Hindsight | Foresight | Insight

Hindsight Links for Mar 4, 6:00 am

// March 4th, 2011 // No Comments » // Digests, Hindsight

• Sleep is More Important than Food, Tony Schwartz @ HBR.org:
  Let’s cut to the chase. Say you decide to go on a fast, and so you effectively starve yourself for…
• The Three Networks You Need, Team @ HBR.org:
  We all know how important networks are in all the different parts of our lives: medical and health, financial and…
• Should You Hire an Overqualified Candidate?, Team @ HBR.org:
  As politicians and economists puzzle over America’s jobless recovery, managers who have started to hire again face another problem: how…
• Draplin Design Company, Adrienne So @ Cool Hunting:
  Portland, OR-based designer Aaron Draplin is the upshot of a stubborn dedication to chasing dreams. A role model for anyone with uncompromising passion who refuses to let social norms interfere with their goals, Draplin started his current career path from very humble beginnings—with a single graphic for the company…
• The Four Personas of the Next-Generation CIO, R “Ray” Wang @ HBR.org:
  Five years ago, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) were on top of the world. These executives played mission-critical roles in driving…

Nuclear Art

// March 2nd, 2011 // No Comments » // Opinion

Every wondered how many nuclear explosions there are have been in human history?  How about in the most relevant half century?  Well, a beginners effort in making this dataset more consumable, was released in 2003 by Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto.  It shows every nuclear explosion between 1945-1998 – apparently.  There is some conjecture that there have actually been quite a few more, involving additional countries as well.  But, lets face it, a few more or less from an approximate total of 2053 nuclear detonations?  My gods people… I had no idea there had been anywhere near that many.  The time-lapse style and map based video is quite long… but it is 10 minutes you’ll be glad you spent getting an appreciation for… well, the disturbing reality of our ‘nuclear’ human natures. Just in case you have forgotten what each of the little blips look like up close, here’s some footage of the first British nuclear test.

Insight Links for Mar 2, 6:00 am

// March 2nd, 2011 // No Comments » // Digests, Insight

• Many Roads to Synchrony: Natural Time Scales and Their Algorithms, Team @ Complexity Digest 2011.04:
  We survey the variety of ways in which one synchronizes to a stochastic process. We define associated length scales, providing characterization theorems and efficient algorithms for their calculation. We demonstrate that many of the length scales ar…
• The Past and Future in the Present, Team @ Complexity Digest 2011.04:
  We show how the shared information between the past and future — the excess entropy — derives from the components of directional information stored in the present — the predictive and retrodictive causal states. A detailed proof allows us to high…
• Event Announcements, Team @ Complexity Digest 2011.04:
  2011 Complexity Conference, Evanston, IL, USA, 2011/03/6-7 Natural Computing Winter School, Hakodate, Japan, 2011/03/15-16 International Workshop: Mining the Digital Traces of Science – Toward interactive visualization of science dynamic…
• Webcast Announcements, Team @ Complexity Digest 2011.04:
  Lakeside Research Days 2010. Smarter Cities NYC. Posted on 2009/10/05 ASSYST Digital Library. Since 09/09 Complex Systems Teleconferences. Since 09/09 Symmetry Festival 2009, Budapest, Hungary, 09/08/1-4….
• Other Announcements, Team @ Complexity Digest 2011.04:
  ASSYSTComplexity One of the main goals of the ASSYST Coordination Action is to promote Complex Systems for Socially Intelligent ICT (COSI-ICT) and, more generally, Complex Systems (CS) Science in Europe and Worldwide. We do this by communicating wi…

Foresight Links for Feb 28, 6:00 am

// February 28th, 2011 // No Comments » // Digests, Foresight

• Michio Kaku on 2013 Solar Maximum: “It Would Paralyze the Planet Earth”, Michael Anissimov @ Accelerating Future:
  Maybe it’s nothing at all! Maybe. Still, I have enough room in my thoughts to consider this, even if the probability is low. I don’t think anyone has the expertise to say for sure one way or the other. A real analysis would involve probability distributions over solar energy flux …
• Cosmic Snow Storm Observed, Janice Karin @ TFOT – The Future Of Things:
  The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s EPOXI mission recently observed a cosmic snow storm originating from the comet Hartley 2. Consisting of both ice particles spewing from the ends of the comet and water vapor escaping from the middle o…
• Future News – February 25, 2011, Rick Schettino @ FutureTimes.net – The Future News Archive:
  3D bio-printers to print skin and body parts (video) Scientists make transgenic fungus to fight malaria Scientists Say Newborn Mice Can Regrow Damaged Hearts Watch the Bipedal Robot Marathon Live Feb 24-27th! (videos) Microsoft Kinect-powered robot to…
• Aging Portfolio.org, Michael Anissimov @ Accelerating Future:
  About: The International Aging Research Portfolio (IARP) is an independent non-profit initiative serving the aging research community, academic, corporate, patient advocacy and charitable funding organizations worldwide. The AgingPortfolio.Org system is a flexible and highly scalable knowledge management system developed to enable funding organizations to collaborate, track, analyze, structure, make …
• Elderly Can See Longer with NeoVista, Ehud Rattner @ TFOT – The Future Of Things:
  NeoVista, based in California, is investigating a new treatment for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a medical condition usually found in older adults that results in a loss of vision. Although there are treatments for this ailment, they are inv…

Hindsight Links for Feb 25, 6:00 am

// February 25th, 2011 // No Comments » // Digests, Hindsight

• True size of Vatican City, Nathan Yau @ FlowingData:

  We saw the true size of Africa, relative to the world’s largest countries, by Kai Krause last year. Taking it in the other direction, xefer shows the true size of Vatican City, world’s smallest state, with an area of approximately 110 acres. That’s just big enough to house a handful …

• An atomic theory of business size, Seth Godin @ Seth’s Blog:
  The magic of the periodic table is that every atom is one thing or another–there isn’t a stable element that’s sort of oxygen and sort of nitrogen. If there were, there would be millions of elements, not a few hundred….
• Wow, Fred Wilson @ A VC:
  I came upstairs to my office at 5:15am this morning with a simple plan. I was going to read through the comments to yesterdays post and select one and write a blog post. 5am to 7am is my writing/thinking time….
• Design Indaba: Pecha Kucha, Karen Day @ Cool Hunting:
  From the seven recent design graduates highlighted for their distinct talents at Cape Town’s Design Indaba conference on creativity, three particularly stand out for their innovative viewpoint and compelling demonstrations. While the others—Camille Blin, Dirk Van Der Kooij, Lindsay Kinkade and Christine Goudie—all presented well-founded concepts in their respective fields,…
• Gibbon Slacklines, Evan Orensten @ Cool Hunting:
  From its origins in the 1970s—when it was used by climbers for practising their moves in parking lots and eventually to bypass terrain that was hard to climb across—Slacklines have more recently also become a great training tool to strengthen your core and improve your balance or just fun…

Insight Links for Feb 23, 6:00 am

// February 23rd, 2011 // No Comments » // Digests, Insight

• Memo to Syria, Ian Ayres @ Freakonomics:
  Readers of this blog may be surprised to learn that in 2005 I coauthored an article with Jonathan Macey which made explicit predictions about the future of democratization in Egypt. In 2005, Jonathan and I wrote: “We also posit that economic reform wil…
• Building a new education system, from the p2p ground up …, Michel Bauwens @ P2P Foundation:
  Another great video from Michael Wesch, how would you build a new education system, from the ground up, knowing what we know today? Michael “is back with a new video called “Rethinking Education,” a montage that pulls together sound bites of thought leaders (Tim O’Reilly, Yochai Benkler, Brewster Kahle, Ray …
• Towards a Distributed Internet, Team @ P2P Foundation:
  Douglas Rushkoff recently announced ContactCon in October, 2011 ( following up on his post http://shareable.net/blog/the-evolution-will-be-socialized ). Now, Venessa Miemis, in collaboration with Paul B. Hartzog, Richard C. Adler, and Sam Rose of the Future Forward Institute http://futureforwardinstitute….
• Middle East Despot Watch, Team @ Freakonomics:
  I’ve been watching developments in the Middle East and Northern Africa closely. It can be hard to keep track of it all. Fortunately, the prediction markets at InTrade provide a useful barometer.
• Are You Smarter Than an Eighth Grader (From 1895)?, Stephen J. Dubner @ Freakonomics:
  The Salina Journal, a daily newspaper in Salina, Kansas, has published a final exam that was given to local eighth-graders in 1895 (via this friendly website). (“It was taken from the original document on file at the Smoky Valley Genealogical Society a…

Foresight Links for Feb 21, 6:00 am

// February 21st, 2011 // No Comments » // Digests, Foresight

• 61 Year Old Gives Birth To Grandchild, Randall Parker @ FuturePundit:
  A Chicago woman took matters into her own hand in order to become a grandmother. Almost 39 weeks ago, Kristine Casey set out on an unusual journey to help her daughter and answer a spiritual calling. Her goal was achieved late Wednesday when she gave b…
• RNA Used to Reprogram Cells, Janice Karin @ TFOT – The Future Of Things:
  Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts developed a new method for reprogramming human skin cells into other cells. Their method delivers the necessary genes using messenger RNA instead of the viruses curren…
• The Next Step in Evolution?, Ehud Rattner @ TFOT – The Future Of Things:
  Scientist from Radboud University, the Netherlands, recently published an article describing a new evolutionary model. While this study relies on Darwin’s familiar writings, this approach differs by suggesting a new hierarchy, allowing scientists to pa…
• Saudi Oil Exports Drop 4.9%, Randall Parker @ FuturePundit:
  Growth in domestic oil consumption in Saudi Arabia is cutting into Saudi oil exports. This trend will continue. Higher prices enable them to export less. Saudi Arabia’s exports fell to 6.05 million barrels a day in December from 6….
• Wolfram on Alpha and Watson, Michael Anissimov @ Accelerating Future:
  Stephen Wolfram has a good blog post up describing how Alpha and Watson work and the difference between them. He also describes how Alpha is ultimately better because it is more open-ended and works based on logic rather than corpus-matching. Honestly I was more impressed by the release of Alpha …