Mech Wars - Not where we want to go!

This excellent article by Frank Pasquale, published in The Guardian, highlights the rise of militarized AI and the various scenarios of how it may play out and possibly be "managed." Essential reading for today's rapidly evolving global perspective.

Organic Composite looks promising

Cool! This organic composite described in Phys.org looks promising for providing a light-stimulated electric current producing media 😀

The Raspberry Pi Story

Ever wonder how those little boards got created and who was behind them? Check out this article from TechRepublic.

Spring Boot gets Big Props

Spring Boot, the open source Java application framework, got big props this week with Netflix's announcement that it will migrate its Java production environment from its custom-made application infrastructure to Spring Boot! 😮

Book Review: Ethics and Data Science

Ethics and Data Science by Mike Loukides

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Every data scientist or software engineer working with Big Data should read this book! It's short and to the point, distilling what could be a confusing consideration of ethics into a few simple approaches, which will make a big difference for any applied project. Starting with the obvious, pledges and creeds, it quickly shows why they're inadequate. Then, the authors discuss the checklist approach, which is applied, systematic, and reproducible. The book gives practical examples of ethical challenges, showing how easily unexamined projects with noble intentions can go awry! Just raising awareness is a big take-away from the book - and if teams develop and apply the checklist approach, it's far more likely they'll deliver solutions that actually "Walk the Talk" of consumer privacy and responsible data management.

It's not a Bullet, it's a Black Hole!

$67 Billion end-to-end? That's in the same range as the proposed "Border Wall" 😱 It's estimated that just $8B is required to upgrade our nationwide air traffic control system to better safety standards. Lately, I feel like I'm living in some weird parallel universe! 😨

Top 'bots!

Here's an interesting on-line article in DesignBoom, showcasing some of the top robots of 2017.

New approaches to Unified Network Management

I've noticed a recent trend among wireless equipment companies to provide both cloud-based and premises-based management mechanisms for campus wireless networks. There are advantages and disadvantages to both; cloud offering "easy management from anywhere" and easy scaling and support, on-premises providing direct control to the network should cloud access drop or become otherwise unavailable.

Now, Netgear has taken the bull by the horns and is offering networking management that will use whatever model, or combination of models, the customer prefers. They obviously "get it!" I expect to see more vendors moving in this direction, too.

The evolution of human-machine interaction

Anyone who's used a mouse & keyboard for over a decade knows that this method of human-machine interaction is growing more clunky and burdensome with each passing year. It's only a matter of time before better (or at least complementary) systems emerge, sort of like when drawing tablets, handwriting / speech detection, and optical character recognition systems first appeared on the scene.

So what will the future of human-machine interaction (HMI) look like?

We already have some possible prognostications available. Wearable Tech being one (e.g., Google Glass and Apple Watch), and gesture-based technology being another. And given that the Big G and the Big A are researching, investing in, and developing both, it's not a stretch to conclude that we will see both emerging alongside conventional keyboard & mouse interaction soon.

Other technologies that will likely influence HMI refinement: Natural Language recognition (speech) and immersive Virtual Reality (VR).

Meshed up

Here's an interesting article about the development of low-power wide area networks for monitoring water conservation and facilitating irrigation management. I just hope they don't directly feed it back to the grid controllers, since if someone or something hacks it, it could literally unleash a flood - not to mention wasting valuable water on a grand scale.

2014 Disruptors from CNBC

Some interesting and disruptive companies profiled in this CNBC article.

BioVR

This is amazing!

"The most complex machine ever constructed by humankind"

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is gearing up for a new research phase in the new year. What secrets will be revealed about particle physics and the structure of the universe as we know it? Stay tuned, the next three years are likely to be ground-breaking!

The Memristor - Putting Moore's law back on track

Haven't heard much at large from HP Labs until this, which I heard Meg Whitman reference several times in a recent talk she gave. Likely this puts the AI evolutionary curve back on track, perhaps making the extrapolation discussed in Louis Del Monte's book increasingly plausible :-)

Things to come

The Open Innovation Forum shares some interesting perspectives on how technology is changing the human race and will continue to do so ahead.

Industries experiencing disruptive change

Locating disruptive change is a big deal when investing for growth; it's become a catch-phrase for investors and a holy grail of sorts for the shrewd. From my perspective, I see a number of industries undergoing disruptive change and with the spread of technology, there will be others, too.

Some to watch right now:

• Learning - What it means to get an education, how it happens, availability to learning resources, and cost are all factors ramping up disruptive change in the learning industry. MOOCs (massively open on-line courses) are gaining traction (Coursera, Khan Academy, and Udacity). Helping students connect to colleges, learning resources, experiences, and each other is another area to watch (Chegg, AfterCollege, Zinch, Facebook, etc). Publishers and distribution networks (No Starch Press, Packt Publishers, O'Reilly, Amazon, Apple, etc) are experiencing and injecting change, too.
• Ticketing and Entertainment - the high cost tickets and events is another area ripe for change; new players such as Brown Paper Tickets are taking a fresh approach, which will inject change in this marketplace.
• Nanotechnology and Materials - There are so many emerging possibilities that it's hard to appreciate them all. The implications to the medical field (diagnostics, treatments, prostheses, augmentation) and industrial fields (electronics, batteries, sensors, solenoids, monitoring devices, 3D printing) are staggering, not to mention what will happen as small amounts of intelligence get added, too; enabling devices to report, confer, and decide.
• Food production, distribution, and nutrition - Initiatives to buy and eat locally (farm to fork), to take control of preparation, to use fresh and simple ingredients, etc are all introducing positive changes. New styles of farming (smaller scale, organic, specialized, and strategic) are making a difference, too. Some examples: Farm Fresh to You, Polyface Farms, Full Circle, Jacobs / Del Cabo, local farmer's markets, etc.
• Software Development and Computing - How it happens and the tools to make it efficient, productive, inherently secure, and sustainable continues to evolve. The Agile Manifesto started a revolution that's still in progress, as it requires dedicating significant resources (an organization must maintain a continuous integration / delivery process, implying significant computing and staff resources, although I suspect virtual machines and cloud computing are lowering cost barriers, too). The tooling now available to software developers is amazing (Eclipse and other IDEs, build management, defect tracking and database systems, testing frameworks, native language presentation and translation technologies, and multi-platform support). Where I think growth is needed is seamless support for multiple displays (web, mobile, and tablet) and efficient and affordable team management tools.

TANMS - research with serious potential

Check out this short UCLA Engineering article highlighting research into TANMS technology - pretty amazing stuff!

Amazing stuff: The quantum frontier

Congrats to the team at the CERN LHC on observing a particle consistent with the Higgs Boson postulate. What a breakthrough, once this discovery is validated and proves to be repeatable. Quantum fireworks on July 4th, WOW!

OLEDs - make way for LCDs!

A really interesting article about how Quantum Dot technology stands to revolutionize LCD capabilities, likely at the expense of OLEDs, which as discussed earlier probably won't scale economically anyway. So this is good news!

Fascinating Digital Media Ecoscapes

I recently saw the display advertising map from Luma Partners and was dumbfounded by what I already knew was a complex environment.

Here's a link to the complete set, which is even more mind boggling.

And you thought a display advertising budget was your biggest headache!