Monthly Archives: May 2017

On Sunday, French voters will choose between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron politicians with radically different visions. Macron is for globalization and European integration. Le Pen is a nationalist, representing the kind of discontent that led to Brexit and the Trump election.

Its a stark choice, but the outcome may actually be less important to the future of Western democracy than, well, the screen youre reading this on.

Thats because the epochal change created by technology is transforming societies more deeply than the political vibrations of 2017. Thats according to David Rothkopf, CEO of Foreign Policy and author of The Great Questions of Tomorrow. He says its easy to miss the bigger picture.

Facebooks goal is five billion members by 2030. That will be the biggest community ever, says Rothkopf. On a level of power, we have to acknowledge that Facebook is going to be significantly more influential in the world, and touch more lives, than all but a couple of nations.

Facebook now has 1.94 billion users, according to an earnings report released this week. The company also said it plans to hire 3,000 new employees to manage and screen all its content. That would bring its global team to 7,500 people. Getting to five billion users depends on people all over the world buying mobile devices.

Mark Zuckerberg may not be in public office, but he wields a lot of social and economic power, Rothkopf says. Not only does Facebook profit from its users, it also has the power to knit them together, and apply algorithms to decide the news they read. Facebook can also share information about them with governments, corporations and other non-state actors. Not to mention, decide what is acceptable speech and advertising.

And how does Facebooks power compare to, say, President Donald Trumps?

I would argue that the reason we have the president we do is that someone, somewhere, wrote an algorithm that said, Stories with the following characteristic will appear at the top of a news feed. Somewhere theres an algorithm writer with a heck of a lot of power who is not accountable to any public institution or been anticipated by any system of law, says Rothkopf.

Much was made of Trumps first 100 days. Its a classic, journalistic yardstick. And theres worthwhile debate about what the first months of the Trump Administration can tell us about the next four to eight years. But what about longer term? Rothkopf sayswe keep looking backwards.

Weve spent the last 20 to 30 years looking backward at the last threats of the 20th century ... instead of a change in the world on an epochal scale, like the fact that in the next 10 years or so every human being on the planet is going to be connected in a manmade system for the first time in history, which means anyone, anywhere can reach out and touch and communicate with anyone anywhere else, anytime. And that does change: Who am I? What is community? What is a government? What is an economy? What is money? What is war? What is peace? It changes the answer to all of those questions.

This story first aired as an interview on PRI's To The Point with Warren Olney.

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Technology is transforming societies more deeply than the political vibrations of 2017 - PRI

Barron's

Facebook, Tesla Realize Technology Can't Solve Everything Barron's Silicon Valley companies tend to solve problems by improving their technology as opposed to hiring people to make hands-on repairs. But in recent days, two high-profile companies have announced major hiring efforts that seem to indicate a shift in that ... and more »

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Facebook, Tesla Realize Technology Can't Solve Everything - Barron's

The fifth annual installment of the Inkjet Summit recently took place in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. I have been lucky enough to attend all five Summits, and once again, it did not disappoint. Each year, approximately 100 printing company owners and senior-level operations and sales executives attend this invitation-only event.

The Inkjet Summit is a one-of-a-kind event designed to educate industry leaders on the future of production inkjet printing technology and software solutions. Knowledge is shared through a combination of general sessions and case studies by both manufacturers and users of inkjet technology. I shared presentations on IWCO Directs new Screen Truepress 520 HD as well as our portfolio of Canon inkjet devices.

The Inkjet Summit is also unique in that it is not sponsored by a single manufacturer, nor is it a user group focused on a single technology. Instead, it provides a vendor-agnostic forum for both new inkjet users and those experienced in inkjet technology to network and share experiences. Another unique feature is one that many attendees jokingly refer to as the speed dating sessions. These sessions provide attendees up to 12 opportunities to have one-on-one, 25-minute interactions with the vendor partners that sponsor the event. This includes equipment manufacturers, software and technology providers, as well as paper manufacturers.

We spent a lot of time focused on new software workflow tools to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the increasingly complex effort to support dynamic content management, which drives one-to-one marketing with a digital press. I had several interesting conversations with a number of technology providers and will provide updates on these opportunities as we complete our due diligence and determine how we can incorporate the latest tools to enhance our service offerings.

The other area of focus this year was paper. There are several exciting advances in inkjet-compatible papers, such as heavier stocks at more market-competitive prices and more options for coated sheets with both matte and gloss finishes. Domtar, Mondi, and Finch all have upped their game in this area. Prices for these stocks continue to improve as demand grows and mills allocate more research and development dollars to this production segment.

Last but not least, all the major equipment manufacturers continue to improve their technologies. The overall print quality, color gamut of the inksets, and general reproduction on the latest generation of digital presses continue to make leaps forward. Of particular note, Screens new SC inkset and Canons ProStream press are taking inkjet print quality to new levels which is one reason IWCO Direct will be moving our Screen press to the new SC inkset this summer. We anticipate an improved color gamut and truer base hues that will drive even more precise color fidelity for our clients.

This past fall, we made a similar ink upgrade on our Canon ColorStreams with Canons new Chromera inkset. Canon also announced their new VarioPrint i200 sheetfed inkjet, which is the little brother of our i300. It provides smaller shops a lower cost entry to the color inkjet sheetfed market, broadening the accessibility of high-quality inkjet production technology.

Once again, the Inkjet Summit exceeded expectations and provided a great venue for learning, sharing, and networking with the top manufacturers of inkjet equipment, software, and paper, as well as networking with other leading service providers.

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Inkjet Summit Provided Opportunities To Share Advances In Technology - Printing Impressions

By Anna Hirtenstein

At a garbage dump about 80 miles west of London, Adrian Griffiths is testing an invention hes confident will save the worlds oceans from choking in plastic waste. And earn him millions.

His machine, about the size of a tennis court, churns all sorts of petroleum-based products -- cling wrap, polyester clothing, carpets, electronics -- back into oil. It takes less than a second and the resulting fuel, called Plaxx, can be used to make plastic again or power ship engines.

"We want to change the history of plastic in the world," said Griffiths, the chief executive officer of Recycling Technologies in Swindon, a town in southwest England where 2.4 tons of plastic waste can get transformed in this way daily as part of a pilot project.

For financial backers including the U.K. government and more than 100 private investors, the technology could mark a breakthrough in how plastic is managed globally. The machine uses a feedstock recycling technique developed at Warwick University to process plastic waste without the need for sorting, a major hurdle that has prevented economically viable recycling on a grand scale.

Griffiths project is unique in that it doesnt target a specific type of plastic, but rather seeks to find a solution for the so-called plastic soup inundating the worlds water bodies. By 2050, plastic will outweigh fish in the oceans, according to a study presented at this years World Economic Forum by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

"It could be a real game changer," said Patricia Vangheluwe, consumer & environmental affairs director at PlasticsEurope, a trade association representing more than 100 polymer producers, including BASF SE and Dow Chemical Co. "This is a great way of getting plastics that you would not be able to recycle with current technology, or do that in an economic way, back into the circular economy."

At the moment, only about 10 percent of plastic gets reprocessed because its cheaper to pump new oil for petrochemical feedstock, especially after crude prices collapsed in recent years. The rest is incinerated, disposed in landfills, or dumped into oceans, releasing toxic chemicals that harm coral reefs and get swallowed by the marine life humans eat.

Many projects fail because they dont offer a big enough margin to make them viable, according to Nick Cliffe, innovation lead in charge of resources efficiency at Innovate U.K., one of two government agencies thats provided 2.6 million pounds ($3.4 million) of grants to Recycling Technologies.

"Recovering raw materials from the waste stream is the future," said Cliffe, whose team also finances projects that recover platinum from old electronics and calcium from eggshells.

A former car assembly-line designer, Griffiths wants to mass produce his machine, called RT7000, and then lease them. It can fit into five shipping containers, a fraction of the size of standard recycling systems. The idea is for it to be transported to the site of the problem, like a beach in a developing country where garbage washes up regularly and local recycling is limited.

Plastic Waste Factoring in a cost of 3 million pounds to install and 500,000 pounds annually to operate, Recycling Technologies expects revenue of 1.7 million pounds per year per machine, thereby recovering its initial investment in 2-1/2 years, he says.

"That was always the objective, to make a machine that could pay for itself, because then people will make the investment decisions and it can scale very quickly," said Griffiths, 48, who aims to have 100 RT7000s up and running by 2025. The county of Perthshire, Scotland will start using one in 2018 to turn 7,000 tons of plastic waste annually into 5,000 tons of Plaxx.

One recent afternoon at the Swindon plant, workers heaped plastic onto a conveyor belt via a tube. The materials move through a series of units that separate out stuff like rocks, dirt and caked-on food. Once thats done, the plastic enters a furnace-like box and is heated at around 500 degrees Celsius (932 degrees Fahrenheit) using hot sand-like particles that melt it into vapor.

The technique is similar to thermal cracking, whereby crude is transformed into gasoline and jet fuel, only a different material is used in heating that Recycling Technologies is in the process of patenting, according to technical director Mike Keast, a former oil refinery designer.

"We have to create new technology so we can both live how we want and not destroy the planet," he said, shouting to be heard over the screech of Coke and Sprite cans being pressed into cubes at an aluminum-can crusher next door.

The vapor is cooled at different temperatures to create one of three materials, each emerging from separate taps at the bottom of the machine. Out of one, a straw-colored light fuel that can be sold to petrochemicals companies. A second pumps out a heavier substance reminiscent of candle wax, similar to whats burned in ship engines. From the third, a thick brown wax that can be used to make shoe polish or cosmetics.

Griffiths says hes in talks with about five petrochemical firms for supply agreements, although he wouldnt give details. German chemical maker BASF, for one, expects feedstock recycling technologies will be "important supplement" to waste-treatment options, according to spokeswoman Christine Haupt.

While he and his staff of 22 are driven by a desire to protect the oceans, they concede that with plastic consumption set to double in the next 20 years, recycling must be profitable to make a difference. Griffiths next goal is to build a manufacturing facility.

"Im not a tree hugger," he said. "I dont think that you can change environmental things without it actually making money."

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Turning plastic to oil, this startup has a game-changer technology - Economic Times

Some companies post dramatic growth and wow investors with the pace of their gains. Yet much of the time, the most solid companies have less exciting but steady and dependable growth. That's been the case lately with Cognizant Technology Solutions (NASDAQ:CTSH), which is at the forefront of the shift toward digital IT services and has fought hard to maintain its competitive position in an increasingly cutthroat industry.

Coming into Friday's first-quarter financial report, Cognizant investors were looking for the company to keep improving its results bit by bit, and the company largely delivered on those expectations. Let's take a closer look at Cognizant and what its latest results say about its future.

Image source: Cognizant.

Cognizant's first-quarter results were consistent with its past performance. Revenue climbed 10.7% to $3.55 billion, which was slightly better than most of those following the stock had expected and was a higher pace from the fourth quarter of 2016. Adjusted net income came in at $669 million, up 5% from a year ago, and that produced adjusted earnings of $0.84 per share. That figure was $0.01 higher than the consensus forecast among investors.

Looking more closely at the report, Cognizant once again saw its best performance from its smallest business divisions. The communications, media, and technology segment enjoyed the fastest growth rate, seeing sales climb by nearly 17% compared to year-ago levels. The products and resources group almost matched that growth rate with 16% gain. Yet combined, the two segments make up just a third of Cognizant's overall revenue.

Growth rates for the rest of Cognizant's businesses were slower, but still strong. Healthcare enjoyed sales gains of nearly 10%, while the largest group, financial services, brought up the rear with a 7% growth rate. Healthcare saw sequential declines compared to the fourth quarter of 2016, but Cognizant's other units managed to keep their upward momentum.

From a geographical standpoint, Brexit once again made the U.K. Cognizant's weakest region, with sales falling 8%. But the rest of Europe made up for the U.K.'s shortfall, salvaging a nearly 7% revenue increase for the region as a whole. North America saw 11% gains in year-over-year revenue, while the rest-of-world region again saw the fastest growth, climbing by more than a quarter.

CEO Francisco D'Souza took the quarterly results as a milestone toward more important long-term goals. "We delivered solid results in the first quarter," D'Souza said, "and continued to build our digital solutions portfolio, expand our skills, and enhance our engagements with clients." The CEO is optimistic about the company's ability to move forward.

In particular, time is increasingly of the essence for the IT services provider to keep up with competitors. In D'Souza's words:

We're making good progress in accelerating Cognizant's shift to digital services and solutions to create value for clients and shareholders, positioning us well to achieve both our revenue and margin targets for this year.

Cognizant's guidance reflected some of that enthusiasm. For the second quarter, revenue should come in between $3.63 billion and $3.68 billion, with adjusted earnings of at least $0.89 per share. Cognizant kept its full-year guidance largely unchanged, with revenue still expected between $14.56 billion and $14.84 billion. The company boosted its adjusted earnings target by $0.01 and now believes it will earn at least $3.64 per share. The IT provider's estimates have generally been solid in the past, and they're consistent with what investors have expected from Cognizant.

Cognizant investors seemed reasonably happy with the report, and the stock climbed a bit more than 1% in pre-market trading following the announcement. Despite the importance of keeping pace in a fast-moving industry, Cognizant's steady growth is reassuring to many tech investors seeking more dependable long-term business models in which to invest.

Dan Caplinger has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Cognizant Technology Solutions. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Cognizant Technology Keeps Pushing Profits Higher - Motley Fool

By Jon Oltsik, Network World | May 5, 2017 12:13 PM PT

Jon Oltsik is a principal analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group ESG and has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and the New York Times.

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A few years ago, next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) came out of nowhere to become a network security staple. These devices combined traditional L3/L4 packet filtering with deep packet inspection, IPS, and other network security services along with knowledge about users and applications. This broad functionality packaging changed the network security paradigmeveryone needed, or at least wanted a NGFW at the perimeter or within the internal network.

Fast forward to 2017, and the bloom is coming off the NGFW rose for several reasons:

Some of the issues and use cases cited here are fairly limited to advanced organizations (which represent somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of the overall enterprise market), so there is still a massive opportunity for NGFW players with mid-market organizations and most enterprises who lack the maturity and experience of more advanced cybersecurity firms. Nevertheless, these trends will persist, squeezing the NGFW market overtime.

Im not suggesting that NGFW vendors such as Check Point, Cisco, Forcepoint, Fortinet or Palo Alto Networks are in any imminent danger. As I mentioned, the market is in an early stage of transition, so bountiful opportunities remain. Over time, however, these organizations must alter their portfolio to offer software- and cloud-based network security alternatives to traditional firewall hardware.

Many are already doing so today. Cisco, Check Point and Fortinet have introduced network security architectures where services can live anywhere on the networksort of a modern-day network operating system (NOS) for network security. And, of course, a network security architecture should plug seamlessly into a security operations and analytics platform architecture (SOAPA).

The services that make up NGFWs are still necessary, and central management and operations is always worthwhile, but the thought of forcing all these things into some perimeter-based god box is looking more and more like a legacy solution. As Bob Dylan might say, "The times, they are a changin."

Jon Oltsik is an ESG senior principal analyst and the founder of the firms cybersecurity service.

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Are next-generation firewalls legacy technology? - Network World

For the first time since the explosion, William Gadsby thought about bending his knee, and it happened.

His keys were banging against his hip so he reached down and dropped them on the floor. But he had lost his knee in 2007 during his second deployment in Iraq, when his leg had to be amputated following an explosion.

He was using a brain computer interface, or BCI, that through circular surface electrodes stuck to his head responded to his reflexive thought to bend his knee and unlocked the simple mechanism on the prosthesis he was wearing.

Its hard to explain how great something is that we all take for granted, he said of his experience. BCI is one of those things that give you a reason to wake up the next day.

Researchers with Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center in Richmond are working with the BCI technology to allow veterans who depend on prostheses to move naturally.

But thats only the beginning, they predict. Eventually, anyone depending on technology to move might be able to control it seamlessly.

Veterans like Luke Sprotte, who has a spinal cord injury, walk because of a system called ReWalk, a robotic exoskeleton, thanks to a VA study. ReWalk provides him a great deal of freedom, but using it isnt always intuitive and takes a lot of practice.

Maybe eventually, Sprotte will be able to use BCI to control the exoskeleton, the researchers hope he could think about walking forward, and the technology would take him there.

The whole trick is to isolate one thought out of thousands and thousands and thousands of thoughts ... and then build a reliable system that can be used every single time, said Dr. Douglas Murphy, a VA physician working on the BCI study.

Building the BCI system was the first phase of the study, and now the second phase involves a 5-year grant of nearly $1 million awarded by the National Science Foundation to make the technology user friendly.

The goal at the end of the five years is to create something that could actually be used by those who need it, from the more than 2 million people in the U.S. who have lost limbs to the 27,000 veterans with spinal cord injuries.

Murphy and a team of researchers and prosthetists including John Fox, chief of McGuires orthotic and prosthetic lab, William Lovegreen with the Department of Veterans Affairs and Dr. Ou Bai with Florida International University are working to make the technology easier to use.

When they sit down and talk , Fox, Murphy and Lovegreen quickly begin referring to the game-changing ways the BCI technology could alter experiences for anyone who has lost a limb or depends on technology to move.

Its going to be phenomenal, Lovegreen said. You can ask any amputee, theyre always conscious of their prosthesis, theyre always conscious of where theyre putting their foot ... People with able bodies, we take that for granted.

The patient wears surface electrodes on his or her head that pick up brain waves, which are then processed by a device about the size of a pager before being transmitted to the prosthesis.

The electrodes sit over the motor cortex and pick up the thoughts that would move an amputated leg, Murphy explained.

The hardware is constantly changing, he added. It started out more cumbersome with the patient wearing a backpack that held the technology to process the brain waves, but has since gotten progressively smaller.

The researchers began their work with a simple prosthesis with a locking knee, but they see the technology becoming increasingly advanced.

Just like every year theres a new smartphone, technology and prosthesis are moving that way, Lovegreen said.

Eventually, Fox said, the electrodes will be down to a pair of glasses they can wear.

After a training accident in January 2009 left him with a spinal cord injury, Sprotte could stand with the help of a few devices, like a standing chair he has in his North Carolina home, but he couldnt walk.

During a recent visit at McGuire, Sprotte was working on mastering the ReWalk system to walk up and down ramps. It wasnt easy because when the system feels the ramp, it senses a barrier and stops and Sprotte must adjust his balance so it starts moving again.

The first time walking, it was pretty unique, kind of like youre floating on something that you cant feel thats carrying you around, Sprotte said. I had to learn to just trust that this was going to do what it was supposed to do.

Allowing veterans like Sprotte to walk carries a host of health benefits, the head of the ReWalk study, Dr. Ashraf Gorgey, said.

It builds up muscles that otherwise arent used, helps improve the digestive system and, Gorgey added, the VA is hoping to show that being able to stand and walk regularly also improves quality of life.

How is a device like this going to make someone be able to be independent in society? said Gorgey, who is also on the BCI grant research team.

It can reflect back on (the patient) in a positive way and helps them gain the benefits by feeling that they are independent: I can do this, Im not any different.

Whether Sprotte will be able to take a device home once he finishes his training is uncertain. Depending on how well he masters the ReWalk, Gorgey said his team may recommend to Sprottes doctor that the VA buy him a device, which costs about $67,000.

That price may go down, though, as more and more companies are making exoskeletons that are getting approved for use by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.

Using technology like an exoskeleton or a prosthetic can be physically and mentally exhausting, requiring people to expend energy in ways theyve never had to before.

Amputees constantly have to be aware of their situations, they have to look and no matter how technologically advanced their prosthesis is they physically have to move that prosthesis, Lovegreen said.

BCI could change that, not just for amputees but for those with spinal cord injuries, too. Rather than having to manipulate his center of gravity so the exoskeleton moves him around, Sprotte could simply use the same thoughts and energy he used before his injury.

Once this is out there, it will be a big save on energy because its just a thought, Fox said.

If some type of BCI technology were readily available, it would impact huge numbers of amputees, both veterans and civilians.

Gadsbys experience with the BCI was natural, he said. Previously, even with the most advanced technology, his prosthetic would react to what he was doing. If he was squatting, it would lock his knee to keep him from falling.

But theres always a slight hesitation to it, he said, because it has to catch up with his real leg. With the BCI it just happened.

Youre not as tired mentally and physically, having to wait for the leg to catch up, Gadsby said. It was natural. I didnt have to master it. It didnt master me.

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New technology allows veterans to control prosthesis with their minds - Richmond.com