Future Salon

Future Salon: 10th Trimtab with Dino Karabeg July 16 @ SAP Palo Alto

In a May 2010 Future Salon, Dino Karabeg, Associate Professor Institute of Informatics University of Oslo, brought us his approach to making global changes (see Future Salon video).  He has returned from Norway for a  brief visit to the Bay Area and we have him for an update with the 10th Trimtab.  Join us July 16 at SAP Labs North America, Building 1: Please follow signs to our room. SAP is located at 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304. Free and open to the public. Please RSVP. 6pm Networking 7pm talk/game. 

Here is Dino's description:

"It is absolutely necessary to find a way to change course," wrote Aurelio Peccei, the first president of The Club of Rome, based on a decade of research and this think tank's view of the global condition in 1980. The Game-Changing Game (a real-life, collaborative game-like strategy), which we will begin playing together at this event, is offered as a prototype solution—a practical way to change course—which is already being implemented in practice.

Two years ago I orchestrated a dialogue at the Future Salon about `trimtabs for systemic change,' where I introduced nine ongoing projects with course-changing potential. I am now coming back with the tenth systemic trimtab; but this final trimtab is generic—The Game-Changing Game is a practical `machinery' for systemic change in any domain, or for systemic innovation, as I prefer to call it.

The Game begins by offering a choice of eight career or life goals. Each choice is followed by a reflection, inviting the player to aim high. A hint is offered why uncommonly high achievements are reachable within The Game. The rest—the substance—of The Game consists of a Vision Quest, where the players find a strategy to be followed along which such high achievements can be reached; and of an Action Quest, where a collection of already active projects, ready to be joined, is discussed and offered.

A salient characteristic of The Game-Changing Game is that information technology is being used in its projects as an enabler. The Game offers a vision of a mature Information Age, where `making the world work for all' is a business niche for information technology; and where a way to get there is offered by creating a synergy between business and humanistic interests.

Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) White Paper

Numenta just posted an Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM)  white paper. HTM is the brain theory of Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee described in their book On Intelligence.

The white paper is like updated Cliff Notes to their book including commonly asked questions. Helps to have presented on conferences like AC2005 where people asks these questions :-)

I think it is a very interesting and quite plausible theory and I can't wait to see it tested. They promise to have a toolset out by the end of 2006. Let's cross our fingers. We'll keep an eye on it.

H2N-Gen Hydrogen Generating Module

Joe Williams Sr. seems to have found the solution for a couple of our problems:

His product, he said, produces a more complete burn, greatly increasing efficiency and reducing fuel consumption by 10 to 40 per cent - and pollutants by up to 100 per cent. ...

The H2N-Gen increases burn efficiency to at least 97 per cent, Williams said. This saves fuel and greatly reduces emissions. ...

"We're marketing a 20-pound unit for $7,500," Williams predicted. "That's the maximum price that it will be. The average truck out there today will get their money back in eight months at the latest. CN (Canadian National) spends $11 billion a year on fuel and we can save them minimum a guarantee of 10 per cent, $1.1 billion a year."

Please hurry up, we all can use less emissions and better efficiency.

World Premiere: Feedster Tagging Prototype released at the Future Salon

Wow the first ever World Premiere at a Future Salon:

Scott Rafer released the Feedster Tagging Prototype. He introduced it as the next stage of tagging.

To find out why tagging is important check the Wikipedia under Folksonomy or read Clay Shirky's Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags

Not everyone is or will ever have or use a del.icio.us account. The new feedster service makes it easy to extend tagging to everyone who visits your site. Scott posted the code I added it to the Future Salon Blog and you can add it to your site too.

Original Sin

Morgan Stanley's Steve Roach paints a not very favorable picture of the Fed's policy in Original Sin:

... never before have I seen a central bank attempt to spin the debate as America’s Federal Reserve has over the past six or seven years ...

Moore's Law 40 already?

Nice little article about Moore's law in the Mercury(free subscription). What I didn't know was that Carver Mead coined the term and that Moore was embarrassed about it:

All of the fuss over Moore's Law comes as a bit of a surprise to Moore himself. He says he was embarrassed when his friend Mead coined the term ``Moore's Law,'' and he couldn't bring himself to utter the phrase for about 20 years.

Followers of the Future Salon and Accelerating Change know that this exponential growth is not only happening since the beginning of the computer industry, but as Ray Kurzweil observes in his The Law of Accelerating Returns since the beginning of time:

Indeed, we find not just simple exponential growth, but "double" exponential growth, meaning that the rate of exponential growth is itself growing exponentially. These observations do not rely merely on an assumption of the continuation of Moore's law (i.e., the exponential shrinking of transistor sizes on an integrated circuit), but is based on a rich model of diverse technological processes. What it clearly shows is that technology, particularly the pace of technological change, advances (at least) exponentially, not linearly, and has been doing so since the advent of technology, indeed since the advent of evolution on Earth.

If that is true, you should get to know more about it and there is a whole conference focusing on this theme again this year: The Accelerating Change 2005. We are happy to announce that Ray Kurzweil will keynote the event.

New Interesting AI Company: Numenta

Numenta a company developing a new type of computer memory system modeled after the human neocortex has just been formed by the team that brought you Handspring and the Treo: Donna Dubinsky and Jeff Hawkins.

The company is based on the insights described in the book On Intelligence that Jeff wrote last year together with New York Times science writer Sandra Blakeslee.

It describes a new theory of what intelligence is, a complementary theory of how the neocortex works, and how we can build intelligent machines.

And now they start to build them. A new approach to AI. Would love to know more about it. Anyone out there that can convince Donna, Jeff and or Sandra to present at a Future Salon? Or even better speak at the Accelerating Change Conference AC2005. After all this year's theme is Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Amplification and it is in their backyard, at Stanford September 16-18.

Chris Scott said after the last Future Salon, your audience asks the best questions. Numenta should get out there too, to get to get some good questions asked and I know especially in AI we would shine.

So please if you know them, tell them about the Future Salon and AC2005 and ask them kindly to be part of the fun.

Out of this world Idea? Now is the time to get funded!

Looks like if VCs don't spend their funds within the next 12-18 months they have to give it back even with their management fees. Robert X. Cringely:

In 1999-2000 -- at the very peak of the dot-com boom -- venture capital firms were not only taking companies public at a furious pace, they were just as furiously raising new venture funds -- funds that will shortly be coming to the end of their lives. Throughout the fixed lifespan of these funds venture capitalists are typically paid 1-2 percent of the total fund per year as a management fee. If a VC raises $100 million for a fund with a six-year life, they'll take $2 million every year as a management fee, whether the money is actually invested or not. Any money that remains uninvested at the end of the fund must be returned to the investors ALONG WITH THE ASSOCIATED MANAGEMENT FEE.

Right now, there is in the U.S. venture capital community about $25 billion that remains uninvested from funds that will end their lifespans in the next 12-18 months. If the VCs return those funds to investors they'll also have to return $3 billion in already-spent management fees. Alternately, they can invest the money -- even if they invest it in bad deals -- and NOT have to cough-up that $3 billion. So the VCs have to find in the next few months places to throw that $25 billion. They waited this long in hopes that the economy would improve and that technical trends would become clear so they could do their typical lemming-like jump off the same investment cliff as all the other VCs. Well, we're at the edge of the cliff, so get ready for the most furious venture investing cycle in history.

If that is the case, Harry Max should polish Public Mind, the concept is great. Let's bond together to get what we want. The Daimler execs may have looked at the Bring the Smart Car to the US request and actually decided to do it.  May be in my dreams :-)

Interactive TV finally at an Amazon near you

The years old marketiers dream of interactive TV, where you can buy anything that is shown in the moving pictures right there is finally coming through at Amazon Television.

Lame-o story packed in a short film with Minnie Driver as the star to give it the air of sophistication. At the end of it you can buy the things you saw right there at Amazon. Great marketing idea, soso execution (BMW Films did a better job, probably better budget too). Still it will be a sure success and make Jeff Bezos more to shoot it into space, for the greater good of all of us I am sure.

Funding for Two Future Salon Presenters

This week Socialtext as well as Technorati got venture funding. Congratulations to Ross and David. Well deserved.

I love that both of them are not making a big fuss about it and focus on building their services and company. They also always have the greater good in their perspectives when making decissions. Very nice.