Smart Economy

Machines smarter then humans? Social Impacts?

One of the main functions of this blog is to explore the social impacts of new smart technology.

Here's and example from the Singularity conference. covered by Wired Magazine.

As computers get smarter machines could become more intelligent than humans within a few decades, leading to an event dubbed the Singularity.

Technologists are still debating the possibility but what if just enough people believed it is likely?

Whether the singularity occurs or not, just the expectation of it could significantly change human behavior, says James Miller, associate professor of economics at Smith College.

“Long before there is a singularity, people will come to expect it,” Smith told attendees at the Singularity Summit in San Jose. “And it is very likely that could happen within 20 years.”

The belief that a vastly different future is near could change how people make choices in life, education, investment and retirement, says Miller. “People will become very fearful of death, save less and invest differently,” he says.

Most significant among their choices would be the emphasis on extending life, says Smith. “If you think there will be a machine-driven future then your top priority is to survive long enough to make it to the singularity,” he says.

That means people force Governments to increase its defense spending in a bid to ensure the greatest chance of survival"

Full story here>>Expectation of Machine Intelligence Could Change Social Behavior, Says Economist

 

LAID - a Smart Decision Room with Ambient Intelligence for Group Decision Making and Argumentation Support considering Emotional Aspects

International Journal of Smart Home Vol.  2, No.  2, April, 2008

Abstract

Decision Making is one of the most important activities of the human being.  Nowadays decisions imply to consider many different points of view, so decisions are commonly taken by formal or informal groups of persons.  Groups exchange ideas or engage in a process of argumentation and counter-argumentation, negotiate, cooperate, collaborate or even discuss techniques and/or methodologies for problem solving.  Group Decision Making is a social activity in which the discussion and results consider a combination of rational and emotional aspects.  In this paper we will present a Smart Decision Room, LAID (Laboratory of Ambient Intelligence for Decision Making).  In LAID environment it is provided the support to meeting room participants in the argumentation and decision making processes, combining rational and emotional aspects.

© 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 

Smart Sustainability Showcase for Toronto and Canada

From: Walter Derzko

Sent: Friday, July 11, 2008 12:19 AM

To: undisclosed list

Subject: re Smart Sustainability ShowCase for Toronto and Canada.

Importance: High

Dear Colleagues

I’d like to plant an idea with you – after speaking with a number of designers and vendors, I’m exploring the idea for a sustainability showcase that would feature theme based exhibits with smart technologies from Canadian and international sources-the best from Ontario, nationally and from around the world.

The launch would be 2010, The timing for this seems right.  The target audience would be Canadian business, consumers and school children

I’m writing a book on smart technologies and this would be a logical extension of the concept.

Two years ago I talked to Samantha Sannella and Poala Polletto at the Design Exchange (DX) in Toronto and with several people at the Ont Science Center.  Both groups expressed interest but said that we would need to find sponsors for the project

My business model for this would be three pronged -vendor based revenue, corporate based sponsor revenue and municipality based sponsorship ie city of Toronto or Mississauga and possibly the province of Ontario who may wish to promote sustainable manufacturing.

This concept would be a Canadian, in fact a North American first.

I have a list of 150 potential vendors, and designers from around the world who are working on smart technologies that we can start to approach.

The exhibits would be theme based, --the sustainable kitchen, the sustainable office, the sustainable retail shelf, the sustainable workspace, the sustainable community, the sustainable city etc and would be updated with new technologies every 3-5 years and have a 1-5 year forward focus. (what's commercially available now or in the very near future.

For other exhibits, there can be a regional or national focus ie smart sustainable technology from the UK, Finland, Germany (Fraunhofer Inst), China, Ukraine, Russia, or Singapore, Hong Kong etc

Corporate sponsors might include: Walmart, Rona, Home Deport, Canadian Tire, Loblaws, Sears, Imperial Oil, the banks (RBC, TD, RBC BMO) etc.

The Sustainability Showcase could be housed in a physical location, or it could tour from location to location around the city or province or be mobile ( on a bus the way the Japanese and Korean do- a display bus turned into a demo center that tours from school to school or to fairs and exhibitions.

OCAD students and staff and Beal senior fellows could play a hand in designing exhibit spaces and sourcing new vendors and sustainable technologies.

Several other revenue opportunities could spin off from this as well

Here’s just a few examples of what can be showcased

1) Environmentally sensible packaging such as Mercury-Absorbant NanoSponge packaging for broken compact fluorescent lamps (CFL's) http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2008/06/mercury-absorba.html

2) Concrete Wood (from the example I mentioned June 2 at OCAD, when Bob Logan was bemoaning the lack of durability of pressboard shelving from Ikea.  See Concrete Wood from lodgepole pine trees destroyed by pine beetles (kills two birds with one stone) http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2007/11/concrete-wood.html

3) End of Traditional Heating and Air conditioning Thin-film version of Active Building Envelope (ABE) systems could make conventional air conditioning and heating equipment obsolete http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2006/07/thinfilm_versio.html

4) OLEDs New High efficiency flat light source OLEDs > Almost any surface in a home, whether flat or curved, could become a light source: walls, curtains, ceilings, cabinets, shelves or tables.  Http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2006/04/new_high_effici.html

Lots more like these

For anyone who is interested in exploring the idea of a Smart Sustainability Showcase for Toronto, we are having a meeting on Tuesday July 22 at 11 am at the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD), Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity, room 600, 6th floor , 100 McCaul St, Toronto just south of the Ont Art Gallery.

Please RSVP, so we know how many people are coming

I have had some positive feedback from several organizations, & I’d like to push the concept forward

I'm sending this nationally and internationally in  case you are aware of any designers, vendors, manufacturers or research centers who have interesting cutting edge smart sustainable technology to showcase.

Contact me by email

----Walter  Derzko; Senior Fellow Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity, OCAD 

© 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

Traditional organizational teams are extinct. Biomimicry and Bioteams. Connect-and-collaborate replaces Command-and-Control

Traditional organizational teams just became extinct. 

With the emergence of global Internet collaboration, social networks and mobile communications, the very meaning of the word "team" has changed --changed utterly. 

Ken Thompson, former European IT Manager with Reuters and a pioneer of the burgeoning "biomimicry" design movement, has mapped out a fundamentally new model for teams.  He teaches organizations how they can look to the natural world to create high performance "bioteams" based on nature's best designs.

In his just-released book, Bioteams, Thompson offers a way to build exceptionally agile, high performing teams based on a thorough examination of the key communication principles that underpin nature's most successful groups --from signal bursts of migrating flocks of geese, to the waggle dance of honeybees, to the pheromone trails laid down by ants.  Based on nature's communication patterns, he provides a complete set of practical techniques that have been proven with real teams in the field, whose stories are described in a comprehensive set of case studies in the book.

Using the principles of bioteaming, command-and-control leadership gives way to connect-and-collaborate, where every member of an organizational team is a 'leader.' 

In nature and in bioteams, leaders don't give commands, they transmit information, trusting the team members' competencies and gaining accountability through transparency.  True team leadership is about cooperation, not control.  It's about acting on opportunities, and letting others lead the leader when they know best about getting stuff done."

Bioteams offers a vision of what successful teaming experiences look like.  More than a book about team dynamics, Bioteams offers stories, principles, and guidelines showing how any individual can successfully participate in almost any work or learning-related situation faced today.  Toby Coppel, Managing Director of Yahoo!  Europe, said of the book, "If you are looking for the book that describes the radical new model for teams in today's world --this is it!"  Jay Cross, CEO of the Internet Time Group, summarized Thompson's work, "Ironically, these are not really Thompson's rules; they are Mother Nature's."

Whether you are a CEO, manager, Chief Learning Officer, trainer, team leader or team member, we are confident you'll find Ken's practical techniques to be valuable in your organization, your work and your life.

In university courses on leadership, organizational behavior and management, his innovative concepts and proven methods will help prepare the next generation of leaders for the interconnected world of the 21st century.

Bottom Up Nanoassembly; For the First time Researchers create three-dimensional structures using DNA-directed assembly 08-036

MIT Technology Review reports that for the first time in history, researchers have managed to create three-dimensional structures using DNA-directed assembly, realizing the promise and proof-of-concept of building novel materials from the bottom up--atom-by-atom...one of the holy grails of nanotechnology...and about 5-10 years before most technology futurists predicted that this would happen.

...Likely to be voted as one of the top science breakthroughs of 2008, unless they discover life on another planet !!

Researchers from Northwestern and Brookhaven National Laboratory report separately in the journal Nature that they have finally delivered on long-sought promise, using DNA linkers to transform nanoparticles into perfect crystals containing up to one million particles.

The startup company, NanoSphere, has used the technology to develop medical diagnostics that have gained approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

One problem needs to be addressed though:

"The structures are highly porous--10 percent particles and DNA and 90 percent water.  That could hinder applications in which water is undesirable.  Drain out the water, and the crystals collapse.  Gang says that one could stabilize the crystals by filling the lattice with a polymer, but he is also exploring alternate stabilization schemes that would preserve the lattice's open space."

I can think of a few approaches.... :-))

See full story  Researchers create three-dimensional structures using DNA-directed assembly

Is the Smarter & more Intelligent "Google generation" a myth? (or why we still need librarians) 08-018

I dropped in to visit my librarian friend at the University of Toronto this week, to thank him for all the help I received from him in the past several years in just finding "stuff" that I urgently needed, especially when I was cornered by a client and needed it yesterday.

He was bemoaning the fate of librarians and libraries in general in the future and asked me what I thought. "If everyone is tagging and exchanging meta-tags about books, then why do we need librarians?" he asked me.

My intuitive response was to reassure him, that librarians will become an even more valuable resource in the future, when everyone has to deal with even more information overload and data stress. The job of the librarian will likely change over the next decade from a "custodian of information" [where do I find X] to a "sense-maker of information" [so what does x mean? or what happens if we combine X with Y?]. As we get more and more new media channels" (and not just books) coming on-stream and others that are obsolesced (but still contain valuable information), this will require integration and synthesis of concepts from many sources, some of which, technology can aid with and the rest we will have to rely on our brains and skills.

My "flash insight" was confirmed this week by a study that shows  that the so-called smarter "'Google Generation"  is a myth.

A study carried out  at University College London claims that, although young people demonstrate an apparent ease and familiarity with computers, they rely heavily on search engines, view rather than read and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information that they find on the web. [...here I would add the lack of synthesis and pattern-recognition skills too--Walter Derzko]

The "Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future" report also shows that research-behavior traits that are commonly associated with younger users--impatience in search and navigation, and zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs--are now becoming the norm for all age-groups, from younger pupils and undergraduates through to professors.

Source: The British Library news release

Moral of the story?....find yourself a good librarian and take them out to lunch once in a while.

Update...Pat, one librarian wrote back with some feedback saying… "always thought the internet was the full employment act for librarians."

and my librarian friend from U of T, responds with a McLuhan-like thought...

" My belief is that libraries should become more like publishers -- as they were in the Middle Ages when copyists sat row upon row copying books.  It's time to reclaim the heritage Gutenburg took away from us.  So librarians should be good editors and know all there is to know about publishing.  The role of copyist is now being fulfilled by the server, but someone still has to create the file that sits on the hard disk."

Smart Hospital Rooms 08-016

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported today on a smart hospital room pilot project at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

"Informed that her hospital room was equipped with computer screens that could display her vital signs, medications and other personal information, and even identify the health professionals walking in her door, Carmella Sacramento gave a classic Pittsburgh response."Get out," said Ms. Sacramento, 73, of Swissvale, who was hospitalized at UPMC Shadyside for a heart problem. "Isn't that something?"

The computer system presents other information, including reminders to patients to ask for help in getting out of bed if they are at risk for falls. And a spotlight focuses on the hand sanitizer dispenser when people enter or leave, reminding them of the need to wash their hands.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center calls the concept the "smart room" and believes it is the first of its kind. The idea has been tested since October in six patient rooms at UPMC Shadyside.

"While many technology vendors have developed 'smart' components, including advanced pumps that use patient information to regulate medication doses, ours is the first system designed to address the broader patient experience," said David Sharbaugh, leader of the project and senior director at UPMC's Center for Quality Improvement and Innovation.

"We believe this technology will enhance patient safety, allow clinicians to spend more time at the bedside and simplify the jobs of health care workers."

Source:  UPMC TESTING 'SMART' ROOMS; SIX ROOMS AT UPMC SHADYSIDE ARE EQUIPPED WITH COMPUTER SCREENS THAT KEEP DOCTORS AND PATIENTS INFORMED JOE FAHY.  Pittsburgh Post - Gazette.  Pittsburgh, Pa.: Jan 16, 2008.  Pg.  A.1

Brain network related to intelligence identified > neurobiology of human intelligence

In a review of 37 imaging studies related to intelligence, including their own, Richard Haier of the University of California, Irvine and Rex Jung of the University of New Mexico have uncovered evidence of a distinct neurobiology of human intelligence. Their Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory (P-FIT) identifies a brain network related to intelligence, one that primarily involves areas in the frontal and the parietal lobes.

Their report includes peer commentary from 19 researchers and appears online in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

“Recent neuroscience studies suggest that intelligence is related to how well information travels throughout the brain,” said Haier, a professor of psychology in the School of Medicine and longtime human intelligence researcher. “Our review of imaging studies identifies the stations along the routes intelligent information processing takes. Once we know where the stations are, we can study how they relate to intelligence.”

The data suggest that some of the brain areas related to intelligence are the same areas related to attention and memory and to more complex functions like language. Haier and Jung say this possible integration of cognitive functions suggests that intelligence levels might be based on how efficient the frontal-parietal networks process information.

Brain imaging studies of intelligence are relatively new, with Haier doing some of the first ones only 20 years ago. Although there is still discussion about how to define and measure intelligence, Haier and Jung found surprising consistency in the studies they reviewed despite the fact the studies represented a variety of approaches.

In his peer commentary, University of Washington psychologist Earl Hunt writes: “

The Jung & Haier P-FIT model shows how far we have progressed toward understanding the biological basis of intelligence. Twenty-five years ago researchers in the field were engaged in an unedifying discussion of the relation between skull sizes and intelligence test scores. By taking advantage of the huge advances in measurement of the brain that have occurred in the past quarter century, [Jung and Haier] can take the far more sophisticated view that individual differences in intelligence depend, in part, upon individual differences in specific areas of the brain and in the connections between them.”

Haier and Jung have made some of the seminal findings in intelligence studies. In a 2004 study, they found that regions related to general intelligence are located throughout the brain and that a single “intelligence center,” such as the frontal lobe, is unlikely. And in a 2005 study, they found that while there are essentially no disparities in general intelligence between the sexes, women have more white matter and men more gray matter related to intelligence test scores, suggesting that no single neuroanatomical structure determines general intelligence and that different types of brain designs can produce equivalent intellectual performance.

“Genetic research has demonstrated that intelligence levels can be inherited, and since genes work through biology, there must be a biological basis for intelligence,” Haier said. “We have a long way to go before we understand the details, but our P-FIT model provides a framework for testing new hypotheses in future experiments.”

see http://today.uci.edu/news/release_detail.asp?key=1658

© 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

Millennium development goals: radically reducing extreme poverty and hunger. Are we on track? 07-200

One year ago in my presentaion at the World Futures Society on Smart Technologies I was reflecting on how smart technologies, namely nanotech and biotech converging technologies could be used to address the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In April 2007, the General Assembly of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations convened to discuss progress made towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Professor Patrick Webb,  dean for academic affairs at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at  Tufts University, presented on the status of the Millennium Development Goal One (MDG1): radically reducing extreme poverty and hunger.

The MDGs were developed at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000 to set measurable goals and targets for a range of pressing global problems, including poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women.

MDG1 has a twofold objective: reduce the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day, and reduce the proportion of people suffering hunger by half. In order to meet these goals, Webb highlighted recent successes that can guide future efforts.

There are three priority issues to be tackled in seeking to address the second objective (on hunger)

• removing the ‘invisibility’ of hunger by better measuring and highlighting areas making limited progress,
• promoting innovations in programming, and
• integrating mainstream lessons from successful action in humanitarian settings (saving lives and reducing acute malnutrition) into development interventions.

Development efforts can address these issues by improving protocols and products for treating malnutrition, and preventing malnutrition by enhancing behaviors and choices that lead to improved nutrition throughout the lifecycle.

Poverty and hunger are multidimensional problems requiring multidimensional solutions. (see related post on Sensmaking Redux 2006)

To address the multidimensional nature of these problems, the first MDG addresses five distinct goals: reducing poverty, narrowing the poverty gap (between richest and poorest), increasing the share of income enjoyed by the poorest families, reducing the share of preschool children who are underweight, and lowering the share of each country’s population that has too little to eat.

“Progress in one target area does not guarantee progress in the other areas,” says Webb. “Focusing on just one aspect of the problem, or just one of the target risks, is missing the point…and risks compromising the success of the entire agenda.”

Speaking on behalf of the three Rome-based agencies of the United Nations (the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)), Webb argued that governments should engage more seriously in measuring their own progress towards agreed goals. Solutions to hunger are known, and novel approaches to the treatment and prevention of malnutrition in emergencies have shown that quick gains are possible. Making such gains sustainable means scaling up innovations across developing country settings, and targeting resources towards such key priorities.

This meeting of Member States, UN System Organizations, other major institutional stakeholders, as well as non-governmental organizations, academics and foundations concentrated on the theme “Eradicating poverty and hunger – Joining forces to make it happen.” The conference explored the issues and set the groundwork for the ECOSOC’s first Annual Ministerial Review (AMR) this summer in Switzerland.

Webb concluded by stating that “…in order to successfully impact malnutrition it takes complementary inputs delivered through complementary partnerships. It is not only about food, and it is not only about cash in the pocket. Many different elements are needed to achieve the five goals, and many institutions have to bring their resources to bear. In order to tackle the problem it is not possible to focus on just agriculture or just health; in order to be successful the many facets of the problem must all be addressed.”

Webb will continue to work with the many stakeholders involved in assessing progress and further advancing the important human goals that are the MDGs.

Source: Tufts Univ press release

© 2005-2007

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

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

Smarter designer mice teach scientists about learning, sense-making, brain disorders 07-165

Adult mice genetically engineered to lack a single enzyme, called Cdk5 in their brains are more adept at learning than their normal cousins, and are quicker to figure out that their environment has changed, a team of researchers  has found.

IMPACT:

The results, appearing today in the online edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience, reveal a new mechanism of learning in the brain, which might serve in humans as a target for treating disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, Alzheimer’s disease or drug addiction, the researchers said.

DESCRIPTION:

"It’s pretty rare that you make mice ‘smarter,’ so there are a lot of cognitive implications," said Dr. James Bibb, assistant professor of psychiatry, UT Southwestern Medical Center and the study’s senior author.

"Everything is more meaningful to these mice," he said.  "The increase in sensitivity to their surroundings seems to have made them smarter."

The engineered mice were more adept at learning to navigate a water maze and remembering that being in a certain box involves a mild shock.  Equally important, Dr. Bibb said, when a situtation changed, such as the water maze being rearranged, the engineered mice were much faster to realize that things were different and work out the new route.

The key in this study was being able to "knock out" the gene for Cdk5 only in the brain, and only when the mice were adults.  This technique, only recently developed and called conditional knockout, allows much more sophisticated experiments than traditional knockout, which entirely eliminates the gene.

"Being able to turn a gene off throughout a brain is a really advanced thing to do," Dr. Bibb said.  "It’s been shown that it can be done, but we put the system together and actually applied it."

Dr. Bibb cautioned that while the mice learn faster, studies on the long-term effects of deleting the enzyme, called Cdk5, from the brain are continuing.

The group is also beginning a search for drugs that might create the same effects without genetic manipulation and monitoring the animals’ health and behavior over time.

The findings may have applications in treating post-traumatic stress disorder, where getting a patient to learn that a once-threatening situation no longer poses a danger is a major goal.

"We made the animals ‘smarter,’ but in doing so and applying this technology, we also found biochemical targets that hold promise for future treatments of a variety of cognitive disorders," he said.

Full story here >> [....]

CONSEQUENCES:

....so do humans have a sense-making Cdk5 gene that can be applified or enhanced to increase NR2B levels in the brain too?

© 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