Jump The Curve Archives: 09/2008

Some Thoughts on Unlearning

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Sleep on It

I speak all over the world on the topic of innovation to businesses, trade associations, NGO’s and governmental organizations, and I have addressed this topic numerous times in this blog (see below). There are a myriad of strategies and tools employers can use to spark innovation, however, there is one simple thing they can do today to help get their workers’ creative juices flowing: They can let them take a nap!

The idea of allowing an employee to take a snooze on the company’s dime undoubtedly sounds heretical to many managers and executives but if you want to become an ”Exponential Executive,” I’d encourage you to follow the lead of companies such as Google, Cisco Systems and Procter & Gamble. They are now installing ”Energy Pods” (see the above photo) and encouraging employees to take 15-30 minute naps during the day.

The logic is simple: sleep can aid the brain in processing business problems and can lead to new insights. Still not convinced? My advice: sleep on it.

Interested in other innovative ideas from Jack Uldrich? Check out these past articles:

Develop a Future Bias
What’s Impossible?
Think 10X, Not 10%
Unlearn Your Mind-Set
The Power of Zenzizenzizenzic
Cultivate a Beginner’s Mind
Want to Spur Innovation? Award a Prize

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Our Robotic Future

When thinking about the future of robotics, it is important to understand how fast the field is progressing. To this end, I’d like to share with you two recent articles and a video. The first article explains how researchers are training robotic helicopters to perform complicated aerial maneuvers. What is in interesting about the work is that robots can study video footage and then learn these maneuvers in about 30 minutes. The second article highlights how a new robot can catch a baseball with a .750 fielding percentage.

Thirty minutes and .750 fielding percentage might not sound terribly exciting, but watch the video below and then consider how improvements in both algorithms and robotic technology will continue to improve both numbers, and I think you’ll agree that, soon, robots will be doing more than just operating as toy helicopters and engaging in childhood games.

Interested in other robot-related articles by America’s leading futurist, Jack Uldrich?

Meet Your Shape-Shifting Robotic Butler of the Future
It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane; No, It’s Super Robot
The Future of Hospitals (Robotics)
The Robot Will See You Now

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A Wave to the Future

Toshiba has developed a new gesture-based interface for flat-panel displays. It is easy to see how the technology might someday be used to replace the remote control, and it is also easy to envision how the technology will make for more interactive video games. But how else might the technology take root in the workplace of the future?

I envision a couple of possibilities. For one, doctors and surgeons will be able to access medical information without needing to touch anything (and, thus, not risk picking up any germs); students will be able to access educational information in new and innovative ways (imagine spinning around a complex 3-D molecule or a strand of DNA); advertisers will engage potential customers in unique ways; architects and designers will be able to more quickly manipulate models; physical therapists will be able to design programs that patients can practice on their television; athletes will be able to hone their reflexes on custom-made programs; and, more innovatively, manufacturers should be able to use a reverse version of the technology to show customers how to repair and fix things.

As the technology gets better, it is reasonable to believe that facial recognition technology will also get better. Therefore, in the near future, your television will be able to sense when you are frustrated or confused. If your problem can’t be fixed with a simple voice command (which should be possible as a result of continued improvements in voice recognition technology), your device should be able to direct you (in a manual sense) to a successful resolution of the problem. For example, it could show which screw to loosen or which wire to remove in order to fix a problem.

If you have other ideas on how the technology might change our lives, I’d be interested in your thoughts.

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You Don’t Know As Much As You Think You Know

As long-time readers of this blog know, I’m a big fan of the unconcept of unlearning. (In fact, I have another website dedicated exclusively to this issue. It can be found at www.unlearning101.com).

I recently came across this wonderful 12 minute presentation by Jonathon Druri entitled “You Don’t Know as Much As You Think.” I’d invite you to watch the full video below. If, however, you don’t have the time, I’ll leave with this quote which I stole from his presentation:

“Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out.”—Thomas Cardinal Wolsey

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Will I Die?

I ask the question from neither a deep-seated fear of dying nor an egotistical desire to live forever. I simply ask it from the perspective of someone who is deeply interested in the accelerating pace of change and is concerned we are heading into a future for which few of us are really prepared.

Let me begin by sharing a couple of recent news items which speak to the astounding progress being made in the field of health care.

To begin, if I am in need of surgery sometime within the next few years, it is likely that that surgery will be conducted with the assistance of a robot. Given that these robots are already better than many human surgeons, this suggest I will not only get out of the hospital faster but that I will be in better condition when I do so. Continued advances in robotics will only improve surgical outcomes over the coming years.

Next, say, I am in an accident. There is now a very good chance—due to advances in the Nationwide Health Information Network, personal electronic records and the ever-improving capability of the Internet—that my providers will be able to rapidly access a growing wealth of medical knowledge in order to keep me alive.

Much of this knowledge will likely be genetic in nature and it is not unreasonable to believe—given the extraordinary advances in genomics as well as the possibility that I will within a few years be able to sequence my own genome for less than $1000 dollars -- that I will soon be able to avail myself to a growing category of drugs individually tailored to treat me for everything from heart disease and diabetes to a wide variety of cancers.

Assuming then that I dodge some of these pesky middle-age risks, there is a very real chance, according to this article, that I’ll soon be able to ”grow replacement body parts.” We can already replace our aging hips and knees, but what happens when I can replace my lungs and, eventually, my heart?

The question is a serious one because society is closer to this future than most people realize.

Alas, these advances—which I remind you are only from the past few days—are just the beginning. I am now 44 years and it is not unreasonable to think, given recent medical progress, that I will live to 100.

But even this is the wrong way to think about this issue. The question I—and all of us, really—need to ask is what further advances will be made in the next 56 years of my life and how might they extend my life past 100 years of age?

I recall a few years ago the story of two longevity researchers who placed a wager with one another on whether a person born in the year 2000 would live to 150 years of age.

Operating on the assumption that neither person might be around to collect on the wager, they agreed to place their respective $150 bets in an interest-bearing trust fund.

Interestingly, in 150 years the $300 was calculated to grow to $500 million—assuming (I believe) a moderately aggressive annually compound interest rate of 10%.

The future of longevity seems, to me, to lie within the “power of compound interest.” Medical and biological information is growing at a rate comparable to 10% annually. Assuming medical knowledge continues at this pace for the next 56 years of my life, society will experience a roughly 256-fold increase in health care-related knowledge between today and the year 2064.

Put another way, as impressive as our medical knowledge is today, it will represent less than 1% of everything we will know when I reach the century mark.

Will that massive amount of new knowledge then help keep me alive another century? And what might we then learn within the following 100 years which could extend my life even further?

Framed this way, the question of “Will I Die,” is one we should all be contemplating—for our own sake and for the sake of society—now.

Interested in related articles by Jack Uldrich that speak to the possibility of radical life extension? Check out these past posts:

10 Reasons We Will Live to 1000

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The Future of Construction is Three-Dimensional

Recently, I have been speaking to more companies in the building and construction industry. The reason is simple: the leaders in the industry understand it is imperative that they innovate. To this end, one of the technologies I encourage them to incorporate into their future business plans is virtual reality technology.

This is for two reasons. First, new 3-D visual reality technology can help architects, engineers and general contractors “walk” through designs to find material clashes and construction errors, as well as find new and improved ways to design and build certain structures.

Second, as 3-D technology becomes more pervasive—and this informative article suggests that it will—I am convinced that both corporate customers and home-owners will begin demanding that virtual reality technology be configured directly into their offices and homes so that they can employ the technology to communicate, educate and entertainment themselves in ways that are fundamentally different from today. (For readers interested in this idea, I refer you to this old post.)

For related articles to the construction industry by Jack Uldrich. These out these past posts:

Printing the House of the Future
Bone Up on Your Material Sciences
The Future of Manufacturing

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The Future Face of Retail Advertising

“What we’re essentially doing is creating the retail environment of the future,” says Barry Salzman, CEO of YCD Multimedia, who is working with Dunkin Donuts to employ facial recognition technology to better target customers with tailored advertising.

In the infamous words of Homer Simpson, “D’Oh!”

This is both an impressive and a frightening display of new technology, but if retailers and advertisers want to “jump the curve,” they had better get a hold of how accelerating advances in facial recognition technology will change the retail advertising landscape in the near future.

Why is this? Because, according to this informative article, facial recognition is already 85% accurate and it is only going to get better. Secondly, more traditional methods of advertising—such as television ads—are no longer as effective as they once were. According to the article, it used to take only three ads to reach 85% of all women in 1996; now it takes 100! (I don’t actually know if these numbers are true, but as technology becomes more pervasive and our methods for receiving information continue to proliferate, the overall trend is clear—TV is becoming less effective.)

Interested in reviewing other future-related retail articles by Jack Uldrich? Check out these past musings:

Tesco Jumps the Curve
The Future of the Grocery Store
Retailers are Jumping the Curve

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Personalized Medicine’s Accelerating Future

This past week I gave a presentation on “The Future of Genomics” to the Minnesota Hospital Association. In the course of my speech, I listed a variety of reasons why society is accelerating toward a future of more personalized medicine, including advances in DNA microarray technology; the growing wealth of genetic knowledge being facilitated by such tools as the “Wikipedia” for Genes and the new ”SNPedia;" private money (in the form of the Archon X Prize); the growing number of start-up companies who are making it more possible for people to have either a portion or their entire genome sequenced by companies such as 23andMe, DeCode, Navigenics and Knome); and the recent passage of the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act (GINA).

Alas, none of these things speak to the possibility like real results. To that end, I’d like to highlight just two articles I came across this morning. The first is from the Wall Street Journal and the article discusses how an old heart drug, bucindolol, has been found to reduce death for people who have a certain genetic mutuation by up to 38%. The second article, ”Chemotherapy Get Personal,” reviews the findings of a recent study in the journal Genes and Development which explains how advanced computer algorithms are analyzing the activity of 20,000 genes to better match specific chemotherapy drugs with individual cancer patients.

The advances, of course, are just the tip of the iceberg. Many of the underlying technologies enabling these startling advances are growing exponentially and they portend a promising era of personalized medicine. In order to reach the full promise of this era, however, it is imperative that both citizens and health care officials alike begin preparing today for the wealth of genetic data that will soon be flowing their way.

Interested in related articles on genomics by Jack Uldrich? Check out these past posts:

The Future is About to Get Personal
You’ll Look and Feel Good in Genes
A Trillion Reasons to Care about Genomics
The Coming Health Care Revolution

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RFID Takes Another Small Step

I have written before about the growing influence of RFID technology, but in another sign that it is evolving into a mainstream technology; on Tuesday it was reported that Walgreen’s, the largest drug store chain in the United States, has integrated RFID technology into its shipping, warehouse management and material handling operations at its newest facility in South Carolina.

What I found really impressive with the news is that the technology is expected to make the distribution center 20% more efficient. Reportedly, nearly half of the workers at the facility have autism or other developmental or physical disabilities which suggests that the technology might also be helpful in bringing even more of these workers into the workplace.

Interested in seeing related articles? Check out these past posts by Jack Uldrich:

The Future of the Grocery Store
Retailers Begin to Jump the Curve
RFID Gets Untracked

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Businesses Newest Tool: A Personal Supercomputer

Yesterday, Cray, the self-described “supercomputer company” officially moved into the personal computing realm when it announced it’s new personal supercomputer, the CX1.

For years, supercomputers have been considered indispensable for large corporations. For example, using supercomputers, Boeing was able to reduce by seven-fold (from 77 to 11) the number of aircraft wings it needed to physically construct for its new “787” Dreamliner before finding the right one. In much the same way, the automotive industry has used supercomputing to help it reduce from 5 years to 18 months the time it takes to move a new automobile design from the drawing board to the showroom floor.

The relevance of Cray’s news is that now a number small and medium-sized businesses will be able to similarly avail themselves of the power of supercomputers. And what might these supercomputers help businesses do? Excellent question.

The best way to answer that is by providing some recent examples of companies using supercomputing:

1. Pringle’s has used supercomputers to help redesign the shape of its iconic potato chip so that it flies off the assembly line and into the can in a faster and more efficient manner.

2. Proctor & Gamble used a supercomputer to redesign its Pamper’s diaper brand.

3. Ping used supercomputers to redesign its latest golf clubs; and

4. Whirlpool has used a supercomputer to both redesign its packaging as well as revise its forklifts so that they no longer scratch and dent the equipment.

Of course, these are but a few examples. Oil and gas companies are using supercomputers to improve their search for hidden deposits and reserves; and financial services are using the tool for more comprehensive asset planning and wealth management.

But even these applications are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Supercomputing technology is rapidly moving downstream. If you want to “jump the curve,” you need to consider today how a supercomputer can help you remain competitive tomorrow.

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A MAV-erick Defense Policy

At present, the United States government spends hundreds of billions of dollars in an effort to keep this country safe at home and defeat its enemies abroad. Much of the money is well spent but, often, I can’t help but feel we are wasting precious resources fighting “the last war.” As I argued in this piece a few weeks ago, we should instead be ”studying the first six months of the next war.”

To end this end, I’d like to introduce you to a revolutionary new technology which could, in the words of the chief scientist of the U.S. Air Force, be a real “game-changer.” The Air Force calls the technology Micro Air Vehicles (or MAVs) and they are small, robotic drones (roughly the size of small birds) that could conceivably follow a terrorist back into a cave in Afghanistan and eliminate him.

The Air Force claims the drones will be “unobtrusive, pervasive and lethal” and they could be ready for action as early as 2015.

It, perhaps, goes without saying that the technology also poses some legitimate civil liberty concerns here at home, but the future seems to be moving inevitably in this direction and I’d much rather have the U.S. government aggressively pursue this technology than our enemies.

It also seems to me that this is the type of technology the Pentagon should be investing more in than, say, the new $500 million next-generation F-35 jet fighters or yet another $5 billion aircraft carrier.

For, in the end, it is not how much we spend on defense that counts, rather it is how wisely we spend our money that really matters.

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Everything You Think You Know About Video Games May Be Wrong

Think that video games lead to violence or anti-social behavior? Or that only male teenagers play video games? Or perhaps you are of the opinion that video games have no educational value . Well, think again and prepare yourself to unlearn. I strongly encourage you to read this post which highlights many of the recent findings of Henry Jenkins, the director of comparative studies at MIT.

I especially like the quote from James Gee who describes video gamers as “active problem solvers who do not see mistakes as errors, but as opportunities for improvement.” Of all the things that we must “unlearn,” one of the greatest is that mistakes are failures. Often they aren’t, instead they are a necessary and vital step down the path toward progress.

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What’s Impossible?

What’s impossible? The question sounds rather quixotic doesn’t it? It isn’t. It’s a question every business, political and community leader needs to ask themselves if they are truly serious about successfully leading their organization into the future.

We now live in an era of accelerating change. Every day new advances in nanotechnology, robotics, biotechnology, and information technology bring science fiction-like advances one step closer to becoming science fact. People unaware of these advances risk leaving their organizations unprepared to compete in this accelerating future.

A perfect case point occurred in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. There was an article entitled ”Why the Gasoline Engine Isn’t Going Away.” Although I disagreed with the premise of the article from the beginning, I decided to read it because I like to challenge my thinking. After finishing it, though, I concluded it was a piece of trash because the author completely missed the context of accelerating technological change.

For example, in a single sentence, he dismissed the possibility of fuel cell technology because hydrogen is currently expensive to transport and store. This is true today, but will it always remain so? The answer is no. Every week new advances in nanocatalysts and nanomaterials bring practical fuel cell technology one step closer to reality.

The same was true of his dismissal of advanced battery technology. To prove his point that battery technology will never be up for the job of replacing the internal combustion engine, he quotes a single battery manufacturer and accepts their conclusion that battery technology will always be expensive. I’d encourage the author to interview officials at A123 Systems and review their new battery technology. If he does, he might have reached an opposite conclusion.

The greater problem with the article, though, is that it serves only to reinforce the power of the status quo. Change is difficult and people will often latch on to any evidence that supports a person or organization’s resistance to change. The Exponential Executive, however, does not seek comfort in the status quo. Instead he or she constantly challenges it.

To this end, one of the most powerful tools for doing this is to challenge people’s perceptions and ideas of what is impossible.

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Unlearning Disease

With all of the information now pulsing around us, it is easy to forget that “we don’t know what we don’t know.” I constantly try to remind my clients in the health care sector of this simple fact. A case-in-point is the extraordinary strides being made in the field of genomics—which, due to accelerating gene sequencing technologies, are occurring on a daily basis.

One the bigger implications of these cascading discoveries is that they will likely fundamentally alter how we classify disease in the future. As a little historical reference, it is useful to consider that in 1850 there were only 140 categories of disease. In 1993, the last time the World Health Organization undertook the classification of all diseases, there were some 12,000. The next classification isn’t expected to occur until 2015, but it is not hard to imagine that the number of diseases—and how they will be classified—will increase even more.

For a great primer on this possibility, I’d encourage you to read this article, Redefining Disease, Genes and All. I especially liked this quote at the end of the article. One doctor, responding to the fact that as late as 1909 one of the leading causes of death was listed as “visitation of God,” he went on to offer this warning: “Imagine how they are going to to be laughing at us,” he said, “not 100 years from now, but even 50 or 20 years now.”

As a result of accelerating technological change, it is certain that “we don’t know what we don’t know” about a wide variety of diseases. To stay open to the possibility that these diseases might soon be both classified and treated differently , it is helpful to keep in mind the possibility that if you don’t change your views you will likely be widely mocked at some point in the future—and it might even be sooner than you expect.

Interested in viewing related articles on unlearning? Check out these past articles:

Does the Pharmaceutical Industry Need to Unlearn?
Is the Health Care Industry prepared to Unlearn?
Learning to Unlearn: Case Study #1
Examples of Unexponential Thinking

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A Sens(or) of the Future

Technology Review has an interesting article entitled ”Self Surveillance” describing the activities of a new start-up, Fitbit. The company has developed a small, unobtrusive sensor that tracks a person’s movement 24 hours a day.

To many people, the idea smacks of “Big Brother” and, undoubtedly, it does raise a number of privacy-related issues. However, I’d encourage people to think through where sensor technology is headed. Fitbit claims that the information it collects from people’s personal sensors will be used to monitor physical activity and thus help people control their weight, but there are boundless other applications as well.

For example, as America (and the world) continues to age, I can envision more and more elderly people wearing sensors to both monitor their health and help their loved ones know that they are safe. Similarly, if more people begin to wear sensors, future mobile communication devices—in partnership with sophisticated algorithms—will be able to more accurately determine traffic flow in everything from stores to our highways. (They will do this by aggregating the data from all of the sensors in a manner that doesn’t necessarily violate a person’s right to privacy). In turn, this wealth of information, can be used to increase productivity by helping people know when stores and freeways are crowded. It could also help retailers keep their stores fully staffed and allow traffic managers to employ better traffic congestion pricing policies.

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