Briefing - Artificial Lifeforms

Genesis Redux

The Economist - 22 May 2010

• Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith created the first creature without an ancestor although they needed some spare parts from a dead creature to make it work.
• Demonstrate's that life's essence is information.
• Started with the smallest living creature, a genome that lives in genital tracts and just has 485 genes; it is the tiniest known free living bacterium.
• Previously, in 2003, they synthesized a virus that spit out new viruses just as destructive to cells infected with the natural version.
• The new bacterium used this virus model in that they wanted it to multiply and produce more cells.
• Dr. Venter deleted 14 unnecessary genes and added some DNA designed from scratch in a process called watermarking.--when the bacteria grew and multiplied, so did the synthetic DNA--thus, IT WAS ALIVE.
• Dr. Jack Szostak is going to the next step by working on a minimal cell and wants to develop what he sees as life's earliest days might have been like - a self sustaining cycle of chemical reactions that can reproduce itself.
• We are searching for practical control over what life can be made to do.
• The pruning part of biotechnology involve eliminating proclivities that might be useful to a wild organism, but drain its energy from the task at hand.
• Another step is to repeat the trick with algae--which can be used for biofuels and help convert CO2 to Oxygen. Is this our solution to global warming?
• The price for doing it has to come down too.
• We all worry about the bad things that can happen but this is always the case. Software innovation comes with viruses, but are the implications here more existential?

Changing the Channel

A Special Report on Television

01 May 2010

Changing the Channel

Television is adapting better to technological change than any other medium, says Joel Budd

• The internet tends to disaggregate media products, breaking albums into tracks, and magazines into articles.
• People can pick and choose the content they want without paying too much.
• HBO was able to please viewers instead of advertisers and were able to take more risks and provide better products.

The Lazy Medium

How people really watch television.

• Even though we can record shows, nearly all TV is watched live.
• People may have strong ideas of what they want to watch, but what they really want to do is watch together.
• Watching patterns 1) First see what is on. 2) Then they move to stuff that's stored on media. 3) Lastly, they would go to on-demand video.
• People seem to underestimate how much television they watch and greatly overstate video that they watch

The Killer App

Television needs sport almost as much as sports needs television.

• Why do media firms pay so much for sports?
• 1) Only a certain number of teams with a certain number of games.
• 2) People usually watch them live so that they don't record them and fast forward through advertisements.
• 3) Ratings are usually guaranteed.

Who Needs it?

3D Television is coming whether or not you want it.

• 3D TV projects two images filmed from slightly different angles.
• The images are then directed to the correct eye to produce the 3-D effect.
• Active TV flashes the two images in quick succession and the set is synchronized with battery powered glasses that darken each lens alternatively so each eye sees images it is only supposed to see.
• Passive TV display the two images on alternate lines of the screen polarizing each line in a different direction; the glasses allow the left eye to see only one image and the right eye to see the other one.
• Sport events will probably spur 3D TV---apparently, filming sports in 3D is so compelling that it requires fewer cameras and cuts between cameras; the cameras are also lower on the field of play.

Here, there and everywhere

Television is spreading in new directions.

• Transmedia - using web video or web comics to supplement shows like Heroes or Lost.
• Experiences are deeper and more immersive for the fan.
• Value of transmedia is not measured in advertising dollars but in audience engagement.
• When Michael Jackson died, MTV quickly assembled a reel of the singer's performances and dispatched it globally; A truly decentralized outfit could not have done that.

An interactive Future

The last remaining mass medium needs to engage its audience and target its offering.

• The internet, both fixed and mobile, lures advertisers with promises of precision---why scatter a message among millions when you can target the few who would really be interested.
• Big shows are crowding out smaller ones partly because of the amplifying effects of social media, like Facebook, and partly through the spread of recorders which makes it easier to watch nothing but hits.
• TV subscriptions are aware of where people live---should be easier to target advertising as opposed to the more diffuse way they do it now, with generic commercials during the shows.
• If TV can combine scale with specificity and become more responsive to its audience, and target its advertisements more efficiently, it will continue to thrive.

A Canterbury Tale

The Battle within the Church of England to allow women to be bishops.

Jane Kramer - New Yorker

26 April 2010

• 1994 - The year women were first ordained as priests of the Church of England.
• Now - 1/3 of Church of England's working priests are women.
• 2008 - Process began for the investiture of the Church of England's first female bishop.
• July 2010 - General Synod, the Church's governing body is going to consider and expected to approve a draft for the change in canon law that would open the episcopate to women.
• Helen-Ann Hartley was ordained at 31 years old.
• Flying Bishop - Bishops that travel to provinces serviced by female priests and provide services to those churches that don't accept the female priests.
• The Episcopalians in America have 11 female bishops and weathered the departure of four right wing dioceses that broke away in 2006
• Jane Hedges, one of the four residentiary canons of Westminster Abbey, a "catholic" Anglican is likely to become the Church of England's first female bishop.
• The Legal Argument - Because of the Church's special status, priests are functionaries of the state and its position towards women violates anti-discrimination laws.
• The Scriptural Argument - Christ called men and women "equal in my hands". Although all the apostles were men, two women witnessed and announced the Resurrection.
• Catholic Church tried to lure away some Anglican priests with conversion regulations posted on their websites - papal poaching.
• Rowan Williams - Archbishop of Canterbury; with time, patience, he felt he could temper the opposition to female priests (Rowan's Obama Syndrome).
• Rowan does not rule the Church of England since the offspring churches are for the most part constitutionally independent.
• Half the world's Anglicans are in Africa with the strongest ongoing tradition of female priests is in South Africa.
• How long can you go without compromising women's integrity in the church.
• Paul of Tarsus influences conservative views - "The head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
• 1Corinthians - Let your women keep silence int he churches for it is not permitted unto them to speak.
• 2007 - Global Anglican Future Conference - produced a statement accusing the Anglican Communion of "false gospel" and concluded that recognition by Canterbury was not necessarily for Anglican Identity.
• As many as 1000 Anglican priests are said to be considering Pope Benedict's offer of conversion. Certain high Anglican rites would be retained; bishops would lose their Diocesan title and authority and would function under a celibate Anglican convert in consultation with a Roman Catholic bishop.

Briefing - Data Data Everywhere

A Special Report on Managing Information

27 February 2010

• Information has gone from scarce to superabundant.
• Decoding the human genome involves analyzing three billion base pairs--which took ten years the first time it was done in 2003, but now it can be done in a week.
• Big Data is the new term for the phenomenon.
• Data and information are hard to tell apart
• Given enough raw data, today's algorithms can reveal new insights that would have once remained hidden
• Revolutions in science have often been preceded by revolutions in measurement - microscope to electron microscope, for example.
• Craig Mundie (head of research and strategy at Microsoft) - Economies can form around the data; data is becoming the new raw materials for businesses
• Mundie and Eric Schmidt (boss of Google) sit on a Presidential task force to reform health care - "If you really want to reform health care, you build a sort of health care economy around the data that relate to people".; data becomes a central asset in trying to figure out how you would improve every aspect of health care.

A Different Game - Information is transforming traditional businesses

• Companies are collecting more data than ever before; these systems are being linked and data-mining techniques give a complete picture of their operations; described as a single version of the truth that allows firms to pick out trends and improve forecasting.
• Cablecom (a Swiss telecom company) - its software spotted that defections to other plans peaked in the 13th month, the decision to leave was made around the 9th month based on number of customer service calls, so the company offered deals at the 7th month which cut down defections to only 5%.
• Business decisions will be made on algorithms rather than hunches.
• Two trends are helping to fuel these new uses of data. 1) Cloud computing uses the internet to collect, store, and process data--companies can lease these computing powers as needed instead of buying expensive equipment 2) Open Source software allows companies to share information more easily.

Clicking for Gold

• Companies are compiling masses of data on people, their activities, their likes and dislikes, their relationships with others and even where they are -- and they are keeping the data private.
• Every eBay product category is treated as a micro-economy that is actively managed; lots of searches for an item without a lot of sales can mean lack of inventory so they can adjust accordingly.
• Making improvements based on big data sets have been done in the past like ancient ships comparing their route maps.
• Spell Check and Translation programs are done by cross checking with all of the available data.
• Google organizes the world's information; they aren't necessarily interested in owning it; they just want access to this information without sharing it with their rivals.

New Rules for Big Data

• Privacy - The tension between individuals' interest in protecting their privacy and companies' interest in exploiting personal information could be resolved by giving people more control.
• Processing Data - racial discrimination for a bank loan is illegal. But when a computer looks at educational level of the loan applicant's mother as a judge for approving a loan is indirectly racist, as education levels for women is often a racial issue in America.
• Privacy rules lean towards treating personal information as a property right. The trail of data that an individual leaves behind and that can be traced to him, from clicks on search engines to book buying preferences belongs to the individual, not the entity that collected it.

TS Eliot - Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?