternative-dnotes-focuses-on-banking-solutions-and-stability-while-venture-capital-investment-continues-at-record-breaking-pace/109719/
Samuel Arbesman — Aeon My family’s first computer was the Commodore VIC-20. Billed by its pitchman, Star Trek’s William Shatner, as the ‘wonder computer of the 1980s’, I have many fond memories of this antiquated machine. I used to play games on it, with cassette tapes that served as primitive storage devices. One of the cassettes we bought was a Pac-Man clone that my brother and I would play. Instead of a yellow pie with a mouth, it used racing cars.
My most vivid memories are of the games whose code I typed in myself. While you could buy software for the VIC-20 (like the racecar game), a major way that people acquired software in those days was through computer code published in the pages of magazines. Want to play a fun skiing game? Then type out the computer program into your computer, line by line, and get to play it yourself. No purchase necessary. These programs were common then, but no longer. The tens of millions of lines of code that make up Microsoft Office won’t fit in a magazine. It would take shelves-worth of books. Read more
Quoted: “At the event, CEO Bill Barhydt said: “Our mission with Abra is to turn every smartphone into a teller that processes withdrawals. This is not just another bitcoin app. The wallet is a full-fledged digital asset management system, and you don’t have to understand it.”
Use of the application is straightforward and relies on a network of people around the world who act as tellers, charging small fees to help people transfer money abroad. A user can deposit funds into his or her account using a debit card or by meeting up with a teller in person and handing them cash. Then those funds can be instantly — the power of Bitcoin — transferred anywhere in the world. The person receiving the money has only to find a teller, show that he or she is the recipient of the funds, and exchange the digital cash (denominated in USD) back for their local currency.”
Read the article here > https://bitcoinmagazine.com/19490/abra-announced-launch-festival-2015-seamless-remittances-powered-bitcoin/
