Paving the way to self-driving vehicles

Via Auto News:

Self-driving vehicles have the potential to make immobility among elderly people and those with disabilities a thing of the past, experts say.

Declining vision and other physical impairments will no longer inhibit people from going out to eat or visiting their favorite stores, the experts say.

In the meantime, companies such as Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Ford and Toyota are laying the foundation for this future with adaptive cruise control, blind-spot monitoring, automatic braking and other semiautonomous functions that could benefit still-mobile seniors.

Paving the way to self-driving vehicles

3D printing will explode in 2014, thanks to the expiration of key patents

Via Quartz:

…not all 3D printing technologies are created equal. The revolution in manufacturing that was supposed to come with cheap, desktop 3D printers hasn’t materialized because, frankly, the models they produce are basically novelties, handy for giving you a feel for what something will look like in three dimensions, but not really usable for creating prototypes that can be directly translated into molds for mass production, and certainly not usable for creating finished goods.

With the expiration of patents on laser sintering 3D printing, however, all of that is about to change.

3D printing will explode in 2014, thanks to the expiration of key patents - Quartz

Project leadership

Via PMI:

A project manager creates objectives; the project leader influences people and events to ensure those are met

A project manager formulates plans; the project leader provides the vision and enthusiasm to achieve them

A project manager monitors results; the project leader recognizes and initiates change to keep the project on track

A project manager assigns activities; the project leader provides direction and motivation

A project manager solves technical problems; the project leader encourages innovation

A project manager puts the team together; the project leader fosters collaboration

A project manager asks for feedback and information; the project leader explains how to make the information useful

A project manager identifies stakeholders; the project leader analyzes and balances their expectations

Join the Evolution - Voices on Project Management

Will we ever want to have sex with robots?

Via BBC:

"…if you are trying to solve the problem of care and companionship with a robot, you are not trying to solve it with the people you need to solve it with - friends, family, community."

…

"We may think we are only making robots," she told this year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, "but really we are re-making human values and connections.

"The pretend self of a robot calls forth the pretend self of a person performing for it," she said.

And that, she says is not promising "for adults trying to live authentically and navigate life's real, human problems".

BBC News - Will we ever want to have sex with robots?

More Light | Books and Culture

Via Books and Culture:

In contrast to the idea that all scientists are non-religious, she reveals a substantial rate of self-declared religious affiliation. Almost half, or 47 percent, declare some kind of faith commitment, far more than a conflict paradigm might suggest, though far fewer than those in the U.S. population as a whole. Her most significant finding is how profoundly the distribution of religious preferences among elite scientists differs from the general population. In addition to the non-religious being overrepresented, Jewish scholars are also found in high numbers (making up 16 percent of élite scientists). Although those of other religions (7 percent) and mainline Protestants (14 percent) are represented at rates similar to the general population, other Christians are strikingly underrepresented. This includes Catholics (9 percent of élite scientists), evangelicals (2 percent), and black Protestants (0.2 percent); although only a small minority in élite institutions, these three groups make up almost two-thirds of the U.S. population.

More Light | Books and Culture

Points:

• “…élite scientists are vitally interested in questions of meaning at the same time that a significant majority do not hold traditional religious beliefs.”
• “This pursuit of nontraditional spirituality is accompanied by a remarkable ignorance about most religious traditions…Rather than recognizing the diversity of religious views that exist even within Protestant Christianity, many scientists stereotype all religious people as ‘fundamentalists’ and have a caricatured understanding of what that means.”
• “A little over a third (36 percent) think that religion has no positive role on campus.”
• “…scientists who are also people of faith have a special responsibility to overcome the first set of myths by offering their stories as scientist-believers to their nonscientist fellow believers, while non-believing lite scientists must actively seek to ameliorate their "religious illiteracy" and find ways to respectfully interact with religion in the classroom and on campus.”

How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class

Via Business Insider and the NY Times:

The good news, however, is that middle-education, middle-wage jobs are not slated to disappear completely. While many middle-skill jobs are susceptible to automation, others demand a mixture of tasks that take advantage of human flexibility. To take one prominent example, medical paraprofessional jobs — radiology technician, phlebotomist, nurse technician — are a rapidly growing category of relatively well-paid, middle-skill occupations. While these paraprofessions do not typically require a four-year college degree, they do demand some postsecondary vocational training.

How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class - NYTimes.com

Points:

• “These middle-skill jobs [paraprofessions] will persist, and potentially grow, because they involve tasks that cannot readily be unbundled without a substantial drop in quality.”
• “…the middle-skill jobs that survive will combine routine technical tasks with abstract and manual tasks in which workers have a comparative advantage — interpersonal interaction, adaptability and problem-solving.”
• “There will be job opportunities in middle-skill jobs, but not in the traditional blue-collar production and white-collar office jobs of the past.”

3 Books Offer Ways to Cut the Cord, If Only Briefly

Via New York Times:

Ms. Steiner-Adair, the primary author of “The Big Disconnect,” is a clinical psychologist who teaches at Harvard Medical School. Her book is based on thousands of interviews, and it can be eloquent about the need to ration our children’s computer time.
,,,
Mr. Pang, the author of “The Distraction Addiction,” is a futurist who has been a visiting scholar at Stanford and Oxford Universities. His book isn’t so much about parenting as it is about what he calls “contemplative computing.” He gets pretty Zen. I can see Keanu Reeves in the film version.
…
“The App Generation,” by Howard Gardner and Katie Davis, is a slab of groaning sociology that nonetheless possesses an interesting insight. “Young people growing up in our time are not only immersed in apps,” the authors write, “they’ve come to think of the world as an ensemble of apps, to see their lives as a string of ordered apps, or perhaps, in many cases, a single, extended, cradle-to-grave app.”

3 Books Offer Ways to Cut the Cord, If Only Briefly - NYTimes.com

Hardcover              Kindle

Hardcover              Paperback             Kindle

Hardcover

Robots projected for growth in China

Via Robot Report:

China’s 12th 5-Year Plan targeted robotics as a growth industry necessary for China’s development. It expects a compound growth rate of 25%, said Wang Weiming, deputy director of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The ministry has set up incentives and 5 geographical areas for Chinese companies to develop (and improve the quality of) their robot products and capabilities. The ambitious plan includes a goal of 30% to be produced with homegrown technologies, Wang said.

The Robot Report - tracking the business of robotics

How can we design an internet of things for everyone (not just alpha geeks)?

Via CNN:

What will people do with the new connected devices and tools that have just become available? And how should those tools evolve to best suit people’s needs? And what businesses will grow from the desire (and eventually the need) for them in our lives? The alpha geek in me is excited once again, but my product designer side knows that in order to be meaningful in people’s lives, products and their associated data have to be presented within specific, human-centered contexts.

How can we design an internet of things for everyone (not just alpha geeks)?

Points:

• “We know that connected devices are possible, but we’re not exactly sure why we need them.”
• “These products can offer us interesting glimpses into our own personal habits and health, providing tools to change behavior.”
• “These products can connect us to other people in new ways.”
• “…connected objects will allow for a team dynamic, where physical aspects (location, laps run, miles walked) can be represented via on-screen graphics or another means of showing measurements such as light or sound.”
• “The internet of things gives us is the ability to expose measurements that were previously invisible.”
• “…what I think is most promising is the ability for people in different parts of the world to band together to offer “macroscopic” views of a particular measurement.”

Why 'The Family' Matters in Economics

Via Instapundit and Mere Orthodoxy:

…you can’t understand today’s economy—from the need for human capital to rising inequality— without considering the platoons of moms, dads, and children that form the backbone of American society. And the situation is not pretty. The American family is in a state of crisis, which in turn is having a profound impact on the economy.

Why 'The Family' Matters in Economics | Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Points:

• “[Nick Schulz] concludes as former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett did, finding that the ‘family is the original and best Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.’”
• “…’family structure was one of the four factors with a clear relationship to upward mobility.’”
• “…American families now seem to follow two tracks: those of the upper-middle class, where family institutions remain relatively strong, and those of the lower-middle class, where family instability is distressingly common.”
• “…the risks of failing are far too high when kids are raised in the context of relational instability. Socioeconomic mobility and multigenerational poverty are empirically linked to family stability like never before.”
• “Family builds empathy and self-control, which in turn shapes character. Character fosters human capital (“knowledge, education, habits, willpower”) and social capital (assets “created and maintained by relationships of commitment and trust”), which ultimately generates economic growth.”
• “…entrepreneurial creativity is in fact motivated and grounded in a strong family structure.”

Ponder: “Improving the incentive structure behind family formation should be the utmost priority of any coherent political platform.”

Paperback              Kindle

Could it be a 'cure'? Breakthrough prompts Down syndrome soul-searching - NBC News.com

Via MSN:

Hailed as a “cure in a Petri dish,” the research by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School is the first to find that it may be possible to switch off the genetic material responsible for the condition that causes cognitive delays, heart defects and shortened lifespans.

The development is expected to help create new treatments for problems caused by Down syndrome -- but it also raises the prospect of eliminating the condition entirely.

Could it be a 'cure'? Breakthrough prompts Down syndrome soul-searching - NBC News.com

Points:

• “On one hand, almost everyone agrees there’s a need for treatments to help the 250,000 people in the U.S. living with Down syndrome, including the nearly 7,000 babies born with it each year.”
• “On the other hand, it’s unclear what costs there may be to shutting down the mechanism that creates people who offer lessons in patience, kindness -- and what it means to be human.”
• “…ethicists fear that genetic manipulation could spell the end of the disorder – and of people who have it.”
• “The number of babies born with Down syndrome has been rising in the past decade, McCabe found. But research suggests that about 74 percent of women who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome end their pregnancies.”

Ponder:

• The concerns revolve around whether it’s more desirable to keep people with Down syndrome in that state.
• 4th point above is a long way to say abortions. Expect the proponents on both sides to weigh in.

The Drone Gender Gap: Big Differences in How Men and Women View Strikes

Via Danger Room:

When asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of the United States conducting missile strikes from pilotless aircraft called drones to target extremists in countries such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia?” women were much less likely to say they approved.

At the most extreme end of that gap is Japan where 41 percent of men approve of while only 10 percent of women do. Double digit gender gaps are found in six of the eight EU countries polled and the U.S. had a 17 point gap.

The Drone Gender Gap: Big Differences in How Men and Women View Strikes | Danger Room | Wired.com

This Is What Makes People Follow Through And Get The Job Done:

Via Barking Up the Wrong Tree:

…if you really want to help yourself or others to get things done, make sure to give them a plan.

This Is What Makes People Follow Through And Get The Job Done:

Useful information.

NSA to cut system administrators by 90 percent to limit data access

Via Boing Boing:

The National Security Agency, hit by disclosures of classified data by former contractor Edward Snowden, said Thursday it intends to eliminate about 90 percent of its system administrators to reduce the number of people with access to secret information.

NSA to cut system administrators by 90 percent to limit data access | Reuters

Points:

• “…what we've done is we've put people in the loop of transferring data, securing networks and doing things that machines are probably better at doing.”
• “These efforts pre-date Snowden's leaks, the agency has said, but have since been accelerated.”
• “’At the end of the day it's about people and trust,’ Alexander said. He again defended his agency's conduct, much of which he said had been ‘grossly mischaracterized. by the press.”

Ponder: Impact of significantly reduced operational staff?

How to coil cables

Useful tip via Boing Boing:

Scientists developing Bluetooth tooth that spies on your oral habits

 

Tooth fillings acting as radio receivers may be nothing more than a myth, but scientists at the National Taiwan University are developing an artificial tooth that would send rather than receive transmissions. They’re working on embedding a sensor in a tooth to keep an eye on oral goings on, along with a Bluetooth transmitter to transmit the data and tell your doctor what your mouth's been up to.

Scientists developing Bluetooth tooth that spies on your oral habits

Soft Skills: Are Your Employees Versed in the Humanities?

Via Build:

when Norman Augustine, longtime chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, insists that liberal-arts deficiencies are putting the United States at a strategic disadvantage, corporate America takes notice.

In June, Augustine added his name and endorsement to The Heart of the Matter, a Congressional report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that argues for large-scale education reform — namely, balancing math, science, and business training with greater reading, writing, and arts education.

Soft Skills: Are Your Employees Versed in the Humanities?

Points:

• “…communication, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration are important to employees’ success.”
• “…how do you evaluate a job candidate’s competency in these ‘soft’ skills?”

The Childless City

Via Instapundit and City Journal:

…we have embarked on an experiment to rid our cities of children. In the 1960s, sociologist Herbert Gans identified a growing chasm between family-oriented suburbanites and people who favored city life—“the rich, the poor, the non-white as well as the unmarried and childless middle class.” Families abandoned cities for the suburbs, driven away by policies that failed to keep streets safe, allowed decent schools to decline, and made living spaces unaffordable. Even the partial rebirth of American cities since then hasn’t been enough to lure families back. The much-ballyhooed and self-celebrating “creative class”—a demographic group that includes not only single professionals but also well-heeled childless couples, empty nesters, and college students—occupies much of the urban space once filled by families. Increasingly, our great American cities, from New York and Chicago to Los Angeles and Seattle, are evolving into playgrounds for the rich, traps for the poor, and way stations for the ambitious young en route eventually to less congested places. The middle-class family has been pushed to the margins, breaking dramatically with urban history. The development raises at least two important questions: Are cities without children sustainable? And are they desirable?

The Childless City by Joel Kotkin and Ali Modarres, City Journal Summer 2013

Points:

• “Schools, churches, and neighborhood associations no longer form the city’s foundation. Instead, the city revolves around recreation, arts, culture, and restaurants—a system built for the newly liberated individual.”
• “Over the past two decades, the percentage of families that have children has fallen in most of the country, but nowhere more dramatically than in our largest, densest urban areas.”
• “What families need is more affordable urban neighborhoods with decent schools, safe streets, adequate parks—and more housing space.”
• “If cities want to nurture the next generation of urbanites and keep more of their younger adults, they will have to find a way to welcome back families, which have sustained cities for millennia and given the urban experience much of its humanity.”

The Public-Private Surveillance Partnership

Via Bloomberg:

The primary business model of the Internet is built on mass surveillance, and our government’s intelligence-gathering agencies have become addicted to that data.
…

The simple answer is to blame consumers, who shouldn’t use mobile phones, credit cards, banks or the Internet if they don’t want to be tracked. But that argument deliberately ignores the reality of today’s world. Everything we do involves computers, even if we’re not using them directly. And by their nature, computers produce tracking data. We can’t go back to a world where we don’t use computers, the Internet or social networking. We have no choice but to share our personal information with these corporations, because that’s how our world works today.

The Public-Private Surveillance Partnership - Bloomberg

How low-paid workers at 'click farms' create appearance of online popularity

Via Business Insider:

Click farms have become a growing challenge for companies which rely on social media measurements – meant to indicate approval by real users – to estimate the popularity of their products.

For the workers, though, it is miserable work, sitting at screens in dingy rooms facing a blank wall, with windows covered by bars, and sometimes working through the night. For that, they could have to generate 1,000 likes or follow 1,000 people on Twitter to earn a single US dollar.

How low-paid workers at 'click farms' create appearance of online popularity - Business Insider

Points:

• “…click farms risk eroding user confidence in what had looked like an objective measure of social online approval.”
• “The importance of likes is considerable with consumers: 31% will check ratings and reviews, including likes and Twitter followers, before they choose to buy something, research suggests. That means click farms could play a significant role in potentially misleading consumers.”
• “…click farms exploit a different sort of computing power altogether: the rise of cheap labour paired with low-cost connectivity to the internet.”

Ponder:

• What else can merchants use as metrics to measure the success of their marketing?
• How can platforms like Facebook ensure confidence in their advertising model?

Startups And The New Space Race

Via Business Insider:

In recent years, some of the most famous names in tech, like Microsoft's Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, and Amazon's Jeff Bezos have been founding and investing in companies that are looking to the stars.

Whether for personal dreams of adventure or for profit, these companies are doing the engineering and basic science needed to get humans into space. 

They're also looking at other opportunities that space provides, like access to resources that are hard  to get on Earth and the ability to collect information about our planet from a different perspective.

Startups And The New Space Race - Business Insider

Companies for billionaires who have everything.

Pennsylvania kills IBM project

Via Business Insider:

The state of Pennsylvania is killing a contract with IBM because, as of July, the project was $60 million over budget and a whopping 42 months behind schedule, state officials said.

That's three and a half years late.

Pennsylvania kills IBM project - Business Insider

Project managers are critical to their organizations for controlling time, cost, and scope of projects.