Please join us on Thursday 25th of March for Mining Future Salon: Understanding Information Flow In The Mobile Corporation with MIT Professor Sandy Pentland. Please RSVPhttp://bit.ly/amkhve
Abstract: Mobile
phones, laptops, and other digital devices form a network of sensors, recording
their user's location, time, who else is nearby, as well communication
patterns. We can `reality mine' this data to better understand and
predict human behavior within the corporation, and improve coordination, job
satisfaction, and productivity. In more than a dozen case studies we have
found that this `reality mining' approach to management often uncovers dramatic
possibilities for improvement in both job satisfaction and productivity, by
allowing more effective combination of face-to-face and digital communications.
Of course there is the flip side to this development: George Oswell's 1984 constant supervision nightmare finally arriving. We the Future Salon audience is known for our interesting questions and dialog during the Future Salon. Therefore it is going to be a super interesting evening, not to be missed.
Massachusetts
Institute of Technology
Professor
Alex (“Sandy”) Pentland is a pioneer in organizational engineering, mobile
information systems, and computational social science. Sandy's focus is the
development of human-centered technology, and the creation of ventures that
take this technology into the real world. He directs the Human Dynamics
Lab, helping companies to become more productive and creative through
organizational engineering, and the Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program, which
helps translate cutting-edge technology into real-world impact around the
world. He is among the most-cited computer scientists in the world, and in 1997
/Newsweek/ magazine named him one of the 100 Americans likely to shape this
century.
SAP Labs North
America, Building D, COIL (Co-Innovation Lab). SAP is located at 3410
Hillview Avenue,
Palo Alto, CA 94304[ map ]. Free and open to the public.
Please spread the word and invite others, but be sure to RSVPhttp://bit.ly/amkhve
so we know how many people to expect.
We asked the Future Salon participants when they RSVPed to also tell us their top 3 personal values. We created a word cloud out of the responses about a week ago and now we updated it with the latest responses:
Interesting is, that respect has lost some ground. Join us at the Future Salon in 18 hours to discuss these results during the Activating
Conscience in Corporations Future Salon this Thursday the
25th of February.
Future
Salons have the following structure: 6-7pm is networking with
light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP; 7-9+pm is the presentation
followed by questions and discussion.
SAP Labs
North America, Building D, COIL (Co-Innovation Lab). SAP is located at
3410 Hillview Avenue,
Palo Alto, CA 94304[map]. Free and open to the public.
Please spread the word and invite others, but be sure to RSVPhttp://bit.ly/9kPpRt
so we know how many people to expect.
The
real problem is that it doesn't matter what regulations are in
place if the people running the economy are rip-off artists. The
system assumes a certain minimum level of ethical behavior and
civic instinct over and above what is spelled out by the
regulations. If those ethics are absent — well, this thing
isn't going to work, no matter what we do.
I can't believe that they are at it again and that we let them. If only these banks had developed some conscience. Or is greed trumping that? Join the discussion around Activating
Conscience in Corporations at the Future Salon this Thursday the 25th of February.
Future
Salons have the following structure: 6-7pm is networking with
light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP; 7-9+pm is the presentation
followed by questions and discussion.
SAP Labs
North America, Building D, COIL (Co-Innovation Lab). SAP is located at
3410 Hillview Avenue,
Palo Alto, CA 94304[map]. Free and open to the public.
Please spread the word and invite others, but be sure to RSVPhttp://bit.ly/9kPpRt
so we know how many people to expect.
Today someone asked me: "Why are you doing the Future
Salon Activating Conscience in Corporations?" We are always looking for the biggest lever to push the world in a positive direction. If we are able to awake conscience in corporations, that will make an enormous difference.
That Walmart is embracing sustainability is one of the most positive signs for our environment in the last years.
As a little teaser Future Salon speaker John
Montgomery answered the following 3 questions:
1) According to history
corporations where first created by kings. What influence did that have
on the conscience of the corporation?
Corporations
in their current form
are anachronisms from the days of feudal Europe. Corporations
were designed to extend the reach and power of the monarchy without
creating rival centers of political and economic power. The king
bestowed a charter upon the corporation and was its investor,
intelligence and conscience. The corporation (corpus L. body)
was
split asunder from its intelligence and conscience. If the corporation
misbehaved, the king could revoke the charter.
The
collective intelligence and conscience latent in those managing the
corporation
was deactivated. Europe threw out its kings in the age of Enlightenment
but
the basic lobotomized corporate form survives intact with legacy
architecture that lacks formal mechanisms to activate the collective
intelligence and conscience latent within each corporate
collective.
2)
What do you say to skeptics, that claim: When the rubber hits the road
the
profit goal is overwriting conscience goals.
The
early evidence is gathering that conscious businesses are better, more
profitable businesses. See Firms of Endearment, for example.
Being a conscious business is a significant competitive
advantage.
3) You saw a
pattern within the 1000+ startups that you helped. What about
established, long
time corporations, can they be guided towards greater corporate social
responsibility?
Absolutely,
YES,
Look
at Google. Google is flirting with activating its corporate
conscience. Its mantra "Do no evil" is the Hippocratic oath and the
fundamental precept of buddhism. As a double negative, it is a very
weak statement, but it is better than what most companies have. This
ethic is part of what creates the perception that Google is a great
place to
work. It hints at a corporate conscience. People are hungry to work
for businesses that have a conscience. Having a corporate conscience
will
become a very important competitive advantage during this
decade.
Look
at Google's recent action with respect to trying to do the right thing
with
respect to its operations in China. Imagine what Google would be like
if
their mantra were "Do Good".
To call Google a long time corporation is a bit of a stretch. Can't wait to continue the discussion this Thursday. Going to be so interesting.
Future
Salons have the following structure: 6-7pm is networking with
light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP; 7-9+pm is the presentation
followed by questions and discussion.
SAP Labs
North America, Building D, COIL (Co-Innovation Lab). SAP is located at
3410 Hillview Avenue,
Palo Alto, CA 94304[map]. Free and open to the public.
Please spread the word and invite others, but be sure to RSVPhttp://bit.ly/9kPpRt
so we know how many people to expect.
For our next Future Salon: Activating Conscience in Corporations we asked the participants that RSVPed (http://bit.ly/9kPpRt) to answer the following question: What are your top three personal core values?
The current word cloud from the answers looks like this:
It is of course crude, as words were used and not phrases to create it.
John Montgomery will use these answers during the next Future Salon. He will do an interactive
exercise with everyone in the room to quickly demonstrate how easy it is
for a
collective to consciously and expressly articulate and activate its
collective
conscience. I can't wait.
We had many great Future Salons over the years, so I don't post this lightly. You have to come to this one on Thursday 25thof February 6-9pm at SAP Labs in Palo Alto as it will be the most important Future Salon ever.
Lawrence Lessig with Change Congress First! is fighting to get legislation passed for public financing of elections. Check out his latest video.He is also calling for a convention. There is a chance that he will present at a Future Salon in the spring too.
In our February Future Salon we are tackling this problem from a different angle. What if we could activate conscience in corporations, could bake it into their bylaws?
Lawyer John Montgomery has represented over 1000 startups and sees a definite pattern among the successful ones: They activated their conscience. He wants to share that pattern of success. He is writing a book about it and will present it to a larger audience for the first time at this Future Salon.
2. Give a quick history
of the development of the conscience of the corporation and the current stage
of development of the corporate conscience. A lot of this is actually in
the court case, which reflects the overwhelming ambivalence our society has
about corporations and the prevailing mistrust of them due to the steady stream
of unconscionable behavior they manifest.
3. Suggest the opportunity
to take the corporate conscience to its next logical stage of development.
4. Do an interactive
exercise with everyone in the room to quickly demonstrate how easy it is for a
collective to consciously and expressly articulate and activate its collective
conscience.
For point 4 we need you to fill out the RSVP (http://bit.ly/9kPpRt) where we have added one question: What are your top three personal core values?
John Montgomery has practiced corporate law in Silicon Valley since 1984. John's
experience includes extensive corporate counseling to public and
private companies and venture capital firms. He has represented clients
in connection with numerous venture capital financings, initial public
offerings, public and private mergers and acquisitions, going private
transactions and a variety of other general corporate matters. [more]
Future Salons have the following structure: 6-7pm is networking with
light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP; 7-9+pm is the presentation
followed by questions and discussion.
SAP Labs North America, Building D, COIL (Co-Innovation Lab). SAP is located at 3410 Hillview Avenue,
Palo Alto, CA 94304[map]. Free and open to the public. Please spread the word and invite others, but be sure to RSVPhttp://bit.ly/9kPpRt so we know how many people to expect.
Artificial Intuition researcher Monica Anderson
will take a closer look at the scientific process and what the latest
developments are in that field.
Join us for this interesting evening on Thursday 21st of January 2010 6pm at SAP Labs in Palo Alto. Please RSVP. (more info further down)
I caught up with Monica and as a little teaser for our Future Salon asked her 3 questions and here are her answers (more detailed than I thought):
1) Do you have a favorite example where the reductionist method of science doesn't work, or even leads to wrong answers?
My favorite example is understanding language. No system based on grammars or other reductionist methods will consistently perform at human level on any task requiring the decoding of the meaning of human languages since language is holistic and meaning is emergent. Algorithms like those used for web search are currently mostly counting unusual words in documents and in so doing, ignoring common but important words like "not". This leads to false positives for words that have many meanings and many other kinds of search quality problems. A decade from now we will likely view our current web search algorithms as gross reductionist hacks but right now they are the best we can do. Besides web search, machine translation and voice recognition are other examples where the poor performance directly follows from their inability to understand language. Neither really works, after decades of hard work, and they will never reach human level performance as long as we try to do it using Reductionist methods. Google's latest translation systems use non-parametric models and have been outperforming all other algorithms in major competitions.
2) Intuition some may say is something that separates us from the animals. You are working on Artificial Intuition. What is it and when do you know you have succeeded in creation one?
I actually believe the opposite: All animals, including humans, have similar, basic Intuition. We use this intuition every step we take; my theory is that intuition based skills get better with practice. If practice makes perfect, then you are using intuition. We all had to practice to learn to walk.
Better and larger brains evolved over time so the intuitive competence varies from species to species. On top of the more basic skills like navigating the world and moving around in it humans have more advanced Intuition based skills that manifest themselves in several ways: - Humans are more effective learners than other animals. - Humans have much better language skills than other animals - Humans have much better reasoning skills than other animals.
"Humans are better at aping than apes". We can learn complex procedures after seeing them once, which means our mechanisms for gathering experience are more effective. Part of this is that as we mature, we learn better ways to learn. But none of these skills require reasoning; they are the result of more effective versions of Intuition (the algorithm) and more data (experience gathered over a lifetime).
At Syntience we are concentrating on the task of understanding language. Our focus is Artificial Intuition - a machine learning algorithm that attempts to determine, learn, and re-use nested patterns in streams of bytes, such as text. This includes determination of saliency and abstractions, concepts, relations, etc. But before we can get to the higher levels of language understanding we have to get the lower levels right since everything builds on all levels below. 20th century AI never got to the lower parts - the kind of understanding we share with other animals - and therefore had nothing to reason about; they were building castles in the air.
We know we will have succeeded when we can outperform the current Reductionist methods on industry standard reading comprehension tests, such as word segmentation: We remove all the spaces from a paragraph of text that the system has never seen but in a language it supposedly understands. If it can put the spaces back in 100.00% correctly, then we win. If you think this is too easy a task, challenge me at the talk. And if we can get one such test consistently right, then we can likely use the same system on *any* language understanding task.
Incidentally, improved Chinese word segmentation would immediately be a product that would create significant revenue.
3) Tell us about a holistic model at work. What problem got solved that wasn't possible via old school science?
All models are the result of some reduction of the problem. Therefore there are no holistic models; if there were, then they would be "perfect simulations", not models. Also, all Model Free methods are Holistic, and vice versa. So if the question had been "Tell us about a Model Free Method at work. What problem got solved that wasn't possible via old school science?" I could have answered:
Around 1995 a friend turned me on to the Constrained Set Coverage Problem and I wrote a short program in Macintosh Common Lisp that generated, in 20 minutes on a Mac Quadra, the same (and complete) set of answers that had taken 3 days to compute on a Cray. No analytical solutions are possible. The Cray effort used a weak Model Free method (complete enumeration) and I used a more powerful Model Free Method (a Genetic Algorithm). .
The Constrained Set Coverage Problem has been shown to be NP-Hard. So Holistic Methods can sometimes be used even if the problems are NP-Hard. Of course, there is no guarantee of success and no telling how long it takes. I succeeded because of a limited dimensionality of the stated problem. But Model Free Methods will be able to try and sometimes succeed in cases where Reductionist methods would say "it can't be done".
The original problem was discussed in Science News Magazine.
This Future Salon is going to be really interesting.
Future Salons have the following structure: 6-7pm is networking with
light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP; 7-9+pm is the presentation
followed by questions and discussion.
SAP Labs North America, Building D, COIL (Co-Innovation Lab). SAP is located at 3410 Hillview Avenue,
Palo Alto, CA 94304[map]. Free and open to the public. Please spread the word and invite others, but be sure to RSVP http://bit.ly/52OgZu so we know how many people to expect.
We
will do our best to webcast the event again via Ustream.tv on the
Future Salon Channel: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/Future-Salon
Without Foresight Institute Gatherings I wouldn't have met John Smart and there wouldn't be a Future Salon. Therefore it is my great pleasure to promote this year's conference:
Foresight Gathering 2010: The Synergy of Molecular Manufacturing and AGI (Artificial General Intelligence)
Christine Peterson the organizer of the Gathering is Vice President of Foresight Institute, a
nonprofit focusing on advanced technologies especially nanotech and AI.
"I love organizing conferences and this one covers the two most important technology developments for the coming decades."
What are you most excited about the event?
There have been meetings on molecular manufacturing and on artificial
general intelligence, but to our knowledge this is the first one to
zero in on the *interaction* of these, which will be huge.
How does a foresight gathering differ from other conferences?
Foresight events attract some of the most intelligent and interesting
people on the planet, and many of them are working actively to make the
world a better place. Participants often find new collaborators at our
conferences -- and of course new friends.
If only this would be during the week, which would make it easier for me to come. Now with family, it is tough. On the other hand you don't have to take vacation days to join the fun.
We are starting 2010 with a great Future Salon. One of Future Salon's pillars is the scientific method. Artificial Intuition researcher Monica Anderson will take a closer look at the scientific process and what the latest developments are in that field. How solid is this pillar?
Join us for this interesting evening on Thursday 21st of January 2010 6pm at SAP Labs in Palo Alto. Please RSVP. (more info further down)
Abstract: Reductionism - the idea that difficult problems should be attacked
by dividing them into simpler problems - is the most fundamental
principle of the hard sciences. The justification "The Whole equals the
sum of its Parts" has been used for thousands of years. Physics and
related sciences, and the support disciplines of mathematics and
computer science are all permeated by this Reductionist stance, and for
good reason: It has worked really well. We have found compact
explanations for all kinds of phenomena and have solved countless
problems using these strategies.
But these strategies don't always work in Life
Sciences like Biology, Genomics, Psychology, and Ecology. Often "The
Whole is larger than the sum of its Parts" and when taking things
apart, emergent phenomena like life, quality, intelligence, and meaning
simply disappear. All attempts to capture the essence of life using
Reductionist models, equations, and theories of living systems have
failed. The Life Sciences have for decades managed to get by using
other approaches. They use methods that emphasize Whole Systems and
where context is to be exploited rather than discarded as a distracting
nuisance. These methods adopt a more "Holistic" stance.
What has gone largely unnoticed is that many of
these alternative approaches involve using weaker and weaker models,
all the way to what we will call "Model Free Methods" (following Lionel
S. Penrose, 1935). We have gathered a zoo of such methods and
implemented some of them in computers. Amazingly, they allow discovery
of solutions to problems "without understanding the problem" in the
Reductionist sense. The advent of computers able to manipulate Big
Data has made these Holistic Methods possible.
We finish with the claim that Artificial
Intelligence failed in the 20th century because "Intelligence is
Holistic" but AI was then mostly practiced by programmers - a
profession that has, by its nature, always attracted the most
hard-lined Reductionists. In the 21st Century, progress in AI will
require that we convert AI into a Life Science and start using Model
Free Methods the way other Life Sciences do. Researchers at Syntience
Inc. have been pursuing this approach to AI since 2001 using an
Algorithm named Artificial Intuition.
Future Salons have the following structure: 6-7pm is networking with
light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP; 7-9+pm is the presentation
followed by questions and discussion.
SAP Labs North America, Building D, COIL (Co-Innovation Lab). SAP is located at 3410 Hillview Avenue,
Palo Alto, CA 94304[map]. Free and open to the public. Please spread the word and invite others, but be sure to RSVP http://bit.ly/52OgZu so we know how many people to expect.
We
will do our best to webcast the event again via Ustream.tv on the
Future Salon Channel: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/Future-Salon
He is out with a super cool new book Exult trying to answer the question: Is a life fully lived worth an early death? About a hang glider from Berkeley that is experiencing death and near death and everything in between ;-)
Joe used to hang glide, which is one of the reason the book is thick with emotions like the exhilaration of flying and the fear of the crash.
It is a fast paced page turner and keeps you mulling the essential question of how to live your life.
Correction: Next Saturday December 12th you have the chance to hear him read from his book.
In his own words: At the new Books Inc. in Berkeley, I'm going to read two sections
from my new novel, Exult. It's a philosophical action adventure, so
I'll read a harrowing action scene, and the harrowing argument that
results.
I'm also going to talk about the promise and challenges of ebooks and
print-on-demand publishing, and I'm going to break the authors'
silence and address the deep problems with traditional publishing.
Only Books Inc. would allow me-- no, encourage me-- to talk about
this. Gotta tip the hat to Calvin Crosby, store manager.
Saturday, December 12, 7 PM.
1760 Fourth Street
Berkeley, CA
510.525.7777
-- a stone's throw from the site of the former Cody's Books.
I wasn't able to participate, but heard that we really packed the house, actually we had to go to the larger room to accommodate the people. Check out the replay of the session.
Last week was the last Future Salon for this year. Even though I wasn't able to participate, I hear John Smart did a great job hosting and it was a big success.Thank you. It is great to have people like John to carry the torch.
Actually it would be even better, if more people that like what the Future Salon is doing would join. With your extra push, we are convinced, it will be even better next year.
"Yes, but how much effort will it be?" I hear you think ;-) No one has time these days. We want to make it as easy and efficient as possible.
Early December we will have an evening meeting where we talk about the general direction and split up the months between us. Depending on how many people we are, you focus on your theme and month, host that month and that is it.
The overarching theme of the Future Salon is:
Boldly creating a world that works for us all.
Therefore we are not covering the latest gadgets at our salons. We are interested in taking a look at larger trends, limits of our own human capabilities and how to overcome them. What can be done to create a more just society that gives opportunities to everyone involved to grow to their full potential?
If that aligns with your own vision and interests, please fill out the following couple of questions and we will contact you regarding the December meeting.
Of course filling out this form doesn't commit you to anything. We know that even with the best intentions life has the tendency to catch up with and sweep you into a different direction than planned.
Let's end the Future Salon year with a bang: 9 steps to a healthier
happier you presented by Mark Allen 6 times Ironman winner and Brant
Secunda a shaman, healer and ceremonial leader in the Huichol Indian
tradition of Mexico. Tuesday 10th of November 6pm at SAP Labs in Palo
Alto. Please RSVP http://tinyurl.com/ybclfbp.
Fit Soul Fit Body, 9 Keys to a Healthier Happier You
World-renowned shaman Brant Secunda and legendary Ironman
Mark Allen will talk about their bestselling book, Fit Soul Fit Body. They will
speak about how to become truly fit from the inside out and take your life to
the next level. Whether you’re training for an athletic event or just want to improve
the quality of your life and how you feel about yourself, Fit Soul Fit Body - 9
Keys to a Healthier Happier You is about everything that makes you well. [more]
As promised the second part of Professor Merzenich's Future Salon talk. Enjoy.
You may want to jump to minute 44 where he lists 13 elements from as he says 1000s that have an influence on our brain plasticity development in ways that we don't yet comprehend and why he thinks that we are not evolved enough to handle the pace of development that we are jumping in literally head first:
We are driving culture too fast and are too dump to understand the consequences.
Cutting umbilical cord too early: Leads to 2 minutes of no oxygen to the brain, which is a suspect for the rise in autism.
Only very few drugs have been studied regarding their influence on the brain.
Chemical safety regulations: 100s of 1000s of chemicals are created every year and they are only banned if there is a clear demonstration of harm.
Car seats (He put that one up for fun). Is it a good idea to put our little kids into little prisons? Same with making our babies sleep on their back. Consequence is that the baby is slower in regards to crawling. His prediction: We will have a female president in the future and she will be very authoritarian because of the restrictions put on her via our current car seats. The interest of our children to go to the outdoors or to the parks will continue to decline because our children don't see what is happening outside of the car window. We come from growing up in the wilderness and we are now wilderness deprived.
We have paved our ways. We have hard shoes to take away the unevenness. Our brains are amazing at balancing out the differences and it actually burns lots of calories doing it, but we don't want hardship. It is not a surprise that it has been proven, that people living on cobble stone streets are healthier. It is one of the reasons why in old age we are frailer than we should be. We were not designed for paved roads.
Hand held devices.
We systematically make our children being afraid of all adults. What a screwy idea to make every child being afraid of every adult. It's insane.
TV addiction
Taking executive control of our children's lives. [24 hour surveillance.] Shouldn't that be one of your main goals to give our kids the executive control of their lives?
Video games.
Narcissism: One word Twitter. [Comment: That on a day when I twitter more than ever ;-)] Let's all be really self-interested. Let's practice many hours a day on how cool we are.
Pornography and media: Is that really a good idea? Praying to the lowest denominator?
By using GPS your brain shrinks. London taxi drivers are able to pass the license test after 3 years of studying, aka driving around on scooters to memorize streets. One year after introducing GPS the London taxi driver's extended brain shrunk back to the usual size. [Comment: There is always a trade-off. Since we can read, we can't remember as good as we used to. We just didn't know how big the difference is for your brain. Another proof of use it or loose it.]
One of our problems is, that these things are just too complicated to do anything about them.
We have about 1000 things that are really important, most of them we don't even know about. Individually we may know about one of them deeply, may be a handful, but that is it.
We have to figure out how we as a society get true expertise around these problems to resolve them and we have to figure out how by accepting our individual limitations we can accept societal solutions.
We have a long long way to go to do that and we may be incapable to do it, because remember we are inherently selfish, a fundamental problem that we have to deal with.
We are at the beginning of enlightenment or disaster. Somehow we have to bring science and knowledge back into this for a true understanding of what we are.
In a sense the only hope we have really is to identify what we are and accept what we are with our limitations.
It took us a while to post it, as we were hoping to get the slides. People came up to me after the talk and said that it was one of the best Future Salons ever.
It is only part one, as I maxed out the weekly allowence for uploading video. Next week part II.
You may remember Joe Quirk presenting the very funny 
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