Innovation Watch Newsletter - Issue 9.

13 - June 19, 2010 ISSN: 1712-9834

Selected news items from postings to Innovation Watch

in the last two weeks...

stem cell implants restore sight... stem cells used to create a liver in
the lab... mind-reading devices expected within ten years... Obama
to be able to order the Internet shut down in a national emergency...
instability is the new normal... China a new hotbed of technology
David Forrest innovation... the next generation will have to reboot the world... the
advises US power grid to be secured against attack... China on a global spree
organizations of energy acquisitions... Europe could launch a third industrial
on emerging revolution, Jeremy Rifkin says... African leaders propose planting a
trends, and continent-wide tree belt to hold back the Sahara Desert... global
helps to develop warming threatens three large Asian rivers... a futurist looks at the
strategies importance of the present... UK academic predicts the next global
for a radically crisis within a few years...
different future
More great resources ...

the new book, Climate Refugees, by Collectif Argos, a team of writers

and photographers who spent four years meeting with the first
climate refugees to get a firsthand look at how people are already
being forced into exile... a link to the Collectif Argos website, ten
journalists who have committed to documenting the changes taking
place in our world... the video clip of a talk by Peter Diamandis,
Chairman and Co-Founder of Singularity University... a post by
Venessa Miemis on "network weaving" -- an essential skill for the 21st
century...

David Forrest
Innovation Watch

SCIENCE
Top Stories: Forward

Stem Cells From Own Eyes Restore Vision to Blinded Patients Know someone who
(Businesweek) - Patients blinded in one or both eyes by might be interested
chemical burns regained their vision after healthy stem cells in this newsletter?
were extracted from their eyes and reimplanted, according to Forward it
a report by Italian researchers at a scientific meeting.
Unsubscribe
Grow-Your-Own Organs Hope after Scientists Produce Liver
in Lab from Stem Cells (Daily Mail) - Scientists have grown a
Don't want to
liver in a laboratory, offering fresh hope to hundreds of
receive the
thousands of patients with diseased and damaged organs. It
newsletter?
raises the prospect of those in need of transplants one day
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being offered livers that are made to order. The first pieces
of lab-grown livers could be used in hospitals within just five
years, the researchers said.

TECHNOLOGY
Top Stories:

Japans Brainwave Initiative: Mind-Reading Bots by 2020

(H+) - In Japan, a short cryptic statement in the Nikkei,
Japans largest business newspaper, made a startling
announcement about a somewhat different vision of the
future a goal to make available commercial mind-reading
devices and personal assistant bots within the next 10 years.

Obama to Be Given the Right to Shut Down the Internet with

Kill Switch (Daily Mail) - President Obama will be given the
power to shut down the Internet with a 'kill switch' in a new
law being proposed in the US. He would be able to order
popular search engines such a Google and Yahoo to suspend
access their websites in times of national emergency.

BUSINESS
Top Stories:

The Black Swans Have Returned (Business Insider) - Risks of

black swans, previously perceived to be small by
corporations, investors, politicians and regulators, are now
being reassessed, owing to (among other issues)
globalization, tighter correlations, advancements in
technology, the growing/excessive complexities of
interlocking supply chains and derivatives, the acceptance of
greater/extreme risk-taking ("the longer people make money
by taking risk, the more imprudent they become," the Minsky
moment), the greater connectivity of increasingly more
complex systems (see Paul Ormerod and Rich Colbaugh) and
so forth. A greater and more dynamic instability is the new
normal.
China: The New Silicon Valley? (CNN) - China is becoming "a
hotbed of tech innovation of global impact and also a magnet
to attract top tier entrepreneurs coming from all over the
world in the same fashion as the Silicon Valley," said Franck
Nazikian, president of CHINICT, which bills itself as the
largest conference on China tech innovation and
entrepreneurship.

SOCIETY
Top Stories:

Rebooting the World: A Job for the New Generation (Globe

and Mail) - Don Tapscott - "The good news, graduates, is
that you are finishing school in a country with a strong
economy, consistently rated one of the best in the world to
live in. But the bad news is that the world my generation is
passing on to you is broken."

Plans To Secure Power Grid From Terrorists, Solar Storms

(PhysOrg) - Electricity is all around us. It lifts elevators,
pumps gas, lights rooms, cooks food, and even powers a
growing fleet of cars. We generally take the vast electric grid
for granted until it turns off. Only then do we realize how
important it is. Blackouts owing to technical foul-ups are bad
enough, but new hazards, some malicious and some from
nature, threaten to create electrical disturbances on an
unprecedented scale.

GLOBAL POLITICS
Top Stories:

Chinas Energy Grab is No Green Affair (Forbes) - Chinese

national oil companies have embarked on a "mega-spree" of
fossil energy foreign acquisitions, accounting in fact for
almost 20% of the worlds global deal value in the first
quarter of 2010.

Rifkin: European Dream Not Dead Yet (EurActiv) - Despite

the economic crisis and the struggle to save the euro, the
European dream is not dead yet: what Europe needs is an
"economic vision and game plan that would create a
seamless, distributive energy grid" to build a third industrial
revolution, said Jeremy Rifkin, author of The European
Dream, in an interview with EurActiv.

ENVIRONMENT
 Top Stories:

Push for Great Green Wall of Africa to Halt Sahara (BBC) -

African leaders are meeting in Chad to push the idea of
planting a tree belt across Africa from Senegal in the west to
Djibouti in the east. The Great Green Wall project is backed
by the African Union and is aimed at halting the advancing
Sahara Desert.

Global Warming Spells Doom for Asias Rivers (PhysOrg) -

The livelihood of thousands of Tibetans living on China's
highest plateau is under threat as global warming and
environmental degradation dry up water sources for three
mighty Asian rivers, experts say.

THE FUTURE
Top Stories:

A Futurist Looks Back to the Present (IEEE Spectrum) -

Robert W. Lucky - "Through the years I have gradually come
to appreciate that the really important predictions are about
the present. What is happening right now, and what is its
significance? The Internets progression from static to
streaming and solitary to social has not only made
predicting the present possible, it has redefined the whole
concept of what we mean by 'right now.'"

2014 The Next World Crisis? (PhysOrg) - A cataclysmic

"Great Event" is approaching which will occur in or around the
year 2014 and determine the course of the rest of the 21st
century, according to a startling new thesis published this
week.

Just in from the publisher...

Climate Refugees
by Collectif Argos

Read more...

A web resource...

Collectif Argos - The Argos team gathers eleven freelance journalists -- writers and
photographers -- dedicated to documentary work. Their reports focus on global, social or
environmental changes and on their impacts on human beings.
Conversation...

Peter Diamandis: The Best Way to Predict the Future (Singularity University)
Peter Diamandis, Chairman and Co-Founder of Singularity University, discusses the best
way to predict the future, and shares his personal philosophies on innovation and the
commercial space industry. Filmed at Singularity Universitys Executive Program, March
2010. (1h 46m 10s)

Ideas and opinions...

Essential Skills for 21st Century Survival: Part 3: Network Weaving (Emergent By
Design) - Venessa Miemis - "As Ive been exploring how to build relationships online and
create an environment where trust can be built, I naturally started introducing people from
different communities to each other in hopes they could benefit from each others
knowledge, wisdom, and experience. I noticed that different disciplines are having the same
conversation, just packaged in the jargon of their field. What if we could cross-pollinate
these conversations, allowing for new ideas to emerge?"

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