Smart Economy

Simulated Brain starting to think?

The BBC reports that a simulated brain experiment is getting closer to real thought. A detailed simulation of a small region of a brain built molecule by molecule has been constructed and has recreated experimental results from real brains.  The "Blue Brain" has been put in a virtual body, and observing it gives the first indications of the molecular and neural basis of thought and memory.  Scaling the simulation to the human brain is only a matter of money, says the project's head.  The work was presented this week at the European Future Technologies meeting in Prague

.

 Full story here>>

 

Walter Derzko

Smart Economy

Toronto

Author of the soon-to-be-released book: Hard Times Golden Opportunities.. about opportunity recognition in a recession/ depression featuring 45 opportunity scenarios.

Intelligent robots that evolve and grow in real time by mimicing biological evolution; unnatural selection

The next issue of New Scientist will feature an article about smart robots that evolve and grow in real time or unnatural selection..more disruptive technology on the way. We will see how much of this can be turned into commercial value, instead of just being an acedmic curiosity

According to New Scientist:

 

 

"Living creatures took millions of years to evolve from amphibians to four-legged mammals - with larger, more complex brains to match. Now an evolving robot has performed a similar trick in hours, thanks to a software "brain" that automatically grows in size and complexity as its physical body develops.

Existing robots cannot usually cope with physical changes - the addition of a sensor or new type of limb, say - without a complete redesign of their control software, which can be time-consuming and expensive.

So artificial intelligence engineer Christopher MacLeod and his colleagues at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, UK, created a robot that adapts to such changes by mimicking biological evolution. "If we want to make really complex humanoid robots with ever more sensors and more complex behaviours, it is critical that they are able to grow in complexity over time - just like biological creatures did," he says."

© 2005-2009

Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

The Smart Technology Blog: The Smart Economy -- Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

• ".....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"-old Japanese proverb
• ".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." -- H. Mumford Jones
• ".......Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought."  --A. Einstein
• ".......Change is difficult, but complacency and stagnation are surefire showstoppers..." --Walter Derzko

• ".......Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."  -- Margaret Mead

• ".......Small minds discuss people; Average minds discuss events; Great minds discuss ideas; --Anon

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

IBM endorses smart technology and a smarter planet

A while back when I was at the Idea Lab at the Design Exchange, I remember sitting over a coffee and exploring a thought exercise with some clients.

The question under debate was: What are  the generic elements or activities that would accelerate any new technology platform, (such as smart technologies) and overcome the initial market interia. Simply put, Is there a generic technology evolution matrix?

We came up with over 25 items. (see related Post-Do you know how to spot opportunities?)

One was having cartoonists make fun of your technology ( No, smart technologies aren't on Dilbert's radar screen yet, but any day now I hope)  Another key event would be to have some influential CEO highlight the benefits of your technology in a milestone keynote speech (act as a complimentor-in business strategy terms. )

Well for smart technologies, that breakthrough event may have happened this month on November 6^th, when IBM’s CEO, Sam Palmisano, outlined a new agenda for building a smarter planet - during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relation. (hat tip to Adam Christensen at IBM HQ)

 

 

From IBM's blog:

"In the speech, he outlines a number of the challenges faced today by people, governments, businesses and organizations. A lack of clean water for a fifth of the world’s population. Energy systems that waste more energy than they produce. Traffic in our cities that clogs roads and chokes economic growth. 

Clearly there are no simple solutions for these problems.

Technology can play a big role in helping find answers to these problems. While the Internet currently connects more than a billion people, in just a few years, it will connect more than a trillion objects. Everything from cell phones, cars, roads, buildings, and even objects in nature itself, will have embedded technology and be connected to one another, enabling tremendous advances in how we understand how the world works and make smarter decisions to make it work better. 

But technology is just part of the solution. Without the people, policies and culture to inspire and execute the change, nothing ultimately gets done."

From Sam’s speech:

[...]   These collective realizations have reminded us that we are all now connected—economically, technically and socially. But we're also learning that being connected is not sufficient. Yes, the world continues to get "flatter." And yes, it continues to get smaller and more interconnected. But something is happening that holds even greater potential. In a word, our planet is becoming smarter.

This isn't just a metaphor.I mean infusing intelligence into the way the world literally works—the systems and processes that enable physical goods to be developed, manufactured, bought and sold… services to be delivered… everything from people and money to oil, water and electrons to move… and billions of people to work and live.

 What's making this possible?

• First, our world is becoming instrumented: The transistor, invented 60 years ago, is the basic building block of the digital age. Now, consider a world in which there are a billion transistors per human, each one costing one ten-millionth of a cent. We'll have that by 2010. There will likely be 4 billion mobile phone subscribers by the end of this year… and 30 billion Radio Frequency Identification tags produced globally within two years. Sensors are being embedded across entire ecosystems—supply-chains, healthcare networks, cities… even natural systems like rivers.
• Second, our world is becoming interconnected: Very soon there will be 2 billion people on the Internet. But in an instrumented world, systems and objects can now "speak" to one another, too. Think about the prospect of a trillion connected and intelligent things—cars, appliances, cameras, roadways, pipelines… even pharmaceuticals and livestock. The amount of information produced by the interaction of all those things will be unprecedented.
• Third, all things are becoming intelligent: New computing models can handle the proliferation of end-user devices, sensors and actuators and connect them with back-end systems. Combined with advanced analytics, those supercomputers can turn mountains of data into intelligence that can be translated into action, making our systems, processes and infrastructures more efficient, more productive and responsive—in a word, smarter.

What this means is that the digital and physical infrastructures of the world are converging. Computational power is being put into things we wouldn't recognize as computers. Indeed, almost anything—any person, any object, any process or any service, for any organization, large or small—can become digitally aware and networked.

With so much technology and networking abundantly available at such low cost, what wouldn't you enhance? What service wouldn't you provide a customer, citizen, student or patient? What wouldn't you connect? What information wouldn't you mine for insight?

The answer is, you or your competitor—another company, or another city or nation—will do all of that. You will do it because you can—the technology is available and affordable.

But there is another reason we will make our companies, institutions and industries smarter. Because we must. Not just at moments of widespread shock, but integrated into our day-to-day operations. These mundane processes of business, government and life—which are ultimately the source of those "surprising" crises—are not smart enough to be sustainable.

[...]

Leaders will need to hone their collaboration skills, because we will need leadership that pulls across systems. We will need to bring together stakeholders and experts from across business, government and academia, and all of them will need to move outside their traditional comfort zones.

I’m struck by the questions this raises. What investments need to be made by both public and private institutions? What policy issues need to be debated and resolved? What role can individual citizens and employees play in helping bring about meaningful change?

I’m also struck by the potential opportunities inherent in finding solutions to these problems. 

see full text of Sam Palmisano's speech

Walter Derzko

 

From IBM's blog:

"In the speech, he outlines a number of the challenges faced today by people, governments, businesses and organizations. A lack of clean water for a fifth of the world’s population. Energy systems that waste more energy than they produce. Traffic in our cities that clogs roads and chokes economic growth. 

Clearly there are no simple solutions for these problems.

Technology can play a big role in helping find answers to these problems. While the Internet currently connects more than a billion people, in just a few years, it will connect more than a trillion objects. Everything from cell phones, cars, roads, buildings, and even objects in nature itself, will have embedded technology and be connected to one another, enabling tremendous advances in how we understand how the world works and make smarter decisions to make it work better. 

But technology is just part of the solution. Without the people, policies and culture to inspire and execute the change, nothing ultimately gets done."

From Sam’s speech:

[...]   These collective realizations have reminded us that we are all now connected—economically, technically and socially. But we're also learning that being connected is not sufficient. Yes, the world continues to get "flatter." And yes, it continues to get smaller and more interconnected. But something is happening that holds even greater potential. In a word, our planet is becoming smarter.

This isn't just a metaphor.I mean infusing intelligence into the way the world literally works—the systems and processes that enable physical goods to be developed, manufactured, bought and sold… services to be delivered… everything from people and money to oil, water and electrons to move… and billions of people to work and live.

 What's making this possible?

• First, our world is becoming instrumented: The transistor, invented 60 years ago, is the basic building block of the digital age. Now, consider a world in which there are a billion transistors per human, each one costing one ten-millionth of a cent. We'll have that by 2010. There will likely be 4 billion mobile phone subscribers by the end of this year… and 30 billion Radio Frequency Identification tags produced globally within two years. Sensors are being embedded across entire ecosystems—supply-chains, healthcare networks, cities… even natural systems like rivers.
• Second, our world is becoming interconnected: Very soon there will be 2 billion people on the Internet. But in an instrumented world, systems and objects can now "speak" to one another, too. Think about the prospect of a trillion connected and intelligent things—cars, appliances, cameras, roadways, pipelines… even pharmaceuticals and livestock. The amount of information produced by the interaction of all those things will be unprecedented.
• Third, all things are becoming intelligent: New computing models can handle the proliferation of end-user devices, sensors and actuators and connect them with back-end systems. Combined with advanced analytics, those supercomputers can turn mountains of data into intelligence that can be translated into action, making our systems, processes and infrastructures more efficient, more productive and responsive—in a word, smarter.

What this means is that the digital and physical infrastructures of the world are converging. Computational power is being put into things we wouldn't recognize as computers. Indeed, almost anything—any person, any object, any process or any service, for any organization, large or small—can become digitally aware and networked.

With so much technology and networking abundantly available at such low cost, what wouldn't you enhance? What service wouldn't you provide a customer, citizen, student or patient? What wouldn't you connect? What information wouldn't you mine for insight?

The answer is, you or your competitor—another company, or another city or nation—will do all of that. You will do it because you can—the technology is available and affordable.

But there is another reason we will make our companies, institutions and industries smarter. Because we must. Not just at moments of widespread shock, but integrated into our day-to-day operations. These mundane processes of business, government and life—which are ultimately the source of those "surprising" crises—are not smart enough to be sustainable.

[...]

Leaders will need to hone their collaboration skills, because we will need leadership that pulls across systems. We will need to bring together stakeholders and experts from across business, government and academia, and all of them will need to move outside their traditional comfort zones.

I’m struck by the questions this raises. What investments need to be made by both public and private institutions? What policy issues need to be debated and resolved? What role can individual citizens and employees play in helping bring about meaningful change?

I’m also struck by the potential opportunities inherent in finding solutions to these problems. 

see full text of Sam Palmisano's speech

Walter Derzko

Smart Virtual Hospital in Second Life with ‘smart’ pill bottles that only the owner can open

FOR RELEASE: Tuesday, August 05, 2008 University of Arkansas Researchers Combine Technologies to Heal Patients, Virtually

University of Arkansas researchers seeking new ways to make health care more efficient and cost-effective have built a new kind of hospital: one that uses location aware systems, sensors, smart devices, radio-frequency identification and virtual reality.

Anyone can visit this hospital, dubbed the Razorback Hospital by some, on the University of Arkansas island in Second Life, a free online 3-D virtual world.

This spring and summer about 40 university students, working with six high school students from the Environmental and Spatial Technology Initiative (EAST), worked with professors Craig Thompson and Fran Hagstrom to create the virtual hospital and supply chain in Second Life.  They will offer a public demonstration and discussion of this world at noon on Thursday, Aug. 7, at the Northwest Arkansas EAST Training Center in Room 263 of the J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. Center for Academic Excellence.

The students have visited local hospitals to understand what needs exist.  They have created a building with patient rooms, intensive care, a diagnostics suite, a pharmacy and supply rooms.  Because limits in Second Life only exist in the imagination, professors and students can create things that they have reason to believe will exist soon in the real world, then interact with those items to see how they work.

“Students in my spring artificial intelligence class developed ‘smart’ pill bottles that only the owner can open and that know their pill count, smart shelves that know when to re-order, a restocking robot, wheelchairs that can follow way points and virtual RFID readers and tags,” said Thompson, a professor in the computer science and computer engineering department and holder of the Acxiom Database Chair in Engineering.

The students also had to create something that most avatars, or the virtual beings within Second Life, lack – internal organs.  Now the virtual doctors in the hospital can perform virtual organ transplant operations.

“We feel there is huge potential here – well beyond health care or the groups we have touched so far,” said Adam Barnes, a staff member on the project.  “The project is really about the future world we will all live in – where every object is a network object and humans can communicate with things as well as they do with each other.”

“This program cuts across the boundaries of departments and colleges, with participants and ideas from the colleges of engineering, business, education and arts and sciences,” said Malcolm Williamson, a research associate with the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies, who works with the project.  “This is a perfect example of what the J.B. Hunt Transportation Center for Excellence was designed for.” Partners in the project include the Center for Innovation in Healthcare Logistics, the RFID Research Center, the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies, the Arkansas Science and Technology Authority and the EAST Initiative.

EAST is a performance-based learning environment for high school students that combines problem-based service learning and advanced technological applications to develop solutions to everyday challenges.  There are more than 170 EAST classrooms in Arkansas.  In total, there are 193 EAST classrooms in seven states, including Hawaii, Oklahoma, Illinois and California.  Please visit www.EASTinitiative.org for more information on EAST.

Please visit http://vw.ddns.uark.edu for more information on the project.

© 2005-2008 Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"© ™

Expert, Consultant, Keynote Speaker and Lecturer on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy

The Smart Technology Blog: The Smart Economy -- Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page 

The 20th IEEE Int'l Conference on Tools with AI (ICTAI 2008)

*** Due to numerous requests, the paper submission deadline is extended to June 30, 2008,
    which is a firm deadline

*******************************************************************************************

The 20th IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE on TOOLS with ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
                               (ICTAI 2008)

                            November 3-5, 2008
                             Dayton, Ohio, USA

            Conference Website: http://dblab.cs.wright.edu/ictai2008/

*******************************************************************************************

                               LAST CALL FOR PAPERS

The annual IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI)
provides a major international forum where the creation and exchange of ideas related to
artificial intelligence are fostered among academia, industry, and government agencies.
The conference facilitates the cross-fertilization of these ideas and promotes their
transfer into practical tools, for developing intelligent systems and pursuing artificial
intelligence applications. The ICTAI encompasses all the technical aspects of specifying,
developing and evaluating the theoretical underpinnings and applied mechanisms of the
AI based components of computer tools (i.e. algorithms, methodologies, architectures,
and languages).

TOPICS OF INTEREST include (but are not limited to) the following:

  AI Algorithms
  AI in Bioinformatics
  AI in Computer Security
  AI in Databases and Data Mining
  AI in E-commerce
  AI in Games
  AI in Information Assurance
  AI in Logistics and Supply Chain Management
  AI in Medicine
  AI in Multimedia Systems
  AI in Real-time and Embedded Applications
  AI in Robotics
  AI in Software Engineering
  Case-Based Reasoning
  Cognitive Modeling
  Constraint Programming
  Collaborative Software Agents
  Reasoning under Fuzziness or Uncertainty
  Evolutionary Computing
  Hybrid Intelligent Systems
  Information Retrieval
  Intelligent Tutoring/Training Systems
  Intelligent Internet Agents
  Intelligent Interface Agents
  Knowledge-based Systems
  Knowledge Extraction
  Knowledge Management and Sharing
  Knowledge Representation and Reasoning
  Machine Learning
  Natural Language Processing and Understanding
  Neural Networks
  Ontologies
  Planning and Scheduling
  Qualitative Reasoning
  Search and Heuristics
  Semantic Web Technologies
  Speech Processing and Understanding
  Vision and Image Processing and Understanding.

The submissions should contain original and high quality work, not submitted or published
elsewhere. The accepted papers will be included in the ICTAI 2008 proceedings published
by the IEEE Computer Society. A selection of the best papers of the conference will be
published in a special issue of the International Journal on Artificial Intelligence Tools
(IJAIT), which is SCI Indexed.

IMPORTANT DATES

  Paper submission: June 30, 2008 (extended)
  Notification of acceptance: July 23, 2008
  Camera ready paper: August 15, 2008

STREERING COMMITTEE

  Nikolaos Bourbakis, Wright State Univ, USA (Chair)
  C. V. Ramamoorthy, UC at Berkeley, USA
  Farokh Bastani, Univ of Texas at Dallas, USA
  Jeffrey Tsai, Univ of Illinois at Chicago, USA
  Benjamin Wah, Univ of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

GENERAL CO-CHAIRS

  Ioannis Hatzilygeroudis, Univ. of Patras, Greece
  Chang-Tien Lu, Virginia Tech, USA

PROGRAM COMMITTEE CHAIR

  Soon M. Chung, Wright State Univ., USA

AREA CHAIRS

  Raj Bhatnagar, Univ. of Cincinnati, USA
  Rüdiger Brause, J.W. Goethe Univ., Germany
  Paola Campadelli, Univ. degli Studi di Milano, Italy
  Shyi-Ming Chen, National Taiwan UST, Taiwan
  Silvia Coradeschi, Örebro Univ., Sweden
  Anna Esposito, Second Univ. of Naples, Italy
  Demetra Evangelou, Purdue Univ., USA
  Robert Ewing, AFRL, WPAFB, USA
  Eric Grégoire, Univ. d’Artois, France
  Melanie Hilario, Univ. of Geneva, Switzerland
  Naohiro Ishii, Aichi Institute of Technology, Japan
  Lakhmi Jain, Univ. of South Australia, Australia
  Taghi M. Khoshgoftaar, Florida Atlantic Univ., USA
  Manolis Koubarakis, Univ. of Athens, Greece
  David B. Leake, Indiana Univ., USA
  William McQuay, AFRL, WPAFB, USA
  Luigi Portinale, Univ. of Piemonte Orientale, Italy
  Vasile Palade, Oxford Univ., UK
  Witold Pedrycz, Univ. of Alberta, Canada
  Robert Reynolds, Wayne State Univ., USA
  Phillip Sheu, Univ. of California-Irvine, USA
  Andreas-Georgios N. Stafylopatis, NTUA, Greece
  Lefteri Tsoukalas, Purdue Univ., USA
  Du Zhang, California State Univ., USA

FINANCIAL CHAIR
  Despina Kavraki, AIIS Inc., USA

REGISTRATION and LOCAL ARRANGEMENT CHAIR
  Donetta Bantle, Wright State Univ., USA

PUBLICATION CHAIR
  Praveen Kakumanu, Riverain Medical, USA

PUBLICITY CHAIR and WEB MASTER
  Vineela Muppavarapu, Wright State Univ., USA

FURTHER INFORMATION

  Prof. Soon M. Chung (PC Chair of ICTAI 2008)
  Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering
  Wright State University
  Dayton, Ohio 45435, USA
  Email: soon.chung@wright.edu
  Homepage: http://www.cs.wright.edu/~schung

First Synthetic Bacterial Genome or Synthetic DNA; a step closer to synthetic life 08-027

Scientists have predicted that between a dozen to 15 intermediate steps are needed to created synthetic life.

We are a step closer this week after the announcement  that a team of 17 researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in the USA has created the largest man-made DNA structure by synthesizing and assembling the 582,970 base pair genome of a bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium JCVI-1.0.

This work, published online this weekin the journal Science by Dan Gibson, Ph.D., et al, is the second of three key steps toward the team’s goal of creating a fully synthetic organism.  In the next step, which is ongoing at the JCVI, the team will attempt to create a living bacterial cell based entirely on the synthetically made genome.

The team achieved this technical feat by chemically making DNA fragments in the lab and developing new methods for the assembly and reproduction of the DNA segments.  After several years of work perfecting chemical assembly, the team found they could use homologous recombination (a process that cells use to repair damage to their chromosomes) in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to rapidly build the entire bacterial chromosome from large subassemblies.

Press release see here>>[...] 

Happy, sad, angry or astonished? This smart advertizing poster can tell

How do people respond when they walk past an advertising poster?  Do they stop and turn around to look at it with interest or march angrily past?  A new system of detailed facial analysis can recognize a person’s mood in an instant.

An advertisement for a new perfume is hanging in the departure lounge of an airport.  Thousands of people walk past it every day.  Some stop and stare in astonishment, others walk by, clearly amused.  And then there are those who seem puzzled when they look at the poster.  With the help of a small video camera, the system automatically localizes the faces of everyone who walks past the advertisement.  And nothing escapes its watchful eye: Does the passerby look happy, surprised, sad or even angry?

The system for rapid facial analysis is being developed by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS in Erlangen.  Highly complex algorithms immediately localize human faces in the image, differentiate between men and women and analyze their expressions.  “The special feature of our facial analysis software is that it operates in real time,” says Dr. Christian Küblbeck, project manager at the IIS.  “What’s more, it is able to localize and analyze a large number of faces simultaneously.” The most important facial characteristics used by the system are the contours of the face, the eyes, the eyebrows and the nose.  First of all, the system has to go through a training phase in which it is presented with huge quantities of data containing images of faces.  In normal operation, the computer compares 30,000 facial characteristics with the information that it has previously learned. 

“On a standard PC, the calculations are carried out so quickly that mood changes can be tracked live,” explains Küblbeck.  However, we do not need to worry about an invasion of our privacy, as the software analyzes the data on a purely statistical basis.

The software package is not only of interest to advertising psychologists; there are numerous potential applications for the system.  It can be used, for example, to test the user-friendliness of computer software programs.  The system monitors the facial expressions of the user in order to determine which aspects of the program arouse a particularly strong reaction.  Alternatively, it can assess the reactions of the users of learning software, in order to establish the extent to which they are put under stress or challenged by the task they are performing.  The system could also be used to check the levels of concentration of car drivers.

A demonstration version of the face detection and analysis software package is available for download at: www.iis.fraunhofer.de/EN/bf/bv/kognitiv/biom/dd.jsp

Artificial Synthetic Life-Genesis 2.0 one step closer? 07-212

In the past week, Craig Venter grabbed headlines with the announcement he was close to creating a synthetic genome, housed within a bacterial cell and constructed chemically from the building blocks DNA.

Meanwhile, other scientists are working towards the even more ambitious goal of building “synthetic life” – creating an entire living cell from scratch using the basic chemical ingredients.

Last week at a meeting in Switzerland, an Italian researcher announced that he had taken a step in achieving this goal by synthesising proteins in cell-like compartments.

I can't wait for the day that it happens--Genesis 2.0 may be much closer then many people are predicting

Full story in New Scientist July 7, 2007 (Vol. 194 No’s 2611) called Life Begins Again; page 6-7 (embargoed till Juy 5th)

© 2005-2007

Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©

Walter Derzko teaches at the Certificate Program on Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Toronto, School of Continuing Studies, which starts in the Fall of 2007

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

The Smart Technology Blog: The Smart Economy -- Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

• ".....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"-old Japanese proverb
• ".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." -- H. Mumford Jones
• ".......Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought."  --A. Einstein
• ".......Change is difficult, but complacency and stagnation are surefire showstoppers..." --Walter Derzko"
• .......Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."  -- Margaret Mead
• ".......Small minds discuss people; Average minds discuss events; Great minds discuss ideas; --Anon

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

UK Government publishes Strategic Horizon Scans

The Horizon Scanning Centre has commissioned two complementary scans looking ahead up to 50 years : the Sigma Scan and the Delta Scan.

Initial versions of both scans have been published by the contractors who developed them : Sigma Scan by Outsights - Ipsos MORI and Delta Scan  by the Institute for the Future (IFTF).

The Sigma Scan is a broad synthesis of some of the world's best Horizon Scanning sources. It covers future issues and trends across the full public policy agenda. It is drawn from a range of sources including think tanks, academic publications, mainstream media, corporate foresight, expert/strategic thinkers, government sources, alternative journals, charities/NGOs, blogs, minority communities, and futurists.

The Delta Scan is an overview of future science and technology issues and trends, with contributions by over 200 science and technology experts from the worlds of government, business, academia and communication in the UKand US.

Develeped over 2005 and 2006 by a team of consultants and futurists,  the Scanning Framework has some novel methodologies and catagories. Each main issue is described as an Issue paper.

The main text of the Issue Papers themselves is divided into a number of different sections:


Headline: Headlines provide a brief description of the future eventuality discussed a pithy note on the main themes contained within the paper.


Keywords: Keywords summarise the coverage of the issue and suggest related issues, domains or topics.


Summary: The summary provides first an Abstract of the Issue (delimited by asterisks) for a quick overview of the whole paper, followed by a description of the trend, event or theme and the debates it raises. This is generally a presentation of the data/evidence in this field, linked where necessary to sources (with no fixed view on likely outcomes).


Implications: this contains a range of possible outcomes that could flow from the Issue as described in the Summary. These incorporate a number of factors where appropriate, including social values, habitat/environment, new technologies, knock-on and perverse effects. Early Indicators: This aspect of the Paper suggests possible early warning signs and precursors that should be looked for to indicate that the Issue may indeed be developing as described in the Paper.

Drivers and Inhibitors: Factors, people, institutions or events which will either fuel (Drivers) or act as a barrier (Inhibitors) to the emergence of this Issue.


Parallels and Precedents: Historical, international or cross-cultural examples of
somewhat similar instances which may shed some light either on the evolution of the Issue or the likely success of different strategies in response.


Sources: The list of sources consulted in writing the Paper, with web links, documents and location information where applicable.


Related links: a list of websites that may be of further interest to the reader relating to the topic


Sigma Scan basics: Issue Markers

Each issue has been further labelled with a number of Markers, which provide highly indicative (i.e. not predictive) information about the possible likelihood, impact,
distribution, severity and development time of each Issue:


Impact: This marker is designed to reflect the potential of this issue to create pervasive and/or serious change in the world at large: a development which in cultural, technological, environmental, economic or political terms alters the way we live or perceive the world. Impact is divided into:

• ****Extreme: Intense, deep-seated, pervasive or long-lasting in its effects. An event/development which profoundly affects the planet for example, an asteroid strike.
• ***High: A great event in human history, something that shapes human history and leaves longstanding cultural residues for example, the moon landings, the establishment of the United Nations, a major pandemic.
• **Medium: A defining aspect of a particular generation or nation's experience of the world. An important footnote in world history, such as the implementation of the Euro, the fall of the Berlin Wall.
• *Low: A development whose scope to instigate change is subtle or in some way restrained by conditions, medium, force, locality or likely responses. Something that captures the news agenda for months or years, but eventually fades into the cultural memory for example, the cultural changes of the 1960s.
• ?Unknown: There is no consensus within the literature about how best to interpret this issue.

Likelihood: The likelihood that this issue will evolve to become a central theme/development - in some way - in future society within its projected life span. The likelihood markers are:

• ***High: 75+% confidence that the events discussed will come to pass.
• **Medium: An equivocal 50/50 call.
• *Low: 25% or less probability.
• ?Unknown: No consensus about the likelihood.
  
  

Controversy: The level of consensus amongst experts, commentators and other observers holds that the Issue will unfold in the way described in the Paper and/or assume a greater significance in acting as an instigator of change. The controversy markers are:

• ***High: Very few experts pay the issue serious attention, and there is very little consensus about the extent to which this issue is likely to emerge. There is very little known evidence for this issue, and what there is highly unconventional, or propounded by alternative sources.
• **Medium: Whilst there is some kind of conventional consensus, futurists and/or alternative sources dispute whether this issue is likely to be a central development in future. Evidence is somewhat equivocal or open to scrutiny, even within expert audiences.
• *Low: The majority of experts, as well as a large volume of authoritative evidence, point to this issue emerging as a central theme over the next 50 years.
• ?Unknown: No known consensus on how to apply this marker.

When: The expected timeframe for this issue to influence C.21st life to the degree ascribed to it under "Impact". Divided into:

• 0-2 years: This impact of this issue is already being felt or will be in the immediate future
• 3-10 years: Likely to be under way but perhaps not well distributed. Wider effects felt over the near horizon
• 11-20 years: Mid horizon effects
• 21-50 years: Mid to far horizon effects
• 50+ years: Far horizon effects ?Unknown: High level of uncertainty as to when this impact could be felt

Where: The geographical spread of the Issues impact. Divided into:

• Domestic/national Largely restricted to particular nation states (e.g. UK)
• Regional Largely restricted to major global regions/continental areas (e.g. EU, Latin America)
• Global Potential to be experienced anywhere/everywhere on a global scale
• ?Unknown

How fast: How quickly the events and potential impacts described in the Paper could be
experienced:

• Instant in a matter of moments
• Days over the course of days
• Months over months
• Years over years
• Unknown

Sigma Scan basics: Issue Genres


As well as the markers, each paper is also classified into a number of different Genres. This is identified at the start of the Summary in capital letters and is supplied as an at-a-glance way for users to decide what sort of critical thinking they should apply to their reading of the paper. (e.g. in the same way that we would apply different critical faculties for reading a work of science fiction than we would for reading todays
newspaper).

Weak signal: A primarily descriptive Paper attempting to shed light on a relatively little known, weakly felt or poorly distributed phenomenon a possible baby trend at the relative margins of current knowledge. The Implications of this style of paper tend to be limited to explaining what is already starting to happen, and the Drivers / Inhibitors are important in deciding whether it will grow into a Key Driver or dwindle into nothing. The aim of Weak Signal papers is to inform readers about trends or
potential events that might slip under the radar.

Forecast: An Issue for which there is a relatively high degree of certainty, at least in terms of its likely presence as a force for change, based as it is on robust quantitative data and relatively stable variables. Forecast papers are based upon well-grounded and
authoritative sources, drawing on models or statistics to draw conclusions.

Key driver: These Papers describe a relatively more mainstream and better-known trend or development. Something that would probably on the radar of most policymakers or strategy thinkers. Key Driver papers provide a top-level review of the trend for the uninitiated, and aim to stretch the more informed reader with some wider Implications Parallels / Precedents beyond the usual inferences and certainties.

Scenario: A Paper which takes as its evidence base published scenario work from other sources. It therefore discusses the range of uncertainties and drivers that have been discussed in developing these scenarios and compares the assumptions in them. Rather than describing a possible driver of future change, it therefore examines the feasibility and possible implications of a particular hypothetical future.

Wildcard: An Issue with the potential to emerge unexpectedly but with potentially major impacts. Often, these papers deal with a radical discontinuity, as compared to other, more continuous and/or gradual trends.

Smart automated Political Risk Analysis

Problem:

Corporations who are seeking to expand their international operations(either by making substantial investments in local corporations, by developing new products for new markets, or by establishing regional manufacturing, distribution, or sales facilities) often encounter substantial risks that greatly differ from the domestic risks they encounter at home. 

These include:

• physical risks (e.g., the kidnapping or assassination of executives),
• economic risks (e.g., currency fluctuations and discriminatory confiscation of assets),
• market risks (e.g., rejection by foreign consumers of products that were successful domestically), and
• technological risks (e.g., lack of a reliable telecommunications infrastructure)
• political risk

Political risk has been defined as

"… the possibility that political decisions, events, or conditions in a country, including those that might be defined as social, will affect the business environment such that investors will lose money or have a reduced profit margin,"

Examples include:

• corruption,
• punitive taxation, and
• arbitrary rejection of license applications. 

Political risks are best defined in terms of political events.  Political events result in part from decisions made by political actors-such as government officials (e.g., politicians, legislators, and regulators).  The decisions they make include decisions to expropriate property, to delay consideration of license applications, retreat on or disregard signed prior agreements and to ignore intellectual property violations.

These actors may be advised by influencers --certain non-government organizations (NGOs)-such as environmental, charitable, social, and religious organizations-who may also be considered political actors. as well.  In addition, political actors and influencers may include religious leaders, foreign investors, local oligarchs and business owners (who may be politicians, as well ) and others whose actions may affect political events.  The actors may be identified explicitly, or the events they generate may be the only overt signs of their presence.

The key to analyzing political events is obtaining good reliable information about these events.

This can be done in the traditional way with tried and true on-the-ground intelligence (see " A framework for conducting political event analysis using group support systems"; Decision Support Systems Volume 38, Issue 4 , January 2005, Pages 511-527) or with novel emerging smart decision support systems, such as a smart early warning system of internal armed conflict and a concept known as "Conflict Carrying capacity"

Smart Solution:

Researchers at Harvard and Ohio State University have been working for the past 6 or so years on an automated Political Crisis Early Warning System that anticipates the worst case scenario --internal armed conflict.

An early paper on was published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution in 2001. Conflict-Carrying Capacity, Political Crisis, and Reconstruction A Framework for the Early Warning of Political System Vulnerability by J. Craig Jenkins, Department of Sociology, Ohio State University and  Doug Bond, Program on Nonviolent Sanctions and Cultural Survival, Harvard University, Center of Excellence in Disaster Management & Humanitarian Assistance

Abstract

"The early warning of protracted political violence needs firm empirical footing in dynamic indicators of the political processes leading to political crises.  This study provides a conceptual framework for the analysis of conflict-carrying capacity (or CCC) defined as the ability of political systems to regulate intense internal conflicts.  CCC is indexed by the multiplicative interaction between the proportions of civil contention, state repression, and violence.  The PANDA Project (1983-1994) is used to illustrate the usefulness of this CCC index in capturing system stability in an institutionalized democracy (the United States), a bureaucratic-authoritarian regime (Mexico), an institutionalized Communist regime (China), and a peaceful democratic transition (Poland).  It provides early warning signals of civil war (Algeria, Sri Lanka) and moves toward political stability (Peru).  Civil contention and state repression are not destabilizing per se.  Rather it is the simultaneous combination of these with violent contention that leads to internal political crises and, alternatively, to political stabilization."

Source: Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol.  45, No.  1, 3-31 (2001)

ETA: Now Recent work on the model has advanced far enough to provide fairly good predictive results.

N.B. This new foresight tool is unlikely to replace political analysts or futurists but provide them with a more robust anticipatory capability. This tool may provide the early warning signal of an event, but not the opportunity or threat windows that result.....that takes human intelligence.

2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

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