A Tale of Two Tails…
The Speculist | Live to see it.
by Stephen Gordon
3y ago
The pace of change in the world is increasing. Therefore primary skill – the type of literacy that we need to teach – is the ability to teach oneself. My wife and I have homeschooled our four sons. Two are still at home being homeschooled, two are in college. A particular episode with my oldest son Timothy stands out – it was about 5 years ago. A particular concept in algebra stumped him – it might have been quadratic equations. He complained that the particular online instructor poorly taught that lesson. I didn’t even check on whether he was correct. My response to him: “So what?” You have t ..read more
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5 Reasons the Internet of Cars Changes Everything
The Speculist | Live to see it.
by Phil Bowermaster
3y ago
The big data industry has witnessed any number of tipping points in recent years as once-obscure ideas and technologies have quickly achieved dominance. Hadoop. Spark. Data Lakes. Big data itself. And now comes the Internet of Cars (AKA the Internet of Automobiles), a phenomenon with huge potential impact both in the industry and in society at large. The U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee recently convened  a hearing to provide “an opportunity to learn about vehicle-to-vehicle communications technology and what it means for our future economy.” Called to testify were execut ..read more
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The Sentient Enterprise
The Speculist | Live to see it.
by Phil Bowermaster
3y ago
How can businesses stay agile and competitive in the face of massive data volumes, exponentially increasing complexity, and the growing need for real-time answers, decisions, and responses? In his new book The Sentient Enterprise, technologist and visionary Oliver Ratzesberger, along with co-author Mohanbir Sawhney, outlines a revolutionary methodology for aligning data, systems, and people within the organization to make agility and decision-making scalable commodities. In this edition of FastForward, Oliver provides an overview of this methodology and explains why a new approach is so needed ..read more
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Emergent Magic: Why Ideas Are Becoming More Valuable
The Speculist | Live to see it.
by Phil Bowermaster
3y ago
One of the side projects related to The World Transformed book is building a vast collection of ideas. The book itself is a collection of ideas, and the notion was that would could use it a springboard to collect lots more ideas about how the world can be changed in positive ways. I put a mechanism in place for collecting ideas, but right now it needs a little work. (Stay tuned.) Anyway, recently as I was thinking about this project and I was answering (in my own mind) one of the potential objections to it, a really strange idea occurred to me. First, the objection: Collecting good ideas adds ..read more
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Sunrise, Sunburn, Sun Tea
The Speculist | Live to see it.
by Phil Bowermaster
3y ago
How does the future happen? Well, maybe it doesn’t. That is, maybe the future doesn’t just “happen.”  Let’s look at some future events. Take tomorrow’s sunrise.  Get up early and go watch it if you like. You have nothing to do with it. Every day, it just happens. It’s the future, and it just happens. So far, so good. How does the future happen? It just does. How about something else that might happen tomorrow? Not a sunrise but a sunburn. Now for that future to happen, you have to show up–unlike the sunrise, which is going to happen either way. You have to get out there and expose yo ..read more
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Visions for a World Transformed Now Available
The Speculist | Live to see it.
by Phil Bowermaster
3y ago
Available now on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback formats: Visions for a World Transformed 99 Ideas for Making the World a Better Place — Starting Right Now How different will the future be from today? As different as we can imagine, and possibly stranger and more wonderful than we ever HAVE imagined. The key is turning our visions for the future into the future itself. And that begins with articulating our visions. In this collection of essays compiled by the hosts of the popular internet radio series, The World Transformed, world-leading futurists, scientists, authors, artists and others ..read more
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No Good Disney Role Models for Boys?
The Speculist | Live to see it.
by Phil Bowermaster
3y ago
Writing at The Federalist, Allison Hull has a bone to pick with Disney: Why Does Disney Hate Boys So Much? All Their Male Characters Are Losers. There is much here that I agree with, especially the Disney Channel’s overwhelming preference for girls over boys. I mean, wouldn’t it be nice if they could find a way to encourage CHILDREN to dream big, rather than just girls? (I’m sure Uncle Walt would approve.) The argument, of course, is that boys get that message from everywhere, all the time. I kind of doubt that’s true in this day and age. The message boys get over and over today is that girls ..read more
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Kaizen!
The Speculist | Live to see it.
by Phil Bowermaster
3y ago
Occasionally on Facebook I get to point out that anything I post without comment is likely something I intend to read later because it strikes me as potentially interesting. These posts often result in comments, which then remind me that I meant to read the thing. It’s a way of outsourcing a reminder to read something to my friends and family. But it does lead to the occasional fun when somebody gets all bent of shape and admonishes me to stop deceiving the public with my pernicious lies or whatever. I got some feedback along those lines for linking to this piece: A Japanese techniqu ..read more
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A New Way to Distribute Books
The Speculist | Live to see it.
by Phil Bowermaster
3y ago
An alternative way of distributing a book: rather than going through the normal distribution channels, just give some away. Ask the recipients, if they don’t find the book to their liking, to please pass it on to someone whom they think would like it. And ask them if they do like it to consider purchasing a copy to give to someone else. In fact, encourage them to give away one to three copies, depending on how much they liked the book. If the book is well-liked, it will go viral. If it is not it will fizzle out almost immediately. This is a test-case for the Gift Economy, albeit an incomplete ..read more
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Old Body, New Parts
The Speculist | Live to see it.
by Phil Bowermaster
3y ago
Researchers and practitioners are making dramatic progress in producing usable human tissues via (highly modified) 3D printers. Although we aren’t there yet, eventually we can expect to see whole kidneys, livers, hearts, and lungs produced in vats or via printer-like devices. These will be a godsend for patients who otherwise would be looking for an organ transplant (no danger of rejection when it’s your own organ.) And down the road, people might start swapping out organs just as part of a maintenance program. If young blood can make you more youthful, what might a whole new heart do? For tha ..read more
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