designing better futures

Optogenetics is amazing

 
Wow!  I jsut finished this article on optogenetics in wired.  Basically it involves targeted neuron therapies involving the typical stuff of gene therapy with an amazing optical twist.

1. isolated gene for expressing protein (in this case light sensitive from algae)

2. A benign viral vector for transduction or other method for transfection (ie. slipping the gene into host cells so it can function delivery)

3. Using light to activate de-activate the protein function (that is pretty wild).

By now luceiferase and other photodetectable biomarkers are pretty common.  I used to read a bio-photonics journal for fun on the subway in New York.

Instead of biomarkers the researches in the article above are using light to induce function both for activation and de-activation of the desired protein state and they are doing it in mammalian brains.  It is huge stuff and an incredible case of lateral thinking.  The article link above does the technology great justice for the layperson and almost  warrants (for me at least) re-subscribing to wired.  Wired has sadly become a rather tired mouthpiece touting the latest MSM offerings pop-tart culture and gadget Version X.0 fanboy gunk.

The interesting things is that instead of typical gene activation, de-activation functional regimes such as SiRNA and related block-out, knock out schemes this one can be activated with remote stimuli and toggled on and off at rapid rate.  How cool is that?

Now ideally the desired behaviour is induced relative to functioning normal bio-feedback loop, but when those fail and the causal chain isn't fully understood this looks like a great shortcut.  Flip a light inside the organism and the proper function is expressed.  Imagine turning on and off a neuro-transmitter related illness like a light switch.

The only cause for pause in my mind is that many bio-feedback loops have dampeners, gain functions and inhibitors for good functional reasons.  The risk is that without understanding the reason for a failed or over-stimulated loop such as parkinsons etc. is the solution/therapy may lead to downstream physical bio-chemical issues or cascading factors as people will use the "desired physical" output potential to achieve a bio-process detriment due to the lack of dampening feedback. 

A way to think of this is the learning function of pain.  In the organism we experience the neural feedback of "pain" in response to physical stimuli that harm us or induce a change in state that means we should limit the current activity or risk physical harm to the organism.

Regardless of the current risks, the world of optogenetics is opening some amazing ways to control neuronal processes as well as monitor them in real time and at localized scale.  Other optical and non-optical bio-markers mean that true functional biological models and therapies are getting closer, this is a good thing. ...and the singularity inches forward another notch.

Taking things for Granted

I have often referred to a type of financial risk as "oxygen" risk.  Oxygen risk is anything so common and familiar that it is taken for granted.  In that vein I offer something to watch that is both interesting and important, a video about clean water technology.  Most of the readers of this blog will take little interest in this, but it is my show here :)

Finance and risk are interesting and important but for me what is most interesting are things related to potentially significant changes in the human condition.  Property rights, iodized salt, sustainable energy, access to toilets, micro-nutrients and civil open society in the Popperian concept aren't considered sexy because they are the "oxygen" for most of the readers of this blog.  For me they are endlessly fascinating. Understanding how they can become more accessible to developing countries and more importantly adapted by their cultures is a point of endless fascination for me.  I am looking forward to reading my copy of a book on Human Waste, ick but it is important to the condition of life for billions of us.

So here is an interesting video on a new water filtration technology.  It is no panacea, just another technology, but most changes and successful systems consist of many little things.  This may be one of them for some people.

Apparent Trojan horse in the Bloomberg directory could be an AVG false positive.

I use Bloomberg  on my laptop to round out my algorithmic trading research. 

My copy of AVG Antivirus just popped a window saying I have the Tiny F. Trojan Horse inside the Bloomberg Directory.

Toby (seen in the comments below) indicates he has contacted Bloomberg and the error is with AVG.  It seems AVG issues a False positive.  So this is most likely not a virus in the Bloomberg system.

Hat tip: Toby

Deep play: Math, coral & crochet.

For those of you who get it, you will realize this video is a lot deeper in terms of symbolic meaning, linkage, learning and evolutionary creation of symbolic and applied knowledge.  For the rest, enjoy the pretty coral.

Margaret Wertheim leads a project to re-create the creatures of the coral reefs using a crochet technique invented by a mathematician -- celebrating the amazements of the reef, and deep-diving into the hyperbolic geometry underlying coral creation.   

I would be interested in hearing comments about this as most of the really deep math people I know will understand immediately why "play" is important.  pushing symbols about isn't interesting, but synthesizing new relationships or constructs within a bounded environment is very cool. 

For the fairly limited maths used in "advanced" finance and risk, just curious what kind of "wooly" form would pop out of a good CMBS or CDO model.  My guess is a CDO would look something like a teratoma and be immediately recognized as unstable or unfunctional due to flawed form.

More power = more questions

Everyday we progress exponentially along the knowledge curve implementing improved technology to manifest greater power.  That power comes in the form of energy, information and control as manifested through individual and group behaviors. 

As a former chief analyst for one of Europe's most advanced research labs and an anthropologist I pose this question. 

More power to ever smaller groups can mean more risk to everyone, what should we do at the group social level? 

I don't have answers, but these are profound and looming questions.  Here is a video or War power.  I have posited since 1990 that applied biological technology will pose as many profound challenges as anything we have yet encountered.  Yes this is Bob Merton, he the maker of small fortunes from large one who blew up LTCM.  He has led some of the most expensive lessons in convexity exposure and Gamma risk ever.  Please god, for the sake of the children keep him away from systemically large amounts of leverage :).

The singularity and the real future of computing, post netbook

The future isn't going to be like the past, netbooks are nice and will have a 3 year life of novelty before they become another banal niche in the silecosystem.  Watch this 7 minute video and think about how fast the future is going to be here.  The technology that delivers this is unfolding no matter what happens in the economy.  The video shows what information anywhere really means.  It is a post Jetson's future, the kind that was tough to imagine just 15 years ago.

My guess is devices similar to this will be in the 3rd world in 7 years and in the developed world in 2-3 years.  As former chief analyst for a research institute Modeled on the MIT media lab, I have seen a few things and can assure you this video is a window into the very near future.

If this video doesn't shake you up a little bit, you need more coffee :;

If you want to see where this is all heading, read the singularity is near by Kurzweil.  I don't make book recommendations lightly, as it is the time of your life we are talking about.

The green re-cession...via demand shock.

A lot of people try to guess at true Chinese GDP using Electricity consumption as a proxy.  Here is a little review of estimated US energy usage through since 1930.  I can't vouch for the source Wattzon or data integrity, but it really makes one think about firms in the peak energy management business like Enernoc or grid pressure relief systems.  I wish the graph below were semi-log to more clearly highlight the 1930's decline.

I found the chart in Paul Kedrosky's mention of an energy conference presentation.

Carbon credits, utilities etc. and anyone used to steady state energy consumption growth is probably in for a bit of a shock.  Smart metering, behavioral changes and other end point and grid efficiency gains will only exacerbate this shock for energy producers and their respective supply chains, railroads etc.

Make Interactive Excel Models in under 2 minutes

Making a model that lets people interact with variables via scroll bars is one of the most powerful and underused components in Excel.

If you enjoy making models for people to "walk around" or feel the sensitivity assumptions, this is for you.

A warning about the tutorial below, it pops open another window and autoplays. It is a little loud.

Change happens faster

Change happens regardless of the economy, only the rate gets altered a bit.  There is some hype here so have the salt shaker ready. 

economics, technology, science and the singularity

Juan Enriquez usually gives some of the more intriguing talks at TED.  He jumps from point to point spinning disjointed concepts into amazing narratives.  As a former chief analyst for a "deep future" science research park and anthropologist, this is right up my alley. 

Be warned watching this video will make your head swim with possibilities.  As a hedge fund manager today, I believe imagination is the most important risk management tool.  This video has a lot of implications.

Check out Ray Kurzweils book the Singularity is Near to understand the drivers behind all of this.

Brittle systems: when things fall apart

A tightly coupled supply chain may have many co-products and dependencies that rely on its inherent economies of scope or scale.  Efficiencies gained from scale or stability create dependencies based on positive externalities.  The more stable the underlying source of the dependency, the more dangerous its failing can be.

Did you know that a slow down in automobile manufacturing can impact the delivery of various life saving drugs?  Neither did I.  You can read about it here at the always interesting Blown mortgage blog.

This is a derivative form of risk that can't be modeled as the causal agents and feedback potential are to tough to model.  It is a qualitative NP hard problem if you will.

Black swans are are caused by cascading failures between what are believed extremely non-linked systems.  We usually think of derivatives in the first order.  

An S&P 500 option or future derives its value from the underlying value of the S&P 500 equity values which of course derive their value from the longer term expected prospects of their earnings.  Black swans are caused by 2 or more loosely coupled and viewed as independent events that link up causing extreme outcomes.

Current earnings estimates point to $30 worth of earnings for the S&P 500 which is currently priced at $835.  That equates to a PE ratio of 27.8 or an effective yield of 3.59%.  That yield sounds a little low to me.  The historical average PE ratio implies an S&P fair value at 490.   For those of you who think in Dow points that equates to a 4,400 DJIA.

The free PHaT tool may be helpful when thinking yield and trading ranges over the last 90 years.  For those interested, the low PE during the depression was roughly 5.6 in June 1932.  That equates to  167 for todays S&P 500 and 1,590 on the DJIA based on current earnings estimates.  I am not saying these are my opinions or fair values for the equities markets, merely pointing out that they are within the realm of the historically possible.  As a PM I think 98% of the time about risk.

Flitter=Photosynth+Facebook+Twitter+Animetrics

I was playing around with Matlab thinking about vector clustering algorithms over the weekend. Something out of my depth really.  While thinking about complex data sets and vectors, I remembered PhotoSynth from microsoft.
 Then I thought about facial biometrics which usually use a few bio points to reduce a face to a few key vectors.  Companies like Animetrics do this.

That got me thinking about a social application mash-up.  In the human animal the gaze is important as we are highly socially evolved.  Our eye have small irises relative to the "white" of the eye compared to the Gorilla or Chimpanzee.  One theory behind this adaptation is that it allows us to track the gaze or focal point of others.  Think about how finally tuned we are to gauge trust based on eye tracking, contact etc. 

Social gaze is our desire to watch others behaviours and in times of uncertainty to mimic it.  This occurs not just during the teenage years but throughout life.  Look at any market. Charlie Munger writes about this.

Social gaze is a powerful tool, it is the basis of marketing.  Facebook and Twitter allow for social broadcast & gaze at an information but not physical level with people continuously answering the question, "what are you doing right now?"

One can easily imagine the following applications being developed.  Variants are probably already in use at Darpa etc or being nurtured in silicon valley.

PeopleHistoryWhere: combine Photosynth for creating location tags and vecotors. Then use similar technology for clustering social vectors extracted from the images, overlap the data sets and from a large pile of public photographs, you could probably determine location, time and social network (relationships).  My guess is that the vector clustering could even indicate passage of time using standardized clues to evolve crude social spatial chronology. 

This would make a very interesting form of historical journalism, genealogy from public photos of who with whom, where and when.  The immortal why of history would be up to the historians.  Imagine getting an e-mail from a photograph asking, "what were you thinking at this moment?"  The moment and actors in any space could theoretically be recreated.  Disneyland pictures 2.0.

Given the human animals social instincts and relatively tight clustering behaviour you could probably infer who was holding the camera where, when and most likely during what time of day and day of year if the picture was outdoors and there are enough shadows a latitude could be approximated.  This could be done using photographs of well photographed landmarks from any period.  This would be very interesting for historians.

The Flitter application mentioned in the title needs less technology overhead, simply register your camera phone or account and start-uploading photos.  Each time a photo is updated an approximate time could be guessed at as to when it was taken and where assuming it was outdoors or indoors near a well photographed (tagged or untagged) landmark. 

Most photos of people are taken next to physical or social landmarks.  A social landmark is a birthday party filled with people for example.  given the small quick nearest neighbors set that a social network allows, it wouldn't be to tough to identify and tag the photo participants automatically.  The software could even prompt the user for confirmation.

Upon uploading to your flitter account, the photo is automatically indexed and placed in either a physical or social context.  This would most likely be a popular social gaze application building on top of existing social software and allowing for interesting auto-tagging. 

Like all technologies, it is ethically agnostic.  It is more a matter of when rather than if this happens in the public sphere.  This technology will of course manifest itself through our cultural filters of greed, lust, fear etc.  Lets hope it provides a better understanding and appreciation of our relationships with each other rather than stalking and finger pointing.

An interesting take on the poor, urbanization, mobile phones and a crisis

Bruce Sterling is an interesting thinker and writer.  He has a great understanding of the social dynamics of technology.  If you are interested in technology, society or global politics, you may find this lecture of the eventual collapse of North Korea and its implications interesting.

Crisis in crisis, 100 year storms and truly great depressions

Aside from the tiresome determination of what "inning" the credit crunch is in and how strong the "headwinds" are lets take a look at the Crisis of crisis.  What does that mean?

Well every media outlet needs a crisis to grab your attention in order to sell it.   

Crisis Definition:

1 a: the turning point for better or worse in an acute disease or fever b: a paroxysmal attack of pain, distress, or disordered function c: an emotionally significant event or radical change of status in a person's life <a midlife crisis>

2: the decisive moment (as in a literary plot)

3 a: an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending; especially : one with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome <a financial crisis> b: a situation that has reached a critical phase <the environmental crisis>

The media will hopefully burn through the "crisis" metaphor in a few months and like some burned out sports hack seek ever more bombastic metaphors and modifiers.  Look out for exploding banks, melting markets and ballistic prices. 

Interestingly we can expect to see more crisis because we can see further and care more now about the world. 

Imagine that some event  warrants the word crisis due to the fact it was a one in a 100 year event.  Our current media and shrinking world mean that instead of a looking at a local phenomenon and seeing a crisis once every 100 years, we can now look and pay attention to 100 different phenomenon.  Now that we can "see" farther and monitor more things, we are more likely to see more crisis.  The crisis of crisis is upon us.  To understand why economic crisis are far more common than the "that is so 6 minutes ago old news" media, I would recommend spending a considered period of time with a book on the matter, such as something from Kindelberger.

For those ranters and ravers who have a limited scope and equate everything bleak with the great depression, please do your homework.  It was mainly a deflationary environment which saw over a 25% contraction in GDP and reported unemployment of over 25% with an estimated shrinking of the money supply of an estimated 30%.  I am not advocating for or against this view of the future, but rather asking for a more considered use of the "like the great depression." catch phrase.

An anthropological perspective on Youtube

Anthropology is a very interesting way of attempting to separate oneself from cultural biases and understand the behaviour of the human animal.  My anthropology background has been incredibly rewarding and I would recommend the major to anyone wanting to learn more about the people around them.
Anthropology is broken into 4 major sub fields: social, linguistic, physical and social.  I am most interested in socio economic anthropology ans sustainable development in cultures.

Have a look, it is pretty interesting to see new media the space it creates for culture.

125 inch TV that weighs 9 pounds, biggest, lightest TV

You may want to hold off on spending that stimulus check on the 40 inch TV.  This is just around the corner. Learn more at Pink Tentacle

Laser TV is right around the corner as well.  3 Times the color depth and disturbingly real effects. 

and of course there is the hologram presentation using telepresence. The gap between living room and holodeck get more narrow each passing day.

Wave your hands in the air

Our interactions shape our beliefs.  Here is a new way of interacting with things.  Remember when people, used the "drive" metaphor for a computer.  He or she knows how to drive a computer.  If you are under 35, you probably don't.  Touch, and gesture are natural anthropic behaviours. 

Here is a very anthropic, what is commonly called "friendly" or ergonomic way to interact...oh and its cool as well. thanks new launches

interfaces of the future

Thanks Core77. Johnny Cheung Lee is pointing the way to the future of interaction and is a great hacker.  Lets hope the digital hardware designer out there are watching his work here.

a video from 1969 Britain on computers.

An interesting experience, to watch and feel the sense of future in the video below.  The technology is now 6-8 orders of magnitude cheaper and better but hasn't fundamentally changed.  thanks to the personal genome site for digging this up

The next real revolution will happen with either analog environments or a shift from the purely Von Neumann architecture used today.  My guess is something mimicking a highly redundant biological system for solving complex non-discrete problems.

Researchers can read thoughts to decipher what a person is actually seeing

Here is a fascinating article that reinforces the work of Ray Kurzweil and his book, the singularity is near.  Basically the article is about the ability to track via live scanning a single human thought.  It is early days in this field, but the science is rapidly approaching boundaries considered science fiction just a few years ago....and ever faster we go, to we know not where or what.