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.

Bruce Sterling is Brilliant

I am a bit bummed that I saw too late Mark Lennard's post that Bruce is doing a lecture in the Bay Area. (Mark, how was it?) I saw him once at the Long Now when he was talking about Singularity. He was speculating whether instead of at the dawn of something big like Singularity we are experiencing Technobesity a glut of technology that we are less and less capable to absorb.

In the new scientist he just published a short story:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Google
It is written out of the perspective of a teenager in the year 2026. Excellent observations of where a couple of trends probably will lead us:

Global Guerillas strike in London?

Update: Some say it was only a tanker driver that flipped a cut out switch ... (May be the sky is not falling. Sorry.)

One of the sites that I am following, always with a little knot in my stomach is Global Guerrillas by fellow Futurist and friend John Robb. He is a military trained fighter pilot and has lead start-ups to success, which probably is the reason for his contrarian viewpoint.

He has excellent insights and writes sharp analysis about the current terrorist threat and mode of operation. Example: 4GW -- Fourth Generation Warfare; CASCADING SYSTEM FAILURE

When I heard about the London Blast today I immediately thought that this fits into John's systems disruption scenario:

It consists of simple attacks (using ad hoc weapons) on critical nodes of infrastructure -- oil, gas, electricity, water, etc. These attacks, if properly targeted, can cause cascades of failure that sweep entire systems.

Is this the start of such a tactic in Europe? Here John's post from today (attention European notation of date DD/MM/YY or is it military date?):

7/12/05: Zawahiri video posted to the Internet: "I call on the holy warriors to concentrate their campaigns on the stolen oil of the Muslims, most of the revenues of which go to the enemies of Islam. The enemies of Islam are exploiting such vital resources with incomparable greed, and we have to stop that theft with all we can and save this fortune for the nation of Islam."

11/12/05: The Bruncefield Total/Texaco oil depot northwest of London exploded. The explosion was so intense, there is very little likelihood that any cause will be found. 400 tankers offload everyday at the facility which stores 4 million[*] gallons of gasoline, diesel, kerosine, and aviation fuel. As one of the top 5 facilities in the UK, it supplies 5% of the country's energy needs.

Currently the media claims it was an accident, and I so hope that they are right. It looks like some concerted effort is in place to keep the story on low profile. How would you otherwise explain that, although this is the biggest explosion in peacetime Europe, and the fire is still burning, probably with toxic gases all around, the front pages on BBC, CNN, New York Times and the Washington Post barely if at all mention it? I made some screen shots. 

High time to get John Robb over here for a global guerillas Future Salon :-)

[*] The BBC as well as the International Herald Tribune state that there may have been 60 Million Gallons of gasoline involved in the fire.

Above Picture  shot by Gridlock and posted on Flickr with Creative Commons license. There are other beautiful ones, but they marked them all rights reserved, so I don't even link to them :-)

7/12/05: Zawahiri video posted to the Internet: "I call on the holy warriors to concentrate their campaigns on the stolen oil of the Muslims, most of the revenues of which go to the enemies of Islam. The enemies of Islam are exploiting such vital resources with incomparable greed, and we have to stop that theft with all we can and save this fortune for the nation of Islam."

11/12/05: The Bruncefield Total/Texaco oil depot northwest of London exploded. The explosion was so intense, there is very little likelihood that any cause will be found. 400 tankers offload everyday at the facility which stores 4 million[*] gallons of gasoline, diesel, kerosine, and aviation fuel. As one of the top 5 facilities in the UK, it supplies 5% of the country's energy needs.

Currently the media claims it was an accident, and I so hope that they are right. It looks like some concerted effort is in place to keep the story on low profile. How would you otherwise explain that, although this is the biggest explosion in peacetime Europe, and the fire is still burning, probably with toxic gases all around, the front pages on BBC, CNN, New York Times and the Washington Post barely if at all mention it? I made some screen shots. 

High time to get John Robb over here for a global guerillas Future Salon :-)

[*] The BBC as well as the International Herald Tribune state that there may have been 60 Million Gallons of gasoline involved in the fire.

Above Picture  shot by Gridlock and posted on Flickr with Creative Commons license. There are other beautiful ones, but they marked them all rights reserved, so I don't even link to them :-)

Changing Politics is Hard

Micha Sifry was the eCampaign manager for Andrew Rasiej bid to become the number two man in New York politics: Public Advocate. They run an open source political campaign:

We had three over-arching goals for this campaign:
1) that we could push into the public debate some big new ideas about reinventing municipal government, fostering civic engagement, and the value of getting everyone an affordable highspeed Internet connection;
2) that the right way to run for office is to be as open, transparent, people-centered, small-donor-based and network-driven as possible (building on the experiences of various 2004 campaigns); and
3) that reform-minded individuals, groups, writers, editorialists, bloggers, and institutions, along with locally-focused civic activists, would find all of this refreshing and inspiring and they would rally to our banner and help amplify our message.

This is where the potential of new technology lies and where also some of my hopes for positive change are rooted. Unfortunately they didn't manifest this time and Micha Sifry has an excellent post mortem sharing his perspective.

The Next Five U.S. Disasters & The Future of Disaster Relief

We're not sure that anyone used these exact words, but it cannot be denied that in the wake of Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans, the overriding attitude from the scientific community was "We told you so."

Which made us wonder: What other natural disaster do scientists know are coming that we will all pretend we knew were coming, too? If you answered, "Major California earthquake," you're wrong. Even the illiterate know that California will one day be an uninhabited island visible only from the beaches of Utah.

We wanted to dig deeper....[The story gets more serious and outlines possible scenarios for next five U.S. natural disasters.] - "The Next Five Disasters", The Wave Magazine, Oct 5-18, 2005

Before we get to the list of U.S. disasters waiting to happen, I'd like to point you to the Recovery 2.0 Wiki which is meant to prepare in advance for the next disaster in terms of web & internet & tech infrastructure. Instead of scrambling to get fundraising and disaster relief wikis and people finders up after an event, why not plan ahead?

Maybe even ways to disseminate information quickly as a disaster strikes to save lives (personal experience: even five minutes would have saved many thousands of lives this past Dec 26th). Even if that's simply SMS. For instance (yeah, I know this isn't totally feasible in US), "the Shanghai city government issued a text message to mobile telephones late on Sunday" warning residents of the impending deadly typhoon recently. Ideas? Contribute at recovery2.org. Also keep an eye also on Jeff Jarvis' blog for Recovery 2.0 and Technorati tags recovery2.0 and recovery2.

And we're meeting tonight face-to-face in S.F. 6 p.m.

Ok, the list rolls on...

• Area: Pacific Northwest Event: Mount Rainer awakens
• Area: Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas Event: Downtown tornado cluster
• Area: Eastern seaboard  Event: Mega-Landslide/Tsunami [Since this one wasn't so obvious, I've included a snippet:]

Every seismologist and geologist  is familiar with the mega-landslides that have  taken place on the sides of volcanoes over the past 20 million years...

A mega-landslide off the Canary Islands, which [research geophysicist Dr. Stephen N.] Ward calls "one of the steepest places on earth," would result in a wave that is still more than 100 feet tall when it hits the eastern seaboard of the United States.

• Area: Boulder, Colorado Event: Flash Flood
• Area: Entire U.S. Event: Avian Flu Pandemic

(Source: "The Next Five Disasters", The Wave Magazine, Oct 5-18, 2005, not online as yet, but this should be URL next week for Vol 5, Issue 20)

I'm seeing more and more about this flu in the news. There's fear that if the virus mutates then human-to-human transmission could make this flu pandemic worse than the 1918 outbreak of H1N1, which killed 500,000 Americans and 50 million people worldwide.

Check out the October feature story in National Geographic is: The Next Killer Flu.

"The administration has failed to prepare adequately for a flu pandemic," said Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts. "The danger of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was ignored until it was too late. We can't make the same mistake with pandemic flu." - "Bird flu preparation goes global", The New York Times, The Associated Press, Reuters, October 6, 2005

Read more about how we're preparing for the possibility of the bird flu and what scientists are doing with genetic studies including combing for the ancient 1918 virus from autopsy tissue and even flying to Alaska to dig up a mass grave buried in permafrost.

tags recovery2.0 recovery2 natural disaster disaster relief

Great Stem Cell Overview

Wow, that was an excellent presentation by Christoper Scott last night. Stem Cells is a complex issue from so many angels: Biology, politics, science, potential health benefits, moral issues, economics, international competition, ... Chris super cool and with loots of dry humor made the topic very accessible and kept us captivated throughout the presentation.

Things I learned last night in no particular order:

Douple Your Chances to Die: Drive an SUV

It's not that you will get hit by an Earth First activist for driving an SUV (Although it would be good if reason would hit SUV drivers soon :-)

No, 'upgrade' from a Jetta/Golf to a Toyota 4Runner and your chances of dying in an an accident just doubled from 37 per million Jettas to 94 per million 4Runners. Oh, and if you love your child, please get a minivan for a third of the 4Runner fatalities only 31 per million Chrysler Town & Country.

Don't believe me, then read Big and Bad last year's excellent New Yorker Article by Malcolm Gladwell. It's a real eye opener regarding building and buying for perceived safety versus real safety and why we fall for it.

Malcolm just brought out a new book Blink. The power of thinking without thinking. Currently on top of Technorati's book list. Salon has a review. There is also the showdown between him and the Wisdom of Crowds author James Surowiecki in Slate [via Evelyn].

Malcolm is on tour in the Bay Area right now. Check it out. I think I will try the lunch Stanford Bookstore session on Wednesday, which is quite close to SAP. See you there.

What is wrong with TV News?

On my way home today I was listening to NPR's Cleveland City Club Forum with Av Westin presenting: What is Wrong with Television News?

He sees politicization, as some call it foxification, as the worst trend in network news. "The reporter being visibly appalled when hearing an opposing opinion." Av stressed, that his is not talking about the opinion journals like the Bill O'Reilly show, which was the first face that came to my mind when I heard this.

The reason behind it is not a conspiracy, but quite simple the ratings game. If you ask the American populace they are about evenly divided into 40% that call themselves conservative and 40% on the liberal side and 20% that don't want to be put in either of these boxes.

David Brin Vs. Brad Templeton; Broadband Activist Dewayne Hendricks Wires the Developing World, & More in the Newest Tech Tidbits

The Institute for the Study of Accelerating Change puts out a weekly newsletter called Tech Tidbits. You can check out this week's edition here. It includes a description of an upcoming debate between physicist-author David Brin and EFF chairman Brad Templeton at Accelerating Change 2004: Physical Space, Virtual Space, and Interface. The topic of that debate is "The Costs and Benefits of Transparency: How Far, How Fast, How Fair?" and Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director of the Draper Fisher Jurvetson technology venture capital firm, will moderate. This week's edition also spotlights broadband activist (yes indeed) Dewayne Hendricks, President of the Dandin Group, who's working to bring state-of-the-art networks to underdeveloped areas like the Country of Tonga and American Indian reservations. Exciting, hopeful stuff. Dewayne will also be speaking at Accelerating Change.

Sign up to receive Tech Tidbits (weekly) and/or Accelerating Times (ISAC's lengthier, quarterly newsletter)

View this week's Tech Tidbits

View recent archive

ISAC is also looking for story submissions. If you'd like to submit an article or write-up for Tech Tidbits or Accelerating Times please email me at jerrypaffendorf(at)accelerating(dot)org.

The Cryptic Prophecies of Jeff Goldblum Applied to Massively Multiplayer Video Games...In a Good Way, of Course

Massively multiplayer online games (MOGs) come in many shapes and sizes, from EverQuest to City of Heroes to Second Life to The Sims Online. But no matter how self-contained a MOG is designed to be (it's a sliding scale), these virtual worlds consistently end up coloring outside the lines of simple fun and games.

Like Jurassic Park with avatars instead of dinosaurs, players routinely pour over the designers' intended boundaries and take over the park, at least partially (hat tip to Jeff Goldblum). This really miffs some of the hardcore gamers whose immersion is disturbed by glimpses of the workaday world outside, not to mention those gaming companies that want to put a smackdown on secondary markets for virtual goods.

The whole thing is rather complicated, what with its who's who of legal, creative and ethical issues. What does seem clear is that as the degree of freedom and quality of simulation within digital environments rises, the pressures of real life suggest new capabilities in areas ranging from education to business to rapid prototyping to military training to dating.

The Virtual Space theme of this year's Accelerating Change conference explores the future of reality gaming and massively multiplayer environments by bringing together some of the most savvy and visionary thinkers on the topic of digital worlds which embrace the real world. Will Wright, creator of The Sims, and Cory Ondrejka, Second Life developer, will provide keynote presentations that should not be missed--"Games as Prosthetics for the Imagination" (Will), and "Living the Dream: Business, Community and Innovation at the Dawn of Digital Worlds" (Cory).

Following Will's talk there will be a debate entitled "Real Money in Virtual Economies: The Future of User-Created Content" between Jack Emmert (lead designer of City of Heroes) and Steve Salyer (new President of Internet Gaming Entertainment--the world's largest secondary market for virtual goods and currencies), and including Cory Ondrejka.

Similarly focused speakers include Nova Barlow (online community consultant and forecaster), Robert Gehorsam (There and the Earth military simulation), Keith Halper (Kuma Reality Games), Robin Harper (University participation and learning in Second Life--Wired News article), and Clark Aldrich (Simulation and the Future of Learning).

For more conference information and a full list of speakers go to http://www.accelerating.org/ac2004. Early registration ends on September 30th.