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"'If it's not talking to each other, it's not a market.' Europe, despite being a political union (of sorts), does not yet feel like a real market. Part of the solution would be to know more about each other, and to talk to each other more often. That's what 'Whiteboard' wants to offer: a place to find information about interesting businesses and innovation, and to talk about it." So yet another DJ journalist, as professor Mark Deuze would say. Raf Weverbergh left the Flemish magazine Humo and started his own venture, Whiteboard.  He won't be the one who is on stage all the time creating his very own content, but rather he invites contributors to talk about entrepreneurship in Europe. Which seems like a great idea, as Europe is not just that doom and gloom continent - but it needs media ventures to talk about its entrepreneurs and to facilitate the conversation between entrepreneurs. So I cannot wait to hear a thousand (or more) entrepreneurial voices on Whiteboard reporting about exciting new things in Europe! 

"The acquisition could be read as a signal to the world that China is determined to be a major competitor in the future genome sequencing market."

The famous sociologist Manuel Castells in an interview by Paul Mason (BBC):  "With Facebook and with all these social networks what happened is that we live constantly networked. We live in a culture of not virtual reality, but real virtuality because our virtuality, meaning the internet networks, the images are a fundamental part of our reality. We cannot live outside this construction of ourselves in the networks of communication." Ever wondered why people try to redefine themselves by nationalism, regionalism, membership of small subcultures, even though the world is globalizing fast? I think Castells has some anwers on that too:  "The more we are connected to everything and everybody and every activity, the more we need to know who we are. Unless I know who I am, I don't know where I am in the world, because then I am a consumer, I am taken by the market, I am taken by the media. "And therefore people decide that they are going to be different. But to do that, they have to identify themselves as individuals, as collectives, as nations, as genders, all these categories that sociologists have already constructed time ago." Castells explains how people in this crisis engage in co-operative or non-profit work. It's a kind of 'non-capitalism'.  Putting now on my list: his new book Aftermath. 

The robotic future is here, and it looks nothing like we thought it would. Instead of humanoid, highly-intelligent robots that do our bidding, the future is increasingly one of robotic swarms, robotic quadrotors, and tiny robots no larger than insects that perform surgery.

'We're in the middle of a revolution caused by the near collapse of free-market capitalism combined with an upswing in technical innovation, a surge in desire for individual freedom and a change in consciousness about what freedom means.'

For advanced economies, such imbalances would likely lead to more long- term and permanent joblessness. More young people without post-secondary training would fail to get a start in the job market and older workers would drop out because they don't qualify for jobs that are being created. The polarization of incomes between high- and low-skill workers could become even more pronounced, slowing the advance in national living standards, and increasing public-sector burdens and social tensions. In some advanced economies, less-skilled workers could very well grow up poorer than their parents, in real terms.

"Britain plans to make it easier for technology firms to list their shares in London, the government said on Thursday, in an attempt to stem the flow of high-growth companies heading across the Atlantic in search of capital." Interesting. Countries in a competition to keep their tech wizards at home. But how important are stock markets for innovation? And nation-states? Don't think too fast stocks and nation-states are something of the past... 

"Everyone there was a "Quant." No one cared what the underlying company represented by a given stock actually did. Apple or General Motors, CAT or IBM… Everything boiled down to a set of statistical observations that, when assembled into the proper algorithm, delivered a portfolio that beats the market." I just love the title of that conference: Alpha Generation - Using News Sentiment Data

A new generation of tools has been improved over the last five years, changing the entire financial world, thanks to the unprecedented levels reached by technology - impossible to conceive some years ago. Velocity, liquidity, price efficiency and systemic risks: the HFT (High-Frequency Trading) era has started.