Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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David Witzel: Net Positive

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence
Dave Witzel
Dave Witzel

The Net Positive movement is building momentum but remains an emerging concept. Forum for the Future is working with business, NGOs and academics to create an ambitious vision with a rigorous and detailed road map for action.

Within a year of inception the group had laid out 12 principles that characterise the approach, tying together all of the areas in which organisations should act.

The NPG then turned its attention to developing a Net Positive measurement framework to enable outcomes to be measured accurately and consistently, and provided guidance on how to communicate an organisation’s approach in a clear and compelling way.  Read more.

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Chuck Spinney: Andrew Cockburn on the Vulnerability of the Election-Industrial Complex

Cultural Intelligence
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

Television, turnout, and the election-industrial complex

By Andrew Cockburn, Harpers

“I never met a politician who started out to be a fund-raiser,” remarked Mike McKenna, a Republican energy lobbyist and recipient of constant pleas for cash from lawmakers.   . . .   “If you can convince the politicians that they don’t really need to spend their time raising all that money,” he told me earnestly, “they’ll carry you round Capitol Hill on their shoulders.”

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Stephen E. Arnold: Google Destroys Search

IO Impotency
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Google and a New Approach to Search Relevance

We know one cannot search for a topic if the words are not in the index. Should we forget about it? Sure, why not? Quite a few folks perceive Google search results as the equivalent of an overnight visit to the oracle of Delphi. “Google Experimenting with Social Search to Let Businesses and Celebrities Post Straight to Search Results” reports: Read more.

Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: Google Destroys Search”

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Farhad Manjoo: Amazon’s Personal Home Assistant The Echo Brims with Groundbreaking Promise

Advanced Cyber/IO
Farhad Manjoo
Farhad Manjoo

The Echo From Amazon Brims With Groundbreaking Promise

What is most interesting about the Echo is that it came out of nowhere. It isn’t much to look at, and even describing its utility is difficult. Here is a small, stationary machine that you set somewhere in your house, which you address as Alexa, which performs a variety of tasks — playing music, reading the news and weather, keeping a shopping list — that you can already do on your phone.

But the Echo has a way of sneaking into your routines. When Alexa reorders popcorn for you, or calls an Uber car for you, when your children start asking Alexa to add Popsicles to the grocery list, you start to want pretty much everything else in life to be Alexa-enabled, too.  Read more.

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Jean Lievens: Finland’s Hugely Exciting Experiment in Basic Income, Explained

03 Economy, 11 Society, Money
Jean Lievens
Jean Lievens

Finland's hugely exciting experiment in basic income, explained

The headlines are shocking: “Finland plans to pay everyone in the country $876 a month”; “Finland plans to give every citizen a basic income of 800 euros a month”; “Finland plans to give every citizen 800 euros a month and scrap benefits.”

The reality is a little less wild. Finland is definitely not close to paying “everyone in the country” or “every citizen” — not yet, anyway. What it is doing is weighing a proposal for a basic income: an approach to welfare in which residents would get a flat amount of money every month, regardless of how rich they are.  Read more.

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Stephen E. Arnold: Free Academic Publishing? Harder Than Most Imagine…

Academia, Access
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Free Academic Journals? Maybe

I read “This Renowned Mathematician Is Bent On Proving Academic Journals Can Cost Nothing.” If you are not an academic, you may not know that some folks pay the publisher to publish one’s research report, journal article, or wild and crazy summary of non reproducible results.

Good business? You betcha. I remember a meeting a decade ago at the Cornell Theory Center. I asked if a faculty member who published in an online journal would be recognized for the work. The answer, not surprisingly, was, “No.” Flash forward to today. Many institutions like the estimable University of Louisville prefer their wizards’ write ups to be in prestigious paper journals. Sure, maybe a short item in the Harvard Business School blog will get some blue or green stars. The gold ones, from what I have heard, go to the expensive, paper journals like those from the ever savvy Elsevier outfit.

The write up states: read more.

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Yoda: US Energy Storage Triples…

05 Energy

yoda with light saberThe Future Is Here: U.S. Energy Storage Triples in 2015

Energy storage installations grew 243% in 2015, and it looks like years of growth are ahead.

A recent report from GTM Research and ESA called U.S. Energy Storage Monitor shows that 2015 was a breakout year for the energy storage industry, and an explosion of growth could be on the horizon. Overall, energy storage installations grew 243% in 2015 to 221 MW (standard discharge time of one hour for these reports). Incredibly, this is just the start of the industry's growth. The authors predict that energy storage will be a 1.7 GW, or $2.5 billion, business by 2020.

 

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