Daily Archives: June 21, 2017

A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry.

One of the core premises of our research is to understand technology from a deeper human level. We too often get caught up in the technology itself, and may lose sight of the basic human needs or desires technology is serving. With all the tech of artificial intelligence, augmented reality and any number of other buzzwords, I sense that the human angle is again being lost while we chase technological advancements for the sake of the technology rather than the sake of the human.

The human angle is being lost while we chase technological advancements for the sake of the technology rather than the sake of the human.

To frame my perspective, I think it is helpful to use the idea of human augmentation as a basis for our understanding of how technology serves humans and will always do so. The core definition of augment is to make something greater by adding to it. Using this framework from a historical perspective, we can observe how nearly every human technological invention was designed to augment a fundamental weakness of human beings.

Tools were invented to augment our hands so we can build faster, bigger, more complex things. Cars were invented to augment the limitations of the distance humans can travel. Planes were invented to augment humans lack of ability to fly. The telephone was invented to augment the limitations of human communications. Nearly every example of technological innovation we can think of had something to do with extending or making greater some aspect of a human limitation or weakness.

This was true of historical innovation, and it will be true of future innovation, as well. Everything we invent in the future will find a home augmenting some shortcoming of our human bodies. Technology, at its best, will extend human capabilities and allow us to do things we could not do before.

While we can analyze many different angles in which technology will augment our human abilities, there is one I think may be one of the more compelling things to augment: Our memory.

My family and I recently took a vacation to Maui. It is always nice to get out of the bubble of Silicon Valley for a more natural atmosphere to observe human behavior and technology. Going to a place where most people are on vacation provides an even deeper atmospheric layer to observe.

One of technologys greatest values to humans is in the assistance of capturing memories.

On vacation, I saw how critical and transformative the smartphone camera has been when it comes to memory augmentation. Ive long thought that one of technologys greatest values to humans is in the assistance of capturing memories. For sure, this is the single driving motivation behind most people purchasing digital cameras and video cameras through the years. With most people in developed markets now owning a memory-capture device, and comparable apps on their smartphones to enhance these memories, observing memory augmentation is now a frequent activity.

It was fascinating to see the lengths people on vacation would go through with their phones, drones (I was surprised how many drones I saw), GoPros, waterproof smartphone cases and more to capture and preserve their memories.

I saw people climbing trees, braving cliffs and hiking extreme conditions with their phones to get a unique selfie. Flying their drone overhead as they jumped off waterfalls. Putting their phones in waterproof cases to get pics of kids snorkeling. And obviously, there were lots of uses for GoPros to capture unique photos and videos of undersea creatures and experiences.

The camera sensor is, and will remain for some time, one of the most important parts of our mobile computing capabilities.

As was often the case, most of the memories captured are designed to share on social media, but the point remains that these pervasive capture devices enable us to create and capture memories we would most likely forget, or have a hard time recalling if left to our memory.

Ive argued before that the camera sensor is, and will remain for some time, one of the most important parts of our mobile computing capabilities. The desire to preserve, or capture a unique memory will remain a deeply emotional and powerful motivator for humans.

Allowing technology to take this idea a step further, we have things like Apple Photos and Google Photos, which look over our memories and make short videos to not just augment but to automate our memory creation process. As machine learning gets even better, these technologies will make creating memories from moments even easier.

As technology continues to augment more and more of our human capabilities, my hope is that the technological tool or process involved will fade so deeply into the background that it nearly disappears. This way we can get the most out of our time whether at work, school, play or vacation, and spend less time fidgeting with technology. Ultimately we will be able to do more with technology, but also spend less time with the technology itself, and more time doing the things we love.

Ben Bajarin is a principal analyst at Creative Strategies Inc., an industry analysis, market intelligence and research firm located in Silicon Valley. His primary focus is consumer technology and market trend research. He is a husband, father, gadget enthusiast, trend spotter, early adopter and hobby farmer. Reach him @BenBajarin.

Go here to see the original:

Technology is created for the purpose of augmenting the fundamental weaknesses of human beings - Recode

CEDAR RAPIDS Whether by coincidence or coordination, Gov. Kim Reynolds agenda for a meeting Wednesday with President Donald Trump in Cedar Rapids is on the same wavelength as the presidents Technology Week focus.

The president will visit Kirkwood Community College to see examples of technology that frankly, may not be at the top of your mind when you think about technology advancements in the United States, said Ray Starling, a special assistant to the president for agriculture, agricultural trade and food assistance as part of the White House Economic Council.

After the Kirkwood visit, Trump will have a campaign-style rally at 7 p.m. at the U.S. Cellular Center, 370 1st Ave. NE. in downtown Cedar Rapids.

Trump is visiting the college, in part, because it is home to one of the first programs in the country to focus on agricultural geospatial technology and precision farming, Starling said in amedia briefing. The program has been honored by the National Science Foundation.

Among the demonstrations Trump will see is technology that guides farm implements and allows farmers to collect data about pesticide and fertilizer needs, soil moisture and yields, Starling said. That takes on added importance this year because net farm income is expected to decline for a fourth year in a row, falling to half of what it was four years ago, Starling said.

Much of precision agriculture technology and other technology used on the farm and in rural American is dependent upon access to the web, he said. The president recognizes that the penetration of the availability of the web has obviously lagged in rural areas.

Connectivity is one of the priorities Reynolds will be lobbying the president on at Kirkwood.

We want Iowans to be able live anywhere in the state of Iowa no matter the size of the community or where it is located to have high-speed internet and connectivity where they can take an idea, create a business, grow it into a successful company and market their products to the world, Reynolds said at a news conference. Its really important that we continue to provide that level of high-speed internet to every single corner of the state.

At Kirkwood, Trump and Reynolds will be joined by Sonny Perdue and Wilbur Ross, secretaries of the Agriculture and Commerce departments, respectively, and Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey.

It also will serve as a send-off for former Gov. Terry Branstad, who will leave Friday for China where he will serve as ambassador.

Reynolds also plans to lobby for White House approval of Iowas stopgap health insurance proposal to provide a coverage option for 72,000 Iowans on individual plans.

The plan, put forth last week by Iowa Insurance Commissioner Doug Ommen, asks the federal government to approve a measure he hoped would both keep a statewide health insurer in the state and also lure others to the states marketplace. The measure contingent on approval by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would provide consumers with age- and income-based tax credits as well as use a reinsurance mechanism for costly medical claims.

In response to the Trump visit, a protest is planned from 5-7:30 p.m. outside the Cellular Center. And at 2:30 p.m., Linn County Democrats will be hosting a community conversation in Room A, Beems Auditorium, the Cedar Rapids Public Library, 450 5th Ave. SE. The event is open to the public.

The rest is here:

Trump visit targets technology, politics - Quad City Times

This gives us a pretty good picture of who is moving across the border, said Frank Longoria, a Customs officer who is assistant director of field operations for border security. Ninety-nine percent of people who cross are doing so for good reason, but trying to catch that 1 percent that is doing something illegal is challenging.

In a small building not far from the entry and exit lanes, a Customs officer, Eugene Jimenez, looked at an X-ray scanning system, which allows him to see anomalies in the frame of a vehicle. He said he was looking for spaces where there should be solid material, or obvious signs of tampering in the gas tanks, batteries or other areas.

A few days before, after a currency detection dog reacted to a white 2008 Volkswagen Passat traveling into Mexico, Mr. Jimenez noticed a space in the bumper when the car was pulled aside for a scan, he said.

Go here to read the rest:

On the Mexican Border, a Case for Technology Over Concrete - New York Times

Red blood cells.

Rubius Therapeutics Inc. of Cambridge is set to announce Wednesday that it has raised $120 million one of the largest biotech financing rounds this year to develop a novel drug-making technology.

The funding, led by life sciences venture capital firm Flagship Pioneering in Cambridge, will let Rubius step up work on its drug discovery technique, which genetically engineers red blood cells so they can produce drugs for a range of diseases. The company had been operating in what is known as stealth mode, with plans under wraps.

Advertisement

Rubius has already made and tested about 200 red cells, each producing different proteins, and plans to use them as catalysts for medicines to fight cancers, enzyme deficiencies, autoimmune and infectious diseases, and rare blood disorders such as hemophilia.

Were developing a new class of medicines that no one else is working on, Rubius president Torben Straight Nissen, a biopharma industry veteran, said. The ultimate goal is to bring as many red cell therapies to patients as possible.

Get Talking Points in your inbox:

An afternoon recap of the days most important business news, delivered weekdays.

Rubius, which raised an initial $25 million in early 2015, started in Flagship VentureLabs, a Kendall Square incubator that has spawned dozens of companies. It now employs about 40 cell therapy scientists and researchers in larger space at 325 Vassar St., near Memorial Drive, and could grow to nearly 100 employees in the coming year, Nissen said.

Nissen said the company could be moving to even bigger quarters as it advances its experimental therapies into clinical trials. Were looking to expand our footprint over the next six to 12 months, and were looking to stay in Cambridge or Boston, he said.

The companys scientific approach is part of a broader Flagship strategy to focus not on individual drug candidates but on platform technologies capable of generating many medicines, said Flagship chief executive Noubar Afeyan, Rubius cofounder.

Advertisement

Were looking for first-of-its-kind platforms, Afeyan said. The risk of doing anything new in our business is so high that theres more reward if youre developing new approaches that can create multiple drugs. Once you can show that one or two [drug candidates] can become drugs, then 10 or 20 of them can.

After the Rubius scientists genetically engineer the red cells, they can be grown in bioreactors, the stainless steel tanks used to produce biotech drugs. We are basically using a manufacturing process where the actual art of making the protein is done by the cells, Afeyan said.

The companys financing round includes co-investors, including large publicly traded institutional firms that werent identified by Flagship.

Here is the original post:

Biotech startup Rubius raises $120m to develop red blood cell technology - The Boston Globe

New adopters of cloud computing services marvel about the cost efficiency theyre seeing compared to their traditional infrastructure, but Microsoft Azure chief Scott Guthrie thinks a new wave of super-efficient cloud products is going to make those gains seem quaint.

Guthrie kicked off the Cloud Tech Summit earlier this month, and touched on the advent of containers and serverless technologies during a wide-ranging discussion. Microsoft and other cloud vendors have been particularly bullish on serverless technologies during 2017 as a path toward an even-more efficient cloud computing environment where you only pay for what you use.

I certainly think the model of a very consumption driven pricing is the direction that everything is going. This has taken consumption to the next logical extreme, where there is no overhead, Guthrie said.

Serverless is yet another slightly misleading term for an enterprise computing tactic. Believe it or not, applications built with serverless technologies still use servers.

But the practice of breaking down applications into lots of small functions means that users dont have to maintain excess capacity in case of spikes in demand, and that has made a lot of companies experiment with these technologies this year. Functions can be written to respond with computing resources automatically when demand grows unexpectedly, and then scale down gracefully as demand ebbs.

And although cloud tends to be cheaper than traditional on-premises hardware, containers and serverless technologies can save users even more money, Guthrie said. And when customers realize how much they can save by writing their apps with serverless technologies, they tend to ramp up quickly, which is great for Microsoft and other cloud providers.

One Azure customer using serverless technologies as part of their Internet of Things manufacturing infrastructure was able to run 1.8 billion serverless invocations a day for something like four dollars, Guthrie said. They came to us and they were like, somethings wrong with your billing, because this cant be right.

And once they realized the bill was correct, they immediately started planning their next move into serverless tech, which will eventually generate real money for Microsoft.

Watch the full video of Scotts interview with GeekWires Todd Bishop above, and stay tuned for more highlights from the event in the days ahead.

Read the original:

Microsoft Azure's Scott Guthrie: Serverless technology will drive further cost reductions in the cloud - GeekWire

James Hercher contributed to this article.

Comcast Advanced Advertising Group said Tuesday in Cannes that it will formally launch a blockchain-powered tool in 2018 to help companies share their data with each other.

The Blockchain Insights Platform is meant to ease the often clunky and nerve-wracking process of data sharing. Because of these challenges, companies that would benefit from sharing their data with each other often dont.

Today, when you try to create an addressable campaign, the only way to do it is to tap into different data pools, said Marcien Jenckes, advertising president at Comcast Cable.

There are two ways to do this: either handing data to Experian, Acxiom or another trusted third party to do a sometimes-slow blind match. The second process involves doing whatJenckes calls a data-for-insights trade with another company.

Why you would put the most valuable thing in someone elses hands is a hard argument to understand, he said.

The Blockchain Insights Program is meant to let data owners share their assets without ever handing them over to a third party.

Imagine segmenting the data youre willing to sell and locking each segment into different vaults. You decide which advertisers can access specific vaults, and you give them the keys to do so.

If a partner wants to act against your auto-intenders and has your permission, it can use its key to find that specific data segment and send its marketing or ad tech stack into the vault to execute the campaign. No data ever leaves, and the blockchain technology, acting as a ledger, records the transaction.

Its a data-sharing process thats meant to be faster and more secure.

You never make anything available that you cant, or that you dont want to, Jenckes said. Its always in your control, and thats the most important thing.

Jenckes also argues that Comcasts blockchain-based solution is even more secure than a blind match.

Someone could reverse-engineer your data if you do a blind match, he said.

If IP addresses accidentally slip through, then the data buyer can potentially associate them with other characteristics, thereby stealing the audience.

Another common solution for pooling data matching off a shared, unique identifier also has issues. For instance, if the data owner rotates its identifiers every three weeks and the advertiser has a six-week campaign, the match must be redone mid-campaign.

But despite the promise of Comcasts Blockchain Insights Platform, theres still more work to do before it reaches its projected 2018 release date.

The data owners assets must be queryable through blockchain technology, Jenckes said. Comcast is working with its initial participants NBCUniversal, Disney, Altice USA, Cox Communications, TF1 Group in France, Channel 4 in the UK and Mediaset Italia to figure out different use cases for their data and ways to apply those use cases. That process will likely take the next six months.

Although Comcast is initially working with its own network (NBCUniversal) and with those that it has an arms-length relationship, which is everyone else on the list, it hopes to eventually open the Blockchain Insights Platform to everyone.

The tool to make data available to blockchain technology will be open-sourced, Jenckes said, though Comcast will have professional services available for participants who need additional help.

Merely educating partners and industry stakeholders presents a high hurdle.

By and large, the awareness of blockchain is nonexistent, so its not surprising that this might seem out of left field, said Ken Brook, co-founder and CEO of blockchain ad tech startup metaXchain. However, this technology is a matter of when, not if.

That being said, its important to keep expectations measured. The Blockchain Insights Platform, after all, isnt generally available.

This is coming in 2018, and the things that are exciting about it are the names of the companies involved, said Will Luttrell, co-founder and former CTO of Integral Ad Science, whose latest startup Curren-C uses blockchain tech. Its difficult sometimes to get past the slogans and lingoism in these releases to figure out whats going on. And blockchain is a particularly complex technology, so its doubly an issue here.

Perhaps because of that complexity as well as its promise blockchain is an intriguing technology for the advertising community, with large enterpriseslike NASDAQ and IBM working to put their own spin on it.

Read the original:

Coming In 2018: Comcast Hopes To Spur Data Sharing With Blockchain Technology - AdExchanger