November 17, 2007 – 12:06 pm
Like everyone else in (science) journalism, I am a). fascinated; b). perplexed; and/or c). terrified by how the Internet is changing our profession. Recently, though, I’ve come across several items that provide a little reassurance—and a challenge. Robert Niles‘ post in Online Journalism Review, Michael Hirschorn’s article in this December’s issue of The Atlantic Monthly, [...]
November 14, 2007 – 5:42 pm
Interesting post by Peter Fleischer, Google’s Global Privacy Counsel, on the Google Public Policy Blog: “Global privacy standards should focus on preventing harm to consumers.” Fleischer points out that, on the one hand, three-quarters of the countries in the world still don’t have meaningful privacy regimes in place. And on the other, “virtually every organisation [...]
October 19, 2007 – 10:18 am
In response to yesterday’s post on challenging the conventional wisdom about innovation, with particular reference to the third point about the importance of “intangibles,” Phil Auerswald from the George Mason University School of Public Policy sent me the latest issue of the journal Innovations, which he co-edits. The theme of this issue is collaborative innovation [...]
October 18, 2007 – 10:01 am
I was recently chatting about innovation with an editor friend of mine, and she asked me what unexplored questions I thought should be addressed.
Well, I don’t know how “unexplored” they are, but here are the three questions I sent her:
October 5, 2007 – 1:42 pm
I just got my advance copies of the November 2007 Scientific American, which has my article on the new IMOD mobile phone displays by Qualcomm. (”Brilliant Displays,” pg. 94.) The interferometric modulator (IMOD) technology itself is pretty cool; basically, it’s a high-tech, controllable version of the iridescence seen on the wings of certain tropical [...]
October 3, 2007 – 12:02 pm
As I promised last week, I wanted to talk a bit about my chapter in the new book Blindside, edited by Francis Fukuyama. Because the book (like the conference it was based on) focuses on prediction and forecasting, I framed the chapter as a discussion of the near-impossibility of trying to forecast technological outcomes-even in [...]
September 28, 2007 – 5:49 pm
A new book called Blindside will be coming out next week. It’s edited by Francis Fukuyama of “end of history” fame, and is essentially the proceedings of the Blindside conference that was sponsored last year by The American Interest, a quarterly policy journal that Frank co-founded back in 2005. The subtitle of the book (and [...]
September 24, 2007 – 4:37 pm
Dick Van Atta has invited me to give a guest lecture this evening to his graduate seminar on Emerging Technologies and Security at Georgetown University. The presentation, Next Generation Infotech, is basically a meditation on the nature of innovation, using examples from the history and future of computing. Since these are two topics I’ve been [...]
A narrative history of personal computing and the Internet.
The story of the Santa Fe Institute and the emerging science of complex adaptive systems.
My first book—a study of artificial intelligence.
