Monthly Archives: January 2020

I rarely use the words transformative or breakthrough for neuroscience findings. The brain is complex, noisy, chaotic, and often unpredictable. One intriguing result under one condition may soon fail for a majority of others. Whats more, paradigm-shifting research trends often require revolutionary tools. When were lucky, those come once a decade.

But I can unabashedly say that the 2010s saw a boom in neuroscience breakthroughs that transformed the field and will resonate long into the upcoming decade.

In 2010, the idea that wed be able to read minds, help paralyzed people walk again, incept memories, or have multi-layered brain atlases was near incomprehensible. Few predicted that deep learning, an AI model loosely inspired by neural processing in the brain, would gain prominence and feed back into decoding the brain. Around 2011, I asked a now-prominent AI researcher if we could automatically detect dying neurons in a microscope image using deep neural nets; we couldnt get it to work. Today, AI is readily helping read, write, and map the brain.

As we cross into the next decade, it pays to reflect on the paradigm shifts that made the 2010s the decade of the brain. Even as a boo humbug skeptic Im optimistic about the next decade for solving the brains mysteries: from genetics and epigenetics to chemical and electrical communications, networks, and cognition, well only get better at understanding and tactfully controlling the supercomputer inside our heads.

Weve covered brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) so many times even my eyes start glazing over. Yet I still remember my jaw dropping as I watched a paralyzed man kick off the 2014 World Cup in a bulky mind-controlled exosuit straight out of Edge of Tomorrow.

Flash forward a few years, and scientists have already ditched the exosuit for an implanted neural prosthesis that replaces severed nerves to re-establish communication between the brains motor centers and lower limbs.

The rise in BCIs owes much to the BrainGate project, which worked tirelessly to decode movement from electrical signals in the motor cortex, allowing paralyzed patients to use a tablet with their minds or operate robotic limbs. Today, prosthetic limbs coated with sensors can feed back into the brain, giving patients mind-controlled movement, sense of touch, and an awareness of where the limb is in space. Similarly, by decoding electrical signals in the auditory or visual cortex, neural implants can synthesize a persons speech by reconstructing what theyre hearing or re-create images of what theyre seeingor even of what theyre dreaming.

For now, most BCIsespecially those that require surgical implantsare mainly used to give speech or movement back to those with disabilities or decode visual signals. The brain regions that support all these functions are on the surface, making them relatively more accessible and easier to decode.

But theres plenty of interest in using the same technology to target less tangible brain issues, such as depression, OCD, addiction, and other psychiatric disorders that stem from circuits deep within the brain. Several trials using implanted electrodes, for example, have shown dramatic improvement in people suffering from depression that dont respond to pharmaceutical drugs, but the results vary significantly between individuals.

The next decade may see non-invasive ways to manipulate brain activity, such as focused ultrasound, transcranial magnetic or direct current stimulation (TMS/tDCS), and variants of optogenetics. Along with increased understanding of brain networks and dynamics, we may be able to play select neural networks like a piano and realize the dream of treating psychiatric disorders at their root.

Rarely does one biological research field get such tremendous support from multiple governments. Yet the 2010s saw an explosion in government-backed neuroscience initiatives from the US, EU, and Japan, with China, South Korea, Canada, and Australia in the process of finalizing their plans. These multi-year, multi-million-dollar projects focus on developing new tools to suss out the brains inner workings, such as how it learns, how it controls behavior, and how it goes wrong. For some, the final goal is to simulate a working human brain inside a supercomputer, forming an invaluable model for researchers to test out their hypothesesand maybe act as a blueprint for one day reconstructing all of a persons neural connections, called the connectome.

Even as initial announcements were met with skepticismwhat exactly is the project trying to achieve?the projects allowed something previously unthinkable. The infusion of funding provided a safety blanket to develop new microscopy tools to ever-more-rapidly map the brain, resulting in a toolkit of new fluorescent indicators that track neural activation and map neural circuits. Even rudimentary simulations have generated virtual epilepsy patients to help more precisely pinpoint sources of seizures. A visual prosthesis to restore sight, a memory prosthesis to help those with faltering recall, and a push for non-invasive ways to manipulate human brains all stemmed from these megaprojects.

Non-profit institutions such as the Allen Institute for Brain Science have also joined the effort, producing map after map at different resolutions of various animal brains. The upcoming years will see individual brain maps pieced together into comprehensive atlases that cover everything from genetics to cognition, transforming our understanding of brain function from paper-based 2D maps into multi-layered Google Maps.

In a way, these national programs ushered in the golden age of brain science, bringing talent from other disciplinesengineers, statisticians, physicists, computer scientistsinto neuroscience. Early successes will likely drive even more investment in the next decade, especially as findings begin translating into actual therapies for people who dont respond to traditional mind-targeting drugs. The next decade will likely see innovative new tools that manipulate neural activity more precisely and less-invasively than optogenetics. The rapid rise in the amount of data will also mean that neuroscientists will quickly embrace cloud-storage options for collaborative research and GPUs and more powerful computing cores to process the data.

First, brain to AI. The physical structure and information flow in the cortex inspired deep learning, the most prominent AI model today. Ideas such as hippocampal replaythe brains memory center replays critical events in fast forward during sleep to help consolidate memoryalso benefit AI models.

In addition, the activation patterns of individual neurons merged with materials science to build neuromorphic chips, or processors that function more like the brain, rather than todays silicon-based chips. Although neuromorphic chips remain mainly an academic curiosity, they have the potential to perform complicated, parallel computations at a fraction of the energy used by processors today. As deep neural nets get ever-more power hungry, neuromorphic chips may present a welcome alternative.

In return, AI algorithms that closely model the brain are helping solve long-time mysteries of the brain, such as how the visual cortex processes input. In a way, the complexity and unpredictability of neurobiology is shriveling thanks to these computational advancements.

Although crossovers between biomedical research and digital software have long existedthink programs that help with drug designthe match between neuroscience and AI is far stronger and more intimate. As AI becomes more powerful and neuroscientists collaborate outside their field, computational tools will only unveil more intricacies of neural processing, including more intangible aspects such as memory, decision-making, or emotions.

I talk a bunch about the brains electrical activity, but supporting that activity are genes and proteins. Neurons also arent a uniform bunch; multiple research groups are piecing together a whos who of the brains neural parts and their individual characteristics.

Although invented in the late 2000s, technologies such as optogenetics and single-cell RNA sequencing were widely adopted by the neuroscience community in the 2010s. Optogenetics allows researchers to control neurons with light, even in freely moving animals going about their lives. Add to that a whole list of rainbow-colored proteins to tag active cells, and its possible to implant memories. Single-cell RNA sequencing is the queen bee of deciphering a cells identity, allowing scientists to understand the genetic expression profile of any given neuron. This tech is instrumental in figuring out the neuron populations that make up a brain at any point in timeinfancy, youth, aging.

But perhaps the crown in new tools goes to brain organoids, or mini-brains, that remarkably resemble those of preterm babies, making them excellent models of the developing brain. Organoids may be our best chance of figuring out the neurobiology of autism, schizophrenia, and other developmental brain issues that are difficult to model with mice. This decade is when scientists established a cookbook for organoids of different types; the next will see far more studies that tap into their potential for modeling a growing brain. With hard work and luck, we may finally be able to tease out the root causes of these developmental issues.

Image Credit: NIH

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These Breakthroughs Made the 2010s the Decade of the Brain - Singularity Hub

Last Saturday we took a look at some of the most-read Singularity Hub articles from 2019. This week, were featuring some of our favorite articles from the last year. As opposed to short pieces about whats happening, these are long reads about why it matters and whats coming next. Some of them make the news while others frame the news, go deep on big ideas, go behind the scenes, or explore the human side of technological progress.

We hope you find them as fascinating, inspiring, and illuminating as we did.

DeepMind and Google: The Battle to Control Artificial IntelligenceHal Hodson | 1843[DeepMind cofounder and CEO Demis] Hassabis thought DeepMind would be a hybrid: it would have the drive of a startup, the brains of the greatest universities, and the deep pockets of one of the worlds most valuable companies. Every element was in place to hasten the arrival of [artificial general intelligence]and solve the causes of human misery.

The Most Powerful Person in Silicon ValleyKatrina Brooker | Fast CompanyBillionaire Masayoshi Sonnot Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Mark Zuckerberghas the most audacious vision for an AI-powered utopia where machines control how we live. And hes spending hundreds of billions of dollars to realize it. Are you ready to live in Masa World?

AR Will Spark the Next Big Tech PlatformCall It MirrorworldKevin Kelly | WiredEventually this melded world will be the size of our planet. It will be humanitys greatest achievement, creating new levels of wealth, new social problems, and uncountable opportunities for billions of people. There are no experts yet to make this world; you are not late.

Behind the Scenes of a Radical New Cancer CureIlana Yurkiewicz | UndarkI rememberthe first time I watched a patient get his Day 0 infusion. It felt anti-climactic. The entire process took about 15 minutes. The CAR-T cells are invisible to the naked eye, housed in a small plastic bag containing clear liquid. Thats it? my patient asked when the nurse said it was over. The infusion part is easy. The hard part is everything that comes next.

The Promise and Price of Cellular TherapiesSiddhartha Mukherjee | The New YorkerWe like to imagine medical revolutions as, well, revolutionarypropelled forward through leaps of genius and technological innovation. But they are also evolutionary, nudged forward through the optimization of design and manufacture.

Impossible Foods Rising Empire of Almost MeatChris Ip | EngadgetImpossible says it wants to ultimately create a parallel universe of ersatz animal products from steak to eggs. Yet as Impossible ventures deeper into the culinary uncanny valley, it also needs society to discard a fundamental cultural idea that dates back millennia and accept a new truth: Meat doesnt have to come from animals.

Inside the Amazon Warehouse Where Humans and Machines Become OneMatt Simon | WiredSeen from above, the scale of the system is dizzying. My robot, a little orange slab known as a drive (or more formally and mythically, Pegasus), is just one of hundreds of its kind swarming a 125,000-square-foot field pockmarked with chutes. Its a symphony of electric whirring, with robots pausing for one another at intersections and delivering their packages to the slides.

Boston Dynamics Robots Are Preparing to Leave the LabIs the World Ready?James Vincent | The VergeAfter decades of kicking machines in parking lots, the company is set to launch its first ever commercial bot later this year: the quadrupedal Spot. Its a crucial test for a company thats spent decades pursuing long-sighted R&D. And more importantly, the successor failureof Spot will tell us a lot about our own robot future. Are we ready for machines to walk among us?

I Cut the Big Five Tech Giants From My Life. It Was HellKashmir Hill | GizmodoCritics of the big tech companies are often told, If you dont like the company, dont use its products. I did this experiment to find out if that is possible, and I found out that its notwith the exception of Apple. These companies are unavoidable because they control internet infrastructure, online commerce, and information flows.

Why I (Still) Love Tech: In Defense of a Difficult IndustryPaul Ford | WiredThe mysteries of software caught my eye when I was a boy, and I still see it with the same wonder, even though Im now an adult. Proudshamed, yes, but I still love it, the mess of it, the code and toolkits, down to the pixels and the processors, and up to the buses and bridges. I love the whole made world. But I cant deny that the miracle is over, and that there is an unbelievable amount of work left for us to do.

The Peculiar Blindness of ExpertsDavid Epstein | The AtlanticIn business, esteemed (and lavishly compensated) forecasters routinely are wildly wrong in their predictions of everything from the next stock-market correction to the next housing boom. Reliable insight into the future is possible, however. It just requires a style of thinking thats uncommon among experts who are certain that their deep knowledge has granted them a special grasp of what is to come.

The Most Controversial Tree in the WorldRowan Jacobson | Pacific Standardwe are all GMOs, the beneficiaries of freakishly unlikely genetic mash-ups, and the realIsland of Dr. Moreauis that blue-green botanical garden positioned third from the sun. Rather than changing the nature of nature, as I once thought, this might just be the very nature of nature.

How an Augmented Reality Game Escalated Into Real-World Spy WarfareElizabeth Ballou | ViceIn Ingress, players accept that every park and train station could be the site of an epic showdown, but thats only the first step. The magic happens when other people accept that, too. When players feel like that magic is real, there are few limits to what theyll do or where theyll go for the sake of the game.

The Shady Cryptocurrency Boom on the Post-Soviet FrontierHannah Lucinda Smith | Wiredalthough the tourists wont guess it as they stand at Kuchurgans gates, admiring how the evening light reflects off the silver plaque of Lenin, this plant is pumping out juice to a modern-day gold rush: acryptocurrency boom that is underway all across the former Soviet Union, from the battlefields of eastern Ukraine to time-warp enclaves like Transnistria and freshly annexed Crimea.

Scientists Are Totally Rethinking Animal CognitionRoss Andersen | The AtlanticThis idea that animals are conscious was long unpopular in the West, but it has lately found favor among scientists who study animal cognition. For many scientists, the resonant mystery is no longer which animals are conscious, but which are not.

I Wrote This on a 30-Year-Old ComputerIan Bogost | The Atlantic[Back then] computing was an accompaniment to life, rather than the sieve through which all ideas and activities must filter. That makes using this 30-year-old device a surprising joy, one worth longing for on behalf of what it was at the time, rather than for the future it inaugurated.

Image Credit:Wes Hicks /Unsplash

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The Year's Most Fascinating Tech Stories From Around the Web - Singularity Hub

Summary: Amidst the gloom that blankets America, there is evidence that a discontinuity in history approaches a technological singularity. It could blow away many of todays problems. Let this help dispel our fears and give us cause to celebrate. In the New Year, we can begin to prepare for what is coming.

Everything that can be invented has been invented. Attributed to Charles H. Duell, Director of US Patent Office 1898-1901. The quote is as false as the idea it expresses.

Wonders might await us that we cannot even imagine, just as the people of 1850 could not imagine the world of 1950. The rate of economic growth will accelerate, bringing more security and prosperity to the world. Pollution as we know it will be almost gone by 2100. The world will become a garden again as the population crashes. In the 22nd century we can repair the damage done in the 21st as the worlds population grew to 10 or 12 billion. Our next big challenge will be managing the political and social disruptions created by the coming new technologies.

History, from the Serengeti Plains to the Apollo moon landings, is a series of singularities. Fire gave us power over the environment. Agriculture gave us control over our food supply. Writing allowed better accumulation of knowledge across generations. The industrial revolutionn broke us free from the Malthusian limits on our population and wealth.

Each singularity took us into an unknowable future. For a fun illustration of this see Early Holocene Sci-fi by Pat Mathews.

Shaman: I have foreseen a time when everybody can have all the meat, fat, and sweet stuff they can eat, and they all get fat.

Chief: You have had a vision of the Happy Hunting Grounds.

Shaman: It is considered a great and horrible problem! People go out of their way to eat leaves and grass and grains, and work very hard to look lean and brown.

Chief: Youve been eating too many of those strange mushrooms, and are seeing everything backward.

The Singularity has happened. We call it the industrial revolution or the long nineteenth century. It was over by the close of 1918. Exponential yet basically unpredictable growth of technology, rendering long-term extrapolation impossible (even when attempted by geniuses). Check. Massive, profoundly dis-orienting transformation in the life of humanity, extending to our ecology, mentality and social organization? Check. Annihilation of the age-old constraints of space and time? Check.

The Singularity in Our Past Light-Cone byCosma Shalizi (Assoc. Prof of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon).

Industrial revolutions do not just solve problems. They make them irrelevant to be replaced by the problems of a more stable and prosperous world. Each is a leap forward followed by a period of consolidation.

An industrial revolution began in 1700 (to pick an arbitrary date) and ended with WWII. Here is a brief description of how it changed the world on a scale we no longer remember. Its momentum boosted per capita GDP in the developed nations through the 1960s. Few noticed it ending. Even in the 1960s people expected a future of rapid technological progress. But all we got was the manned space program (an expensive trip to nowhere) and the supersonic transport (a premature technology), and radical but narrow changes in communication and computers.

Few predicted this slowdown. One who did was the great physicist Albert Abraham MichelsoninLights waves and their uses

The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote. Many instances might be cited, but these will suffice to justify the statement that our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.

Now the slowing is obvious. The productivity of research the engine of progress is slowing as ever more resources are devoted to it (see this NBER paper). See this dismal graph from Are ideas getting harder to find?, a 2017 NBER paper by Nicholas Bloom et al. More evidence: growth in total factor productivity peaked in the 1940s, despite the skyrocketing number of researchers. We press the gas pedal ever harder, but the car does not accelerate. Click to enlarge the graph.

Looking at the bottom line,US economic growth has been slowing since the 1970s, as has that of the other developed nations. Many books describe this, such as these.

Each year gives more evidence that a singularity lies in our near future, a discontinuity in history that ends our current tech stagnation. We can only guess at what it might bring.

Space travel can bring a vast increase in resources. In the distant future, planetary engineering might make us independent of Earths vicissitudes.

Genetic engineering can liberate humanity from random evolution, bringing the freedom to shape ourselves.

New energy sources, such as fusion can provide ample clean power for a growing world. It has reached a new milestone, as private capital moves in.

New industrial methods are coming. Such as learning the mysteries of catalytic chemistry. Our bodies do near-miraculous chemical processes at room temperature. This will also transform agriculture into a more eco-friendly cornucopia.

Semi-intelligent computers (aka artificial Intelligence) can supplement our minds, just as machines supplemented brawn boosting productivity and hence economic growth. In the more distant future, perhaps they will end our solitude and free us from limitations of biological intelligence.

A longer vital lifespan can change humanity in ways we cannot imagine. In George Bernard Shaws Back to Methuselah

These are only plausible innovations. Who knows what we might achieve in the future?

There are many different concepts of a singularity, some contradictory. A key aspect is that we cannot see through a singularity in the physical universe (e.g., a black hole). Its first mention was by the great John von Neumann (1903-57), paraphrased by Stanislaw Ulam (BAMS, 1958).

One conversation centered on the ever-accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.

The public learned about it from Vernor Vinges 1986 book Marooned in Realtime

There are several kinds of technological singularity, described in this excerpt from Three Major Singularity Schools by AI researcher Eliezer S. Yudkowsky.

Singularity discussions seem to be splitting up into three major schools of thought: Accelerating Change, the Event Horizon, and the Intelligence Explosion. The thing about these three logically distinct schools of Singularity thought is that while all three core claims support each other, all three strong claims tend to contradict each other.

Core claim: Our intuitions about change are linear; we expect roughly as much change as has occurred in the past over our own lifetimes. But technological change feeds on itself, and therefore accelerates. Change today is faster than it was 500 years ago, which in turn is faster than it was 5000 years ago. Our recent past is not a reliable guide to how much change we should expect in the future.

Strong claim: Technological change follows smooth curves, typically exponential. Therefore we can predict with fair precision when new technologies will arrive, and when they will cross key thresholds, like the creation of Artificial Intelligence.

Advocates: Ray Kurzweil, Alvin Toffler(?), John Smart.

Core claim: For the last hundred thousand years, humans have been the smartest intelligences on the planet. All our social and technological progress was produced by human brains. Shortly, technology will advance to the point of improving on human intelligence (brain-computer interfaces, Artificial Intelligence). This will create a future that is weirder by far than most science fiction, a difference-in-kind that goes beyond amazing shiny gadgets.

Strong claim: To know what a superhuman intelligence would do, you would have to be at least that smart yourself. To know where Deep Blue would play in a chess game, you must play at Deep Blues level. Thus the future after the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence is absolutely unpredictable.

Advocates: Vernor Vinge.

Core claim: Intelligence has always been the source of technology. If technology can significantly improve on human intelligence create minds smarter than the smartest existing humans then this closes the loop and creates a positive feedback cycle. What would humans with brain-computer interfaces do with their augmented intelligence? One good bet is that theyd design the next generation of brain-computer interfaces. Intelligence enhancement is a classic tipping point; the smarter you get, the more intelligence you can apply to making yourself even smarter.

Strong claim: This positive feedback cycle goes FOOM, like a chain of nuclear fissions gone critical each intelligence improvement triggering an average of>1.000 further improvements of similar magnitude though not necessarily on a smooth exponential pathway. Technological progress drops into the characteristic timescale of transistors (or super-transistors) rather than human neurons. The ascent rapidly surges upward and creates superintelligence (minds orders of magnitude more powerful than human) before it hits physical limits.

Advocates: I. J. Good, Eliezer Yudkowsky.

Why are so many so gloomy about our future? We have survived ice ages, pandemics, natural disasters (e.g., the eruption of Toba, which exterminated most of humanity), and our own mistakes. Our history gives us good reason to look to the future with anticipation, not fear. Remember that as our elites attempt to lead us by arousing fears. Do not fear the future. Have faith in America.

Ideas!For ideas how to spend your holiday cash, see my recommended books and filmsat Amazon. Also, see a story about our future:Ultra Violence: Tales from Venus.

If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about forecasts, about the new industrial revolution, about good news for America, and especially these

Our future might see accelerating growth leading to the unimaginable. These two books sketch out what might lie ahead.

Marooned in Realtime

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

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Celebrate our bright future on New Years eve! - Fabius Maximus website

If your New Year's resolutions include "leadership--get better at it," publishers in 2020 have some refreshingly non-theoretical offerings: one about word choice and one that's a kind of lead-as-you-go field manual. Big names tackle big subjects (see Michael Porter on politics and Sylvia Ann Hewlett on #MeToo). And in a couple of juicy insider accounts, scrappy entrepreneurs take down enemies (Square beats Amazon) or are taken down by friends (Instagram's founders exit Facebook, stage left).

JANUARY

#MeToo in the Corporate World: Power, Privilege, and the Path Forward, by Sylvia Ann HewlettFor decades Hewlett, an economist, has illuminated the practices and power structures obstructing women in the workplace. In#MeToo in the Corporate Worldshe tackles the limitations and unintended consequences of the #MeToo movement, including male skittishness about mentoring or sponsoring junior women. That over-cautiousness, in turn, narrows the pipeline to the C-suite, where we need diversity to end this crap once and for all.

Sizing People Up: A Veteran FBI Agent's User Manual for Behavior Prediction, by Robin Dreeke and Cameron StauthThe same tactics used to detect spies and criminals can be applied to the business world. Whom should I trust? Is this guy going to deliver? What did that comment in the meeting really mean? Is she seriously going to buy or is she stringing me along? Hiring and sales should benefit. Sizing People Upco-author Dreeke is a former head of the FBI's counterintelligence behavioral analysis program.

The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives, by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven KotlerA gazillion books ponder the social and economic effects of disruptors like AI, virtual reality, 3-D printing, blockchain, robotics, and digital biology. What's intriguing about The Future Is Faster Than You Think is the speculation fromDiamondis (executive chairman of Singularity University) and Kotler (a science journalist)about what happens when all that stuff starts coming together. The implication for extending lifetimes is especially intriguing.

Leadership Strategy and Tactics: Field Manual, by Jocko WillinkA field manual is perfect for new leaders, who have less time than anyone to wade through great big books on leadership. The military uses field manuals to provide simple, step-by-step instructions for coping with myriad unfamiliar situations. Willink, a onetime Navy Seal commander, takes that approach in Leadership Strategy and Tacticswith subjects like dealing with imposter syndrome, doling out punishment, and giving feedback.

Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World, by Marco Iansiti and Karim LakhaniJust as the internet required a fundamental reinvention of business models, artificial intelligence challenges leaders to rethink everything about their organizations. AI processes are more scalable than human-powered ones; the technology creates more scope because it easily connects to other digital businesses; and it greatly amplifies learning and improvement. In Competing in the Age of AI,two Harvard Business School professors explain how to take advantage.

FEBRUARY

Leadership Is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say and What You Don't, by L. David MarquetLanguage is, arguably, the biggest leadership subject of all. Readers can apply lessons from Marquet, a nuclear-submarine-commander-turned-consultant, simply, immediately and every day. As Leadership Is Language demonstrates, Understanding distinctions between good and bad word choice and phrasing can improve the relationship between you and your team. For example: try delivering information ("I'll start again at 11 a.m.") instead of instruction ("Be back by 11 a.m.). See? Simple.

Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments, by Stefan ThomkeThirty years ago Peter Senge encouraged companies to become learning organizations. Now in Experimentation Works, a Harvard Business School professor gets more concrete, lauding the power of "experimentation organizations" in which everyone--not just R&D--constantly tests everything from new processes to new business models with scientific rigor. Thomke lays out best practices forcreating a strong hypothesis,setting up control groups, andinterpreting results. Can you tell a true positive or negative from a false one? Do you ever compare current practices to themselves? If not, you may be blowing it.

MARCH

Competition Overdose: How Free Market Mythology Transformed Us from Citizen Kings to Market Servants, by Maurice Stucke and Ariel EzrachiConventional wisdom says competition is good. Fair enough. But more isn't always better. In fact, the proliferation of rivals sometimes hurts consumers, who pay less but also get less--unhealthy food, toxic drinking water, hidden fees, failing schools, and an internet stalked by advertisers. The authors, both professors of business law, explain in Competition Overdosehow lobbyists, lawmakers, and business leaders conspire to push noxious competition and advocate for something nobler.

The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time, by Jim McKelveyAs co-founder of the small-merchant payment company Square, McKelvey spent the early days of his venture not getting killed by Amazon. Square was so good at not getting killed that it actually took out Amazon's rival service less than a year after its introduction. The company pulled that off using a strategy McKelvey calls the "innovation stack." Other successful startups have used it too, and the author explains how it works.

The Myth of Chinese Capitalism: The Worker, the Factory, and the Future of the World, by Dexter RobertsChina's manufacturing prowess is either threat or opportunity, depending where you live on the supply chain. But will it ultimately hoist that country to world domination? Maybe not, suggests business journalist Roberts. The Myth of Chinese Capitalism is a tale of two cities--impoverished Binghuacun, from which hordes of migrants depart; and industrial Guangdong, where hordes of migrants arrive. The struggles of families there predict rising social tension that endanger the giant's future.

APRIL

No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram, by Sarah FrierJournalist Frier landed interviews with Instagram's founders, executives, and competitors to chronicle the company's meteoric growth as it hooked the world on visual storytelling, followed by its sale to and rocky relationship with Facebook. No Filter'spublisher promises previously unreported dramatic details of Kevin Systrom's and Mike Krieger's departures from the company they spawned. Also: Marquee users like Anna Wintour and Kris Jenner discuss how they craft their personal brands.

Reprogramming the American Dream: From Rural America to Silicon Valley--Making AI Serve Us All, by Kevin Scott with Greg ShawBooks on AI are proliferating so fast you'd think computers were churning them out. But Reprogramming the American Dream authorScott should have an interesting perspective. First, because he is CTO of Microsoft. Second, because he grew up in rural Virginia and understands how white-collar disruptions affect back-roads populations. Scott advocates international policy collaboration similar to that focused on climate change, space exploration, and public health.

MAY

Always Day One: How the Tech Titans Plan to Stay on Top Forever, by Alex KantrowitzThe title, of course, refers to Jeff Bezos's dictum that Amazon employees approach each day like the first day of a startup. Kantrowitz, a BuzzFeed journalist, sat down with Bezos,Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg,Google's Sundar Pichai,and other leaders of the colossi that--for good and ill--dominate our lives and economy. In Always Day One he explains how such companies maintain a constant state of urgency and reinvention to avoid stasis and irrelevancy. And he suggests how startups might try to change that.

The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy, by Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. PorterRemember when it was fashionable to argue that government should be run like a business? Even if government isn't a company, politics is an industry, and a singularly destructive one with its own skewed forms of competition. In The Politics Industry,HBS professor Porter--creator of the seminal "Five Forces" strategy--joins activist Gehl to explain what happens when competing parties control the rules of competition and how citizens can help fix the system.

JUNE

Billion Dollar Burger: Inside Big Tech's Race for the Future of Food, by Chase PurdyAs meatless meat colonizes even the shores of fast food, Purdy, a writer for Quartz, reports on the potentially planet-changing disruption that may stave off hunger, endanger farm economies, and make some folks very rich. Billion Dollar Burger's center is Josh Tetrick, CEO of a Silicon Valley company developing meat from cell cultures. Tetrick, who is beset by hungry competitors, is a fascinating guy who previously took on Big Condiments with vegan mayonnaise.

Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them, by Gary Hamel and Michele ZaniniHooray that business authors now talk less about managing workforces and more about managing individuals. In Humanocracy,London Business School professor Hamel and McKinsey alum Zanini lay out the costs of dehumanizing workers in the interest of control and explain how to achieve the benefits of coordination and consistency while letting employees be themselves.

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16 New Business Books You Need to Read in 2020 - Inc.

Gears shift jarringly as the audiences polite, hushed reverence made way for Neon Pattern Drum, its relentless beat and all-encompassing bass instantaneously transforming the space into a euphoric, hands-in-the-air dance party where patrons risked looking foolish by remaining in their seats.

Hopkins has said his most recent album Singularity is designed to replicate the build, peak and release pattern of a psychedelic experience. Trippy, hypnotic visuals crafted to melt minds are projected onto a large screen while two performers with flashing light-wands that could have been designed to direct UFOs in to land, show off some dazzling routines.

Hopkins largely skips the quieter moments from his discography in favour of keeping the momentum high, reaching fever pitch during an intense, acid-techno strafing delivered via 2013 single Open Eye Signal.

As an exercise in both blasting away Sunday night cobwebs and giving an accurate depiction of what a dance party would look and sound like within the Blade Runner universe, the performance was a winner. Hopkins made the iconic venue serve his particular artistic vision, rather than the other way around.

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Techno fans have a blast - The Age

(Photo : upload.wikimedia.org)How sure are we that dark matter is real? Or is the genie going back to the bottle that will change everything?

The universe is a sea of black that surrounds everything in the universe as it is. Right now, galaxies are moving apart at fantastical rates of speed as they drift apart. What fuel this universal expansion? Since the big bang, there have been pockets of dark matter, this forms the unseen framework of the universe. It is till now, one counter-theory about is suggesting it does exist which is like sending the genie back to the bottle. What happens to the ever-expanding universe model without dark matter to fill up the spaces, in between the physical universe as every sentient life form understands it?

One of the first assumptions is with the genie in the bottle postulate is that implosion on a universal scale without the dark matter. Researchers with the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (IKBFU), located in Russia are boldly suggesting there are more forces at work with universal expansion. Like all theories from relativity to Isaac Newton's law of gravity they are grounded on the concept of gravity. But, this force operates independent of space-time and is an essentially a free agent from the four universal forces. In short, gravity has an effect upon it, and the proposed is one controversial concept too.

It will be a big break from most reasoning because it can operate free from universal gravitation. Mind numbing when gravitation is the force that keeps matter intact or destroys it. The presence of dark matter is vital to keep the galaxies apart, but without it to hold expansion and keep moving away. Acceleration slows down and the inevitable countdown to the singularity where the galaxy began. Call it point zero or "god". Without the mechanics of dark matter, the view of the expanding universe does not apply.

Details of the theory will be like no other concept that has been suggested, because it operates similar to dark energy but is not. Introducing the Casimir effect, which was first introduced as forces that are created as a result of quantum reactions in a quantized field. Predicted by Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir in 1948.

What alternative theory to universal expansion caused by it, not dark matter that exists in pockets as described. The Casimir effect can fuel universal expansion because it creates spaces in the "space", that expands as the quantum effect multiples similar to repulsion on a grand universal level. Next question is for everyone, how far will the walls created by the effect expand? Will it be an infinite expansion or finite, and where does everything end. Does the universe begin or does it go out with the singularity?

One possible answer is the universe exists as a three-dimension construct that allows the Casimir effect to expand the spaces in the 3-d model. The earth lies on a two-dimension plane in the universe, while the universe overlays everything is the third dimension. With dark matter out of the equation, the genies is back in the bottle which leaves the Casimir effect filling the spaces and repulsing at the same

Related Article: New dark energy theory claims it may not even exist

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Does Dark Matter Really Exist or Is the Genie Going Back in the Bottle - Science Times

Futurism is a mugs game: if youre right, it seems banal; if youre wrong, you look like the founder of IBM, Thomas Watson, when he declared in 1943 that there is room in the world for maybe five computers.

David Adams knew these risks when he wrote about the future of technology in the Guardian in 2004 even citing the very same prediction as an example of how they can go awry. And from our vantage point in 2020, Adams certainly did a better job than Watson. When he looked ahead to today, he avoided many of the pitfalls of technology prediction: no promises about flying cars nor sci-fi tech such as teleportation or faster-than-light travel.

But in some ways, the predictions were overly pessimistic. Technology really has made great leaps and bounds in the past 16 years, nowhere more clearly than AI. Artificial intelligence brains simply cannot cope with change and unpredictable events, wrote Adams, explaining why robots would be unlikely to interact with humans any time soon.

Fundamentally, its just very difficult to get a robot to tell the difference between a picture of a tree and a real tree, Paul Newman, then and now a robotics expert at Oxford University, told Adams. Happily, Newman proved his own pessimism to be unwarranted: in 2014, he co-founded Oxbotica, which has hopefully solved the problem he mentioned, because it makes and sells driverless car technology to vehicle manufacturers around the world.

If we move on from worrying over details, there are two key points at which the 2020 predictions fall apart: one about tech, the other about society.

Gadget lovers could use a single keypad to operate their phone, PDA [tablet] and MP3 music player, Adams wrote, or combine the output of their watch, pager and radio into a single speaker. The idea of greater convergence and connectivity between personal electronics was correct. But there was a very specific hole in this prediction: the smartphone. After half a century of single-purpose consumer electronics, it was difficult to perceive how all-encompassing a single device could become, but just three years after Adams pubished his piece, the iPhone launched and changed everything. Forget carrying around a separate MP3 player; in the real 2020, people arent even carrying separate cameras, wallets or car keys.

Failing to foresee the smartphone is an oversight about the progress of technology. But the other missing point is about how society would respond to the changing forces. The 2004 predictions are, fundamentally, optimistic. Adams writes about biometric healthcare data being beamed to your doctors computer; about washing machines that automatically arrange their own servicing based on availability in your electronic organiser; and about radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips on your clothes that trigger customised adverts or programme your phone based on where you are. And through it all is a sense of trust: these changes will be good, and the companies making them well-intentioned.

There is a loss of privacy that is going to be very difficult for people and we havent figured out how to deal with that, one of Adamss interviewees admitted, when describing technology in 2020. But if you explain what it does, how much information it provides and where it goes and that the trade-off is that you dont have to wait as long in line at the supermarket then people will take the trade-off. In fact, over the past decade and a half, the vast majority of people were simply never given the choice to accept the trade-off, and it is increasingly clear that many of them never would have if they had understood what was at risk.

If the Guardian missed the advent of the smartphone, despite writing just three years before the launch of the iPhone, how can we possibly do better today, looking 10 times further ahead? The world of 2050 will be unimaginably different in many ways, even if we can safely assume people will still generally have two arms, two legs and an unpleasant smell if they dont wash for long periods of time.

But there are forces working in our favour. The internet is far more entrenched now than it was in 2004, and while its chaotic effect on our lives shows no sign of abating, it is at least predictably unpredictable. Similarly, smartphone penetration in the west is now as high as it looks likely to go. However the world changes over the next 30 years, it wont be as a result of more Britons or Americans getting phones.

Other predictions can be as simple as following trendlines to their logical conclusion. By 2050, the switchover to electric cars will have mostly finished, at least in developed nations as well as in those developing nations, such as China, that are starting to prioritise air quality over cheap mechanisation.

The next billion will be online, mostly through low-cost smartphones receiving increasingly ubiquitous cellular connections. But what they do on the internet is harder to guess. In 2020, there are two countervailing trends at work: on the one hand, providers, principally Facebook, have been trying to use subsidised deals to push newly connected nations on to stripped-down versions of the internet. If they succeed at scale, then many of the benefits of the web will be stolen from whole nations, reduced instead to being passive participants in Facebook and a few local media and payment companies.

But pushback, from national regulators in places such as India and from competing carriers, could bring the new nations to the real internet instead. Unless, that is, national regulators push in a different direction, copying China, Iran and Russia to keep Facebook out by building a purely nationalistic internet. How better to ensure that the benefits of the web accrue domestically, they reason, than by requiring your citizens to use home-grown services? And if it makes it easier to impose censorship, well, thats just another benefit.

James Bridle, the author of the unsettling book New Dark Age, points out that the discussion cant lose sight of who the next billion actually are. I keep thinking about the way the tech industry talks about the next billion users without acknowledging that those people are going to be hot, wet and pissed off, he says, and were only talking about hardening borders, rather than preparing politically, socially, technologically for this reality.

Because, if we are guessing the future from simple trend lines, there is another one that we need to acknowledge: the climate. The specifics of what will change are not for this piece, but the human response very much is.

One possibility is plan A: humanity, in time, reaches net zero when it comes to emissions. In that scenario, we will live in a world where plant proteins replace meat in everyday consumption, where electrically powered networked mass transit reaches into the suburbs and beyond, a world of video-conferencing and remote attendance steadily chipping away at business flights, and of insulation inside the walls of British homes. (Look, it cant all be high-tech.)

If plan A fails, then there is a chance we turn to plan B. That is a world in which megascale injections of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere turn the heavens a milky-white, and a whole generation never sees a clear blue sky, in order to reflect more of the suns rays and pause the greenhouse effect. It is one in which we turn on gigantic processing plants that do nothing but extract carbon dioxide from the air and pump it underground into disused oil wells. It is one in which whole cities are abandoned and populations relocated to avoid the worst effects we cant prevent.

Plan B geoengineering is neither optimistic nor pessimistic about the future of humanity, says Holly Jean Buck, the author of After Geoengineering. The worst thing would be we fail plan A and plan B. Over the next decade, I think geoengineering will definitely be tried. Right now, its toned down, I think because of people not wanting to talk about it. We dont have the body of knowledge, and would need 20 or 30 years to develop it. Right about midcentury means it will be a crunch point: climate change will be really apparent.

But for Buck, as for Bridle, the distinctions that really matter arent necessarily the technology. The choices around whether we have a livable future or a dystopian one are about social attitudes and social changes.

Right now, were in this era of stopgaps. Society used to be able to make a long-term plan: people built long-term infrastructure and thought a bit further out. Thats not something that happens now: we go to quick fixes. We need a cultural change in values, to enable more deliberate decision-making.

There is another possibility: that technology really does save the day, and then some. John Maeda, the chief experience officer at the digital consultancy Publicis Sapient, says that by 2050, computational machines will have surpassed the processing power of all the living human brains on Earth. The cloud will also have absorbed the thinking of the many dead brains on Earth, too and we all need to work together to survive. So I predict that we will see a lasting cooperation between the human race and the computational machines of the future.

This sort of thinking has come to be known as the singularity: the idea that there will be a point, perhaps even a singular moment in time, when the ability of thinking machines outstrips those who created them, and progress accelerates with dizzying results.

If you interview AI researchers about when general AI a machine that can do everything a human can do will arrive, they think its about 50/50 whether it will be before 2050, says Tom Chivers, the author of The AI Does Not Hate You.

They also think that AGI artificial general intelligence can be hugely transformative lots of them signed an open letter in 2015 saying eradication of disease and poverty could be possible. But also, he adds, citing a 2013 survey in the field, on average they think there is about a 15% to 20% chance of a very bad outcome [existential catastrophe], which means everyone dead.

There is, perhaps, little point in dwelling on the 50% chance that AGI does develop. If it does, every other prediction we could make is moot, and this story, and perhaps humanity as we know it, will be forgotten. And if we assume that transcendentally brilliant artificial minds wont be along to save or destroy us, and live according to that outlook, then what is the worst that could happen we build a better world for nothing?

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Technology in 2050: will it save humanity or destroy us? - The Guardian

Noel Fielding has hinted there will be more of The Mighty Boosh in the new decade.

The comedian and television presenter, who co-wrote as well as starred in the surreal cult comedy series with Julian Barratt from 2004-09, posted an image of himself and Barratt on Instagram and suggested its time for a comeback.

There really wasnt enough Boosh this decade! lets try and rectify that in the next one, Fielding wrote beneath the photo.

Last year Fielding and Barratt returned as The Mighty Boosh for the first time in five years to become the UKsRecord Store Day ambassadorsfor 2019.

We are approaching singularity, when computers will overtake and replace us. Therefore, it suddenly felt prescient to outwit them and somehow save our precious early recordings onto a format that the dawning artificial intelligences will not see as a threat, Barratt said of their acceptance to be ambassadors.

The Mighty Boosh comedy troupe has existed in many artistic forms since its inception in 1998 from stand-up shows and gigs to a radio series and a celebrated TV show.

In recent years, Fielding has co-presented The Great British Bake Off since its move from the BBC to Channel 4, while Barratt has starred in TV shows including Flowers and Killing Eve.

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Noel Fielding teases return of 'The Mighty Boosh' - NME.com