Innovation Watch Newsletter - Issue 10.

21 - October 8, 2011

ISSN: 1712-9834

Selected news items from postings to Innovation Watch in the last two weeks... Moore's Law accelerates genetic engineering... an MIT researcher speeds up evolution... smartphones could replace many medical monitoring devices... Israeli researchers implant a computer chip to compensate for damage in a rat's brain... Monsanto is to be charged with biopiracy in India... computers are increasingly taking over financial trading... Occupy Wall Street could become a major social movement... Mexico contemplates a two-year marriage license... China says the United States risks triggering a trade war... nationalist and populist rebellions are growing worldwide... a new solar plant in Spain generates energy day and night... help-yourself electric cars will transform the streets of Paris... balancing certainty and believability is a challenge in forecasting the future... computer algorithms are quietly taking control... More great resources ... a new book by Jeffrey Sachs, The Price of Civilization: Economics and Ethics After the Fall... a link to Google's One World Many Stories website... a video clip from The Economist on software used to predict political events and track terrorists... a blog post by Venessa Miemis on business-to-business trade networks... David Forrest Innovation Watch

David Forrest advises organizations on emerging trends, and helps to develop strategies for a radically different future

SCIENCE
Top Stories: Forward

Fueling Green Tech with Biology and Moore's Law (CNET) Moore's Law has led to a steady increase in computing power for decades, but that rate of progress is now being matched in the life sciences, said Steve Jurvetson, managing director at venture firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, during a keynote talk. It's at the point where genetic engineers can rapidly create custom-made versions of micro-organisms, such as e.coli bacteria, by studying organism genomes and assembling bits of DNA, he said. "You can take e.coli and treat them like Lego blocks. It's just like building code into a living organism," he said. Genetic engineering has been greatly sped up by the steady increase in computing power. Are Viruses the Way to Green Manufacturing? (BBC) - If Prof Angela Belcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology gets it right, the future of manufacturing will rest on the shoulders of tiny organisms. Instead of waiting 50 million years, she's speeding up the evolutionary process by running 1 billion experiments at a time. She starts with a billion viruses, harmless to everything except bacteria, that have been genetically altered so they each create slightly different proteins. These viruses are mixed together with whatever elements Belcher has chosen from the periodic table -- and out of the billion different proteins the viruses make, roughly 100 will link up with the elements the way she wants.

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TECHNOLOGY
Top Stories: Could Smartphones Be the Stethoscopes of the Future? (Daily Mail) - Thermometer, stethoscope... smartphone? Research from Worcester Polytechnic Institute shows that smartphones could replace anything from heart monitors to microscopes. Researchers proved that simply pressing a patient's finger against a Motorola Android smartphone's camera, they could harvest data as accurately as the huge and expensive monitors used in hospitals. Other researchers showed off using iPhone as a microscope -- and an app that breathalyses you to 'tell' you if you are hungry enough for a snack. RoboRat: Israelis Create Rodent With Robot Brain (ABC News) - In the technological journey towards artificial intelligence, Israeli researchers have made the next giant leap: the RoboRat. Matti Mintz of Tel Aviv University in Israel and his fellow scientists have built a rodent-sized artificial cerebellum that when implanted onto the skull of a rat with brain damage, allows him to function normally again. The cyborg cerebellum consists of a computer chip that is electrically wired into the rat's brain with electrodes. Since the cerebellum is normally responsible for coordinating movement, this chip was programmed to take in sensory information from the body, interpret it, and communicate messages back out to the brain stem and in turn, the rest of the body.

BUSINESS
Top Stories: Monsanto, World's Largest Genetically Modified Food Producer, to be Charged with Biopiracy in India (Huffington Post) Add a new word to your lexicon: Biopiracy. That's what U.S.-based agribusiness giant Monsanto has been accused of in India, where the government is planning to charge the company with violating the country's biodiversity laws over a genetically modified version of eggplant. In doing so, India has placed itself at the focal point of the movement to challenge genetically modified crops, which opponents say are destroying traditional crops and threatening farmers' livelihoods. Quant Trading: How Mathematicians Rule the Markets (BBC) - Long ago computers made dealers redundant, yet brokers and their ilk have remained the masters of the investment universe, free to buy and sell wherever they see fit. But the last bastion of the old order is now under threat. Investment decisions are no longer being made by financiers, but increasingly by PhD mathematicians and the immensely complex computer programs they devise. Fundamental research and intuition are being usurped by algorithmic formulae. Quant trading is taking over the world's financial capitals.

SOCIETY
Top Stories: Occupy Wall Street Could Be Beginning of Social Movement: Experts (Huffington Post) "Occupy Wall Street" may be the beginning of a major social movement, but its ultimate impact will depend on the group's ability to produce a focused agenda and get organized, experts say. The protesters, who have no official leaders, recently released a broad list of grievances, ranging from the wars in the Middle East to student debt and high bonuses for Wall Street executives. But those grievances shared a common theme: discontent with the power of corporations and alarm that the economic future of a broad swath of the population appears in jeopardy. Instead of Divorce, Short-Term Marriage (New Zealand Herald) - Leftist politicians in Mexico have proposed that the country issue a new kind of marriage licence -- one valid for two years. "The proposal is, when the two-year period is up, if the relationship is not stable or harmonious, the contract simply ends," said Leonel Luna, the Mexico City assemblyman from the Party of the Democratic Revolution who co-authored

the bill.

GLOBAL POLITICS
Top Stories: China Says U.S. Risks Trade War With Bill Targeting Currency (Businessweek) - China said the U.S. risks triggering a trade war through legislation before the Senate that would punish the Asian nation for what lawmakers say is the undervaluation of its currency, the yuan. The Peoples Bank of China said it "regrets" the Senate vote to consider the bill, and the Foreign Ministry said the measure would violate World Trade Organization rules, in statements today on their websites. The bill is aimed at letting American businesses seek duties on Chinese imports to make up for the weak currency. Global Populist Revolt: Tea Party, True Finns, Singing Red (Huffington Post) - As the world economy falters, the manifold dislocations of globalization that had been eclipsed by the roaring growth of the past three decades have been fully exposed. In response, a nationalist and populist rebellion -- ranging form the Tea Party in the United States to the True Finns in Europe to the "Singing Red" movement in China -- is brewing against the very integrating institutions that hold the global system together.

ENVIRONMENT
Top Stories: Solar Plant First to Generate Energy at Night (Daily Mail) The first solar plant that can operate without the sun has been officially opened. The GBP 260 million Germasolar power plant has been designed to work even through the night and can store heat to power turbines for 15 hours without exposure to sunlight. The plant -- a tower with a glowing 'bulb' surrounded by 2,600 mirrors -- is situated near Seville, one of the hottest places on the European mainland. The plant is a heliostatic solar plant -- a solar furnace -which uses mirrors to concentrate the intense heat onto two salt tanks. The 900C heat melts the salt, boiling water around it to drive turbines. The New, Silent, French Revolution (New Zealand Herald) Paris, a city which has seen many revolutions, claims it is on the cusp of another -- one that will change the world's relationship with the car. The first help-yourself, electrically powered hire cars were being tested on the streets of the French capital. The Mayor of Paris and the French billionaire who has sponsored the GBP 250 million ($438 million) Autolib scheme believe this will be the first step in an urban and

suburban sea change.

THE FUTURE
Top Stories: The Foresight Paradox (Open the Future) - In every foresight or forecasting exercise, there are two overarching tensions: the more certain and detailed the forecast, the more people will accept it and believe it to be useful; and the more certain and detailed the forecast, the less likely it is to happen. This is the foresight paradox: you can be completely accurate, or you can be completely engaging, but you can't be both. As a result, every forecast (or scenario, or prediction) has to find the right balance between the two, trading off likelihood for believability. When Algorithms Control the World (BBC) - If you were expecting some kind of warning when computers finally get smarter than us, then think again. There will be no soothing HAL 9000-type voice informing us that our human services are now surplus to requirements. In reality, our electronic overlords are already taking control, and they are doing it in a far more subtle way than science fiction would have us believe. Their weapon of choice -- the algorithm.

Just in from the publisher...

The Price of Civilization: Economics and Ethics After the Fall

by Jeffrey D. Sachs
Read more...

A Web Resource... One World Many Stories - Experience the stories in 3D with the Google Earth plugin.

Multimedia... Forecasting Human Behaviour (The Economist) ... Software programs based on game theory are being used to predict political outcomes and track down terrorists. (7m 11s)

The Blogosphere... How Can Business-to-Business Trade Networks Build Local Resilience? (Emergent By Design) - Venessa Miemis "Over the past year, I've been exploring the many examples out there of communities forming peer-to-peer networks in order to rebuild local economies, resilience and trust. These range from gift economies to barter groups, from loyalty programs to mutual credit systems. The latter, mutual credit systems, is the focus of this post."

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