Thursday, August 9, 2018

Friday Thinking 10 August 2018

Hello all – Friday Thinking is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. My purpose is to pick interesting pieces, based on my own curiosity (and the curiosity of the many interesting people I follow), about developments in some key domains (work, organization, social-economy, intelligence, domestication of DNA, energy, etc.)  that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.

Many thanks to those who enjoy this.

In the 21st Century curiosity will SKILL the cat.

Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning. Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works. Techne = Knowledge-as-Know-How :: Technology = Embodied Know-How  

“Be careful what you ‘insta-google-tweet-face’”
Woody Harrelson - Triple 9

Content
Quotes:

Articles:



Elinor Ostrom was also challenging the received wisdom in her field of political science. Starting with her thesis research on how a group of stakeholders in southern California cobbled together a system for managing their water table, and culminating in her worldwide study of common-pool resource (CPR) groups, the message of her work was that groups are capable of avoiding the tragedy of the commons without requiring top-down regulation, at least if certain conditions are met (Ostrom 1990, 2010). She summarized the conditions in the form of eight core design principles: 1) Clearly defined boundaries; 2) Proportional equivalence between benefits and costs; 3) Collective choice arrangements; 4) Monitoring; 5) Graduated sanctions; 6) Fast and fair conflict resolution; 7) Local autonomy; 8) Appropriate relations with other tiers of rule-making authority (polycentric governance). This work was so groundbreaking that Ostrom was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2009.

Lin’s design principles (DP) had “major evolutionary transition” written all over them. Clearly defined boundaries (DP1) meant that members knew they were part of a group and what the group was about (e.g., fisherman with access to a bay or farmers managing an irrigation system). Proportional equivalence of costs and benefits (DP2) meant that members had to earn their benefits and couldn’t just appropriate them. Collective choice arrangements (DP3) meant that group members had to agree upon decisions so nobody could be bossed around. Monitoring (DP4) and graduated sanctions (DP5) meant that disruptive self-serving behaviors could be detected and punished. Fast and fair conflict resolution (DP6) meant that the group would not be torn apart by internal conflicts of interest. Local autonomy (DP7) meant that the group had the elbow room to manage its own affairs. Appropriate relations with other tiers of rule making authority (DP8) meant that everything regulating the conduct of individuals within a given group also was needed to regulate conduct among groups in a multi group population.

The concordance between Lin’s core design principle approach and multilevel selection theory had three major implications. First, it placed the core design principle approach on a more general theoretical foundation. Lin’s “Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD)” framework emanated from political science and she was an early adopter of economic game theory, but her main case for the design principle approach was the empirical database that she compiled for common-pool resource groups around the world, as described in her most influential book Governing the Commons (Ostrom 1990). Multilevel selection theory showed how the core design principle approach follows from the evolutionary dynamics of cooperation in all species and from our own evolutionary history as a highly cooperative species.

Second, because of its theoretical generality, the core design principle approach is likely to apply to a much broader range of human groups than those attempting to manage common-pool resources (CPRs). Almost any group whose members must work together to achieve a common goal is vulnerable to self-serving behaviors and should benefit from the same principles.

Third, the core design principle approach can provide a practical framework for improving the efficacy of groups in the real world. It should be possible for almost any kind of group to assess itself with respect to the design principles, address shortcomings, and function better as a result.  ….

The Tragedy of the Commons: How Elinor Ostrom Solved One of Life’s Greatest Dilemmas




But if this is the era of post-truth, when, exactly, was the halcyon age of truth? In the 1980s? The 1950s? The 1930s? And what triggered our transition to the post-truth era – the internet? Social media? The rise of Putin and Trump?

A cursory look at history reveals that propaganda and disinformation are nothing new, and even the habit of denying entire nations and creating fake countries has a long pedigree. In 1931 the Japanese army staged mock attacks on itself to justify its invasion of China, and then created the fake country of Manchukuo to legitimise its conquests. China itself has long denied that Tibet ever existed as an independent country. British settlement in Australia was justified by the legal doctrine of terra nullius (“nobody’s land”), which effectively erased 50,000 years of Aboriginal history.

In fact, humans have always lived in the age of post-truth. Homo sapiensis a post-truth species, whose power depends on creating and believing fictions. Ever since the stone age, self-reinforcing myths have served to unite human collectives. Indeed, Homo sapiens conquered this planet thanks above all to the unique human ability to create and spread fictions. We are the only mammals that can cooperate with numerous strangers because only we can invent fictional stories, spread them around, and convince millions of others to believe in them. As long as everybody believes in the same fictions, we all obey the same laws, and can thereby cooperate effectively.

Truth and power can travel together only so far. Sooner or later they go their separate ways. If you want power, at some point you will have to spread fictions. If you want to know the truth about the world, at some point you will have to renounce power. You will have to admit things – for example about the sources of your own power – that will anger allies, dishearten followers or undermine social harmony. Scholars throughout history faced this dilemma: do they serve power or truth? Should they aim to unite people by making sure everyone believes in the same story, or should they let people know the truth even at the price of disunity? The most powerful scholarly establishments – whether of Christian priests, Confucian mandarins or communist ideologues – placed unity above truth. That’s why they were so powerful.

Yuval Noah Harari extract: ‘Humans are a post-truth species’




Without deep knowledge of a company’s critical research — which businesses may be reluctant to share, for competitive reasons — it’s difficult for outsiders to evaluate a start-up’s worth. That makes it harder to obtain funding, and it may be partly responsible for certain trends: why there are fewer initial public offerings these days, why smaller companies are being swallowed by the giants, and why so many companies remain private for longer.

That creates opportunities for private equity firms, which have insider access to innovative start-ups that may never go directly to the public markets. Meanwhile, Main Street investors are consigned to a less diverse universe than they may realize.

There’s a broader problem. Our visibility into the inner workings of public companies isn’t great, but we know far more about them than we do private companies, which aren’t required to disclose nearly as much information.

And these changing dynamics mean we know far less about many of the creators of American profits and jobs than would otherwise be the case.

In a democracy in which corporations already have enormous clout, that is worth worrying about.

The Stock Market Is Shrinking. That’s a Problem for Everyone



The game of Monopoly was originally quite different when it was first patented in 1904 by a progressive woman named Lizzie Magie. Magie’s game, called “The Landlord’s Game,” was like the version you grew up playing, in that it could be won by accruing as many land lots, properties, and cash as possible. But her version came with a twist. At any time, the players could choose a more egalitarian future by voting in the Single Tax rules.

Once activated, the Single Tax required players to redirect all fines and rents on empty lots into the Public Treasury’s coffers. For any player to erect properties or collect a fine on an existing property, the Treasury first had to receive rent on the land. These public funds paid for public utilities, transportation, and college, which then became available to everyone for free. Residual funds were redistributed as higher wages for everyone. No individual could really win the Single Tax game, other than by collaborating to break up all monopolies.

THE RULES OF MONOPOLY





The subject of money, currency is both a concrete reality and a mass hallucination shimmering in the Zeitgeist of change. Not just the world of Finance or the dominant paradigms of our economy is secure as new forms of bits or social credit become our means of recognizing and exchange value. But still a comprehensive accounting of our values and how we value are values seems clear. It worth looking at the history of money (beyond the tired fable of economist’s ideas of its roots in barter).
Early governments created money to pay off public works debts and to collect taxes, Rosenswig contends. Bartering had nothing to do with it. Instead, money grew out of older systems of credit and debt, which anthropologists have documented for more than a century. In small-scale societies, debts concern obligations to others. Among hunter-gatherer and farming groups, for example, daughters given away in marriage create debts that are partially repaid with goods known as bridewealth. Full repayment requires that the recipient of the first bride provide a bride in return. No cash needed.

Conflict reigns over the history and origins of money

Thousands of years ago, money was a means of debt payment, archaeologists and anthropologists say
Economists and revisionists alike agree that an object defined as money works in four ways: First, it serves as a means for exchanging goods and services. Currency enables payment of debts. It represents a general measure of value, making it possible to calculate prices of all sorts of items. And, finally, money can be stored as a wealth reserve.

From there, the two groups split. Mainstream economists assume that bartering of goods and services inspired money’s invention. Anthropologists and archaeologists contend that early states invented currency as a means of debt payment.

“Much academic work assumes that [monetary systems] arose in nation-states within the last 200 to 400 years,” says sociocultural anthropologist Daniel Souleles of Copenhagen Business School in Frederiksberg. But financialized transactions and debt show up in lots of places much further back in time.

Recent research from the Americas adds new questions to the debate. These investigations suggest that money independently appeared for different reasons and assumed different tangible forms in many parts of the world, starting thousands of years ago.


This paper has wonderful illustrations that support the article above. The origin of writing is accounting - this article (15 pages - available as a downloadable pdf) is well worth the read for anyone interested in the origins of writing.

The Evolution of Writing

Abstract
Writing – a system of graphic marks representing the units of a specific language – has been invented independently in the Near East, China and Mesoamerica. The cuneiform script, created in Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq, ca. 3200 BC, was first. It is also the only writing system which can be traced to its earliest prehistoric origin. This antecedent of the cuneiform script was a system of counting and recording goods with clay tokens. The evolution of writing from tokens to pictography, syllabary and alphabet illustrates the development of information processing to deal with larger amounts of data in ever greater abstraction.


Well speaking about money and its possible future -  this might seem an inevitable development.

Facebook recently started asking banks for your financial data

A report from the Wall Street Journal today revealed Facebook was attempting to gain detailed financial information from its users’ banks. Oof, in how many languages can I say “no?”

According to the Journal, Facebook has approached the likes of Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, and Citigroup with an eye toward partnership. In exchange for users’ banking data, it proposed to offer a bank’s customers the ability to conduct business within Facebook itself.



This is an interesting signal of optimum team size, organizational architecture and shared incentives.
“Passionate workers can do much more in a few work hours than any dev forced to work on weekends or late at night,” he said. “We were able to achieve much more being eight people than when we were 20+, so we plan to stay below the 15-person limit.”

Game Studio With No Bosses Pays Everyone The Same

The game industry is not exactly known for valuing workers. Big studios are rife with soul-destroying crunch and end-of-project layoffs. French studio Motion Twin, developer of the Castlevania-inspired roguelike Dead Cells, is trying something different: Workers own and manage the company. There is no boss.

Motion Twin describes itself as an “anarcho-syndical workers cooperative.” What this means in practical terms is that all of its 11 workers are, in theory, equal. Same pay, same say.

“We actually just use a super basic formula: if a project finds success, people are basically paid more in bonuses, and everyone is paid the absolute same way,” said longtime Motion Twin game designer Sébastien Bénard in an email. “The devs and the artists are paid the same amount of money, and people like me who have been here for 17 years are paid the same amount as people who were recruited last year.”

Bénard says that lately the studio has gotten good about just telling people who seem to be on the verge of burnout to go home. The company puts an emphasis on employees being happy and driven, and burnout risks stripping away both those crucial qualities forever. “It’s obviously better to lose a few work hours than a colleague,” said Bénard. “There’s absolutely no discussion about that.”


This article signals a couple of things - China’s rise as a true competitor in the world of hardware, software and AI - and the rise of computational paradigms based on specific purpose architectures.
Kunlun can be deployed in the cloud or at the edge, such as in autonomous vehicles, an area in which Chinese companies are allocating sizeable research and development funds. But edge deployments of AI do not stop there. On-device AI is used in mobile phone cameras to improve picture quality, it can provide speech and voice recognition, and it may be used in security systems, drones or robots.

Cloud-to-Edge AI Chip Kunlun Repositions Baidu in AI Market Globally

Search engine giant Baidu has recently unveiled China’s first cloud-to-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip —Kunlun — at Baidu Create 2018. The move repositions the company in not only the Chinese market but also globally, says leading data and analytics company GlobalData.

Launched this month, Kunlun is China’s first cloud-to-edge AI chip, built to accommodate high performance requirements of a wide variety of AI scenarios. With this, Baidu joined the ranks of Google, Nvidia, Intel, and many other tech companies making processors especially for AI.

Additionally, Baidu also joins select few companies that not only offer an AI platform to help enterprises deploy AI-infused solutions but also have their own hardware to maximize AI processing. Built to accommodate the high performance requirements of a wide variety of AI scenarios, Kunlun includes training chip ‘818-300’ and inference chip ‘818-100’. It can be used to provide AI capabilities such as speech and text analytics, natural language processing, and visual recognition.


And another signal of the same trends in Machine Learning (ML).

Google AI Chief Jeff Dean’s ML System Architecture Blueprint

Dean has often pointed out that ML’s growth trend as reflected in related arXiv papers has already surpassed Moore’s Law, the 1975 prediction for chip growth.
Dean and Patterson dissect hardware design in their Golden Age paper, using the example of the Google-developed TPUv1 and TPUv2 Tensor Processing Units (TPU), which are advanced application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC). The duo advises engineers to look forward at least five years for hardware development, as an appropriate design must remain relevant through at least a two-year design and three-year deployment window to maintain its competitive edge, assuming standard depreciation projections.

Dean identifies six issues that impact ML hardware design within this five-year window, from purely architectural to mostly ML-driven concerns, including:
Training
Batch Size
Sparsity and Embeddings
Quantization and Distillation
Networks with Soft Memory
Learning to Learn (L2L)


But new foundations continue to emerge signaling yet another source of potential exponential developments in computational paradigms.

A neural network that operates at the speed of light

A team of researchers at the University of California has developed a novel kind of neural network—one that uses light instead of electricity to arrive at results. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their ideas, their working device, its performance, and the types of applications they believe could be well served by such a network.

Deep learning networks are computer systems that "learn" by looking at many examples of data types and then use patterns that develop as a way to make interpretations of new data. Like all other computers, they run on electricity. In this new effort, the researchers have found a way to create a deep learning network that does not use electricity at all—instead, it uses light. They call it a diffractive deep neural network, or more succinctly, D2NN.

To build such a network, the researchers created small plastic plates printed using a 3-D printer. Each plate represented a layer of virtual neurons—and each neuron could behave like its biological counterpart by either transmitting or reflecting incoming light. In their example, they used five plates lined up face-to-face with a small space between them. When the system was operating, light from a laser was directed at the first plate and made its way through to the second, third, fourth and fifth in a way that revealed information about an object placed in front of the device. A sensor at the back read the light and interpreted what was found.


I am a huge fan of Robot Wars or BattleBots - an entertaining contest between robot enthusiast to see who can make the most survivable and ‘fight-worthy’. Sort of an Mixed Martial Arts for robots. Here’s an interesting signal for the future of Nanobots.

DARPA Wants Your Insect-Scale Robots for a Micro-Olympics

SHRIMP is a new DARPA program to develop insect-scale robots for disaster recovery and high-risk environments
The DARPA Robotics Challenge was a showcase for how very large, very expensive robots could potentially be useful in disaster recovery and high-risk environments. Humanoids are particularly capable in some very specific situations, but the rest of the time, they’re probably overkill, and using smaller, cheaper, more specialized robots is much more efficient. This is especially true when you’re concerned with data collection as opposed to manipulation—for the “search” part of “search and rescue,” for example, you’re better off with lots of very small robots covering as much ground as possible.

Yesterday, DARPA announced a new program called SHRIMP: SHort-Range Independent Microrobotic Platforms. The goal is “to develop and demonstrate multi-functional micro-to-milli robotic platforms for use in natural and critical disaster scenarios.” To enable robots that are both tiny and useful, SHRIMP will support fundamental research in the component parts that are the most difficult to engineer, including actuators, mobility systems, and power storage.


This is a fascinating article - with great and surprising visualizations of national land use.

Here's How America Uses Its Land

There are many statistical measures that show how productive the U.S. is. Its economy is the largest in the world and grew at a rate of 4.1 percent last quarter, its fastest pace since 2014. The unemployment rate is near the lowest mark in a half century.

What can be harder to decipher is how Americans use their land to create wealth. The 48 contiguous states alone are a 1.9 billion-acre jigsaw puzzle of cities, farms, forests and pastures that Americans use to feed themselves, power their economy and extract value for business and pleasure.

Using surveys, satellite images and categorizations from various government agencies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture divides the U.S. into six major types of land. The data can’t be pinpointed to a city block—each square on the map represents 250,000 acres of land. But piecing the data together state-by-state can give a general sense of how U.S. land is used.


Perhaps we need more cooperatives to implement and manage renewable energy and even Internet infrastructure and to develop and support more open source approaches.

As Economics Improve, Solar Shines in Rural America

Declining costs have helped some of the country's smallest electricity providers expand their use of solar in highly innovative ways
A five-year effort by electric cooperatives to expand the use of solar energy in rural parts of the United States is coming to a successful conclusion.

Under the Solar Utility Network Deployment Acceleration (SUNDA) program, which was run by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) under a cost share arrangement with the U.S. Energy Department, rural electric co-ops are on track to own or buy 1 gigawatt of solar power generation capacity by 2019.

As of April, more than 120 co-ops had at least one solar project online. Of those, half said they have plans to add more solar generating capacity.

The accomplishment is no small feat. The consumer-owned structure of co-ops means that they can’t make direct use of federal tax credits, which have helped to spur solar adoption among investor-owned utilities. Co-ops often have had to come up with innovative financing arrangements to make the numbers work. In particular, solar adoption has benefited from big drops in the cost of solar PV cells in recent years.


This is a great signal about the phase transition in energy logistics that renewable energy sources and new forms of energy storage.

Network Of Tesla Powerwall Batteries Saves Green Mountain Power $500,000 During Heat Wave

One utility company in Vermont is using a virtual power plant (VPP) comprised of 2,000 Tesla Powerwalls installed in homes across the state to beat the heat.

Last year, Green Mountain Power started offering 2,000 customers a chance to own a Tesla Powerwall residential storage battery for as little as $1,500 and $15 a month for 10 years. But there was a catch. All those Powerwalls would be accessible by the utility company to help stabilize the grid and supply extra electricity, when needed.

The program represented a significant cash outlay for Green Mountain Power. The cost of a Powerwall system plus installation is about $5,500, so the company was investing $8 million of its own money up front and betting it would recoup that investment over time. Now the company says its virtual power plant system saved it $500,000 in just one week this month as temperatures soared into the 90s.

First, by tapping into its VPP system, it was able to avoid buying electricity from other power generators at peak prices. The cost of electricity from the grid is adjusted every 5 minutes. As demand goes up, so do the prices. But there is a second factor in play, one that people who only use electricity for routine domestic purposes are not aware of.

By relying on all those Powerwall batteries, GMP skipped that peak hour, which will lower its electricity costs for the entire year. Total cost benefit to the company? $500,000, says Castonguay. “We’re always predicting the peak, looking at ISO-NE’s forecast information, looking at our own systems here. If tomorrow looks like there’s going to be a peak between 5 and 6 p.m., let’s look at running from 4 to 7 p.m. with batteries and other loads,” to lessen power purchases, he says.


Another aspect of infrastructure - mass transit - this seems applicable not only to buses, but subways and delivery transport.

The Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Bus That Produces Zero CO2 Emissions

when the Summer Games head to Japan in 2020, visitors will be greeted with Sora, Toyota’s new fleet of eco-friendly buses that can efficiently transport millions of spectators from event to exciting event. Sora buses are powered solely by hydrogen—the universe’s most abundant element—and will generate zero emissions as they move swiftly through the streets of Tokyo.

Exploring the Sora
Sora’s trailblazing technology is evident even before you step on board. The vehicle's futuristic shape, minimal colour palette, and bold LED lighting are a significant departure from the boxiness of conventional transit vehicles. Likewise, the fleet’s very name is a cheeky nod to its innovative design. “Sora” is an acronym taken from the Earth’s water cycle (Sky, Ocean, River, and Air) and the vehicles embody their name as they’re powered by hydrogen and emit water as their sole by-product.

To channel this energy effectively, Sora buses rely on the Toyota Fuel Cell System—a technology that was first developed for the Toyota Mirai hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle. Each Sora has a high-capacity external power supply system that provides a 9 KW maximum output, and an electricity supply of 235 kWh2. In case of emergency, this system can also be used as an emergency external power source, helping to provide relief and support in times of crisis.


Sometime you just need another hand - to get what you want done - done.
Well here's a good signal - human enhancement and/or Doctor Octopus - just think of the sports possible when each player has a 'handy' swarm as an extended mind.

This brain-controlled prosthetic will lend you a hand — and a whole arm

For years, scientists have been exploring how we can use signals from the brain to control prosthetic limbs. Usually, this work is focused on restoring motor function to people who have lost an arm or a leg, but new research from Japan shows how the same technology can also be used to augment existing human capabilities.

Engineers from Kyoto’s Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute have demonstrated how people can be taught to control a third robotic arm with their brains, even using the limb to multitask. As described in a paper published in the journal Science Robotics today, eight of 15 test subjects were able to successfully balance a ball on a board with their hands, while grabbing a water bottle with a brain-controlled robot arm.

Although this may sound like something out of science fiction, it’s important to stress that the functionality of this third arm is extremely basic. The prosthetic moved along a predetermined path and performed only a single gesture: closing and opening its hand. Similarly, the brain-machine interface used to control the arm is not some magical mind-reading device. It’s a cap fitted with electrodes that measure electrical signals produced by the brain. In this case, participants were asked to imagine opening and closing the robot hand. The scientists recorded this signal, and turned it into an instruction for the robot arm.

Even with these limitations, though, it is very interesting work. As Nishio and his colleague Christian Peñaloza point out in their paper, it seems to be the first time supernumerary limbs have been controlled using the human brain. Usually such prosthetics are operated using joysticks or, if connected directly to the human body, electrical signals from muscles.


The ubiquitous selling of bottled water has been one of the best ‘pet-rock’ like scams ever. Before the onslaught of the massive marketing campaign to sell us the ‘purity’ of personal bottled water - public drinking fountains could be found everywhere. This is a wonderful re-imaging of the fire hydrant so it can provide a dual use function. The image is a must see.
using the same process of construction used for regular fire hydrants. His new water fountain-cum-fire hydrant is cast out of iron.

Reimagined fire hydrant doubles up as a water fountain for people and dogs

This multipurpose drinking fountain, designed by ÉCAL industrial design graduate Dimitri Nassisi, can be used for fighting fires, quenching thirst, filling bottles and refreshing pet dogs.

Styled to look like an updated fire hydrant, the Drinking Hydrant is bright blue to attract the attention of anyone looking for water.

"In Switzerland you find some drinking fountains, but I don't feel there is enough of them. The problem I saw was that they would often be very discreet and people don't know where to find them," explained Nassisi.
"Also, it is very complicated to add new drinking fountains. It takes a lot of time to develop such a project and the costs are high."

A double valve system enables firemen who need to use the hydrant to combat fire to fully open both valves and run the water at very high pressure. At other times, the valves would reduce the pressure for easy drinking.
Nassisi also included a dog bowl into the foot of the hydrant. "I want anyone to be able to enjoy the fountain – grown ups, children and even dogs."

Thursday, August 2, 2018

Friday Thinking 3 August 2018

Hello all – Friday Thinking is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. My purpose is to pick interesting pieces, based on my own curiosity (and the curiosity of the many interesting people I follow), about developments in some key domains (work, organization, social-economy, intelligence, domestication of DNA, energy, etc.)  that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.

Many thanks to those who enjoy this.

In the 21st Century curiosity will SKILL the cat.

Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning. Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works. Techne = Knowledge-as-Know-How :: Technology = Embodied Know-How  

“Be careful what you ‘insta-google-tweet-face’”
Woody Harrelson - Triple 9

Content
Quotes:


Articles:



JD.com, a giant Chinese e-commerce platform, recently opened a Shanghai fulfilment centre that can process 200,000 orders a day with just 4 employees. At its annual conference in May, Google introduced an AI virtual assistant called Duplex that can mimic the human voice with uncanny precision. Amazon, meanwhile, will soon open checkout-less grocery stores in Chicago and San Francisco, in what could be the first major transformation of bricks-and-mortar retail in decades.


From autonomous vehicles to cancer-detecting algorithms, and from picking and packing machines to robo-advisory tools used in financial services, every corner of the economy has begun to feel the heat of a new machine age. The RSA uses the term ‘radical technologies’ to describe these innovations, which stretch from the shiny and much talked about, including artificial intelligence and robotics, to the prosaic but equally consequential, such as smartphones and digital platforms.


But what do these technologies mean for workers? Here there is still little consensus. Leading robotics expert Rodney Brooks describes fears of mass automation as “ludicrous”, whereas Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos claims “it’s hard to overstate how big of an impact [AI is] going to have on society over the next 20 years”. Adair Turner, Chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, believes automation will be “rapid, unstoppable and limitless”.


What is certain is that the world of work will evolve as a direct consequence of the invention and adoption of radical technologies — and in more ways than we might imagine. Alongside eliminating and creating jobs, these innovations will alter how workers are recruited, monitored, organised and paid.

Good Work in an Age of Radical Technologies - RSA



Foresight as a practice, when distinguished from forecasting, is formally premised on the unknowability of the future and hence attempts to be more systematic in imagining futures that are not constrained by projecting the past. This does not mean that foresight practitioners do not use extrapolation and models to imagine the future. Indeed, they can use probabilistic statements as spring-boards for imagining the future and can even, in certain circumstances, aim to provide a probabilistic assessment of the future. Foresight processes however, usually take a different path from that of the forecaster. In general, foresight claims both a more creative and participatory mission, aimed at discovering new options and exploiting different forms of knowledge. As a result, foresight as a practice has experimented, somewhat haphazardly as is to be expected at the outset of new frameworks, with the challenge of both inventing and making sense of numerous new methods for generating and interpreting anticipatory assumptions and imaginary futures (Bishop, Hines and Collins, 2007; Wilkinson, 2009; Rossel, 2012).

Transforming the Future Anticipation in the 21st Century



The endemic lack of predictive success of the econometric project indicates that this hope of finding fixed parameters is a hope for which there really is no other ground than hope itself.


Real-world social systems are not governed by stable causal mechanisms or capacities. The kinds of ‘laws’ and relations that econometrics has established, are laws and relations about entities in models that presuppose causal mechanisms being atomistic and additive. When causal mechanisms operate in real-world systems they only do it in ever-changing and unstable combinations where the whole is more than a mechanical sum of parts. If economic regularities obtain they do it (as a rule) only because we engineered them for that purpose. Outside man-made ‘nomological machines’ they are rare, or even non-existent. Unfortunately, that also makes most of the achievements of econometrics – as most of the contemporary endeavours of mainstream economic theoretical modelling — rather useless.


Even in statistics, the researcher has many degrees of freedom. In statistics — as in economics and econometrics — the results we get depend on the assumptions we make in our models. Changing those assumptions — playing a more important role than the data we feed into our models — leads to far-reaching changes in our conclusions. Using statistics​ is no guarantee we get at any ‘objective truth.’


We simply have to admit that the socio-economic states of nature that we talk of in most social sciences – and certainly in economics – are not amenable to analyze as probabilities, simply because in the real world open systems there are no probabilities to be had!


To understand real world ‘non-routine’ decisions and unforeseeable changes in behaviour, ergodic probability distributions are of no avail. In a world full of genuine uncertainty – where real historical time rules the roost – the probabilities that ruled the past are not those that will rule the future.


What is important with the fact that real social and economic processes are nonergodic is the fact that uncertainty – not risk – rules the roost. That was something both Keynes and Knight basically said in their 1921 books. Thinking about uncertainty in terms of ‘rational expectations’ and ‘ensemble averages’ has had seriously bad repercussions on the financial system.


Probabilistic reasoning in science — especially Bayesianism — reduces questions of rationality to questions of internal consistency (coherence) of beliefs, but, even granted this questionable reductionism, it is not self-evident that rational agents really have to be probabilistically consistent. There is no strong warrant for believing so. Rather, there is strong evidence for us encountering huge problems if we let probabilistic reasoning become the dominant method for doing research in social sciences on problems that involve risk and uncertainty.

The main reason why almost all econometric models are wrong



What is a nomological machine?
In a simple, concise, and pithy definition Nancy Cartwright answers her own question, saying: “It is a fixed (enough) arrangement of components, or factors, with stable (enough) capacities that in the right sort of stable (enough) environment will, with repeated operation, give rise to the kind of regular behavior that we represent in our scientific laws”.

Nancy Cartwright: Nomological Machines





The smart city is an inevitable development - but not necessarily a smooth conflict free development - given the importance of governance and the resistance of incumbents. This is a useful signal of the current state of thought.

Forces of change: Smart cities

While smart cities earlier focused on connecting infrastructure for better insights, the spotlight is slowly shifting to better engaging governments, citizens, and businesses with the goal of providing improved city services and a higher quality of life. What exactly is Smart City 2.0?

It is most obvious in American cities how the car has architected the urban city. This is a very important signal of the potential of self-driving cars to not only transform mass transit but to drive (pun intended) the re-imagination of the cityscape and possibly instigate (along with other aspects of the digital environment) an initial real estate crisis.

Parking Has Eaten American Cities

A new study documents the huge amount of space taken up by parking, and the astronomical costs it represents, in five U.S. cities.
Parking eats up an incredible amount of space and costs America’s cities an extraordinary amount of money. That’s the main takeaway of a new study that looks in detail at parking in five U.S. cities: New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Des Moines, and Jackson, Wyoming.


The study, by Eric Scharnhorst of the Research Institute for Housing America (which is affiliated with the Mortgage Bankers of America), uses data from satellite images, the U.S. Census, property tax assessment offices, city departments of transportation, parking authorities, and geospatial maps like Google Maps to generate inventories of parking for these five cities. (The inventories include on-street parking spaces, off-street surface parking lots, and off-street parking structures.)


It not only estimates the total number of parking spaces in these cities and their overall estimated replacement costs, but develops interesting metrics such as parking spaces per acre, parking spaces per household, and parking costs per household—as well as providing maps of parking densities across these cities.


In sum, it provides additional empirical confirmation for parking guru Donald Shoup’s idea that American cities devote far too much space and far too many resources to parking.

This is an interesting signal related to the emerging digital environment - how it can be a positive benefit in terms of efficiencies and conveniences and how it can be ‘colonized’ to serve incumbent interests. Every light casts shadows.
There is a feedback loop going on here. In closing down their branches, or withdrawing their cash machines, they make it harder for me to use those services. I am much more likely to “choose” a digital option if the banks deliberately make it harder for me to choose a non-digital option.

The cashless society is a con – and big finance is behind it

All over the western world banks are shutting down cash machines and branches. They are trying to push you into using their digital payments and digital banking infrastructure. Just like Google wants everyone to access and navigate the broader internet via its privately controlled search portal, so financial institutions want everyone to access and navigate the broader economy through their systems.


Another aim is to cut costs in order to boost profits. Branches require staff. Replacing them with standardised self-service apps allows the senior managers of financial institutions to directly control and monitor interactions with customers.


In behavioural economics this is referred to as “nudging”. If a powerful institution wants to make people choose a certain thing, the best strategy is to make it difficult to choose the alternative.

As a high-school drop-out and former hippie - there was a time in the 50s to 70s where the ideas of changing one’s consciousness was popular and felt to be potentially able to deeply change society. Those aspirations did not manifest themselves - however they did not go away and continue to percolate in cultural consciousness. This is an important weak signal of another potential source of change as well as a new medium of therapeutic treatment - a very good scientific and friendly examination. Worth the read - 3300 words.

Caves all the way down

Do psychedelics give access to a universal, mystical experience of reality, or is that just a culture-bound illusion?
In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the middle of a psychedelic renaissance. Research into the healing potential of psychedelics has re-started at prestigious universities such as Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and Imperial College London, and is making rock stars out of the scientists carrying it out. Their findings are being reported with joy and exultation by mainstream media – on CNN, the BBC, even the Daily Mail. Respectable publishers such as Penguin are behind psychedelics bestsellers such as Michael Pollan’s book How To Change Your Mind (2018), which was reviewed enthusiastically across the political spectrum. Silicon Valley billionaires are putting their blockchain millions into funding psychedelics research, and corporates are preparing for a juicy new market. The counterculture has gone mainstream. Turn on, tune in, sell out.


The renaissance involves the resurrection of many ideas from the first ‘summer of love’ in 1967, in particular, the mystical theory of psychedelics. This idea was introduced by Aldous Huxley in his classic The Doors of Perception (1954). Having studied mystical experiences for more than a decade without really having one, Huxley took mescaline, and felt that he’d finally been let into the mystics’ club. Other 1960s gurus such as Alan Watts, Ram Dass and Huston Smith were also convinced that psychedelics led to genuine mystical experiences, and would be a catalyst for Western culture’s spiritual awakening.


The mystical theory of psychedelics has five key tenets. The first is that psychedelics lead to a mystical experience of unitive, non-dual consciousness, in which all is one, you are united with It, God, the Tao, Brahman, etc. This experience is timeless, ineffable, joyful and noetic (you know that it is true).

On the other hand - there is an increasing reliance on external forms of experience management - sometimes for very real needs - but sometimes - treatments are more profitable than cures. This may be very important as we advance into the blended world of digital enhancements.
As a sociologist, I am concerned about the formation of new pharmaceutical persons who are digitally enhanced to be compliant with the profit motives of corporations and the directives of health providers and drug companies. While all sorts of technologies monitor patients’ bodies, this is the first pharmaceutical to do so.

Digital mental health drug raises troubling questions

Moments after Neo eats the red pill in “The Matrix,” he touches a liquefied mirror that takes over his skin, penetrating the innards of his body with computer code. When I first learned about the controversial new digital drug Abilify MyCite, I thought of this famous scene and wondered what kinds of people were being remade through this new biotechnology.


Otsuka Pharmaceuticals and Proteus Digital Health won Food and Drug Administration approval to sell Abilify MyCite in late 2017. This drug contains a digital sensor embedded within the powerful antipsychotic drug Abilify, the brand name for aripiprazole, which is used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. The goal of the digital sensor is for doctors to monitor their patients’ intake of Abilify MyCite remotely and ensure that the patient is adhering to the correct drug dose and timing.


Pills with embedded sensors mark a new era in digital health and, I believe, herald the arrival of a new kind of digital cyborg identity, which sociologist Deborah Lupton defines as “the body that is enhanced, augmented or in other ways configured by its use of digital media technologies.” Drugs are cybernetic technologies in that we absorb pharmaceuticals through metabolic processes that biochemically recode our brains and bodies.

The magical illusions of movies are evolving - more magic realism. The short video and other images illustrate the new capacity very clearly.

Unreal Powers On-the-Fly Compositing with Handheld Camera

At NAB 2018 in Las Vegas, AMD partnered with ARwall to showcase a new use for real-time rendering in virtual production: an augmented reality wall that responds to changes in camera perspective, thus eliminating the need for compositing green screen footage with rendered CG in post-production. The ARwall Effects (ARFX) System, running on AMD hardware, was on display for all NAB participants to demo.


With the ARFX System, real-time images, computed with Unreal Engine, are displayed on a screen large enough to serve as a scene’s backdrop, and the images update in real time in response to the camera’s movement. When live actors stand in front of the wall, the result is an instantly “composited” shot — a real-time 3D virtual set extension.

This is an important signal of the emerging field of lab grown organs.

After 15 years of trying, scientists successfully transplanted lab-grown lungs into pigs

internist Joan Nichols and her colleagues at the University of Texas Medical Branch have spent years finding ways to engineer a lung from scratch in the laboratory, using donated cells. Theoretically, these lungs could be custom-built for each patient, solving both wait-time and compatibility problems. In early trials, though, these lungs have failed to keep donee animals alive for more than a few hours; the engineered organs couldn’t replicate the complexity of the blood vessels that enable the transfer oxygen to the blood stream. Until now.


On Wednesday, Aug. 1, Nichols and her team published (paywall) work in Science Translational Medicine showing that lungs created from pigs could be successfully transplanted into the animals for long periods of time. And it appeared that the engineered lungs were successfully providing oxygen to their blood, and were correctly growing the network of tiny blood vessels in the organ tissue.

This is a must view 60 min video that provides an excellent summary of the state of our knowledge of our microbiome - and the microbiome’s impact on our physical and mental health. There is a fascinating section relating the ‘obesity’ epidemic with the spread of antibiotic - as a means of changing our microbiome. For some people it is better to eat a bowl of ice cream than a bowl of rice!!!!  Also there is research suggesting that particular microbiomes can be related to neurological diseases. We don’t have a single microbiome - rather we have archipelagos of microbiomes - the domestication of DNA isn’t only about manipulating our DNA - but also about understanding the depth of our ecological evolution.

Follow Your Gut: Microbiomes and Aging with Rob Knight - Research on Aging

Rob Knight explores the unseen microbial world that exists literally right under our noses -- and everywhere else on (and in) our bodies. He discusses the important influence the microbiome may have on the aging process and many end-of-life diseases.

Another very fascinating signal of our growing understanding of how ecologies work - in this case it is communication among bacteria - but the findings have significant implications for our understanding of the role of the individual and the collective - how cooperation is fundamental to evolution of fitness.
In a community of bacteria, signals pass from cell to cell in a connected path over a distance of hundreds of cells. Using fluorescence microscopes, the researchers were able to track individual cells that were "firing" (transmitting a signal). The scientists found that the fraction of firing cells and their distribution in space precisely matched theoretical predictions of the onset of percolation. In other words, the bacterial community had a fraction of firing cells that was precisely at the tipping point between having no connectivity and full connectivity among cells, also known as a critical phase transition point.

Bacterial communities use sophisticated strategy to communicate over long distances

Clusters of bacteria employ the same 'percolation' method we use to brew coffee
It's the way we end up with a fresh cup of coffee from a clump of beans. It's how ocean oil rigs extract petroleum from dense rock formations beneath the seafloor. It even helps explain how forest fires spread.


A theory known as "percolation" is now helping microbiologists at the University of California San Diego explain how communities of bacteria can effectively relay signals across long distances. Once regarded as a simple cluster of microorganisms, communities of bacteria--also called "biofilms"--have been found to utilize ion channels for electrochemical communication that helps the community thrive and survive threats, such as chemical attacks from antibiotics.


The findings, led by Joseph Larkin and senior author Gürol Süel of UC San Diego, are published July 25 in the journal Cell Systems.


Biofilm communities inhabit locations all around us, from soil to drain pipes to the surface of our teeth. Cells at the edge of these communities tend to grow more robustly than their interior counterparts because they have access to more nutrients. To keep this edge growth in check and ensure the entire community is fit and balanced, the "hungry" members of the biofilm interior send electrochemical signals to members at the exterior. These signals halt consumption at the edge, allowing nutrients to pass through to the interior cells to avoid starvation.


"This keeps the interior fed well enough and if a chemical attack comes and takes out some of the exterior cells, then the protected interior is able to continue and the whole population can survive," said Larkin, a UC San Diego Biological Sciences postdoctoral scholar. "It is essential that the electrochemical signal be consistently transmitted all the way to the biofilm edge because that is the place where the growth must be stopped for the community to reap the most benefit from signaling."

Mass producing biology science research is here and this is one good signal of it’s potential.
“This is a new ‘secret weapon’ in our fight against disease,’ said Freedman, who is a scientist at the UW Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, as well as at the Kidney Research Institute, a collaboration between the Northwest Kidney Centers and UW Medicine.

Robots Grow Mini-Organs From Human Stem Cells

An automated system that uses robots has been designed to rapidly produce human mini-organs derived from stem cells. Researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle developed the new system.


The advance promises to greatly expand the use of mini-organs in basic research and drug discovery, according to Benjamin Freedman, assistant professor of medicine, Division of Nephrology, at the UW School of Medicine, who led the research effort.


A report describing the new technique will be published online May 17 in the journal Cell Stem Cell. The lead authors were research scientists Stefan Czerniecki, and Nelly Cruz from the Freedman lab, and Dr. Jennifer Harder, assistant professor of internal medicine, Division of Nephrology at the University of Michigan School of Medicine, where she is a kidney disease specialist.


The traditional way to grow cells for biomedical research, Freeman explained, is to culture them as flat, two-dimensional sheets, which are overly simplistic. In recent years, researchers have been increasingly successful in growing stem cells into more complex, three-dimensional structures called mini-organs or organoids. These resemble rudimentary organs and in many ways behave similarly. While these properties make organoids ideal for biomedical research, they also pose a challenge for mass production. The ability to mass produce organoids is the most exciting potential applications of the new robotic technology, according to the developers.

More development in the domain of precise imaging - as these capacity become widely accessible look for a phase transition is what we know.
"The entire fly brain has never been imaged before at this resolution that lets you see connections between neurons," he says. That detail is key for mapping out the brain's circuitry—the precise webs of neuronal connections that underpin specific fly behaviors.

Complete fly brain imaged at nanoscale resolution

Two high-speed electron microscopes. 7,062 brain slices. 21 million images.
For a team of scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia, these numbers add up to a technical first: a high-resolution digital snapshot of the adult fruit fly brain.


Researchers can now trace the path of any one neuron to any other neuron throughout the whole brain, says neuroscientist Davi Bock, a group leader at Janelia who reported the work along with his colleagues on July 19, 2018, in the journal Cell.


"The entire fly brain has never been imaged before at this resolution that lets you see connections between neurons," he says. That detail is key for mapping out the brain's circuitry—the precise webs of neuronal connections that underpin specific fly behaviors.

This is another signal of the emerging diversity in computational paradigms.

Researchers move closer to completely optical artificial neural network

Researchers have shown that it is possible to train artificial neural networks directly on an optical chip. The significant breakthrough demonstrates that an optical circuit can perform a critical function of an electronics-based artificial neural network and could lead to less expensive, faster and more energy efficient ways to perform complex tasks such as speech or image recognition.


"Using an optical chip to perform neural network computations more efficiently than is possible with digital computers could allow more complex problems to be solved," said research team leader Shanhui Fan of Stanford University. "This would enhance the capability of artificial neural networks to perform tasks required for self-driving cars or to formulate an appropriate response to a spoken question, for example. It could also improve our lives in ways we can't imagine now."


An artificial neural network is a type of artificial intelligence that uses connected units to process information in a manner similar to the way the brain processes information. Using these networks to perform a complex task, for instance voice recognition, requires the critical step of training the algorithms to categorize inputs, such as different words.

This is very interesting signal - if it can be scaled in a relatively cost-effective way.
The ability to power a home with an order of magnitude smaller panel - is worth watching

Breakthrough could triple the energy collected by solar to 60% efficiency

Current solar cells are able to convert into electricity around 20% of the energy received from the Sun, but a new technique has the potential to convert around 60% of it by funneling the energy more efficiently.
UK researchers can now ‘funnel’ electrical charge onto a chip. Using the atomically thin semiconductor hafnium disulphide (HfS2), which is oxidized with a high-intensity UV laser, the team were able to engineer an electric field that funnels electrical charges to a specific area of the chip, where they can be more easily extracted.


This method has the potential to harvest three times the energy compared with traditional systems. The researchers believe their breakthrough could result in solar panels, no bigger than a book, producing enough energy to power a family-sized house.


Previously the group created the best transparent conducting material.

Here’s a very good signal for what can address near future security concerns for individuals and especially organizations.

Google: Security Keys Neutralized Employee Phishing

Google has not had any of its 85,000+ employees successfully phished on their work-related accounts since early 2017, when it began requiring all employees to use physical Security Keys in place of passwords and one-time codes, the company told KrebsOnSecurity.


Security Keys are inexpensive USB-based devices that offer an alternative approach to two-factor authentication (2FA), which requires the user to log in to a Web site using something they know (the password) and something they have (e.g., a mobile device).


A Google spokesperson said Security Keys now form the basis of all account access at Google.
... a Security Key implements a form of multi-factor authentication known as Universal 2nd Factor (U2F), which allows the user to complete the login process simply by inserting the USB device and pressing a button on the device. The key works without the need for any special software drivers.

Remember the hype about ‘smart dust’ about a decade ago? The digital environment is getting smaller, larger, ubiquitous - where will it be in the next decade?

A new kind of spray is loaded with microscopic electronic sensors

The microchip-loaded aerosol could be used to track environmental and health hazards
Talk about cloud-connected devices.
Using tiny 2-D materials, researchers have built microscopic chemical sensors that can be sprayed in an aerosol mist. Spritzes of such minuscule electronic chips, described online July 23 in Nature Nanotechnology, could one day help monitor environmental pollution or diagnose diseases.


Each sensor comprises a polymer chip about 1 micrometer thick and 100 micrometers across (about as wide as a human hair) overlaid with a circuit made with atomically thin semiconducting materials (SN Online: 2/13/18). This superflat circuit includes a photodiode, which converts ambient light into electric current, and a chemical detector. This chemical detector is composed of a 2-D material that conducts electric current more easily if the material binds with a specific chemical in its environment.


Researchers can choose from a vast menu of 2-D materials to fashion detectors that are sensitive to different chemicals, says study coauthor Volodymyr Koman, a chemical engineer at MIT (SN Online: 1/17/18). In lab experiments, Koman and colleagues created a sensor spray that detected toxic ammonia vapor inside a sealed section of piping, as well as a spray that ID’d soot particles sprinkled across a flat surface.

This is a very interesting signal of emerging technology for creative and interactive work. The 3 min video illustrates the tech very well.

The Holographic Display Of The Future Is Here

The holographic display of the future is here and you can have one on your desk for under $600.
Ever since I saw Princess Leia appealing to Obi Wan that he was her only hope when I was 11, I’ve wanted a holographic display. Movies like Minority Report and Back to the Future II (do you remember the shark hologram that ate Marty?) have consumed thousands of people’s lives over the past few decades. But until now, no one has been able to make a scalable device that would let groups of people, unaided by a VR or AR headset, see and touch a living and moving 3D world.


That’s changing today with the launch of the Looking Glass, a new type of interface that achieves that dream of the hologram we’ve been promised for so long. The Looking Glass is technically a lightfield and volumetric display hybrid, but that’s pretty nerdy-sounding. I like to just call it a holographic display.


It’s a technology at the Apple II stage, designed for the creators and hackers of the world — specifically 3D creators in this case. If you’ve ever played with a MakerBot or Form 2, have a Structure sensor in your backpack, know what volumetric video is, or have 3D creation programs like Maya, Unity, or Blender on your computer, then you should get a Looking Glass. You can holographically preview 3D prints before you print them, experiment with volumetric video recording and playback, or create entirely new and weird applications in Unity that can live inside of the Looking Glass. And when I say weird I mean it — the founders Shawn and Alex put a 3D scan of me inside and gave me some new dance moves.

The trajectory toward fully renewable and near-zero-marginal cost energy continues to accelerated as well as produce powerful ideas to energize our future. This is a longish article with some nice photos.

The $3 Billion Plan to Turn Hoover Dam Into a Giant Battery

Hoover Dam was a public works project likened to the pyramids. Now, after channeling a river, what if it could tap the power of the sun and wind?
Hoover Dam helped transform the American West, harnessing the force of the Colorado River — along with millions of cubic feet of concrete and tens of millions of pounds of steel — to power millions of homes and businesses. It was one of the great engineering feats of the 20th century.


Now it is the focus of a distinctly 21st-century challenge: turning the dam into a vast reservoir of excess electricity, fed by the solar farms and wind turbines that represent the power sources of the future.


The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, an original operator of the dam when it was erected in the 1930s, wants to equip it with a $3 billion pipeline and a pump station powered by solar and wind energy. The pump station, downstream, would help regulate the water flow through the dam’s generators, sending water back to the top to help manage electricity at times of peak demand.


The net result would be a kind of energy storage — performing much the same function as the giant lithium-ion batteries being developed to absorb and release power.