Innovation Watch Newsletter - Issue 13.

12 - June 14, 2014 ISSN: 1712-9834

David Forrest is a
Canadian writer and
strategy consultant.
His Integral Strategy
process has been
widely used to increase
collaboration in
communities, build
social capital, deepen
commitment to action,
and develop creative
strategies to deal with
complex challenges.
David advises
organizations on
emerging trends. He
uses the term
Enterprise Ecology to
describe how ecological
principles can be
applied to competition,
innovation, and
strategy in business.
Highlights from the last two weeks...
scientists engineer white blood cells to be HIV-resistant...
researchers diagnose diseases by sequencing DNA from the blood
or spinal fluid of an infected person... a computer passes the
Turing test for the first time... algorithms recognize human
gestures or activities in videos... new websites allow businesses
to join the sharing economy... Google plans to launch satellites to
reach unconnected parts of the world... NSA collects millions of
faces from the web... Belgian information pioneer catalogued and
connected information long before the internet... China pursues
territorial claims by constructing artificial islands in the South
China Sea... China escalates its war on American technology
companies... Arctic sea ice is polluted with microplastics... China's
state of the environment report is grim... six ways the internet of
things will develop by 2025... a Silicon Valley venture capitalist
sees a future where most of us are unemployed...
More resources ...
a new book by David Marquand, Mammon's Kingdom: An Essay on
Britain, Now... a link to the McKinsey Insights & Publications
website... audio of a Kojo Nnamdi show on social impact bonds...
a blog post by Evan Selinger on how the internet of things will
cause us to outsource decisions to smart devices...
David is the founder
and president of Global
Vision Consulting Ltd.,
a strategy advisory
firm. He is a member
of the Professional
Writers Association of
Canada, the World
Future Society, and the
Advisory Committee of
the Institute for
Science, Society and
Policy at the University
of Ottawa.
David Forrest
Innovation Watch


SCIENCE TRENDS
Top Stories:
Stem Cells Edited to Produce an HIV-Resistant Immune
System (Wired UK) - A team of haematologists has engineered a
particular white blood cell to be HIV resistant after hacking the
genome of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). The technique
has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences and was devised by Yuet Wai Kan of the University of
California, former President of the American Society of
Haematology, and his peers.
Quick DNA Tests Crack Medical Mysteries Otherwise Missed
(NPR) - Researchers are developing a radical way to diagnose
infectious diseases. Instead of guessing what a patient might
have, and ordering one test after another, this new technology
starts with no assumptions. The technology starts with a sample of
blood or spinal fluid from an infected person and searches through
all the DNA in it, looking for sequences that came from a virus, a
bacterium, a fungus or even a parasite.
More science trends...

TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
Top Stories:
For the First Time Ever, a Computer Passed Turing Test for
Artificial Intelligence (Wire) - Yesterday, at a University of
Reading demonstration in London, a computer convinced human

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judges that it was actually a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy. By
convincing one-third of the judging panel of its humanity, it
became the first computer ever to pass the famous Turing Test.
The University of Reading test was a five-minute keyboard
conversation with someone or something on the other side. The
questions are a free-for-all -- no script is applied and there are no
topics assigned in advance. It's meant to simulate a conversation
with a complete stranger. The judges then determine if they
believe they have been speaking to a machine or a human. As
long as one-third of judges believe its human, the machine passes
the test.
Algorithm Searches for Human Actions in Videos (Wired UK)
- An algorithm has been developed to automatically recognise
human gestures or activities in videos in order to describe what is
taking place. MIT postdoc Hamed Pirsiavash and his former thesis
advisor Deva Remanan from the University of California at Irvine
have used natural language processing techniques in order to
improve computers' ability to search for particular actions within
videos -- whether it's making tea, playing tennis or weightlifting.
The activity-recognising algorithm is faster than previous versions
and is able to make good guesses at partially completed actions,
meaning it can handle streaming video.
More technology trends...
BUSINESS TRENDS
Top Stories:
The Sharing Economy Isn't Just For Consumers: Now Small
Businesses are Getting in On the Game (Fast Company) - So
far, the sharing economy has mostly been about consumers, but
the opportunity for businesses is at least as large. While
individuals can share their houses, cars, tools and parking spaces,
companies also have valuable assets that might be useful to
someone and could generate some extra cash. Floow2, in the
Netherlands, is an example of what an Airbnb for businesses could
look like. A marketplace for equipment like forklift trucks and
earth-diggers, it allows companies to list items theyre not using,
and have other businesses rent them out.
Google's Planning to Lace the Sky With Net-Providing
Satellites (Venture Beat) - Not content with driverless cars,
mobile platforms, or its Internet-dominating search engine, Google
is now planning to connect the unconnected parts of the world
with small satellites. According to a story in the Wall Street
Journal, the tech giant will spend between $1 and $3 billion to
build, launch, and manage 180 small, high-capacity satellites that
will be placed into orbits lower than traditional satellites. Citing
"people familiar with the project," the paper said the venture is


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being led by Greg Wyler, who previously founded Google-backed
satellite communications firm O3b Networks, and is already staffed
by 10 to 20 people.
More business trends...
SOCIAL TRENDS
Top Stories:
N.S.A. Collecting Millions of Faces From Web Images (New
York Times) - The spy agency's reliance on facial recognition
technology has grown significantly over the last four years as the
agency has turned to new software to exploit the flood of images
included in emails, text messages, social media, videoconferences
and other communications, the N.S.A. documents reveal. Agency
officials believe that technological advances could revolutionize the
way that the N.S.A. finds intelligence targets around the world,
the documents show. The agency's ambitions for this highly
sensitive ability and the scale of its effort have not previously been
disclosed.
The Birth of the Information Age: How Paul Otlet's Vision for
Cataloging and Connecting Humanity Shaped Our World
(Brain Pickings) - Decades before Alan Turing pioneered
computer science and Vannevar Bush imagined the web, a
visionary Belgian idealist named Paul Otlet (August 23, 1868
December 10, 1944) set out to organize the world's information.
For nearly half a century, he worked unrelentingly to index and
catalog every significant piece of human thought ever published or
recorded, building a massive Universal Bibliography of 15 million
books, magazines, newspapers, photographs, posters, museum
pieces, and other assorted media.
More social trends...
GLOBAL TRENDS
Top Stories:
China Building Dubai-Style Fake Islands in South China Sea
(Bloomberg) - Sand, cement, wood and steel are the latest tools
in China's territorial arsenal as it seeks to literally reshape the
South China Sea. Chinese ships carrying construction materials
regularly ply the waters near the disputed Spratly Islands,
carrying out work that will see new islands rise from the sea,
according to Philippine fishermen and officials in the area. Artificial
islands could help China anchor its claims and potentially develop

bases to control waters that contain some of the world's busiest
shipping lanes. China, which says the area falls within its 1940s-
era "nine-dash line" map, successfully assumed control of the
Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines in 2012 and has pressured
Vietnam in the past month with an exploration oil rig in waters
claimed by its neighbor.
China Escalates Its War on American Tech Firms (TIME) -
U.S. technology firms have often found China a tough market.
Microsoft has struggled with widespread software piracy.
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are all blocked by Chinese
censors. That costs the American Internet giants untold numbers
of potential customers. Now, in the wake of Washingtons charges
against five Chinese military officials for cyberspying, a riled
Beijing has intensified its criticism of U.S. tech businesses.
More global trends...
ENVIRONMENTAL TRENDS
Top Stories:
Arctic Sea Ice Polluted With Microplastics (CBC) - Arctic sea
ice has sopped up and stored large quantities of microplastic
pollution from populated areas in the south, a new study has
found. Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic from microscopic to
fingernail-sized that have been found polluting oceans and lakes
around the world over the past decade, but not so far north as the
Arctic Ocean. Scientists are concerned about them because they
tend to suck up and concentrate other pollutants in the
environment, which enter the food chain when animals swallow
microplastics.
China's Annual State of the Environment Report is Miserable
(Quartz) - China's government swears it is finally getting tough
on pollution, cracking down on everything from factory emissions
to cars in the capital city. One sign that things are changing:
analysts say the clean-up is already impinging on Chinas
economic growth. The country's newly-released "state of the
environment" report, however, paints a much grimmer picture of
an overwhelmingly polluted country.
More environmental trends...
FUTURE TRENDS
Top Stories:
6 Ways the Internet of Things Will Develop by 2025 (Fast
Company) - For some time now, futurists have imagined an
"Internet of things" where everything from vehicles to appliances
are part of one big network. Two decades ago, it seemed like a
fanciful idea. Today, it looks inevitable. All the pieces are in place,
and some of them are already connected. A new report from the
Pew Research Center Internet Project and Elon University's
Imagining the Internet Center looks further ahead to 2025, and
asks how things will have moved on by then. Its conclusions --
summarized below -- are based on responses from 2,551 people,
both Internet "experts" and members of the public.
A Silicon Valley VC Imagines a Future Where Most of Us
(Except Robots) Don't Have Jobs (Fast Company) - Steve
Jurvetson, a partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm DFJ,
calls himself a "raging techno-optimist." But at last weekend's
XPrize Visioneering event, a gathering of over 100 like-minded folk
tasked with thinking up ideas for the next big XPrize challenge,
Jurvetson offered a warning: The world needs to think about what
a future of abundance will do to the gap between rich and poor.
An investor in futuristic tech companies like SpaceX and Synthetic
Genomics, Jurvetson gave his talk during a series of short sessions
from event participants.
More future trends...
From the publisher...
Mammons Kingdom: An Essay on Britain, Now
By David Marquand
Read more...
A Web Resource... McKinsey Insights & Publications - McKinsey publishes insights that
help to advance the practice of management and provide leaders with facts on which to base
business and policy decisions.
Multimedia... Social Impact Bonds Come to Washington (Kojo Nnamdi) - Local
governments are using a new fundraising tool to solve problems like homelessness and teen
pregnancy. With Social Impact Bonds, private investors give money to non-profits to solve
problems. If they are successful, government pays them back with interest. If they don't
make their goals, they don't get paid. Kojo explores the potential of a business approach to
public problems. (52m 37s)
The Blogosphere... Google vs. Our Humanity: How the Emerging "Internet of
Things" is Turning Us Into Robots (Salon) - Evan Selinger "According to a new Pew
Research Center report, by the time 2025 rolls around the Internet of Things will
dramatically improve our lives. Janna Anderson, co-author of the document, says experts
expect 'positive change in health, transportation, shopping, industrial production and the
environment.' While these are genuine possibilities, I'm worried that insufficient attention is
being paid to a troubling issue that goes beyond potential privacy problems: the moral cost
of outsourcing our decisions to increasingly interconnected smart devices."

Email: future@innovationwatch.com