Smart Economy

Early warning signals, climate change, ice ages and tipping points

Regular Smart Economy blog readers will remember the theory that I posted a while back-geologically speaking, earth should be in an ice age now--i.e Toronto should be covered by about a Km of ice, if it wasn't for all the human produced CO2 and global warming largely due to of 8,000 years of agriculture, such as rice farming and deforestation.

Now comes a paper in New Scientist that provides evidence that the transition to a previous mini ice age about 13,000 years ago (from a warm sunny  climate to a landscape of ice covered glaciers) took an incredible short period of time (6 months to a year) and not the decade or decades that we previously assumed.

New Scientist writes:

"JUST months - that's how long it took for Europe to be engulfed by an ice age. The scenario, which comes straight out of Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, was revealed by the most precise record of the climate from palaeohistory ever generated.Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by the Younger Dryas mini ice age, or "Big Freeze". It was triggered by the slowdown of the Gulf Stream, led to the decline of the Clovis culture in North America, and lasted around 1300 years.

Until now, it was thought that the mini ice age took a decade or so to take hold, on the evidence provided by Greenland ice cores. Not so, say William Patterson of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and his colleagues.The group studied a mud core from an ancient lake, Lough Monreagh, in western Ireland. Using a scalpel they sliced off layers 0.5 to 1 millimetre thick, each representing up to three months of time. No other measurements from the period have approached this level of detail.

 Carbon isotopes in each slice revealed how productive the lake was and oxygen isotopes gave a picture of temperature and rainfall. They show that at the start of the Big Freeze, temperatures plummeted and lake productivity stopped within months, or a year at most.  

[...]

The mud slices from the end of the Big Freeze show that it took around two centuries for the lake and climate to recover.

 Patterson says that sudden climate switches like the Big Freeze are far from unusual in the geological record.

The Younger Dryas was brought about when a glacial lake covering most of north-west Canada burst its banks and poured into the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. The huge flood diluted the salinity-driven North Atlantic Ocean mega-currents, including the Gulf Stream, and stalled it.

Two studies published in 2006 show that the same thing happened again 8200 years ago, when the Northern hemisphere went through another cold spell.

Some climate scientists have suggested that the Greenland ice sheet could have the same effect if it suddenly melts through climate change (see Hansen comment below), but the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded this was unlikely to happen this century....[the truth is that they just don't know for sure--Walter Derzko]

Seems almost anti-intuitive; Here's the likley sequence:

Global warming ( natural or man-made), ->Greenland ice sheet melting, -> change in ocean salinity; -> Atlantic Gulf stream stalling; -> mini ice age..

This shows how we can get stuck in dictotomous thinking...the debate is  not whether or not we have global warming or global cooling, or if it is man-made or caused by nature,  but the recognition that we can have both at the same time -that's what happens at tipping points or critical transitions !!--Walter Derzko

Another significant advance comes out of this research..and this is really cool-a weather report from millions of years ago:

"Patterson's team have now set their sights on even more precise records of historical climate. They have built a robot able to shave 0.05 micrometre slivers along the growth lines of fossilised clam shells, giving a resolution of less than a day. "We can get you mid-July temperatures from 400 million years ago," he says."

Climate scientist James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, in Newsweek interview  (http://www.newsweek.com/id/224178 ) said last week:

“The Greenland ice sheet had been losing between 150 and 200 cubic kilometers a year in 2002, and now is losing almost 300 cubic kilometers a year.”  

But Hanen doesn't say when we will reach the tipping point. How much fresh water is needed to dilute ocean salinity and disrupt the North Atlantic current and tip into an ice age? Well we just  don’t know for sure—all of it is pure guesswork.  or to support some political agenda --Walter Derzko

 

 

Hanson adds: “Antarctica had been losing less than 100 cubic kilometers a year, and is now losing more than 150, so it seems like we're heading into a period of much more rapid ice sheet loss. Also, in the arctic we've lost 40 percent of the sea ice in the warm season, and that will soon be 100 percent. Mountain glaciers are retreating rapidly  and could be gone in 50 years. (Recently,  our mainstream climate modelers said this would take a century or more --100 years, but it's happening right now—Walter Derzko)

 

That's why it's important to continue to do R&D work on early warning signals for critical transitions.

A paper titled -Early warning signals for critical transitions, in the Sept 13 issue of Nature states:

"Complex adaptive dynamic systems (such as ecosystems, financial markets, and climate ) can have tipping points (or critical transitions,) at which point a sudden shift to a contrasting dynamical regime may occur. Although predicting such critical points before they are reached is exrtemely difficult, work in different scientific fields is now suggesting the existance of generic early-warning signals that may indicate for a wide class of systems if a critical threshold is approaching."

Walter Derzko

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

What came before DNA or RNA ? Fullerenes and amino acids? 08-008

Christmas and New Year's is a time when many people think about birth or rebirth and some even more philosophically about how life first started on earth.

The complexity of life has always bothered me. Helical DNA molecules are a fairly complex structure and I always wondered if there could have been a proto-genesis stage to life…ie what where the steps before the creation of DNA and RNA on Earth?

We are now getting some strands of evidence (pun intended) that suggests what came before DNA and RNA. One explanation is the primordial soup theory. According to Wikipedia, the primordial sea, or primordial ocean, is a term applied collectively to the oceans of the earth at a very early time in its history, either the time before or during the development of multi-cellular life forms (i.e., during the Precambrian), or alternatively before the development of the first land-based life forms (i.e. during the early Paleozoic). The term primordial ooze (or primordial or prebiotic soup), refers to a particular set of models of the origin of life.

One hypothesis has been the notion of spontaneous self-assembly of basic amino acids to form simple strands of DNA. This was recently in the news with the announcement amino acids can self-assemble under curtain conditions. However, this seems too random and uncertain to be constantly reproduced to create life. 

Could some other atom or molecule have been used as a template for the creation of life on earth, prior to the short-strand DNA formation stage?

Carbon is one of the most abundant atoms on earth. Most people will recognize two forms of basic carbon; charcoal or graphite (the lead in your pencil)and diamonds. The third form of carbon (discovered in the 1980’s) is C60 or Fullerenes or Buckyballs, named after Buckminster Fuller, the designer of the geodesic dome at Expo 67 which resembles a 60 point soccer ball.Fullerene (C₆₀, C₇₀, etc.) was the third carbon allotrope discovered in 1985 (by H.W. Kroto, R.E. Smally, R.F. Curl; Nobel Prize in 1996), and since then, a great deal of attention has been focused on its physical-chemical and unique bio-medical properties. Fullerenes have been found in nature (in molasses - a waste byproduct of heating sugar cane), in candle soot and in impact craters of meteorites in Sudbury Ontario( formed both on impact and of extraterrestrial origins).

Could C60 Fullerenes have been the templates uses by very basic amino acids to form the first strands of life (DNA) in earth’s pre-mordial soup, millions of years ago?

This plausible hypothesis was proposed by Prof. Grigoriy Andrievsky in Sudak Crimea at the 7^Th International Conference called Cosmos and the Biosphere, in the fall of 2007 in a paper entitled “Water Structures ordered [in a] specific manner as universal regulators of biological processes; what hydrated fullerenes-the symbiosis of cure carbon and water-have told [us]”.Andrievsky G.V. ISMA NAS Ukraine, STC 'Institute for Single Crystals', Kharkiv, Ukraine.  Andrievsky points out the similarity between spherical fractal clusters of hydrated fullerenes (HyFn) (C₆₀ and surrounding water clusters) and some of the most significant biological structures.Fullerenes have been found to mimic several biologically important structures such as clathrine cages, viral structures, and other structural (spatially) similar biological supra-(or sub)-molecular structures. He also suggests that the universalism of HyFn biological activity as the confirmation of hypothesis that C₆₀ - H₂O systems might be the matrix for primary biological matter (substance) formation (such as RNA or DNA).

He writes:

“The wide range of HyFn positive biological activity can be determined by the quite eligible hypothesis that fullerenes and fullerene-like structures, conjoint with water molecules, could be the first natural matrices for the initial synthesis of pristine bio-molecules on earth. As a consequence, HyFn should not be foreign for living organisms and, thus, they should be capable of protecting and stabilizing the biological structures formed in nature and which exist in a hydrated state."

This was confirmed this week in a paper published in Chemical Physical Letters called Fullerene-Amino Acid Interactions.  A Theoretical Study.by Aned de Leon, Abraham F.Jalbout and Vladimr A. Basiuk. In it, they explored the ability of the C60 fullerenes to interact with amino acids at the theoretical level. The calculations suggest that the most favorable interactions of the fullerene is with arginine, leucine, and tryptophan which is related to the backbone structure of the corresponding amino acids.

How did life first start on earth? Liquid crystal phases of smart self-organizing DNA molecules point to a new scenario

Liquid crystal phases of tiny DNA molecules point up new scenario for first life on Earth

A team led by the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Milan has discovered some unexpected forms of liquid crystals of ultrashort DNA molecules immersed in water, providing a new scenario for a key step in the emergence of life on Earth.

CU-Boulder physics Professor Noel Clark said the team found that surprisingly short segments of DNA, life's molecular carrier of genetic information, could assemble into several distinct liquid crystal phases that "self-orient" parallel to one another and stack into columns when placed in a water solution.  Life is widely believed to have emerged as segments of DNA- or RNA-like molecules in a prebiotic "soup" solution of ancient organic molecules.

A paper on the subject will be published in the Nov. 23 issue of Science

Since the formation of molecular chains as uniform as DNA by random chemistry is essentially impossible, Clark said, scientists have been seeking effective ways for simple molecules to spontaneously self-select, “chain-up” and self-replicate.  The new study shows that in a mixture of tiny fragments of DNA, those molecules capable of forming liquid crystals selectively condense into droplets in which conditions are favorable for them to be chemically linked into longer molecules with enhanced liquid crystal-forming tendencies, he said.

“We found that even tiny fragments of double helix DNA can spontaneously self-assemble into columns that contain many molecules,” Clark said.  “Our vision is that from the collection of ancient molecules, short RNA pieces or some structurally related precursor emerged as the molecular fragments most capable of condensing into liquid crystal droplets, selectively developing into long molecules.”

The CU-Boulder and University of Milan team began a series of experiments to see how short the DNA segments could be and still show liquid crystal ordering. The teams found that even a DNA segment as short as six bases, when paired with a complementary segment that together measured just two nanometers long and two nanometers in diameter, could still assemble itself into the liquid crystal phases, in spite of having almost no elongation in shape.

Scientists propose the kind of chemistry that led to life ; Pre-life or Proto-Life steps ? 07-185

Before life emerged on earth, either a primitive kind of metabolism or an RNA-like duplicating machinery must have set the stage - so experts believe.  But what preceded these pre-life steps? 

A pair of UCSF scientists has developed a model explaining how simple chemical and physical processes may have laid the foundation for life.  Like all useful models, theirs can be tested, and they describe how this can be done. 

Their model is based on simple, well-known chemical and physical laws.  The work appears online this week in "The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."   

The basic idea is that simple principles of chemical interactions allow for a kind of natural selection on a micro scale: enzymes can cooperate and compete with each other in simple ways, leading to arrangements that can become stable, or "locked in," says Ken Dill, PhD, senior author of the paper and professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at UCSF. 

The scientists compare this chemical process of "search, selection, and memory" to another well-studied process: different rates of neuron firing in the brain lead to new connections between neurons and ultimately to the mature wiring pattern of the brain.  Similarly, social ants first search randomly, then discover food, and finally build a short-term memory for the entire colony using chemical trails.  They also compare the chemical steps to Darwin's principles of evolution: random selection of traits in different organisms, selection of the most adaptive traits, and then the inheritance of the traits best suited to the environment (and presumably the disappearance of those with less adaptive traits).  Like these more obvious processes, the chemical interactions in the model involve competition, cooperation, innovation and a preference for consistency, they say.  The model focuses on enzymes that function as catalysts - compounds that greatly speed up a reaction without themselves being changed in the process.  Catalysts are very common in living systems as well as industrial processes.  Many researchers believe the first primitive catalysts on earth were nothing more complicated than the surfaces of clays or other minerals.  In its simplest form, the model shows how two catalysts in a solution, A and B, each acting to catalyze a different reaction, could end up forming what the scientists call a complex, AB.  The deciding factor is the relative concentration of their desired partners.  The process could go like this: Catalyst A produces a chemical that catalyst B uses.  Now, since B normally seeks out this chemical, sometimes B will be attracted to A -- if its desired chemical is not otherwise available nearby.  As a result, A and B will come into proximity, forming a complex.  The word "complex" is key because it shows how simple chemical interactions, with few players, and following basic chemical laws, can lead to a novel combination of molecules of greater complexity.  The emergence of complexity - whether in neuronal systems, social systems, or the evolution of life, or of the entire universe -- has long been a major puzzle, particularly in efforts to determine how life emerged.  Dill calls the chemical interactions "stochastic innovation" - suggesting that it involves both random (stochastic) interactions and the emergence of novel arrangements. 

"A major question about life's origins is how chemicals, which have no self-interest, became 'biological' -- driven to evolve by natural selection," he says.  "This simple model shows a plausible route to this type of complexity." 

Dill is also a professor of biophysics and associate dean of research in the UCSF School of Pharmacy.  He is a faculty affiliate at QB3, the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research, headquartered at UCSF.

Impact? Why is this significant?

So will we soon see kids and hobbyists playing with Proto-Life chemistry sets in the basement? 

A new field for design?

Source: Press Release

© 2005-2007

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

Cancer research helps biofuels; good example of lateral thinking and serendipity at work 07-050

I've said many times before that solutions to a problem in one field often appear serendipitously from another seemingly unrelated one.

"Nearly a decade ago, Tom Todaro was talking to his researcher colleagues at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center about techniques the institute had devised to slow down tumor growth by slowing the rate at which tumor cells divide.  Then they had an idea.  Why not exploit the reaction in reverse and get cells to grow faster?"

( good and simple, applied example of Edward de Bono's reverse, lateral thinking, for all you future Nobel laureates...Walter Derzko)

The result:  10 years & 9 million dollars later: Targeted Growth, a company that has developed techniques for increasing crop yields with canola, corn and other crops.  In their natural state, these crops stop growing after a certain point in the season.  Targeted Growth manipulates a plant's genetic code so the cells continue to divide past their ordinary stopping point. This genetic manipulation leads to increased seed size and seed count.  In experiments, the technique has increased overall crop yield by as much as 20 percent. Targeted Growth does not integrate foreign genes into a plant, which creates so-called transgenic plants.  Instead, it removes native genes from a species, modifies them and then reinserts them back into the plant.

BTW, they just got a 22.3 million dollar infusion of private equity for more broader research into other crops.

For more see here >> [...]

From their web site:

In 2007 USA State of the Union address, President Bush outlined his "20 by 10" strategy for reducing US consumption of oil by 20 percent in 10 years.  Included in this strategy was a call to increase renewable fuels to 35 billion gallons by 2017 - an increase of 28 billion from previous requirement.

Impacting Biofuel Production

The world's ever increasing consumption of energy is not about to change course in the years to come.  It is inevitable that alternative energies will be a part of our future.  The question is no longer if, but how.

How will we produce enough renewable fuel to make an impact on the world's energy needs?

Targeted Growth, based in Seattle, WA, was formed in 1999 to address this opportunity by focusing solely on increasing seed size and yield in major biofuel crops.  Targeted Growth has the technology platform and staff expertise required to make this a reality.  The company has dedicated nearly 8 years and $9 million to prove that it is possible to produce significant yield increases (greater than 10 percent ).  In large scale field trials conducted from 2003 to 2006, Targeted Growth has shown consistent yield increases of 20 percent.  Targeted Growth believes that corn, soybeans, camelina and canola will play a major role in the production of biofuel for many years to come.

ETA: 2011-2015

about 4 years before you see it on your plate or in your car

© 2005-2007

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 "

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 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

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

Happy 1st Birthday to the Smart Economy Blog; Announcing a new Web site, Monthly workshops and webinars

Today marks the 1st anniversary of the Smart Economy Blog. We've received many encouraging feedback & emails from our readers over the past year and good suggestions from positive-focused critics for future improvements.

• According to Pingpoat, The Smart Economy Blog is worth  is $1011.17!  per day
• Inbound links: 1085
• Technorati rank: 34,021

So today, I'm announcing a series of new "smart" initiatives that we will be kicking off in October 2006.

The Smart Economy is growing exponentially and so are we, right along with it.

Smart Economy Learning Series-monthly workshops in Toronto

Starting in October 2006, we will be launching a monthly series of one-day workshops on topics that our blog readers say interest them. These include:

• Latest Tools for Advanced Environmental Scanning, Managing Information Overload and Sense-making ( October 12, 2006, BCE Place Toronto) email me asking for a registration form
• Lateral thinking in business  (Date TBA)
• Developing foresight in your business or industry  (Date TBA)
• Resolving conflicts and disputes using lateral thinking (Date TBA)
• The Opportunity Clinic --Scanning your business environment for Opportunities(Date TBA)
• The Idea Lab --Designing smart products and services that will drive business development forward (Date TBA)
• Introduction to Business Development --Tracking emerging technologies as threats or opportunities for your business (Date TBA)
• Technology Assessment for Investment Professionals & High Tech Startups (Date TBA)
• Building a Busines Case for Smart Devices, objects and services (Date TBA)
• Designing winning business modles for Smart Technologies (Date TBA)

Register today, since space will be limited. Past workshops have sold out quickly.

The Smart Economy Web Page

We are finally in the last stages of planning and constructing our new web site for the Smart Economy. Watch out for launch date soon.

The Smart Economy Webinar Series.

Also starting in October 2006, we will host a monthly opportunity for our blog readers to phone in and participate in a "live seminar" which will include power-point slides and a Q&A session, all from the comfort of your PC or laptop. It will be on some current topic related to the smart economy and some rising smart technology that will be coming into prominence soon. This will be a subscription based series.... We will try to keep the price reasonable so that everyone can participate. Subscription information & schedule will be out soon. Watch for announcements.

Thanks again for all your ideas and keep the feedback coming in.

© 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 "

To arrange for an in house presentation 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

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

Looking for Feedback on the Smart Economy Blog

Today is a bit of an anniversary for the Smart Economy. Since I started on this blog last Fall (Sept 15th, 2005 to be exact), I've posted 500 entries (this is # 501). We've received over 100 comments online and many more private direct emails. Our daily traffic is growing steadily month by month, as word spreads about The Smart Economy. Many other influential and popular web sites, trend syndication services and blogs now link back to us.

• According to Pingpoat, The Smart Economy Blog is worth is $1011.17!  Per day
• Inbound links: 1085
• Technorati rank: 34,021

I'd like to hear feedback from you --- our blog readers. How can we improve this site?

• what do you enjoy reading about smart technologies?
• what else would you like to see?
• what don't you like? what annoys you?
• what suggestions do you have for future topics?
• what  would you like to see more coverage of?
• do you use RSS? would you subscribe to a Smart Economy RSS  news feed?
• would you like to hear news about the smart economy on your Mp3 player?
• would you like a one-stop-shop to purchase smart technologies?
• would you find road maps for smart technologies useful for your worK?
• would you subscribe to a monthly online seminar (webinar) on smart technology?
• would you find workshops on smart technology topics useful?
• how do you use our information? investment decisions? strategic decisions? alliance decisions? other?

Post your replies or comments in the comments box below or send me a private email

I look forward to hearing from you.

Enjoy the rest of 2006 and 2007 and I hope to see you back here on a regular basis.

All the best !!

Walter Derzko

Is my discipline/ field transforming or reaching its natural end?

I receive numerous conference announcements and invitations every month.

I've started to notice four prevailing themes / trends in many announcement for events for 2007.

Not just the content and context is new but the focus and questions are new.

Time for New Foundations

1) Many professions are stepping back and starting to challenge the very principles and foundations of their profession or discipline.  Here's a segment from an international business conference planned for the spring of 2007 (see here for more )

Globalization is changing the playing field for international business, and thereby altering the way that firms interact with their environment at the local, national and supra-national environment.  It also changes how multinational firms are organized and managed internally.  Future research needs to address these challenges.  Do we need to question old truths and conventional approaches to international business?  Are we too complacent in our approach to these new issues?

Consider: Are pockets of intellectuals in my field starting to question, rethinking and reform the existing business paradigm, landscape and boundries?

Key Questions of our Times?

2) Many disciplines and professions are starting to take stock and ponder: what are the key questions or research themes of out times?  This is not a new approach but it seems to be gaining more and more prominence.  Here again is an example for an upcoming international business conference

1. Is the multinational firm a dying breed? Globalization has changed the relative merits of alternative organizational forms.  Is the concept of internalization as relevant as it was in the 1980s to explain cross-border activities?  Do new business concepts of outsourcing, alliances and global production networks make the concept of the monolithic MNE obsolete?  To what extent are geographical borders themselves still relevant to firms?

2. The geography of innovation Globalization has changed the dynamics of innovation, the dynamics of cluster evolution and the patterns of interaction between clusters.  This is of great concern to those wishing to attract high value-adding activity to certain locations.  Can innovation and industrial policy initiatives really help to create new innovation clusters?  Should so many resources be focused on creating high-tech clusters, and do new MNE structures help or hinder the creation of new clusters?

3. Management across countries and contexts Globalization brings MNEs into contact with a variety of different business environments.  This challenges multinational enterprises to adapt their strategies and operations in areas like marketing, human resources, supply chain management and subsidiary roles.  How are management practices, structures and modes of operation influenced by the host country environment?  How do MNEs adapt organizational forms and management practices to diverse institutional and cultural contexts?  And what impact does this have on firm performance and on individuals within those organizations?

4. Conflicts in international business regulation Globalization has meant that conflicting interests of regions, nation states, supranational organizations and integration areas generate a wide array of policy initiatives which are rarely harmonized.  Although it is recognized that policy harmonization is necessary at either global or regional level in certain areas (such as standards, competition policy, etc), differences between industries, ideologies etc, has meant that many new global institutions that hinder international business.

Have you ever stopped to think: What are the key questions in my discipline/field?

New Disciplines

3) In the past year I've noticed a slew of new professional disciplines being formed.  Most are just combinations of existing ones (such as forensic meteorology), but I suspect as new scientific discoveries head out of the lab and into the field and become commercialized, we'll be seeing brand new professions and disciplines taking shape.  This should co-inside with the continued pace of layoffs from existing multinational firms from the "sunset" industrial economy and even the newer information economy (think recent Intel & EDS layoff's )

Tipping Point ?

4) Pay attention to newspaper stories and articles and conference papers.  I'm seeing more and more stories with the headline..The Death of…..

This is replacing or equaling the number of stories that include the phrase: "for the first time"

Conclusion:

Are you seeing these 4 signals in your profession or from your point-of-view?

This leads me to wonder ?  Are many professions reaching their natural tipping point or inflection point  or will they morph in time into something new ?

For a continued discussion on disruptive technology and which firms are likely to survive this transition and which won't and why, see part 2 next week.

© 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 "

To arrange for an in house presentation 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

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

What it means to be Human ? Post Human ? Homo-remediation?

What does it mean to be human?  Well I think most of us can distinguish between humans and non-humans, well so far at least.

Many speakers at the World Futures Society (WFS) meeting in Toronto this past weekend spoke about what it might mean to be "post human' or trans-human.  The biggest and fiercest proponent of that idea is US inventor Ray Kursweil, who was the keynote at the WFS In his book the Singularity, Kursweil cites a number of technology advances and breakthroughs that are likely to happen in the next 25 years which could push evolution in that direction ( from human evolution to joint technological / homo evolution .  …

With the current research focus and potential breakthroughs, I envision the following progression and trend line/time line (from simple human enhancement (now 2006 ) [see Feb.6, 2006  Smart Technology and Human Enhancement) or 317) Better Than Human?  Humans to the Nth power? ] to life extension (2010-20) to aging elimination (2020-2030) (turning off certain aging genes -yes we can do that now.....Researchers find molecular 'brake' to cell death June 2006)  to what I call Homo-remediation, reversal of the aging process in cells and organs both in-vivo and in-vitro-where cells could get younger and not older with age ...you do the programing (2050?)

Curious and want to know more …..?

TransVision 2006, which is coming up in Finland, Aug 17-19 2006 expands on these notions of what it will mean to be a post human and covers some interesting specific topic areas presented by leading academics (and not fringe futurists) This year the theme of the conference is Emerging Technologies of Human Enhancement.  The conference will be looking at recent and ongoing technological developments and discussing associated ethical and philosophical questions.

Here's the KeyNote ---Aubrey de Grey, Ph.D. ( Is Life Extension an Enhancement?)

He  is  a biogerontologist at the University of Cambridge, UK.  He designs interventions to reverse the cellular and molecular changes that accumulate with age and reduce remaining life expectancy.  He has coined the term "strategies for engineered negligible senescence" (SENS) to describe these interventions, which he argues are the only feasible way to extend human lifespan by more than a decade.  He has published widely on such technology and  is also the co-founder and chief scientist of the Methuselah Mouse Prize, a contest designed to accelerate research into effective life extension interventions by awarding prizes to researchers who extend the lifespan of mice to unprecedented lengths.

Here's what else caught my eye in the program

• Technological Evolution Mr. Jose Cordeiro (UN Millennium Project)
• Information Technologies, Methods and Practices for Mind Enhancement Dr. Danila Medvedev
• Designing Artificial Minds Dr. Harri Valpola
• Neural macrosensing / AGI Consciousness Ms. Natasha Vita-More (Extropy Institute)
• Mutually Assured Permanent Pervasive Surveillance (Video conference) Mr. Philippe Van Nedervelde (Foresight Nanotech Institute)
• Virtue Engineering: Applications of Neurotechnology to Improve Moral Behavior Dr. James Hughes (Executive director, WTA)
• Cognitive Divide or a Mind-Meld?  : Scenarios of Cognitive Enhancement Dr. Anders Sandberg
• "Body Enhancement Technologies at 2020" panel discussion

See Program

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Walter Derzko

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