Group items tagged

here is bipartisan support for SOPA and the like. Not universal support, mind you, but bipartisan. Why? Dan Nguyen thinks he knows why: They all suffer from the same brand of earnest ignorance.

It is a constant complaint: We're choking on information. The flood of data on the Web has reached mind boggling proportions, and it shows no signs of stopping. But wait, says Harvard professor Ann Blair - this is not a new condition. It's been part of the human experience for centuries.

I wrote about how NBC has handled Keith Olbermann's departure from his show on MSNBC. Writing that story put me in mind of one of the hoary chestnuts of public relations strategy, which is to let sleeping dogs lie for some situations. Veteran PR folks are fond of refering to a minor flap as a "one-day story," meaning that you read about it in the newspaper today, but it disappears tomorrow. Unfortunately, the Internet has forever ended the technique of letting the storm blow over.

How important is Twitter in the political revolutions sweeping the Middle East? That was the topic of discussion on stage at the CTIA mobile and wireless convention today in Orlando, Florida and two very different, very strong opinions were voiced. "I don't think anyone in their right mind would say that sending a tweet is the equivalent of activism," said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, "but it's another tool people can use." Kenneth Roth, executive director of of Human Rights Watch, one of the world's most respected human rights organization, framed things very differently though. He said on stage (above) that mobile technology in general would make it impossible today for something like Nazi Germany to unfold again the way it did historically.

Chance favors the connected mind. That is what author Steven B. Johnson says to those looking for the next big idea. Johnson is the author of "Where Ideas Come From" a book that looks at the macro trends on how innovation evolves. Ideas are rarely created through a "eureka" moment. It may seem like Doc Brown fell off his toilet and invented the flux capacitor, but really the idea for time travel and how to do it were converging in his brain for quite some time before the blow to head. Instead of an "aha!" moment, Johnson believes that ideas are born of a "slow hunch" that are made possible through periods of technological innovation and evolution. If you are creating a startup, where do you get your ideas from?

Alex Pang, a visiting fellow at Microsoft Research Cambridge, actively researches this area. Pang proposes a new paradigm called contemplative computing. Today he gave a talk on the idea at the Lift France 2011 conference and has published a PDF of it. You can also find a rough draft of his paper on contemplative computing. So can computers actually help improve our concentration and contemplation, instead of leading us into distraction? The problem, as Pang puts it, is that "Technologies that were supposed to help us think better, work more efficiently, and connect more meaningfully with others now interrupt us, divide our attention, and stretch us thin."

The time it takes for new products to come to market is getting ever shorter. As a consequence, goods are being produced using manufacturing facilities and IT systems that were designed with completely different models in mind. Fraunhofer developers want to make factories smarter so they can react to changes of their own accord.

Executives expect that new digital tech will transform their businesses, but admit their companies are far from prepared. (via @McKinsey)