New Florence. New Renaissance.

An acceleration in biomimicry

Other neuroscientists are studying zebra finches’ songcraft. Some are becoming expert in the electrical conductivity of sheep skulls. Still more are opting for the classics of high school biology: fruit flies, whose neural setup is relatively simple to behold, or worms, who wring considerable juice from their few neurons. Over the past few years, technology companies have been raiding universities to hire away such people. Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter all hired doctoral candidates from one of Mathis’s recent fellowship programs, she says. “The Ph.D. students would have jobs before they got their degrees.”

 

Animals have long played important roles in advancing corporate science, of course, particularly for medical treatments. But the leap required to translate insights from the zebra finch’s sound-processing anatomy into Siri’s voice-recognition software—or mouse gaming into a future when Amazon.com Inc. runs all-android warehouses—is of an entirely different order. With whole new industries at stake, the race to unlock the secrets of the animal mind is getting weird.

BusinessWeek

 

 

 

Reimagining Capitalism

From a must read issue of Forbes.

"And those were just some of the billionaires willing to speak on the record. Virtually everyone I talked to acknowledged the need for change. Some incremental and many systemic; some spoke in whispers, many in full-throated pleas for “reform” or “a reboot.” The rock star Bono had perhaps the most poetic suggestion: a reimagination.

If such a term conjures Steve Jobs or Walt Disney, two of capitalism’s visionary saints, so be it. Entrepreneurial capitalism remains, objectively, the best system ever invented to create and distribute prosperity, and if you look at the billion-plus people in China, India and elsewhere who were lifted from extreme poverty in the past two decades, it remains easy to sing its praises. The dynamism remains true in the U.S., too. Of The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, 67% are self-made and 11% are immigrants. “America works, and it works now better than it ever worked,” Buffett says."

You may enjoy this Bill and Melinda Gates discussion about billionaires and philanthropy

 

 

Forbes

 

 

Dean Kamen, Polymath

Dean Kamen keynoted at PowerPlex last week. I would have been content to just listen to him talk about his serial inventions which have earned him nearly 450 patents - the Segway, insulin pumps, prosthetics and countless other items.

However,  in his talk he spent plenty of time on FIRST and how it has fired up so many of our young about robotics and STEM topics. 

and that is about to get turbocharged with help from Disney 

But to me even more inspiring was how he has helped revive Manchester, NH. That textile town is now a high-tech hub. This Politico article describes Kamen's role in the revival. So many other US towns could benefit from similar rejuvenation.

Just when you thought he could not do any better, he ended his talk with

"Us technologists solve problems...we can always wait for politicians or lawyers...but why wait?"  

Indeed.

The Workday Innovation Summit - raising the bar even after a decade

"Like a marathon tennis match with plenty of volleys and lobs and aces, the back and forth was something to watch." 

I wrote that in August 2010 when Workday hosted its first Technology Summit for analysts. "Rarely though 20 of us are we in a room for a whole day - many of us have competitive business models, others honestly cannot stand each other. So, it is even more unusual we would (mostly) agree about - and even admire what was on display."

A decade later, Workday could easily invite over a hundred analysts interested in its rocket ship progress. It now tops the Fortune Future 50 list. It's cloud handles 12+ billion transactions a month. But it keeps the invitee list small, and instead varies the content to keep up with its growing product mix and market trends. The "faculty to staff" ratio keeps improving.

CEO Anil Bhusri and his team remain remarkably open. One of the slides summarized his changing role (and changing market emphasis on machine learning). He had no reason to say so, but he apologized for not spending enough time with analysts. He has had family issues including the passing of his father so it was especially gracious of him.

Workday's pioneering format has led other vendors to follow suit. They realize user conferences are intended for customers and a separate forum works better for analysts.  Plex combines them with plant tours and customer advisory board meetings. SAP recently used its summit to introduce us to its Qualtrics acquisition.

Of course, some vendors avoid the summit format - too much executive time in front of pesky analysts:)

A setting on the water in Marin County gave this one a unusual advantage over others. A decade later Workday continues to raise the bar.

10 Grand Challenges for Technology

From the MIT Technology Review

None is easy, but all are incredibly important

see if you can guess the challenges before you click through...

 

 

 

7 Engineering Marvels

The This is Engineering campaign, led by the Royal Academy of Engineering, has worked with young engineers to identify seven wonders of the 21st century world that are rarely recognised as feats of engineering. The list includes breakthroughs in fashion, sport, technology, entertainment, film, healthcare and the environment, and highlights the increasingly broad role of engineering in everyday life.

Royal Academy of Engineering

They include Gore-Tex fabric, Hawk-Eye, Dolby Atmos, iPhone, YouTube, 3D printed bone implants and Clean water

Welcome Gen Z to the workforce

While talk over the last decade has largely focused on understanding the work habits and attitudes of Millennials, it’s already time for a new generation to enter the fold.

Generation Z, the group born after the Millennials, is entering their early adult years and starting their young careers. What makes them different, and how will they approach things differently than past generations?

Visual Capitalist

 

 

 

Sci-Tech Oscars

You won't see them on stage tonight - but these geeks were already given their Oscars in a ceremony on February 9 for their work on matters like

• PIX System’s novel security mechanism for distributing media
• MoGraph toolset in Cinema 4D for motion graphics
• Silhouette rotoscope and paint system
• Polarized Spherical Gradient Illumination facial appearance capture
• Medusa Performance Capture System

 

A celebration of event organizers

There's this countdown that naturally takes place in the last seven days. That exists in the world of parties, it exists in the world of curation for museums. Even literally, the orbit of the Cassini probe around Saturn...is six and a half days. The Bible says that the Earth was created in seven days. There's this kind of natural, organizing principle to a week. And so that is, it probably seems kind of obvious because the (Netflix) show's called 7 Days Out, but that is the consistent thing and the similarity across all of these worlds, again, is through time.

Hollywood Reporter

Tech in 2039

PC Magazine

Each of our interviewees has a unique perspective on the most important factors that will influence our tech-driven future, including artificial intelligence, automation, biotechnology, nanotechnology, autonomous vehicles, Internet of Things devices, smart cities, and much more. They also speculate how broader issues such as climate change and online privacy and security will affect us and the technology with which we'll be living. It's our best educated guess at predicting what our world and technology's role in it will look like—whether our lives will be dystopian, utopian, or somewhere in that vast gray area in the middle.