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The technological future arrives at different times in different places. Travel physically allows you to see this.
One thing about the future is you can also get a rough time table for its arrival, just not what shape it will arrive in. I used to work in a science research lab, whatever survived there might show up on the shelf or in your home in 4-10 years.
Science takes lots of weird twists and turns to become technology and then applied commercial technology. Here is a wild case in point.
A sheep that is 15% human has been made. An animal with a few human organs inside, is pretty interesting.
Genetic technology will rapidly provide answers to some very challenging questions that we aren't socially, legally or religously enculturated to answer. Expect lots of debate and discussion.
All I can say is hang on, life is going to get weirder and more flavorful.
Good to Great is a fascinating book which uses rigurous quantitative analysis to indicate that values based companies succeed.
These companies use slow and steady growth to make impressive results. They organizations all know who they are and what they are doing. Organizational belief and strong culture are not to be under estimated.
If you haven't read the book, I recommend doing so, to understand that the organization you work with can improve.
There are some interesting concepts which involve things such as
and quite a few others. 
A great addition to this book is Good to Great and the social sectors. I plan on using this for my property wiki project. This project aims at building a massive open wiki to aid making it easier for people to register property around the world. I believe that by focus and effective communication a $9.3 trillion opportunity to make things better can be undertaken. If you are interested in property wiki, take a look at this video highlighting the opportunity to make things better.
"these aren't the droids you're looking for." a classic line from a great cultural icon of a film, Star Wars.
One of my pet passions is the human mind and how it works on the individual level and in groups. Hence my anthropology, marketing, psychology interests and even AI.
Made to Stick is a great book about how to get into other people's heads. Our minds work in mysterious ways. Try this exercise...
Whatever you do: don't visualize any purple rhinos......
Dammit. To late.
Made to stick is written by 2 brothers who have spent years studying the phenomenae of communication via marketing messages, urban myth, effective teaching and other ideas that get stuck in peoples heads.
Sticky communication is power. We are surrounded by information. This is a pain, because what we really want is entertainment, knowledge or things that helps us. Most of the information we take in is clutter and stressful. Imagine an empty beach...very little information there but a nice feeling of calm.
Now imagine a crowded street, billboards, traffic people, clothes that socially signal things etc Wow a lot of information.
Made to stick is a study in what works for creating effective information. My only suggestion if you have any job involving communication (leadership, marketing, teaching, listening, presenting) is to either buy this book or ask me to lend you my copy.
If you don't want to know how to make sticky ideas at least you may learn a few Jedi mind tricks. OK, you can stop thinking about the purple rhino now.
Solving problems whether they are architectural, ergonomic, financial or scientific require thought. Excellent thought yields great design.
Constraints and new solutions can yield the best designs. Here are some interesting examples of a new re-inforced glass. These are physical properties which will yield amazing structures and hopefully enhance our lives today and in the future.
As an anthropologist, technologist and marketer. Behaviour and science fascinate me.
The image to the left is a study of where men and women look at a picture. The original research work is here.
Normally I wouldn't comment other than a little surprise, I guess that envy thing is playing a role here.
In reviewing the research, the following phrase cought my eye.
"Although both men and women look at the image of George Brett when directed to find out information about his sport and position, men tend to focus on private anatomy as well as the face. For the women, the face is the only place they viewed."
ok kind of strange...but wait.
"Coyne adds that this difference doesn’t just occur with images of people. Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site."
Science doesn't judge and neither should we. I must admit though my wife and found a lot of humour in all of this. I constantly explain to my wife that "we are all just animals with opposable thumbs with the gift of gab". She retorts that she is a star, which from a physics of matter creation is technically true. All matter is the remnant of the fusion process going on inside of stars.
So we may be animals or stardust, but fellas enough with checking out the dogs already. :)
I am currently reading a book called Meaning inc. It is a good way to pass the time on the New York subways. I came across a great quote from Lou Gerstner.
Basically the book is all about how truly successful organizations have a purpose and belief that is held by their employees in what they are doing. We spend a lot of time working, so we better care about it. Those organizations that foster meaning for their staffs and customers excel, it is that simple.
As an amthropologist I love this quote about creating meaning and belief from a CEO who got it.
"I used to think culture was part of the game. Now I realize it is the whole game." Lou Gerstner CEO IBM 1993-2000.
The fact is all organizations are held together as belief systems. Belief in the goal mission etc. organizational structure even its rights and rituals. I have used my amthrpology (amateur anthropologist) when I am in corporations and market study roles to better understand these belief systems. It is powerful stuff playing field amthropologist on a sales call, corporate visit or market researcher.
A sense of love, duty and meaning are what can happen in corporations that get this right. This doesn't mean manipulation or abuse of people or beliefs, on the contrary it means everyone doing extra ordinary things they can feel great about at the end of their careers. What kind of kind of company do you work for? What kind of company do build?
Ok it is 2012 your X+5 years old (X being your age today). Say it out loud, I am X years old.
Now what kind of company do you work for? Have you made things better, do you believe in what you do? Ok, now it is 2022 you are X+15 year old. What do you do? Do believe in it? A lot of people avoid this question. Some lucky ones use it change their entire lives and are happier for it.
A new form matter has been found with profoundly interesting properties and could affect the standard model of physics is being worked with. Read about it here
Some of the greatest discoveries of future alchemy are going to involve things called band gap crystals and artificial matter. These are years out there in some cases and here today in others, but these materials and effects will be the Eldorado's of the next 15-25 years.
A great intro book about artificial matter is hacking matter. I read this years ago when it came out. Totally cool stuff.
The era of chemistry and plastics, when we created new materials, is about to be superceded by the era of new materials created by nano-tech assembly, this will be similar to chemistry, but use self assembly, thin films and lattices in new and amazing ways.
The future will be stranger than you can imagine carbon fibers are strong so what. How about materials that change their properties with the flip of a switch so to speak. Check out the site and the book for the full details.
These materials will be playing profound roles in high tech where they will have a high impact and in biotech where they will have a huge impact.
Ecko 1 CIT 1/2
Tonight I attended a reception at the HQ of Mark Ecko fashion. Very cool offices, they had a basketball court, reminded me of starlab with lots of creative style loaded with contemporary pop culture riffs. Think Warhol's factory for 2007.
Marck Ecko Urban enterprises is the brand created by 34 year old Mark and his less well known but 
often mentioned business partner Seth. Hats off to the lads, they have managed to be very cool and they know how to do it properly. Unselfconcious honest and out there with the people. Mark knows his brand and has made the leap in Fashion to run a $1.5 B/year shop.
He gave a great interview and is very straightforward about the good and the bad times. The style and influence is very now. Of course the challenge is that the target of "now" always changes.
He seems to be on the right track. In his office, I spied a copy of a book about Branson, which sounds like a good role model. Should probably follow up in a few years with Madonna, the supreme master at reinvention in the pop cultural world. He gets brand and knows how manage a large enterprise. He is also keenly aware of how global things are.
The CIT and Conde Nast parts of the show were kind of typical corporate pieces very polished, but lacking authenticity and fun, where is the kookiness the edge.
I like the honesty geek awkwardness of the valley or edgy type corporate presentations. I think CIT has done the right thing to partner up and present themselves in this light, now if they could just loosen up a bit.
Any way, well done to Mark Ecko and company, if you ever need an in house anthropologist give me a ring. and well done to the people who put the project together.
First off lets ignore the lame image here. One of the more interesting companies playing around in the field of Machine learning (AI) whatever you wish to call it has opened up their development algorithms. Numenta, the baby of Jeff Hawkins has opened their doors for developers to drive there development environment. This is fantastic stuff.
Hawkins book "on intelligence" which I reviewed earlier is a fascinating read on consciousness and mind and the role played by the Neocortex. I would urge anyone interested in AI or theories of learning to read it. I used to work with early neural nets and genetic algorithms trying to predict bond and currency markets as an undergrad. It was a hobby. Needless to say, I was getting a lot of action as an undergrad:)
The theories postulated here and the potential for moving forward with machine learning is deeply interesting. Hawkins HTM theory is interesting with its focus on the Neocortex and associative learning. It treats this thin layered outer coating of the brains the place where the magic happens, converting qualia into biological associative bits so to speak. This leaves the bulk of the grey matter out of the equation. It will be interesting to see how the wetware guys think about this new silica approach.
Hawkins got slammed a bit in a video presentation as just putting up a new recursive neural net. I think that was mistaken. I look forward to reading papers and stories about Numenta's approach. A lot of researchers will debunk the approach showing it to be poor at older tests and data sets that neural nets excel at. But in the long run, I bet with Hawkins. HTM won't answer the mystery of consciousness, but it will start making things a lot smarter a lot faster. The future just started getting here a little faster.
check out an older video of him here or this one from MIT
It might not look like much, but spongy materials have some serious potential. There is a great article on Super absorbers on the TransStudio site. I think that Noise pollution if minimized could significantly up real estate prices in major urban areas. Consider the negative implications of a new airport on real estate prices.
Major roads and railroads have the same impacts. Super Absorbing technology could be used to line barriers along railways and major roads in urban areas. The increase in property values might offset the costs. Net result, better quality of life for a significant part of the population.
All right all of you aspiring Donald Trumps, do your feasibility studies, go out and by some options on homes next to noisy areas, then get the city to invest in super noise absorption technology. :)
here is a great video from the book Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. It is about business chasing the poorest consumers and thus enriching their lives. Great stuff.
The video is about an Eye clinic modeled on McDonald's processes that is bringing site to people all over India.
Years ago I developed an quantitive traded index product for money market funds. Money market funds are the ugly ducklings of the mutual fund business, fighting it out for basis points. The amazing fact is that people allocate 20-25% to them. A huge opportunity. The idea is to offer the transparency of an index with a few extra basis points from a traded international cash product.
The consumer gets a diversified basket of currencies, no leverage and an open approach to managed currencies that yields far better than the T-bills plus they are used to. I designed the product from concept to marketing creative and graphics on my own. Have a look at these pages:
The latest volatility spike in YEN and forex combined with low risk free rates in general may make this product more interesting.
Have a look at the pitch document I put together a long time ago. This thing could make a mint for an asset management firm. Read my prospectus and concept Download GO.pdf
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