The KnowledgeWall display provides a forum for iterations to communicate some results from our Weak Signal® Research activities to the rest of the Value Web®. This page documents materials that have spent some time on the KnowledgeWall display, which is physically located upstairs at the Palo Alto knOwhere® Store. Items are organized in chronological order of when it was added to the wall, not necessarily when it was published. All items are physically archived in the iterations KnowledgeWall Archive, part of the iterations library. Where possible, the url for the item will also be included on this page. Please e-mail the webmaster with your contributions, questions and comments.

Anchors have been placed before each entry on this page to enhance linking capabilities and create a yet another emergent path through our website. Anchors are named with the first two words of the article (not including "the", "an", "of", etc., or initials), and the date of Knowledge Wall entry. For example, the anchor for The Plan to Save Fallingwater, entered on August 25, 2000 is: #plan_save_08.25.00. Note that the protocol for archiving these K-Wall pages is still being worked out. Please inform the webmaster about links you make to this page.

Other Knowledge Wall pages can be accessed from the Site Index page.

December 29, 2000

BetterTogether, The Report of the Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America, December 19, 2000.

"The goal of BetterTogether is to provide interactive opportunities to celebrate the new and better ways that americans are connecting, and provide tools that make it easier for them to do so."

click here for the pdf

http://www.bettertogether.org/

Caltech, MIT Offer to Help Fix Voting Equipment, by Kenneth R. Weiss, San Jose Mercury News, December 15, 2000.

"California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced Thursday they will join their brainpower to figure out how to update the nation's creaky voting apparatus and develop a better way to cast ballots. 'It's preposterous that a lack of technology would bring this democracy to its knees,' said Caltech President David Baltimore. 'It is embarrassing to America ... So we have a responsibility to make sure it never happens again.'"

Chemistry Without Chemicals: New Supercomputer Center Helps Chemists Understand Complex Reaction Processes, EurekAlert, December 14, 2000.

" One of the most powerful academic supercomputers in the Southeast forms the core of Georgia Institute of Technology's new Center for Computational Molecular Science and Technology. Installed in October, the 72-processor IBM SP supercomputer allows researchers to study complex chemical processes, modeling the hopping of electrical charges and breaking of chemical bonds at a level of detail no other technique could provide.

"Though the results must still be verified experimentally, computational chemistry allows scientists to ask more complex questions and get faster, more detailed answers without mixing the first chemical. The technique provides clues to chemical engineering mysteries that cannot be investigated any other way, and reduces trial-and-error in research."

http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/git-cwc121400.html

'Earth System' Analysis and the Second Copernican Revolution, by H. J. Schellnhuber, Nature, December 2, 1999.

"Optical magnification instruments once brought about the Copernican revolution that put the Earth in its correct astrophysical context. Sophisticated information-compression techniques including simulation modelling are now ushering in a second 'Copernican' revolution. The latter strives to understand the 'Earth system' as a whole and to develop, on this cognitive basis, concepts for global environmental management."

click here for the pdf

http://www.nature.com/nature (subscription required - see note)

The Incredible Shrinking Ozone Hole, NASA Science News, December 12, 2000.

"After reaching a record-breaking size in mid-September, the ozone hole over Antarctica has made a surprisingly hasty retreat, disappearing completely by November 19, NASA scientists said."

"The ozone hole waxes and wanes with the seasons every year, slowly vanishing as the Southern Hemisphere reaches the peak of its summer. But this year the hole closed up earlier than in recent years; for the last three years the hole has lingered on well into December, according to Dr. Richard McPeters, principal investigator for NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)."

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast12dec_1.htm

Internet Computing and the Emerging Grid, by Ian Foster, Nature Web Matters, December 7, 2000.

"Internet computing and Grid technologies promise to change the way we tackle complex problems. They will enable large-scale aggregation and sharing of computational, data and other resources across institutional boundaries. And harnessing these new technologies effectively will transform scientific disciplines ranging from high-energy physics to the life sciences."

http://www.nature.com/nature/webmatters/grid/grid.html

Making a Potential Difference, by George E. Blomgren, Nature, October 12, 2000.

"To reduce our use of fossil fuels we will need cheap and safe batteries to run electric vehicles and store energy - magnesium batteries may be the answer."

http://www.nature.com/nature (subscription required - see note)

Neuroscience Contest Promps 'Thinking About Thinking', EurekAlert, December 14, 2000.

"Concluding an unusual intellectual contest, a Princeton scientist has revealed the principles behind a computer model of a mouse brain capable of recognizing spoken words."

"Neuroscientist John Hopfield created the brain simulation several months ago based on a theory he developed about how the brain interprets sensory perceptions, from touch to hearing. Hopfield did not, however, publish his insights immediately. Instead, he made the simulation available on a Web site and, in September, issued a challenge to colleagues to deduce the principle behind it."

http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/pu-ncp121400.html

The New Uncertainty Principle, by David Appell, Scientific American, January 2001.

For complex environmental issues, science learns to take a backseat to political precaution

"Observe before you project yourself on a parabolic trajectory. The weight of 28.35 grams of prevention is worth 454 grams of cure. Science certainly has much to say on taking precautions. But for the enormously complex and serious problems that now face the world--global warming, loss of biodiversity, toxins in the environment--science doesn't have all the answers, and traditional risk assessment and management may not be up to the job. Indeed, given the scope of such problems, they may never be."

"Given the uncertainty, some politicians and activists are insisting on caution first, science second. Although there is no consensus definition of what is termed the precautionary principle, one oft-mentioned statement, from the so-called Wingspread conference in Racine, Wis., in 1998 sums it up: "When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically."

http://www.sciam.com/2001/0101issue/0101scicit1.html

Science for Art's Sake, by Steve Nadis, Nature, October 12, 2000.

"In several labs around Boston, the techniques of genetic and tissue engineering are being used in the name of art. Steve Nadis asks the artists and scientists involved what they gain from this fusion of high culture and cell culture."

http://www.nature.com/nature (subscription required - see note)

Staying Alive, by Claire Ainsworth, New Scientist, December 15, 2000.

A gene that doubles life span is discovered in the fruit fly

"The discovery of a gene that doubles a fly's life span could help researchers unravel the connection between metabolism and aging."

"The gene, dubbed Indy - I'm not dead yet - seems to mimic the effect of a calorie-restricted diet, which is known to prolong life."

http://www.newscientist.com/dailynews/news.jsp?id=ns9999263

December 11, 2000

Artificial Life: Boids of a Feather Flock Together, by Shawn Carlson, Scientific American, November 2000.

"Scientists sometimes struggle to understand why certain animals act as they do, especially social animals. A school of fish or a flock of birds, for example, behaves in many ways like a single creature. Yet exactly how the individuals organize themselves into a "superorganism" is still very much a mystery." In this Amateur Scientist column, Carlson looks at a variety of artificial life-forms.

http://www.sciam.com/2000/1100issue/1100amsci.html

For more on boids and flocking rules, see this entry from the Journal of Transition Management on the MG Taylor Corporation website.

Chair Becomes Personalized Posture Coach, by P. Weiss, Science News, November 18, 2000.

An important component of ubiquitous computing and the "smart office" will certainly be furniture that responds to us in useful ways, and adapts to how it is being used. This short article discusses a prototype office chair that has been developed by researchers at Purdue University.

The article isn't available online, references and sources are available here.

Device Gets a Leg Up On Future Memory Storage, by Mitch Jacoby, C&E News, November 20, 2000.

Scientists at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory in Switzerland have demonstrated a new data-storage device based on a large array of scanning-probe microscope assemblies. Dubbed Millipede because of its 1,000-plus "legs," the memory chip has been shown capable of storing data in the range of 100 to 200 gigabits per sq inch while operating in a highly parallel fashion [Appl. Phys. Lett., 77, 3299 (2000)].

http://cen.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/78/i47/html/7847notw3.html (subscription required)

Or go to http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/443/vettiger.html to view a report on an IBM website.

Peter F. Drucker: Challenging Wisdom, Knowledge Management, November 1999.

"At 90, the father of modern management remains at the forefront of social and economic thought. His life and work form a bridge from the Industrial to the Knowledge Age."

This is a great 4 page fold-out looking at some of Drucker's major accomplishments, along the tracks of Management Guru, Social Ecologist, Generalist, Journalist, Advisor and Teacher.

A Fast-Changing Genie Alters the World, by John Markoff, New York Times, December 11, 2000.

Markoff looks at some of the ways that the Internet (the Web in particular) have changed the world in a remarkably short period of time, and asks where it will go from here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/11/technology/11WEB.html?1211inside (registration required)

Going Nuts for a Hydrogen-Fuelled Future, by Ian Sample, New Scientist, December 9, 2000.

"If you want to go green, get out your nutcrackers. Scientists in Britain say hazelnuts could provide the hydrogen to power the fuel-cell driven cars of tomorrow. "

http://www.newscientist.com/nlf/1209/going.html

Also see the story below on the birth of the Hydrogen Economy.

It's a Nano World, Manipulating molecules can create tomorrow's miracle materials, by Otis Port, Business Week Online, November 27, 2000.

"The possibilities are almost endless: Polymer-based paints and coatings that contain tiny ceramic particles to defy scratching and corrosion. Improved catalysts that spawn new pharmaceuticals and plastics. Iron-polymer batteries that generate twice as much power. We could also see resilient metal-composite car-body panels that pop back into shape after minor fender-benders. Tough yet lightweight composites that boost jet-engine performance--including turbofans that self-repair tiny stress cracks. And there'll be all manner of materials with internal smarts that emulate biological systems, enabling them to adapt to changing conditions, compensate for wear, and warn of impending trouble."

As a member of our ValueWeb pointed out, "It's time to take nano off the list of future technologies. If BW has it, it's not the future anymore."

http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_48/b3709110.htm

Patently Ridiculous, by Barry Fox and Andy Coghlan, New Scientist, December 9, 2000.

"The biotech gold rush is making a mockery of the world patent system."

"The stampede to file patents on biotech inventions is bringing the patent system to its knees and may even create a new digital divide between rich and poor countries."

http://www.newscientist.com/nlf/1209/patently.html

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November 28, 2000

Blinding Bridge, by Emma Young, New Scientist, November 21, 2000.

"The world's first 'blinking' bridge has been successfully lifted into place across the River Tyne, UK."

http://www.newscientist.com/dailynews/news.jsp?id=ns9999192

The Corporate Research and Development Scorecard, Technology Review, November/December 2000.

See how much 150 of the world's top companies invest in R&D.

http://www.techreview.com/articles/nov00/rdscorecard.htm

Europe Nixes Software Patents, by Michelle Delio, WIRED NEWS, November 22, 2000.

"Europe will not officially allow developers to own patents on software, at least for the time being."

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,40329,00.html

The Great Out of the Small, by Danniel S. Goldin, Samuel L. Venneri and Ahmed K. Noor, Mechanical Engineering, November 2000.

"Researchers probing the secrets of life on the molecular scale have the reaches of the solar system in mind." An interesting article that looks at Nano, Bio and Info technologies, and includes a discussion of biomimicry.

http://www.memagazine.org/contents/current/features/thegreat/thegreat.html

IP's Middle Child Grows Up, by Evan I. Schwartz, Technology Review, November/December 2000.

"Trademark tends to be the ignored 'middle child' of intellectual property (IP) protection. Trademark's little brother, Copyright, gets all the empathy because he's getting beat up on the Internet by services like Napster. Meanwhile, Patent, the big sibling of the IP family, is stirring up controversies over genetics and online business models. Yet Trademark is often the most successful of the three - quicker than Patent and more powerful than Copyright."

(Unfortunately, this column isn't on the Technology Review Website.)

Kicking the Habit, by Fred Pearce, New Scientist, November 25, 2000.

"They're calling it the 'Bahrain of the North'. These are exciting times in Iceland, the birthplace of the hydrogen economy. Thorsteinn Sigfusson, professor of physics at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik and chairman of Iceland New Energy, says that within 20 years his country can become the first in the world to run on hydrogen without recourse to fossil fuels. To start with, hydrogen will run its fleets of buses, trucks, cars and trawlers, and later it will provide electricity and heat its buildings through the long winters. Iceland could be the first of the 21st-century successors to the OPEC sheikhdoms. Call them HYPEC--the organisation of Hydrogen Producing Countries."

http://www.newscientist.com/nlf/1125/kicking.html

Also see an article from the October 1997 WIRED, Dawn of the Hydrogen Age.

U.S. To Fight Fire Ants, Not With Fire, But Flies, by Philip Brasher, San Jose Mercury News, November 16, 2000.

Watch closely for the unintended consequences ...

"A tiny Brazilian fly whose larvae literally eats the heads off fire ants will be unleashed across the South -- and possibly in California -- under a government program to control the vicious ants that are a spreading menace to homeowners, farmers and wildlife."

(The Mercury News has removed this story from the "free" area, but it is available from their archive.)

Washed Off The Map, by Fred Pearce, New Scientist, November 25, 2000.

"GLOBAL warming could be on the verge of triggering a rise in sea levels that would flood huge swathes of the Earth's most densely populated regions, says an unpublished report from the world's top climate scientists."

http://www.newscientist.com/nlf/1125/washed.html

November 16, 2000

Are You Being Watched? A Law Professor Worries as Surveillance Spreads, by Scott Carlson, The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 9, 2000.

"The very public personal problems of President Clinton got Jeffrey Rosen thinking about privacy issues in American law and politics. Mr. Rosen is an associate professor at George Washington University's Law School, and he also covers legal affairs for The New Republic. He saw Kenneth Starr's team using technology -- DNA tests, wiretaps, the retrieval of e-mail messages, and so on -- to scrutinize the president's personal life and that of a young White House intern. The scandal influenced Mr. Rosen's new book, The Unwanted Gaze, which examines how legal, technological, and cultural shifts have undermined American privacy."

http://chronicle.com/free/2000/11/2000110901t.htm

Blind to Change, by Laura Spinney, New Scientist, November 18, 2000.

This story puts some scientific evidence behind the notion that we only see what we are prepared to see, and what we expect to see.

"For all our experience of a rich visual world, it seems that we take in no more than a handful of facts about the world, throw in a few stored images and beliefs, and produce a convincing whole in which it is impossible to tell what was real and what imagined. As Blackmore puts it: "There is a world and a brain in it, which together are building a construction, a story, a great confabulation."

http://www.newscientist.com/nlf/1118/blind.html

Brain Signals Show to Move a Robot's Arm, by Sandra Blakeslee, New York Times, November 16, 2000.

"Scientist have identified the signals generated in monkey's brains as they prepare to move their arms, and, in a major step toward melding minds and machines, the researchers have now used those signals to move a robotic arm."

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/16/science/16ROBO.html (registration required)

Also check out: Lamprey Cyborg Sees the Light and Responds, by S. Perkins, Science News, November 11, 2000.

"The $6-million eel it ain't. But researchers who have taken the unprecedented step of connecting a brain, in this case a sea lamprey's brain, to a small mobile robot say they've got a roving fishbot that may someday lead to better prosthetic devices for humans."

http://www.sciencenews.org/20001111/fob4.asp

Calculating Swarms, by Ivars Peterson, Science News, November 11, 2000, pg. 314.

Ant teamwork suggests models for computing faster and organizing better

"An ant taking a shorter path to a particular food source returns sooner from its round-trip excursion than a second one following a longer trail. Other ants start on the shorter path, reinforcing its odor cue, before the second ant returns from the lengthier route. The stronger its scent, the more ants choose a given path. So, the longer route gets less traffic, and its scent slowly fades away as the pheromone evaporates.

"In effect, astonishing feats of teamwork emerge from a large number of unsupervised individuals following a few simple rules. This sort of self-organizing cooperative behavior among ants, bees, and other social insects has become the envy of engineers and computer scientists as they work to solve tough path-finding, scheduling, and control problems in industrial and other settings."

http://www.sciencenews.org/20001111/bob1.asp

Also check out Inspiration for Optimization From Social Insect Behavior from the July 26, 2000 entry to the Knowledge Wall.

The Code Is the Law, by Lawrence Lessig, The Standard, April 9, 1999.

In this short editorial piece, Lessig touches on a couple of themes he explores in much more depth in his important book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.

"The single most significant change in the politics of cyberspace is the coming of age of this simple idea: The code is law. The architectures of cyberspace are as important as the law in defining and defeating the liberties of the Net. Activists concerned with defending liberty, privacy or access must watch the code coming from the Valley - call it West Coast Code - as much as the code coming from Congress - call it East Coast Code."

http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,4165,00.html

Creating an African Virtual Community College: Issues and Challenges, by Osei K. Darkwa and Steve Eskow, First Monday, November 5, 2000.

"This paper proposes the establishment of an African Virtual Community College (AVCC) which uses the power of information communications technologies to overcome the financial, physical and informational barriers preventing increased access to higher education in several African countries. AVCC will utilize new technologies as the central media of its educational and training programs. This paper outlines the assumptions underpinning the AVCC model, its components and its advantages over existing educational models."

"The AVCC proposal is realistic, strategic and imaginative. It is our hope that through distance learning opportunities and job placement, fewer African people will leave the continent for better opportunities because they will be assured that opportunities for employment will be available at home."

http://firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_11/darkwa/index.html

Essence of Distributed Work: The Case of the Linux Kernel, by Jae Yun Moon and Lee Sproull, First Monday, November 5, 2000.

"This paper provides a historical account of how the Linux operating system kernel was developed from three different perspectives. Each focuses on different critical factors in its success at the individual, group, and community levels. The technical and management decisions of Linus Torvalds the individual were critical in laying the groundwork for a collaborative software development project that has lasted almost a decade. The contributions of volunteer programmers distributed worldwide enabled the development of an operating system on the par with proprietary operating systems. The Linux electronic community was the organizing structure that coordinated the efforts of the individual programmers. The paper concludes by summarizing the factors important in the successful distributed development of the Linux kernel, and the implications for organizationally managed distributed work arrangements. "

http://firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_11/moon/index.html

In a First, a Species is Named in an Electronic Publication, by Richard Monastersky, The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 15, 2000.

The era of electronic publishing takes an important step forward as for the first time, scientists have named a new species in an electronic publication.

http://chronicle.com/free/2000/11/2000111501t.htm

M.I.T. Media Lab at 15: Big Ideas, Big Money, by Lisa Guernsey, New York Times, November 9, 2000.

In struggling to define Media Lab 2.0, the lab is looking at some important issues, including the balance between corporate sponsorship and academic freedom, techniques for fostering innovation, and models of shared intellectual property.

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/09/technology/09MITT.html

People Power, by Fred Pearce, New Scientist, November 18, 2000.

"Forget big generators, in ten years' time we could be making and even selling our own electricity. We might even save the planet."

"The people that spread thousand-megawatt power plants across the planet now see the future in small generators, each little more than a millionth as powerful, in basements and backyards round the world. One of the biggest enthusiasts is Karl Yeager, who heads the US industry-funded Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, California. By 2050 he thinks that most of our electricity will come from millions of microturbines, solar panels and, most importantly, hydrogen-powered fuel cells."

http://www.newscientist.com/nlf/1118/people.html

What Global Language?, by Barbara Wallraff, The Atlantic Monthly, November 2000.

Don't bet on the triumph of English.

"English isn't managing to sweep all else before it -- and if it ever does become the universal language, many of those who speak it won't understand one another."

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/11/wallraff.htm

November 10, 2000

Filtering Programs Block Candidates Sites, by Lisa M. Bowman, ZDNet, November 8, 2000.

It seems that Jeffery Pollock, conservative Christian candidate for the 3rd Congressional District seat in Oregon, was "quite baffled" to learn that the very same Internet filters he had been advocating, were blocking access to his own site!

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2651471,00.html

First Bionic Eyes, by Victor Chase, Technology Review, November/December 2000.

"Doctors in Illinois have implanted the first permanent artificial silicon retinas in the eyes of three blind patients. The outcome of the pioneering bid to restore sight using microelectronics isn't yet known, but the undertaking is an important initial step toward realizing the goal of artificially assisted vision."

http://www.techreview.com/articles/nov00/benchmark1.htm

Ruling Says Parents Have Right to See List of Sites Students Visit, by Carl S. Kaplan, New York Times, November 10, 2000.

The struggle between privacy and transparency continues ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/10/technology/10CYBERLAW.html (registration required)

U.S. Supreme Court to Decide Electronic Copyright Issue, by Andrea L. Foster, The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 7, 2000.

The US Supreme Court announced Monday that it will decide a case that pits freelance writers against The New York Times and other widely read periodicals. At issue in the case -- which could have repercussions for scholars and scholarly libraries -- is whether publishers violate writers' copyrights by posting their works electronically without their permission.

http://chronicle.com/free/2000/11/2000110701t.htm

November 8, 2000

An iterations Election Special - Election Math

Math Against Tyranny, by Will Hively, Discover, November, 1996.

"When you cast your vote this month, you're not directly electing the president--you're electing members of the electoral college. They elect the president. An archaic, unnecessary system? Mathematics shows, says one concerned American, that by giving your vote to another, you're ensuring the future of our democracy."

http://208.245.156.153/archive/output.cfm?ID=907

May The Best Man Lose, by Dana Mackenzie, Discover, November, 2000.

"This month's presidential election highlights an ugly truth about American politics: The most popular candidates, like John McCain, often don't get elected. The problem, mathematicians say, lies in our voting system itself."

http://www.discover.com/nov_00/gthere.html?article=featbestman.html

When Votes Don't Add Up, by Lila Guterman, The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 3, 2000.

"The frustration of voters who feel forced to choose between conviction and strategy after they enter the voting booth reveals a flaw in our voting system, say several mathematicians and political scientists, who are using the close 2000 presidential election to emphasize the benefits of alternative scoring methods. Under the current system, the candidate with the most votes wins in each state whether or not that person has a majority, thereby allowing a third-party candidate to upset an election, even with just a small fraction of the votes."

http://chronicle.com (subscription required - see note)

Not Just a Roof, but Roots for a Season, by Julie V. Iovine, New York Times, October 26, 2000.

An article discussing efforts to create affordable, sustainable shelters for migrant workers.

"When asked to describe his designs, Mr. Bell refrains from professional jargon, describing instead how design can make a typical picker's job a little less spirit- and backbreaking. "Not all design issues are about money," he said. "Having the sun come in your window in the morning doesn't cost anything. They come back from work with some equipment. So I made a screened porch where they can drop off their tools, and I have a big sink there so they can wash up some from the pesticides. Generally, a couple of them will start cooking, while some are showering, taking turns." He made sure to build in a long kitchen counter that could double as a dining bar for ad hoc meals."

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/26/living/26MIGR.html (registration required)

Also, be sure to check out Design Corps, an organization started by Mr. Bell in 1991.

"Community Design Opportunities" has been created in an effort to link students, architects, and designers, or for that matter, anyone who is interested in the development and design of their community, with local community-based efforts."Ê

Philanthropy's A Game to Be Taken Seriously in Valley, by Dan Gillmor, San Jose Mercury News, October 19, 2000.

"Bruce Largecap, technology tycoon, has died and left $500 million to a new foundation. You're the foundation's director, and your mission -- in a clever new CD-ROM simulation -- is to create an arts-led renaissance in a place where culture has been an afterthought.

You're in Silicon Valley, of course, where the arts languish amid unprecedented riches."

http://www0.mercurycenter.com/svtech/columns/gillmor/docs/dg102000.htm

Programmable Matter, by Wil McCarthy, Nature, Vol. 407, page 569, October 5, 2000.

Another great Futures essay from Nature, this time looking at advances in quantum computing ...

"4 July 2100. The flick of a switch: a wall becomes a window becomes a door. Any chair becomes a hypercomputer, any rooftop a power or waste-treatment plant."

http://www.nature.com/nature (subscription required - see note)

Turning On the Nanoworld, by Philip Ball, Nature Science Update, November 2, 2000.

"Nanotechnology Ñ molecule-sized engineering Ñ promises wonders: from ultra-dense computer memories to cell-sized robots. Now this promise comes a step closer to being realized, thanks to a team of chemists from Liverpool University in the UK. They have solved the problem of connecting electronic components that are not much larger than molecules."

http://helix.nature.com/nsu/001102/001102-10.html

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October 20, 2000

Being There, by Anil Ananthaswamy, New Scientist, October 21, 2000.

From a special feature on "Emerging Technologies".

"Imagine seeing and touching your first grandchild in a New York hospital--from Sydney. The smart 3D behind tele-immersion will make it feel just like the real thing"

"It's easy to dream up applications for such a technology. Business people on different continents could conduct face-to-face meetings. Schoolchildren in China, Australia or Britain could walk beneath massive dinosaur bones in a museum in New York. Patients in remote areas could see a doctor. And once haptics--touch simulators--are built in, people could use tele-immersion to come together in even stranger ways. A woman in Europe could reach out and touch her newborn grandchild in the US. "

http://www.newscientist.com/nlf/1021/being.html

Karaoke Cars, by Ian Sample, New Scientist, October 21, 2000.

From a special feature on "Emerging Technologies".

"It's no longer a metaphor. In the next few years, you'll be riding the digital highway in a networked car that knows how to party while it probes the air and talks to the Net."

"Gridlock could get pretty bizarre in the wireless world. Thanks to Internet technology, Tokyo's traffic jams are going to be transformed into raucous karaoke parties. According to Masao Nakagawa of Keio University in Yokohama, high-speed radio links aren't just for connecting cars to the Internet. They could also let drivers share information with vehicles nearby."

http://www.newscientist.com/nlf/1021/karaoke.html

Sayonara WAP, by Peter Hadfield, New Scientist, October 21, 2000.

From a special feature on "Emerging Technologies".

"Out of nowhere, Japan has been transformed into a nation of information junkies by efficient, unflashy, Net-ready phones. Will i-mode take the world by storm?"

"DoCoMo is still signing on people at a rate of a million a month. It reckons on having 14 million subscribers by the end of the year, and if it keeps growing at its present rate, by next September it will be the world's largest Internet service provider. Just in case you still think the mobile revolution is just a lot of hype, in the minute it's taken you to read this far, at least 20 Japanese people have acquired their Internet-ready phones. "

http://www.newscientist.com/nlf/1021/sayonara.html

Group Urges Southwest Migration Corridors, by Jocelyn Kaiser, Science, Vol. 289, September 29, 2000, pg. 2259.

From the "Rebuilding the Planet as a Work of Art" Department, "Conservationists with an ambitious goal of "rewilding" North America have released their vision for an ecologically rich swath of the Southwest, where subtropical and temperate biomes meet. The Sky Islands Wildlands Network is a blueprint for protecting species across 4.2 million hectares of Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico by encouraging the return of wolves, jaguars, bears, and mountain lions."

http://www.sciencemag.org (subscription required - see note)

Ozone Alert, by Emma Young, New Scientist, October 10, 2000.

"Record levels of ultraviolet radiation were recorded in towns in southern Chile and Argentina on 7 October, as the edge of the Antarctic ozone hole passed overhead. More than 115,000 residents of Punta Arenas in Chile were put on alert and warned not to venture outside without protective creams, clothes and sunglasses. People were exposed to around double normal UV levels. Exposure to the sun for just seven minutes would have been enough to burn skin. Raised levels of UV can also cause skin cancers and cataracts. "

"'"We can reasonably expect full-blown Arctic ozone holes within the next 10 to 20 years. This will definitely affect inhabited areas, spreading over parts of northern Europe, northern Canada and northern Russia.' "

http://www.newscientist.com/dailynews/news.jsp?id=ns999961

Swisshouse: The Consulate of the Future, A Physical/Virtual Environment for Science and Education, by Jeffrey Huang and Muriel Waldvogel. A PDF file from the www.creativeswitzerland.com website.

"The Swiss House for Advanced Research and Education is the world's first digital consulate and serves as a link between the scientific, academic, and high-tech communities of New England and Switzerland.Ê SHARE is a community that is both physical and virtual. It serves as a face-to-face meeting point for creative thinkers and entrepreneurs from both countries. The interactive Web site with video cameras in the Swiss House will allow people to tune into what is going on."

This is a project with what appear to be a variety of synergies and overlap to what the MG Taylor family of organizations is doing. The PDF talks about concepts we're all familiar with, including "The Knowledge Cafe," an "Active Information Wall," an "Idea Marketplace" with a "growing knowledge base," and others.

October 13, 2000

Amazon Tastes Its Own Patent-Pending Medicine, Forbes.com, October 13, 2000.

"In late September OpenTV applied to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to broaden the scope of a patent originally awarded to the company in 1998 so it includes "one-click" shopping. This tool lets repeat customers make purchases without having to re-enter address and credit card information each time. Amazon first made one-click shopping available on its site in September 1997 and was awarded the patent for it in September 1999.

Should the Patent Office decide in OpenTV's favor, Amazon could be forced to either pay licensing fees for one-click shopping or abandon it altogether. Ironically, that's the same position Amazon has been trying to put Barnesandnoble.com into for the past year."

http://www.forbes.com/ecommerce/2000/10/13/1013amazon.html

Bold Enterprise, Antimatter Could Carry Us to the Edges of the Solar System, by Paul Marks, New Scientist, October 14, 2000.

"AN antimatter-aided space drive might bring deep-space missions within our grasp. Engineers at NASA and Pennsylvania State University say that by the end of the century, spacecraft could reach the edges of the Solar System and beyond."

http://www.newscientist.com/nlf/1014/bold.html

Close Encounters, by Philip Ball, Nature Science Update, October 13, 2000.

"Although ants communicate mainly by exuding chemical signals - 'smells' - they also exchange sounds that are barely audible to the human ear. They produce them by rubbing one part of their bodies against another, an activity called 'stridulation'. "

http://helix.nature.com/nsu/001019/001019-1.html

Even Amnesics Dream of Tetris, by Laura Helmuth, ScienceNOW, October 12, 2000.

"There are many kinds of memories; some, called "explicit," mean that you can remember a past experience. People with damage to their hippocampus and surrounding brain structures can't build new explicit memories. If amnesics play Tetris, take a short break, and then return to the game room, they don't remember the game or even having met the experimenter who just taught them how to play."

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2000/1012/3

Nanotubes by the Kilo, by Robert F. Service, ScienceNOW, October 10, 2000.

"Researchers say they have developed a new chemical process to produce large amounts of carbon nanotubes with relative ease. The find, announced on 3 October at a meeting of the American Vacuum Society in Boston, could bring down the production costs of nanotubes and help researchers apply them in a range of new materials and devices."

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2000/1010/4

Quick Thinking, Nicola Jones, New Scientist, October 14, 2000.

"Blind people can pick out the meaning of a spoken sentence more quickly than sighted folks, researchers in Germany and the US have found. The finding adds weight to the notion that blind people can hear better than others, their hearing compensating for the loss of their sight."

http://www.newscientist.com/nlf/1014/quick.html

Religious Group Trying to Clone Wealthy Couple's Dead Daughter, by Rick Weiss, San Jose Mercury News, October 13, 2000.

"But while no one knows whether this group will ever try to clone a human being, experts familiar with recent scientific advances say there is no longer much debate that human cloning can be achieved with existing technology. And, in fact, it's probably a group like the Raelians that would be in the best position to pull it off, they said."

(Reminiscent of an article from WIRED a couple years ago.)

http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/nation/docs/clone13.htm

World's Toughest Code Cracked, Reuters, WIRED News, October 12, 2000.

"A team of Swedish computer buffs have fought off thousands of rivals from around the world to crack what was billed as the toughest code challenge ever set."

"That doesn't necessarily mean that Internet security is invalid because it took a year for a team of Swedes to crack this with some very sophisticated computers."

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,39417,00.html

October 8, 2000

How We Went Digital Without a Strategy, by Ricardo Semler, Harvard Business Review, September-October, 2000, pg. 3.

A great "First Person" column from HBR in which Semler (author of Maverick) discusses the organizational transformation strategies that have allowed Semco to successfully extend its business from manufacturing to services to the Internet.

"... I believe we have an organization that is able to transform itself continuously and organically - without formulating complicated mission statements and strategies, announcing a bunch of top-down directives, or bringing in an army of change-management consultants. As other companies seek to build adaptability into their organizations, they may be able to learn a thing or two from Semco's example."

http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/products/hbr/index.html

Networked Incubators: Hothouses of the New Economy, by M. Hansen, H. W. Chesbrough, N. Nohria, and D. N. Sull, Harvard Business Review, September-October, 2000, pg. 74.

http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/products/hbr/index.html

The Power of Memes, by Susan Blackmore, Scientific American, October, 2000, pg. 64.

"Behaviors and ideas copied from person to person by imitation - memes - may have forced human genes to make us what we are today."

Blackmore (author of The Meme Machine) presents her theory that humans' uncanny ability to imitate, and thus to transmit memes, is what sets us apart from other species. The article also includes three short counterpoint articles by Lee Alan Dugatkin, Robert Boyd, Peter J. Richerson and Henry Plotkin.

(Unfortunately, this article isn't available on the Scientific American website.)

Speedy Sex, A Bit of Evolution Will Work Wonders for the Internet, by Duncan Graham-Rowe, New Scientist, October 7, 2000.

"VIRUSES are common on the Internet, but now it's the turn of bacteria, says British Telecom. But rather than being a menace, the organisms BT has in mind have been designed to help make the Net faster. The idea is to mimic bacterial sex to "evolve" a more efficient network."

http://www.newscientist.com/nlf/1007/speedy.html

Will Disruptive Innovations Cure Health Care?, by Clayton M. Christensen, Richard Bohmer, and John Kenagy, Harvard Business Review, September-October, 2000, pg. 102.

Christensen (author of The Innovator's Dilemma) and his co-authors discuss disruptive technologies in the context of the health-care industry.

"Health care may be the most entrenched, change-averse industry in the United States. The innovations that will eventually turn it around are ready, in some cases - but they can't find backers."

http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/products/hbr/index.html

October 1, 2000

Digital ID Law Takes Effect, by Elise Ackerman, San Jose Mercury News, October 1, 2000.

"Starting today, people planning to go online might want to think about bringing along some identification -- digital identification, that is. Thanks to a new federal law that takes effect today it's likely to become important to prove who you are on the Internet. The new law, which builds on a similar California law that took effect in January, grants electronic signatures the same binding legal status as their ink-drawn cousins. It makes it possible for businesses and individuals to sign enforceable contracts online simply by clicking a mouse."

http://www.mercurycenter.com/business/top/058548.htm

Also see Legalized e-Signatures Bring Convenience, Risk, from CNN.com, September 29, 2000.

http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/09/29/e.signature/index.html

(Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace by Lawrence Lessig, and The Transparent Society by David Brin are two really important books that discuss issues brought up in the two above articles at length.)

The Gnutella Paradox, by Janelle Brown, Salon.com, September 29, 2000.

"As soon as an online music-trading service gets big enough to be useful, it's doomed."

An interesting article that provides some context around the RIAA lawsuit against Napster, peer to peer computing, and where things may go from here.

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/09/29/gnutella_paradox/index.html

Honda Shows Off its Experimental Fuel-Cell Car, by Yuri Kageyama, Associated Press, from NandoTimes.com, September 29, 2000.

"The Japanese automaker showed its FCX-V3 to reporters Friday as part of a project with Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler and other automakers to test out a technology of the future: the fuel cell. Though the automakers won't be sharing fuel-cell technology, they will be helping each other cross other hurdles such as developing fueling systems, winning public acceptance and studying possibilities for commercial production.

Honda has set 2003 for commercial production of fuel-cell vehicles.

www.nandotimes.com/noframes/story/0,2107,500263768-500408507-502487053-0,00.html

Molecular cut 'n' paste, by Philip Ball, Nature Science Update, September 29, 2000.

In an important step on the road to a nanoscale assembler, a team of physicists in Germany have used "tweezers" (a scanning tunnelling microscope) to past together a molecule from its fragments, a process that is normally performed on trillions of molecules at a time.

http://helix.nature.com/nsu/001005/001005-1.html

The Real Price of Oil, by Christopher Flavin, an OpEd piece from the Internation Herald Tribune, September 28, 2000.

"As oil prices hit their highest levels in a decade, and politicians from Paris to Washington search for scapegoats, it's time to turn attention closer to home: today's high oil prices are less the fault of OPEC than they are a reflection of the last decade's failure to reduce dependence on oil. And unless we use the current crisis as an opportunity to improve fuel economy and diversify energy supplies, we will put the health of both the world economy and the global environment at risk. "

http://www.worldwatch.org/alerts/000928.html

Slimy, But Not Stupid, by John S. Macneil, ScienceNOW, September 27, 2000.

"Slime molds, brainless amoebalike organisms that live in forests and plant beds, aren't likely to win the Nobel Prize. But Japanese and Hungarian researchers report that they may yet possess a shred of something akin to intelligence. When placed in a maze between two sources of food, the slime seeks out and finds the shortest path through the maze. Researchers say this ability shows that even lifeforms as primitive as a single cell can perform computations."

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2000/927/1

Whatever You Want, by Michael Brooks, New Scientist, September 30, 2000.

"A spare part for your dishwasher, a new pair of glasses or a toy for your nephew, the same magic box can make them all. And yes, you could soon have one at home"

"The technology is maturing fast, and 3D printing is already a worldwide hit with engineers. Make a few quick plastic prototypes and you can instantly tell whether an innovative space-saving engine part will really fit in as it's supposed to. The US Army is developing ways to print out vehicle parts from a truck-mounted 3D printer, so stranded drivers can pick up vehicle parts made on the spot. And NASA is about to 3D print in space. Tests in zero-gravity simulations have been successful, and a 3D printer is awaiting a space shuttle launch."

http://www.newscientist.com/nlf/0930/whatever.html

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