1. Should We Vaccinate Wild Apes? - Jennifer Viegas via Discovery New — If we are to save the great apes, many believe we will have to vaccinate them from common shared diseases, like measles, mumps and rubella, as humans and great apes are coming into closer contact. Also, new research on vaccines against Ebola  — which has a 90% mortality rate in humans — could lead to wiping out that disease in the ape population, where is is now killing 1/3 of chimpanzees and gorillas, and maybe cutting off one of the sources of ebola outbreaks in human populations.

#ebola #apes #vaccination

2. Neanderthals are as Unprepared for Modernity as We Are - Kyle Munkittrick via IEET — Speaking of non-homo sapiens primates, and living in close proximity with them, Kyle Munkittrick suggests we should clone Neanderthal in order to learn more about them, and us, and he also makes the case that this would be ethical: at least as ethical as a human parent deciding to have a child, so long as we provided the Neanderthal ‘a proper foster family, strict guidelines for study, adequate privacy, and full human rights, I can see no reason cloning a Neanderthal would be unethical.’

reconstruction by Kennis and Kennis / photo by Joe McNally / via National Geographic

#neanderthal #cloning #bioethics

3. Nerve probe controls cyborg moth in flight - Anil Ananthaswamy - New Scientist — DARPA has found a way to control the flight of a moth, one equipped with a radio-controlled probe to send signals to nerves in their abdomen. The MIT researchers behind this hope to use such moths for surveillance, outfitted with tiny cameras and transmitters.

#cyborg #moths #surveillance

4. Somebody’s watching: how a simple exploit lets strangers tap into private security cameras - Katie Notopoulos via The Verge — More on the surveillance front: Console Cowboys details how to hack into Trendnet home security cameras and watch their streams. Yikes.

#hacking #securitycameras #trendnet #surveillance

5. Did Wal-Mart love RFID to death? | SmartPlanet - Matthew Malon via SmartPlanet — Wal-Mart coerced its suppliers to integrate RFID into all goods, but the revolution in supply chain just hasn’t happened, despite all the hype in the early and mid-’00s. Nowadays, it is used more in retail stores for inventory control, not across the entire supply chain.

#rfid #wal-mart #supplychain

1.  Scientific publishing: The price of information via The Economist —There is a growing revolution in the scientific community, a rejection of the status quo involving scientific journals. Many prominent academics are advocating a more open, less commercial model of publishing, where companies like Elsevier don’t get to make hundreds of millions based on labor and writing provided by academics.

#academia #academicpublishing #newmedia

2. Report Card for America’s Infrastructure via The American Society Of Civil Engineers — ASCE gave the US an overall D in infrastructure in 2009, and estimates that $2.2 trillion needs to be invested over the following five years, which has obviously not been done. ASCE estimated that less that $1 trillion would be spent. We can expect a serious degradation of infrastructure — roads, aviation, dams, bridges, energy, water systems, schools, parks, rail and transit — and at least a few spectacular disasters before we even start to pay attention.

#infrastructure

3. Data Philanthropy: Public & Private Center Data Sharing for Global Resilience - Robert KirkPatrick via Global Pulse — KirkPatrick fashions the term data philanthropy — ‘the private sector shares data to support more timely and targeted policy action’ — and suggests that the architecture of releasing and reusing big data in the public center is still unformed, but has great promise. Issues of privacy, sharing, and tools are obvious, but the need for world resilience is even more clear.

#bigdata #dataphilanthropy #robertkirkpatrick #globalpulse

4. How Rapidly Cities Are Growing - Arjan de Raaf via Infographic List — Interesting infographic that show the number of people per hour migrating to the world’s largest cities. Delhi is adding 49 people per hour.

#migration #cities #urbanization #infographic

5.  U.S. Space Science Confronts New Economic Reality - Adam Mann via Wired.com — Despite claims of American exceptionalism and innovation, funding for space science is dwindling and various agencies are having to make draconian choices on astronomy, exploration, and other space research. NASA may be backing out of two international space missions to Mars, for example, and meanwhile the costs of the planned James Webb Space Telescope have grown from $1B to $8.7B.

The segmented mirrors of the planned James Webb Space Telescope

#space #nasa #telescopes

…

1.  US Postal Service loses $3.3 bln in first quarter - via Reuters — The U.S. Postal Service reported a net loss of $3.3 billion in its first quarter (ending Dec 31st) with total mail volume falling 6.1%. USPS lost $5.1B last fiscal year, and is being blocked from its plan to close thousands of facilities and restructure its worker benefits by the US Congress. Expect USPS to hit its debt ceiling this fall, or sooner. I predict it will be renationalized, and radically restructured: imagine Fedex operating as the USPS, or ‘post offices’ in supermarkets.

#usps #postoffice #mail

2. Today Yesterday: 5 Vintage Visions for the Future of Technology - Maria Popova via Brain Pickings — Retro futuristic visions of the then-future: the office (1969), electronic journalism (1981), clothing (1930s), the hospital (1950s), and banking (1965). Wow.

#retrofuturism #futureofwork #journalism #e-everything

3.  Google Reincarnates Dead Paper Mill as Data Center of Future - Cade Metz via Wired — More importantly, the paper mill, built in 1953, has access to the frigid Baltic Sea which is employed to cool the server farm with massive heat exchangers:

Google is a good citizen though: it returns the water to the Baltic almost as cold as when it was borrowed, using Baltic water, again.

#datacenters #google #finland

4.  The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be - Jamais Cascio via Open The Future — Cascio says that futurists have become adept at prophesying technological advances (“boys with toys”), but remain relatively bad at nearly everything else:

The TL;DR version

Technology foresight has been stuck for the last 10-20 years; we need to be paying more attention to social-cultural futurism.

My push is to ‘postfuturism’ — to get out of the stranglehold of conventional futurist thinking.

#socialfuturism #futurism #jamaiscascio #postfuturism

5.  Envisioning the Future of Technology - Alex Mensing via The Long Now Blog — In a way confirming what Jamais Cascio was talking about in The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be (see above), London-based designer Michell Zappa created an amazing graphic for envisioning emerging technology in the near future.

#futurism #emergingtechnology #michellzappa

1. Jules Verne: The Man Who Invented the Future - Ward Jenkins via  The Ward-O-Matic — Peter Plasencia’s illustrations of Verne’s works are wonderful, although the book is out of print.

#julesverne #futurism

2. U.S. House of Representatives Passes H.R. 2930, the ‘Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act’ - Eric Blattberg via Crowdsourcing.org — Us House of Representatives votes in favor of allowing companies to raise money on the web through crowdsourcing; Senate is expected to vote in 2012. This sort of securities selling is already legal in parts of Europe, and is likely to dramatically shift early stage financing for start-ups in the US.

#crowdsourcing #HR2930 #start-ups #funding

3. ‘Google Glasses’ with built-in computer displays ‘could be on sale soon’, says insider - Rob Waugh via Mail Online — We may all be wearing ‘Terminator Goggles’ soon, according to a Google insider. The glasses resemble Oakley Thumps, and would provide a heads-up display on one of the two lenses, and also mount a camera to assist in virtual reality processing. The biggest things holding back real miniturization of computers are keyboards and displays. If we can do away with displays — and shift onto goggles — we’ll be halfway there. The solution to the keyboard is gesture, which the googles-mounted camera could solve.

#goggles #HUD #google

4. ABB revs-up electric car charging network - Caroline Copley via Reuters — ABB believes car chargers for electric cars should be a billion dollar industry within 5 years. Current market is just $50-$100 million. Big oil companies dispute predictions of 5+M electric cars by ‘17, and 7.7M recharging stations worldwide.

#energy #carchargers #ABB #electriccars

5. Solar Power Capacity Increased 54% in 2011 - Zachary Shahan via CleanTechnica — Reaching ~28 gigawatts worldwide solar capacity grew 54%, mostly in Germany and Belgium, led by a massive drop in the price of solar panels, according to Bloomsberg, who also predict leveling off in ‘12.

#solar #capacity

1. WikiCells: Bottles That We Eat - David Edwards via Wyss Institute at Harvard — Edwards and others have cooked up a new form of ‘container’ — wikicells — based natural food membrane using the electrostatic characteristics of materials like food wrap. Except now, instead of plastic, these ‘containers’ can be made of food themselves, like a container for cooked brisket made of gravy, or a ‘carton’ of ice cream encased in ice cream.

#foodstuff #wikicells

2. Startup Soraa unveils game changing next-gen LED light - Katie Fehrenbacher  via GigaOM — The inventor of the white LED and the blue laser, Shuji Nakamura, has invented technology at Soraa to make LEDs that are brighter, better quality, more efficient, and cost less to make. Relying on gallium nitrate, and avoiding silicon carbide, the new LED line will likely lead to a $400M/year run rate for Soraa, which has raised $100M from by Khosla Ventures, NEA and NGEN Partners.

#soraa #led #energy #galliumnitrate #shujinakamura

3. For Multitaskers, Multiple Monitors Improve Office Efficiency - Matt Richtel via NYTimes.com — NEC says 30% to 40% of the employees of its corporate customers now used more than one monitor, up from 1% four years ago. More liquid media — Twitter, Facebook, chat — require more real estate to be exposed, and falling costs and increasing thinness of displays is also a factor. Expect the corporate norm to be two monitors next year, and three monitors on 50% of desktops.

#monitors #streaming #productivity #overload

4. Future Hipsters - YouTube - via futurehipsters.com — Funny spoof of today’s hipsters 40 or 50 years from now, looking back on the present day, thanks to Social Media Week.

5. Why William Gibson Distrusts Aging Futurists’ Nostalgia - via Wired.com —

Gibson: Futurists get to a certain age and, as one does, they suddenly recognize their own mortality, and they often decide that what’s going on is that everything is just totally screwed and shabby now, whereas when they were younger everything was better.

It’s an ancient, somewhat universal human attitude, and often they give it full voice. But it’s been being given voice for thousands and thousands of years. You can go back and see the ancient Greeks doing it. You know, “All that is good is gone. These young people are incapable of making art, or blue jeans, or whatever.” It’s just an ancient thing, and it’s so ancient that I’m inclined to think it’s never actually true. And I’ve always been deeply, deeply distrustful of anybody’s “golden age” — that one in which we no longer live.

Humans, Version 3.0 - Mark Changizi via SEEDMAGAZINE.COM — Changizi says near-term  human adaptation won’t be based on genetic manipulation or mutation, but is more likely to be based on neuronal recycling, where we repurpose brain centers to something that they aren’t innately set up to do. This is how we cooked up written language, mathematics, and music: by extending our innate capabilities by the creation of artifacts that mimic natural phenomena that our minds know how to manipulate.

#neuronalrecycling #cognition

Flingo Gets $7 Million for a Second-Screen Bet - Peter Kafka via AllThingsD — August Capital invested $7M in Flingo, a ‘second screen’ social play. The ‘second screen’ refers to the use of a computer or mobile device while watching TV, usually for social interaction. Kafka thinks there is still room for specialized players: Facebook and Twitter don’t have a monopoly here. I agree.

#flingo #secondscreen #social tv #augustcapital

In the Developing World, Solar Is Cheaper than Fossil Fuels - Kevin Bullis via Technology Review — In another example of how technology can leapfrog in developing countries, solar power is being adopted in a bottom-up grassroots way in Africa and other regions where people don’t have access to the electric grid, and solar is competing with lamps running on kerosene. Companies like Eight19 make low-cost lighting systems, where customers pay a low initial purchase fee and a weekly payment, usually by a scratch card from a local vendor that provides them a code, enabling electricity for a week. Once the customer has covered the cost of the unit — in 18 months or so — they can trade up for a larger one.

#eight19 #solar

Urbanflow Aims To Turn Cities Into Playgrounds For Interactive Infographics - John Paulus via Co.Design — A compelling concept video for an ‘operating system for cities’, comprising public kiosks, devices, and web apps called Urbanflow, produced by Urbanscale. Makes a pretty compelling vision of how the public spaces of cities — through kiosks and interactive surfaces — could coordinate information flow making cities more accessible and better instrumented.

#urbanflow #cities #urnbanscale #connectedcities

Microsoft’s Productivity Future Vision - John Gruber via Daring Fireball — John Gruber saw a Microsoft future vision video (which I think has some cool ideas about device interactions) but it infuriated him:

This video encapsulates everything wrong with Microsoft. Their coolest products are imaginary futuristic bullshit. Guess what, we’ve all seen Minority Report already. Imagine if they instead spent the effort that went into this movie on making something, you know, real, that you could actually go out and buy and use today.

The moral is that you need to have more than cool ideas. If you are a monster like Microsoft, you need to back up your hype with real product.

#microsoft #johngruber #futurevision #affordances

Aggregation is deep in journalism’s DNA - David Skok via Nieman Journalism Lab — Skok spelunks in old old media — the 1920’s — and confirms that editors have been aggregating materials forever: it’s not some pernicious web innovation. Especially interesting are the observations of Bruce Bliven, the one-time managing editor of The New York Globe and editor of The New Republic, whose thoughts were aggregated by Time magazine from an essay he wrote in The Atlantic Monthly:

“The public,” says Mr. Bliven in effect, “is always asking about Newspaper morals. But equally important with newspaper morals is newspaper intelligence. And both of them are changing drastically, dangerously, because of mechanical progress.”

No Joke: These Guys Created A Machine For Printing Houses On The Moon - Tim Maly via Co.Design — USC professors Behrokh Khoshnevis (Engineering), Anders Carlson (Architecture), Neil Leach (Architecture), and Madhu Thangavelu (Astronautics) mocked up a plan to build a Moon base with robot-controlled 3-D printers, so people wouldn’t have to show up on the lunar surface until all is built, and the coffee is hot.

As We May Think - Vannevar Bush via The Atlantic, 1945 — Perhaps the most prescient piece of all time, As We May Think’s author, Vannevar Bush, envisioned the Memex (memory + index = memex): a hypothetical hypertext system that presaged and influenced the development of the web. Vannevar Bush was the Director of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development, and is no relation to the two America presidents with the same last name.

Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus - Sally Adee via New Scientist — New research by Michael Weisend on transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) — sending 9 volts though the brain — leads to much faster learning of motor skills (~ 2.3 times faster), like sharpshooting, as well as the creation of a flow state. This builds on research about the different excitation patterns between the brains of expert and amateur athletes. We can expect much faster training in the future, breaking the 10,000 hour rule. Now a number of DIY tDCS enthusiasts are investigating this on their own, part of a cosmetic neuroscience trend.

Let the Robot Drive: The Autonomous Car of the Future Is Here - Tom Vanderbilt via Wired — Vanderbilt takes rides in Google’s autonomous car and looks at what Mercedes, BMW, VW, and other car makers have in the works, and concludes it’s time to step aside for our robotic overlords, at least as far as driving is concerned. He wonders ‘Imagine the complexity we’ll have when cars drive themselves. Who will be responsible for their operation—the car companies or the drivers? What happens, for example, when a highway patrol officer pulls over a self-driving car? Who gets the ticket?’ Anthony Levandowski, of Google, says ‘The fact you are still driving is a bug, not a feature.’

Device Usage on the Social Web - by the bitly science team via bitly blog — Examination of Bitly links shows that a/ Mac OS X devices are used more like mobile devices than other OS’s, b/ Kindle usage is much later at night than other devices, and c/ Windows and Linux users act very much the same.

You Already Own the Next Most Important Transportation Planning Tool - Emily Badger via The Atlantic Cities — AirSage is analyzing cell phone data to discern transportation patterns extremely useful in urban planning: why did it take so long for this to be obvious?

The Wi-Fi of the Future Has Arrived - Justin Fritz via Wall Street Daily — white spaces technology, using spectrum formerly used by TV, is a lower frequncy than wifi, and can pass through walls and other obstructions wifi cannot. And it oculd be managed on a municipal basis. Isn’t it time that we treat wifi as a public good, like roads, instead of as a utility? (h/t to plerudulier)

Cities via Scientific American Magazine September 2011 — Issue devoted to the world’s rapid urbanization. Bookmark this for reference in the years to come, with foundational pices by Edward Glaeser, Luiz Bettencourt and Geoff West, and William Gibson, among others. “The Internet, which I think of as a sort of meta-city, has made it possible for people who don’t live in cities to master areas of expertise that previously required residence in a city, but I think it’s still a faith in concentrated choice that drives migration to cities.” - William Gibson. (h/t to plerudulier)

10-Year-Old Accidentally Creates New Molecule in Science Class - Dan Nosowitz via Popular Science — Fooling around with a ball-and-stick model in a 5th grade science class, Clara Lazen configured a molecule and asked if it was real. The science teacher was unsure, and after contacting a chemist friend learned that the molecule was totally possible, but had never been discovered. Clara is now the coauthor of a peer-reveiwed paper on tetranitratoxycarbon, the substance she discovered. (h/t infoneer-pulse)

Qualcomm, Ericsson just brought mobile calls into the IP age - Kevin Fitchard via Broadband News and Analysis — Qualcomm and Ericsson have prototyped SRVCC – single-radio voice call continuity – the next step in migrating today’s creaky circuit-switched voice networks to the IP world of VoLTE, or voice over LTE. This is all very important because cell phones are a kludge of multiple radio channels of varying speeds and relying on old old tech, like Ma Bell’s switches instead of the Internet’s IP. Also, this will likely increase battery life for mobile devices.

Once Again, RSS Is Dead. But ONLY YOU Can Save It! -  John Battelle — John Battelle once again declares RSS dead, since he has 400,000 RSS subscribers but only 644 clicks on a recent post. The action has moved away from RSS to streamed URLs, and RSS is becoming obsolete?

Twitter – A Wiser Way to Censor? - Eric Sander via Big Think — Eric Sander thinks that Twitter’s new censorship policy (which he explains) might be considered an improvement, not cause for opprobrium.

Mythbusters Banned From Discussing RFID By Visa And Mastercard - Jacob Sloan via Disinformation — Mythbusters host Adam Savage says that Mastercard and Visa ‘banned’ the show from detailing how easy it is to hack RFID chips in many credit cards.

First: Apple’s rank in mobile phone profitability and revenues - Horace Dediu via asymco — Apple captures about 90% of the profits of the mobile phone market.