Group items tagged

The objective of this project is the design and development of a privacy-aware content filtering platform focused on future pervasive wireless networks.  I'm expected to design a content filtering and users protection platform based on two building blocks:

The primary role that productivity plays in the network economy is to disperse technologies. A technical advance cannot leverage future opportunities if it is hoarded by a few. Increased productivity lowers the cost of acquisition of knowledge, techniques, or artifacts, allowing more people to have them. When transistors were expensive they were rare, and thus the opportunities built upon them were rare. As the productivity curve kicked in, transistors eventually became so cheap and omnipresent that anyone could explore their opportunities. When ball bearings were dear, opportunities sired by them were dear. As communication becomes everywhere dirt cheap and ubiquitous, the opportunities it kindles will likewise become unlimited.

The goal of the workshop is to explore ways to become better providers and connectors of knowledge in a world where the sources of knowledge are increasingly diverse and dispersed. At the World Bank, for example, we are seeking ways to connect with new centers of research, emerging communities of practice, and tap the practical experience of development organizations and the policy makers in rapidly developing economies. Our goal is to find better ways to connect those that have the development knowledge with those that need it, when they need it.

500 feet beneath the ocean's surface, the Colorado receives their orders!

It seems that more and more policy makers, advocacy groups, advertisers and media pundits are making claims based on science: this kind of potion is good for your health, that chemical is bad for the environment, this new technology can reduce crime. How is the public supposed to know what to believe?

SANTA BARBARA-"Maybe we're just too dumb," Nobel laureate physicist David Gross mused in a lecture at Caltech two weeks ago. When someone of his level wonders whether the unification of physics will always be beyond mortal minds, it gets you worried. Since his lecture, I've been learning about a theory that seems to confirm Gross's worry. It is so ridiculously hard that it could be the subject of an Onion parody. But at the same time, I've been watching how physicists are trying to power through their intimidation, because the theory promises a new way of understanding what space and time really are, at a deep level.

In 1991, when I was a staff writer for Scientific American, I wrote a letter to Thomas Kuhn, then at MIT. I said I wanted to profile him for Scientific American and "tell readers how you developed your views of the process of science." When he didn't respond, I called. Kuhn was reluctant to do the interview. He distrusted journalists, and he was still peeved by an old Scientific American review of his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. When I persisted, Kuhn asked to see other profiles I had done, and I mailed him pieces on his MIT colleagues Claude Shannon and Noam Chomsky.

For me, roller derby began with a very steep learning curve. I didn't know how to skate, I didn't know the rules, and so every practice left me physically and mentally exhausted. I did bring my own skill set to the sport: I've been an athlete my whole life, and played many a contact sport, and so some parts of roller derby - the physical fitness, hitting, body awareness, cross-training and nutrition - came easily.