Kolektor Adbrite: December 2010

Monday, December 6, 2010

Harvard Scientists Reverse Aging in Mice – Total Bullsh*t

A completely random picture of a lab mouse

According to those idiots over at the Guardian, “Harvard scientists reverse the ageing process in mice – now for humans”. As if that were not miraculous enough, the Guardian also claims that “Now they believe they might be able to regenerate human organs”. Here at the Hub we would love nothing more than for this story to be true, but alas it is one of the hugest piles of sensationalist bullshit I have seen on the net in quite a while. The scientific research cited by the Guardian does not support these sensationalist claims and the Guardian knows this. But they don’t give a damn because sensationalism sells – big time! The Guardian knows that sloppy, idiotic bloggers and news organizations across the web will regurgitate anything they see without hardly the slightest attempt at fact checking. And hence this bogus story has been an enormous hit. The story already has more than 15,000 Facebook likes and this number is sure to grow. It has been picked up and rehashed as a legitimate scientific story by major news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Digg, Endgadget, Wired, and many more. Congratulations to the Guardian and the author of the story, Ian Sample – you have created a story that sells well, but your reputation is utter crap.

First let us take a brief look at the scientific research that Guardian correspondent Ian Sample claims will reverse aging and allow us to regenerate human organs. Scientists at Harvard genetically altered mice so that they lacked an enzyme, telomerase, that is responsible for maintaining proper telomeres. Telomeres are repeated sequences of DNA at the ends of our DNA that protect the DNA from damage. Without the ability to produce the telomerase enzyme, the mice had essentially nonfunctioning telomeres, leaving their DNA unprotected and prone to extensive damage and malfunction over time. To no one’s surprise, as these mice grew and lived out their lives within the laboratory their bodies quickly broke down. Their organs began to fail – they lost their sense of smell, they became infertile, they were weak. With the mice now in this degraded state (that we are lead to believe approximates aging), the Harvard researchers then proceeded to give the mice regular injections of the telomerase enzyme to see what would happen to them.

So what happened to the mice once their broken, dying bodies were finally given injections to activate the vital telomerase enzyme that they had thus far been denied? In what will be a surprise to nobody (except apparently the Harvard researchers and Ian Sample at the Guardian) the bodies of the mice stopped their decay. As if this were not miraculous enough, the bodies of the mice also seemed to regain some of their lost vitality and function now that their DNA was allowed to function properly. Isn’t that amazing?

Any reasonable person would quickly summarize this research as something like “take away a vital enzyme from an organism and it starts to decay, give the enzyme back to the organism and decay stops, allowing the natural process of repair and growth in the organism to proceed”. The research sheds some light on how crucial telomerase and telomeres are to the proper function of an organism, but unless you are an expert in that field this is a non-story. This research is a long, long way from leading to a reversal in aging. Unless, that is, you are Ian Sample working for the Guardian, in which case apparently you have just stumbled upon a fantastic piece of research that you can use to create a misleading and sensationalist story that will sell to mindless readers and bloggers.

I can’t figure out what is more ridiculous here. Is the Guardian story itself the most ridiculous thing, or is the fact that the story was blindly syndicated by thousands of news outlets and believed by millions of readers across the world even more ridiculous? Ian Sample and the Guardian must be laughing all the way to the bank with the traffic this story is generating for them. Readers will correctly point out that I am only aiding their little game by giving the story even more prominence and calling it out in this post. To that all I can say is that I can’t stop people from reading the Guardian’s BS, but at least I can do my part to show the world what complete crap it is. The Guardian has gained itself a hugely popular story, but at what cost to it’s reputation? Sadly, most people probably won’t even care. But I can hope.

Image source [rama]

Time Presents 10 Questions for Kurzweil: Hello, Mainstream

Time gives Ray Kurzweil 10 questions. Another step towards making The Singularity a household name.

Everybody thinks about the future, but not everyone makes it their life’s work. Besides being an inventor and author, Ray Kurzweil is one of the world’s premier futurists and he’s the de facto frontman for The Singularity. Time Magazine recently interviewed the prophet of accelerating technology for their ‘10 Questions’ segment. You can see the video below. While Kurzweil doesn’t say anything he hasn’t said before, the video is a great synopsis of his views on technology, the reshaping of our biology, and the possibility of extending our lifespans indefinitely. Slowly but steadily, it seems like mainstream audiences are being exposed to Kurzweil’s brand of futurism. Is the world ready to accept the possibility of exponential growth? Thanks to Time, more are at least contemplating it.

While Kurzweil has made appearances on Television since 1965, and has received dozens of public accolades, he’s far from a household name. I’m not sure he will ever become universally famous, but I definitely think that his vision of the future is slowly making its way to the greater public – at least in the US. He recently appeared in PBS’s discussion on Bioethics, his movie – The Singularity Is Near – is making its way towards widespread distribution, and not a day goes by that his name doesn’t pop in news feeds and blogs all over the internet. Whether or not you agree with predictions about the future, you can see why many find him a great subject for discussion in the video below. He has fantastic visions of the future that he obviously believes in deeply and can articulate well. Even if you think he’s a lunatic, he’s not a raving one.

As I’ve said many times before, I’m a pretty big fan of Ray Kurzweil, but I’m a little uneasy with a single person representing the diverse and often contentious community of futurists in the world. It seems that whenever opponents attack techno-optimism they do so through Kurzweil. There are so many other, worthwhile, theorists who explore and discuss the future it seems a shame that the mainstream can only be exposed to one. Don’t get me wrong, there are many well-accepted public figures who make predictions about the future of the universe (Michio Kaku and Stephen Hawking among them) but when it comes to exponential growth and The Singularity Kurzweil is the go-to guy. He’s probably the one I would choose if I had to send someone to speak about accelerating technology…but I don’t have to send just one. Hopefully as Kurzweil breaks ground with major media outlets and brings the Singularity into popular discussion we’ll have the chance to expose the general public to the plurality of thought that exists within our community. Thanks to Kurzweil for helping put the Singularity on the map (and Time for covering it) but let’s not forget that the future is a big place. There’s room for more than one opinion.

[image and video credit: Time]

[source: Time]

Super Fast FANUC Robot Sorts Candy According to Color (video)

Don't like your red Skittles touching your yellow ones? FANUC has a robot you should meet.

Before you let a robot handle your prescription drugs, better let it train on candy first. FANUC’s M-1iA picking and sorting robot is one of the fastest robots on the planet. While it’s not the absolute champion of speed, it can do something that many of its competitors cannot: see in color. With FANUC’s “iRVision” visual analysis capabilities, the M-1iA can locate, pick up, and move identical objects based on the colors of their surfaces. FANUC has the high-speed sorter demonstrating its skills using sugary candies, but the ultimate idea is to have it process prescription pills or other small valuable items. Watch its super quick selection skills in the videos below. I can’t speak to its rapport with patients, but this robot is about a billion times faster than any pharmacist I’ve ever seen.

FANUC isn’t crazy to think that the M-1iA could find a home in the pharmaceutical industry. Robots are already sorting pills and filling prescriptions in hospitals in the real world. RFID tags and other means of tracking containers keep these robots from needing to sort mixed pills, but the FANUC robot’s ability to discern color could provide a valuable means of double checking that the right medicine goes into the right pill box. Maybe it could even detect if a drug had been damaged or spoiled. Whether or not the M-1iA will makes its way into pharmacies or industrial pharmaceutical factories in the near future isn’t clear, but I think we’ll see more sorting robots that showcase their visual skills as well as their speed. For now, the M-1iA represents a godsend to all those candy lovers who like to eat their Skittles, M&Ms, and jelly beans one color at a time. OCD, meet Robotics – you two were made for each other.

[screen capture and video credit: kmoriyama]

[sources: FANUC site and video]

A World of Tweets: Putting the Tweetsphere on the Map

Frog Design's A World of Tweets puts Twitter traffic on the map.

There’s too much damn information in the world! If you haven’t been bored when reading about random statistics from the internet then you’re probably a futuristic artificial intelligence. (In which case, welcome, Overlord). Making boring data look awesome is difficult, but a pair of designers in Milan have given us a tool to help. A World of Tweets from Frog Design is an evolving map of the tweetsphere. Geotagged tweets appear as drops of heat that accumulate on the globe. You can even switch the map to a 3D display if you have your pair of Red/Cyan glasses handy. There’s something about watching the East Coast heat up around lunchtime every day that seems deeply satisfying. I may not know what every tweet is saying, but I do know how the tweet traffic itself is changing. Very cool. This is more evidence that great design can make almost anything fun to look at. Watch a brief demo I made of the site in the video below.

I’m a sucker for clean crisp presentations of data analysis, and A World of Tweets has that in spades. Creaters Carlo Zapponi and Andreas Markdalen have provided a beautiful way to visualize the tweetsphere. Of course, it’d be just as thrilling if we were looking at Facebook status updates, cancer-related mortality, or Justin Bieber album sales. It’s not the data, but the presentation that really makes A World of Tweets so cool.

A World of Tweets is crisp clean and full of facts. Can we make one of these for every dataset on the web?

That’s not to say tweets can’t be important. We’ve discussed how analysis of social networks, and the people who comprise them, can allow scientists to predict the spread of deadly diseases and habits. There’s also a chance that Twitter could be used to accurately predict fluctuations in the stock market. The most promising application may arrive when projects like A World of Tweets are combined with Twitter projects that provide sentimental analysis. We wouldn’t just know where people were tweeting, we’d know (roughly) how they are feeling while they tweet. AWOT already combines two other data management technologies: Yahoo! Placemaker and Twitter Streaming API. Plugging in data from a site like TweetFeel shouldn’t be that difficult. Someone needs to get on this…

In the future, I hope we get more of this kind of design. We have so much information constantly being thrown at us that it takes really good presentation and a ‘wow’ factor to make us sit up and take notice. In other words, there’s only “too much damn information in the world” if you don’t have a good way of understanding what you’re looking at. So go grab your 3D glasses, fire up A World of Tweets, and watch the millions of thoughts stream by. It’d be relaxing if it wasn’t so awesome looking.

[image credits: Carlo Zapponi & Andreas Markdalen Frog Design, Milan]

[sources: Frog Design]

Trading Stocks at the Speed of Light – Computers Own Finance, Next the World

Ultra fast trading leads to optimal locations for computer nodes. This is the beginning of a grid that will blanket the planet.

One day the world could literally be covered in computers with major network hubs surrounding our planet in a fine meshed grid. What’s going to drive us to complete such a herculean task? Profit. Physicist Alex Wissner-Gross and mathematician Cameron Freer have discovered the optimal places on Earth for making split-second deals on securities. Their report, recently published in Physical Review E, is actually an economics paper. As Wissner-Gross and Freer explained to me in a phone interview, ultra-fast computerized trading has reshaped our world. When you start trading stocks at the speed of light, even small advantages in position can lead to millions in profits. Businesses have sought out the best places on the globe to set up computer trading stations and reap the rewards. Wissner-Gross and Freer have the treasure map for this new financial world, and if you want to claim your share you’re going to need to understand the importance of trading stocks at the speed of light.

Welcome to the Warp Drive Stock Exchange

We’ve put the stock market in the hands of computers, and only now is the public starting to understand what that means. When you picture institutions like the New York Stock Exchange, stop imagining a group of uptight men yelling prices at each other in a crowded room. That’s so 20th century. Now, the great majority of all trades are done by computers, and they can make deals faster, more often, and on smaller margins than humans can. This has lead to the rise in high frequency and low latency trading – why wait for the million dollar deal when you can make a million penny deals each second. More than 70% of our trading (by volume) already involves these computer-enabled high frequency sales, and in this brave new world being able to act a millisecond faster than the competition can mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profit each year. Wissner-Gross and Freer’s paper, Relativistic Statistical Arbitrage, deals with the fallout of these split second trades.

Normal arbitrage is a pretty basic idea – you know that people in Tokyo value a stock at $2 a share, and you know people in New York are willing to sell that stock at $1.75 a share. If you can buy up the New York stock and sell it in Tokyo you can make a healthy $0.25 on every share, with little risk of loss. The person who discovers the price difference the quickest has the most chance of making the deal and collecting the rewards.

But what happens when computers are trading millions of shares each minute? In the fraction of a second it takes for a computer to recognize a chance for arbitrage, a faster computer may have already acted on the deal and claimed the profits. Milliseconds matter. Millions of dollars are at stake. You want to get information as quickly as possible, and make decisions as quickly as possible too.

Here’s the catch: even with information traveling at near the speed of light through the internet, it can take hundreds of milliseconds for data to get from one point on the globe to another. Traders that can place servers and lay fiber optimally across the globe to cut down on this time delay can therefore gain a crucial time advantage over their competitors.

So, it turns out that if you want to make the most profit on the difference in prices between Tokyo and New York, you want your computer to be somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There’s an ‘optimal location’ that will maximize a chance for arbitrage between those points. If you place your computer in the right spot you will be able to get information back and forth between your trading partners and make the best deal.

Understanding all this? Great. Now let’s just expand this concept to the point of insanity. Start trading fast enough and even relatively small distances get to become really important. It’s not just Tokyo and New York, there are optimal trading locations in each country between cities, even inside cities. And every different kind of stock (or commodity or security) is going to have its own optimal locations based on the geography of supply and demand. Heck, those optimal locations even evolve over time as markets expand, shift, and decline.

Wissner-Gross and Freer, with their understanding of physics, developed a way to find those optimal nodes. That alone could have been enough to secure them some tidy offers from major financial institutions (and they do have those offers in the works). But Wissner-Gross and Freer took it a step further and asked another question. If there is a best place to make money, what happens when people start building computers there?

When you build a trading node at an optimal location you won’t be alone. Your competitors will install similar computers nearby. You get a miniature trading center at that spot, and something weird happens. Pricing information (news about stocks in Tokyo, for example) travels to the location and then starts to slow down or even stop! Why? When financial data hits the cluster, the computers start looking to trade, but they can make trades much faster with nearby computers than with computers in New York or Tokyo. So they do. And the arbitrage inside these clusters affects the flow of data. Pricing changes. There’s no longer a $0.25 difference between the two cities, because that price has been balanced by the hyper fast trading of computers in the area. Or even if it hasn’t been completely balanced, those trades have slowed down the passage of data due to the internal exchange of information

This is the relativistic part of Relativistic Statistical Arbitrage. We’ve see similar effects when dealing with bending, slowing, and even ’stopping’ light in different mediums. Knowing how pricing information behaves like light could help financial institutions position their nodes, program their computers, and increase their decision making speeds to make billions of dollars in profit.

The Long Term Effects of Short Term Trading

Wissner-Gross and Freer throw around terms like ‘econo-physical’ and ‘propagation of tradable information’ to help describe the newly discovered importance of speed-of-light security sales. I’ll include another term: ‘eye-opening’. In the past five years (maybe longer in some cases), financial institutions have been pouring money into high-frequency and low-latency trading, restructuring themselves to take advantage of computerized arbitrage. They compete to find profits on smaller margins and higher speeds and could use Wissner-Gross and Freer’s paper to help them better optimize the locations for their computer clusters.

In the past decade the effect of geography on computing has become very apparent. Big names like Google have placed their server farms strategically to get search results to users in tiny fractions of a second. The architecture for content delivery networks became (and continues to be) very important. Choosing locations for computer clusters will only grow more sophisticated as businesses opt to account for relativistic effects. There’s money to be made by building the best trading node structures, and so we’ll see them thrive in the years ahead. In fact, Wall Street companies have almost certainly done mammoth amounts of research into econophysical effects, but in secret (can’t let the competitors know what you know). Wissner-Gross and Freer are making this understanding public (and thus more scientific) and may be making connections between relativistic physics and trading that large corporations may already have explored privately.

It’s important to remember that geographic considerations for computing extend far beyond Wall Street. Energy grids, distributed computer processing projects, telecommunication routing – these systems all have arbitrage-like opportunities inside them. One place needs power (or processing resources, or bandwidth) and another place has it. By finding the optimal way to exchange these resources we get the best possible deal. The ‘natural price’ for these commodities is reached quickly.

So financial businesses and search engine companies may have started to build the computer nodes across the globe, but there will be many different industries that come to rely and profit by them. This will encourage the construction of more nodes, and in finer gradations. Eventually, and neither I nor Wissner-Gross and Freer have a timetable for this, the pressure to build trading nodes might encourage us to practically blanket the globe in computers. At some profit point having a computer perhaps every 100 kilometers will make sense. For some locations you’ll need many more points of presence (POP), and in others much less. Beyond that, who can say? Singularity enthusiasts may point to the day when we could have a continuous string of computers covering our planet’s surface. Yet there are strong limiting factors (power consumption, material costs, heat dissipation, etc) that will counteract economic pressures. Where those forces will ultimately find a balance is anyone’s guess.

Before we reach that point, however, we’ll hit some changes that will be very exciting in their own right. Wissner-Gross tells me that we have major incentive to lay down fiber optic highways between cities and take advantage of faster data exchange rates to improve our trading times. Internet 2.0 is partially being financed by relativistic arbitrage. That’s awesome. And Freer explains how there will be philosophical ramifications as well. It used to be that location mattered. You built cities along major trade routes, and you put your house close to good roads. The internet has changed that somewhat: now anyone can work from home and telecommute to any city in the world. That will stay true, but in the world of high speed computing physical location stopped being trivial ten years ago. Where a server is located can be of great importance. Society was freeing itself of geography just as computation became chained to it.

I am blown away by the need to conceive of stock prices as space-time events. Sit and think about that for a second. We’re using physics to explain finance. And not just economics, but general computational infrastructure, energy usage, telecommunications, and a dozen other fields as well. Wissner-Gross and Freer have presented us with a shift in how we should view the world. A small shift, perhaps, but a critical one. Most will probably not notice its importance because most have not noticed the growing importance of computerized securities trading. For those who are wise enough to use it there lies the possibility of huge profits. For the rest of us, this research is still key because it sheds light on how the public must rethink trading now that computerized transactions are the norm. Also, inside of this research lies the foundation for a computerized planet. With so much money to be made such a future almost seems inevitable. Thanks Alex and Cameron, you may have just pulled the Singularity a little nearer.

[image credit:Wissner-Gross and Freer 2010 Physical Review E]

[sources: Wissner-Gross and Freer 2010 Physical Review E (full PDF here), Alex Wissner-Gross and Cameron Freer]

Extraordinary Memory Through Ordinary Means (video)

Imagining startling scenes in well-known locations can help you remember.

Genetic alterations, cybernetic implants, and nanotech helper robots are not going to be featured in this article. Instead I’m going to discuss an even cooler method of human enhancement: practicing mental tricks. For thousands of years, people have been finding ways to improve their sense of memory with simple techniques that take advantage of how our brain seems to store information. By associating random data with vibrant images, stories, and steps on a journey, memory champions have been able to recall huge strings of numbers, cards in shuffled decks, and just about anything else. Memory competitions have sprung up all over the world, with the highest ranking contestants forced to memorize larger and larger amounts of data to prove their mnemonic might. Catch some of their impressive skill (and a few pointers on how to develop your own) in the videos below. As we seek to transcend human limitations these feats of memory highlight how some among us have already gained fearsome mental prowess with nothing more than a few tricks and a lot of patience.

There are many people who display the ability to recall insane amounts of information without practice. These ’savants’, such as Kim Peek who was the basis for the movie Rain Man, in many cases owe their skills to developmental disorders or brain damage. We’ve seen how some scientists are working on ways that we can technologically induce these conditions in all of us without the disadvantages. While it may take years for those technologies to become available, memorization techniques are here now. These techniques seem too simple to work, but can be put to amazing effect.

Here’s Chester Santos, US Memory Champion of 2008, demonstrating a common memorization technique to Wired. Watch how Santos uses intense images linked to locations (the parts of the body) to improve memorization:

Ron White, who succeeded Santos as US Champion, explains similar techniques in the following clip:

And this segment from the BBC’s “Get Smart” show covers Andi Bell, who has an even more impressive record of memorization.

Like Santos, Bell teaches his interviewer a mnemonic based on spatial reasoning. This technique, called the “method of loci” is one of the most commonly used, and earliest developed of the memorization tricks. As you can see, it works really well even with first time users.

As good as Santos, White, and Bell may be, each of them pales in comparison to Ben Pridmore who was the reigning champion of the world until just recently. Here you’ll see him memorize an entire deck of cards in less than 25 seconds with no errors. Wow.

Of course, no one stays atop the memorization heap for long. Simon Reinhard conquered a deck of cards in less than 22 seconds, and Johannes Mallow defeated Pridmore in the world memory competition in Germany this summer. (Such competitions award points for a variety of memory skills including recalling faces, names, numbers, cards, and words. Mallow was the overall point leader.) Add in those obsessed with memorizing static data sets (like the digits of pi, or the words in the Bible), and you have a diverse global community that is continuously pushing itself to greater heights.

Which is sort of loose proof that a good memory can be developed with hard work. World memory champions spend countless hours honing and practicing their mnemonic techniques. As you saw in the videos above, those techniques can be learned (in a general sense) rather quickly. We may not all be able to memorize a deck of cards in twenty seconds, but we should be able to better remember important facts using colorful images of animals playing around our house.

It’s rather remarkable that one of the best memory enhancing technologies we’ve developed isn’t a computer chip wired to the brain, or a drug…it’s a mental trick. We’ve seen how other simple measures, like avoiding distractions and getting enough sleep, are also very effective. Clearly there is room for many of us to improve our brains without the need for accelerating technology.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t develop more dramatic technologies for improving memory. Rather, I think the mnemonic tricks perfected by memorization champions could help us develop those technologies more quickly. Does the method of loci work because it accesses parts of our brain dedicated to visual analysis and spatial reasoning? If so, could we stimulate those parts of our brain and help us record something perfectly? Remembering something forever could be as simple as pushing a button on an implant. We’ll already have visual and audio recordings of the world around us thanks to life-logging. Improved memories, then, may be less about having an absolute recollection of events and more about improved comprehension and analysis. How much better might we be at our jobs if important facts were ingrained into our consciousness so that we could use them without needing to check a piece of paper, video, or website? Improving our memories, first through mental discipline and later through technological augmentation, seems like one of the first steps towards transcending the limits of our humanity. Take a good look at the champions of memory – we could all have even better skills one day.

For now, best start practicing your mnemonics. I wonder if I can recall all the elements of the periodic table by pretending they are throwing a party in my freshman dorm… Hey, Sodium get out of the shower. Chlorine, what have I told you about smoking inside the building? Phosphorus, stop trying to set fire to everything!

[screen capture credit: BBC]

[video credit: Wired, CBS, BBC, Memory-Sports]

[sources: World Memory Championships, Memoriad, MemorySports]

Cool Video of Real World TRON Light Cycle Test Drive

Tron's light cycle is real, ridable, and ready to buy.

Geeks and gear-heads rejoice: the light cycles from Tron have made it into the real world! This summer the team at Parker Brothers Choppers announced plans to create full street-legal versions of the most famous icon from the Tron movies. Now, they’ve released video of the first futuristically sleek motorcycle prototype…and it looks awesome! Working from little more than pictures and artists’ concept sketches, Parker Brothers Choppers was able to build a machine that captures the style and excitement of the movie while still being able to drive with the power of a V-twin engine. Watch the only non-virtual light cycle in existence in the video below. This thing is amazing!

Back in June, Parker Brothers Choppers had five of these bikes on eBay, each with a unique color. According to Wired, there are still four left, but the price tag has jumped up to $55,000. Jeff Halverson at PBC revealed the bike’s specs: 474 lbs, 100 inches long, 23 inches wide, with a seat 28.5 inches off the ground. Top speed and driving stats are still unavailable, but I get the feeling from the video that this is more of a show than performance vehicle.

Unfortunately, it looks like the test driven prototype doesn’t include the really amazing neon light features that we’d come to expect from the Tron movies. The bike may be glowing during a night rally at which the bike appeared (see the video below which is cued up to the relevant point in time), but I may just be seeing a reflection in its shiny exterior. Either way, it looks like we’ll have to wait a while until this bike really shines the way we want.

It may not glow very well yet, and it will never be able to produce a light wall, but the Tron motorcycle is iPad compatible. According to Wired, the builders are including the option of having all displays (gauges, etc) routed through the tablet computer. Hey, that means you could play Tron while driving the Tron motorcycle. Nice. Dangerous, but nice.

[image credit: Michael Lichter]

[video credit: Parker Brothers Choppers]

[source: Wired]

Heartland Raises $20 Million, Talks Big About Robots

$20 million richer, but no clearer on what they are actually producing, Heartland remains a tantalizing mystery to investors.

What do Roombas and Kindles have in common? They’re fueling the next generation of industrial robots. Rodney Brooks, one of the founders of iRobot, has been developing his new company, Heartland Robotics, for the past few years. Recently Heartland announced it had raised $20 million in series B funding. Among the second round of financiers is returning investor Bezos Enterprises, the personal fund of Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon. According to Brooks, Heartland Robotics will revolutionize the field of industrial robots, moving us away form big bulky machines that are dangerous to be around. The working robot of the future will be safer, smarter, and cheaper. At least, that’s Heartland’s plan. We’ve yet to see a hint, let alone a working prototype, of what the new company is developing. Still, with Brooks’ impressive history in robotics, and with a growing pile of capital to draw upon, Heartland Robotics may be able to live up to its claims.

As we’ve mentioned in our past Heartland coverage, it looks like Brooks may be building off of a humanoid grasping arm called Obrero. Frustratingly, no one from the new company has confirmed that premise or proposed alternatives. In a general way, however, Brooks made his thoughts on the current stand of manufacturing robots clear in a presentation to Maker Faire in 2009. I’ve shown parts of this before so I just want to share a brief clip (see the following) where he addresses ways to improve robots. I’m not sure what Heartland is building, but judging from these comments they are probably focusing on visual and audio recognition, and pairing that to improvements in dexterity.

Even without knowing exactly what Heartland is up to the internet media as well as investor groups seem to believe its potential is remarkably big. That perception is enhanced by some of the over-the-top rhetoric coming out of the company. Brooks and iRobot have been pivotal players in US robotics, but these claims seem grandoise even for him. I’ll leave you to mull over the ones below on your own. Can Heartland, or any single company, enact this kind of innovation in industrial robotics? Too early to say…but if they succeed it’s going to cause some profound and wonderful changes to the way we produce everything.

Our robots will be intuitive to use, intelligent and highly flexible. They’ll be easy to buy, train, and deploy and will be unbelievably inexpensive. Heartland Robotics will change the definition of how and where robots can be used, dramatically expanding the robot marketplace.

—Rodney Brooks, Heartland Robotics Press Release 11/30/2010

********

It used to be the stuff of science fiction. Now it’s simply science. Robotics has advanced to the point where industrial robots are no longer the sole province of a few big manufacturers in a handful of industries. Soon any manufacturer will be able – quickly, affordably, with no special technical skills – to acquire a robot and integrate it into the production process.

— Taken from the Heartland Robotics website.

********

Robots will change the way we work.

They will have intelligence and awareness. They will be teachable, safe and affordable. They will make us productive in ways we never imagined.

Robots will reinvigorate industry and inject new life into the economy. Making businesses more competitive. Keeping jobs from moving overseas. Demonstrating the power of American ingenuity.

Robots will change how we think about manufacturing. And Heartland will change how we think about robots.

— Taken from the Heartland Robotics website.

[image credit: Heartland Robotics]

[source: Heartland Robotics, Press Release (PDF)]

Japan’s Robot Picks Only the Ripest Strawberries (video)

With multiple cameras and sharp pincers, this robot resembles an insect pest. However, it could help revolutionize fruit picking.

It takes more than a green thumb to be a great farmer, super-human vision helps as well. The Institute of Agricultural Machinery at Japan’s National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, along with SI Seiko, has developed a robot that can select and harvest strawberries based on their color. Ripened berries are detected using the robot’s stereoscopic cameras, and analyzed to measure how red they appear. When the fruit is ready to come off the vine, the robot quickly locates it in 3D space and cuts it free. From observation to collection, the harvesting process takes about 9 seconds per berry. Creators estimate that it will be able to cut down harvesting time by 40%. Prototypes are currently being tested in the field with marketable versions expected in the next few years. This artificial agriculturalist was recently recognized by the 4th Annual Robot Award of the Year in Japan. You can see why in the videos below. If we adapt its combination of visual acuity and manual dexterity for other produce, the strawberry harvesting robot could help reshape industrial agriculture.

A typical berry field one square kilometer in size takes about 500 hours to harvest. With its speedy evaluation, the strawberry picking robot could cut this down to around 300 hours. Not only that, but every berry would have a quantifiably similar level of ripeness based on color, and would be harvested with a minimum of bruising. Robots will also be able to harvest during the night (as shown in the videos below) allowing for the fruit to reach market closer to optimum freshness. These improvements in speed and quality will likely translate to millions of dollars saved each year for the industry as a whole. Even if we focus on strawberries alone, robots like this one make a lot of sense.

Here is raw footage of the robot in action:

DigInfo’s coverage has a great interview with an IAM representative from NARO, and shows how the robot views the fruit it picks for harvest:

Of course, the real potential of this robot extends far outside harvesting just strawberries. Berries have a relatively high value per fruit, and can be raised in controlled conditions very well, so they are an ideal first test case. Clearly, however, the lessons that NARO is learning with the strawberry robot are going to apply to tomatoes, grapes, and many other plants with similar anatomies. Crop selection based on color would be useful for almost all fruits, as well as many other forms of produce. Stereoscopic vision, which allows the robot to accurately locate the fruit in 3D space and remove it without damage, could help with any agricultural project, and is a big part of the robotics industry as a whole.

We’ve seen other projects which highlight the potential of robots in the gardens, fields, and farms of the world. MIT developed prototype bots that could monitor, feed, and harvest tomato plants. Robots have been an important part of dairy farming, and continue to increase in scale and skill. Such machines allow humans to fill management roles and let robots maintain cheaper, healthier, and more valuable crops.

The automation of agriculture could prove to be a pivotal development in the early 21st century, akin to the adoption of combustion engines in the early 20th century. Just as horses were eventually replaced by tractors, humans may find themselves replaced by robots in the remaining realms of agricultural labor in which they still hold sway.

It will be a few years, however, before NARO’s strawberry robot is threatening anyone’s job. Yes, the sophistication of the bot is wonderful to behold, but the device is still in field tests. Developers will need to finish that research, redesign the robot accordingly, and then market the device. Who knows how long it would take it to hit the global agricultural industry. That’s assuming, of course, that the robot’s costs (for electrical power, maintenance, etc) are low enough not to interfere with the benefits it produces in harvest effeciency and quality.

Given enough time, however, it will make economic sense to pick berries with robots rather than humans. The history of industrial agriculture teaches us that if a worker can be replaced by a machine, they will be. Yet despite the obvious disruptions this causes in employment, I think the eventual move towards robotic agriculture is a vital one. We are still fighting global hunger, and anything that can increase our productivity and efficiency in agriculture is likely a valuable step towards solving that grand challenge. The strawberry robot is a relatively small development, but it’s a good one.

[screen capture: meminsider]

[video credit: DigInfo News, meminsider]

[source: DigInfo]

New Video Of Cyborg Professor With a Camera on the Back of His Head!

Wafaa Bilal tinkers with his newly installed camera. Is the cybernetic artist's new eye a sign of things to come?

Never question the resolve of an artist. First off, they are crazy enough to do anything. More importantly, some of them are secretly cyborgs. NYU Professor Wafaa Bilal announced his intent to install a camera on the back of his head earlier this season, and, true to his word, he is now walking around with the device surgically implanted. Bilal, an Iraq-born artist, has a history of controversial projects aimed at getting audiences to explore the limits and boundaries of society. Now, his backwards facing camera will stream the part of the world he never sees to visitors at the Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar. The art project, entitled “The 3rd I” will go live on December 15th and continue for a year. Take a look at the cybernetic camera and listen to Bilal explain his work in the video from the Associated Press below. Two hours of surgery with nothing but local anesthesia – well, no one said becoming a cyborg (or an artist) was easy.

As we discussed in our earlier coverage, Bilal’s artistic venture into lifelogging is about more than getting an extra set of eyes in the back of his head. It’s also about exploring how society excepts the changing mores about recording what’s around you. NYU administrators have required Bilal to cover the camera while on campus to preserve the privacy of their students. Students who in all likelihood take pictures of each other all the time and share intimate details about hookups on Facebook. To NYU, there’s still a difference between choosing to be recorded, and having someone record you without your knowledge. Could that change? The upcoming generation is being raised in a culture that’s far more open than the previous one. How long until they expect every part of their lives to be captured on video? Bilal’s previous artworks have explored American angst about terrorism, global racism, and war. “The 3rd I” seems less dramatic in comparison, but I think the issues it raises could become more important in the years ahead than anyone expects.

[screen capture and video credit: Associated Press]

[source: The 3rd I, WafaaBilal.org, AP]

The Pills Have Eyes: Microchipped Medicine Is Coming

The Proteus chip transmits data from your stomach.

Open wide! Earlier this month, Swiss pharma giant Novartis announced it will be seeking regulatory approval of “smart pills” embedded with microchips within the next 18 months. The chip-on-a-pill, developed by Proteus Biomedical (and snatched up by Novartis for $24 million), will transmit data from the body to doctors, helping them to track med intake and tweak dosage. We previously covered the Proteus system’s clinical trials; now it looks like it will see European regulators by 2012.

So how does it work? The microchip is embedded in a normal pill – Novartis is starting with meds for organ transplantation, but the chip could be attached to any existing medication. As stomach acid breaks down the pill, it activates the microchip, which transmits time-stamped data to a patch worn on the patient’s skin. The patch then relays the data to your local wireless signal or smartphone, where it’s sent to your doctor (via a series of tubes). This lets your doctor ensure you’re taking the proper dosage at the proper time – or that you’ve taken your meds at all.

The system could also pass along important biometrics, like temperature and heart rate. Novartis has exclusive rights to the technology, which it plans to package first with existing medication that mitigates dangers of organ transplant. Following a transplant, patients require immunosuppressive drugs to reduce the risk of organ rejection; but this kind of therapy can increase the chances of infection. These dual dangers make dosage an important metric for doctors to monitor, and a good application of the microchip technology.

Novartis hopes to side-step a lengthy full regulatory review because its chip is attached to medications that are already on the market. If the chip is safe and doesn’t affect the normal drug action, it would be considered bioequivalent and skip some red tape. But regulators will be interested in more than bio-safety; the wireless transmission of information brings up questions of data security. Can a 3rd party intercept the signal? Figure out who takes what drugs, when, and in what doses? Regulators will be looking to ensure that individual data is transmitted securely, and for good reasons.

Data security aside, the idea of microchipped meds seems like uncharted ethical waters. I haven’t seen much discussion of the first application that jumped to mind: psychiatric medication. There are a wide range of reasons why people skip doses – forgetfulness, unwanted side effects, or plain old rejection of doctor’s orders. The context is also crucial here: are we talking about skipping a dose of Prozac at home? Or palming Clozaril at the hospital? Refused or skipped meds are notorious problems within the psychiatric community, and chipped drugs would add a new level of control over patients’ lives. Foucault would have a field day.

Skipped meds aren’t the only issue. What would be the consequences for drug abuse? It doesn’t seem too far-fetched for chips to be able to report who took which drugs, and where. This would have some major consequences for the rampant black market for painkillers in the US; could law inforcement get their hands on drug use data? Opiates wouldn’t be the only issue; imagine doctors (or police) tracking the actual use of Adderall across a modern university campus. During finals week.

Set aside the paranoia, and the potentials for personalized medicine are tremendous. We’ve talked about the promises of body 2.0 previously. As the chip technology is improved, it could be used to watch individual drug uptake and action; treatments could be fully customizable in real-time. That could mean patients wouldn’t need to wait weeks to determine if a drug was compatible, or have to switch medication several times. If you were in the 2% who will experience a particular side effect, your doctor could know before it kicked in. The promise for customizable treatments is a powerful one, and it’s already a driving force in biotech.

In my mind, this technology straddles the line between body 2.0 exciting and dystopia/panopticon creepy. I like lying to my dentist about how much I floss. Of course there are far less benign examples, but the question of privacy is tightly wrapped up in this kind of biotech. As per the cliché, new advents in technology make new things possible – some we want, and some we don’t. Microchipped medication will be here soon. We should start discussing what to do once it arrives.

[images courtesy of Proteus Biomedical, Stumptuous.com]

[source: Reuters]

Video Game Exercise Bikes Ride onto the Social Network

Video game enhanced exercise is turning to the social network for more fuel.

Do you feel like you need to spend more time at the gym? You’re on the internet, of course you do. Why not let video games keep you motivated to exercise? Special accessories like the Wii’s Balance Board or X-Box’s Kinect let you burn a few calories while you play, but that only goes so far. To get a really strong cardio workout, gyms have installed full-size exercise bicycles that let you pedal around an imaginary track shown on a computer screen. At some point, however, the novelty of cycling through a virtual countryside will fade as well. What’s the final tool to keep us returning to our game-enhanced exercise equipment? Competition and shame. Like so many other technologies, video gaming stationary bicycles are taking advantage of the social network to increase their appeal. Interactive Fitness Holdings’ Expresso Bike not only lets you race against other people in your gym, it helps you share your scores on Facebook and Twitter. Few things may encourage you to pedal faster than receiving a smug tweet from your friend bragging about their latest time trial. The Expresso has hit upon a very powerful hook: when you can struggle against strangers, your friends, and yourself, you’ll never run out of competition to keep you in the race.

Expresso shares your exercising efforts with friends via Facebook or Twitter.

Stationary bikes hooked up to video games are nothing new. Various forms of the Expresso have been selling for almost five years, and there are many other competing bike companies out there, not to mention the Wii Fit, EA Active, and other titles available on traditional video game consoles. “Exer-gaming” is a growing industry, and Expresso is just one of many products you could choose to help you have fun while getting in shape. That being said, the Expresso bike does have almost all of the cool features that exemplify the field. Many of which can be seen in the video below.

There are 30+ tracks, with more created every year. Music is built into the system so you can listen while you ride. The stationary bike has a steerable set of handlebars, allowing you to control where you go as well as how fast you get there. There is a gear-shifting control that varies resistance and gives you a mild mental challenge as you plan the best resistance for each terrain. Expresso also lets you play a variety of games, including chasing down moving targets, racing against a pace-setting virtual biker, or even riding alongside a ‘ghost’ that represents your position in a previous race. With the latest update to the Expresso software, you can now share all of these features with other riders in your social network. A “Ghost Challenge” lets your friends race against you even when they are miles away or arrive hours later to the gym.

For those who really like to compete, you can send a virtual avatar to a friend (a 'ghost') that will let your opponents see a recording of your performance on their screen as they bike.

The ability to play against opponents even when they aren’t available is a really cool aspect of bringing exer-gaming to the social network. We all have our different schedules, and it’s hard enough to get yourself to the gym, let alone coordinate with a partner. Asynchronous competition is a great tool that lets you benefit from the personal relationship (or all-out war) you have with a fitness buddy without their physical presence. I’m waiting for Expresso (or a competitor) to incorporate a microphone and audio recording so that you can taunt your opponents in real time or leave verbal encouragement for yourself later.

As cool as it is to see video game exercise bikes sharing through Facebook and Twitter, I have to admit that this is far from a real innovation. First, people have been able to share exercise states, dieting tips, and video game experiences over networks for years now. Second, including a social networking aspect into your company’s product isn’t visionary, it’s just plain necessary. IF Holdings has a great exercise bike in Expresso, but letting users challenge each other across the internet seems like a really obvious choice.

Still, who really cares whether or not Expresso’s move towards the social network is mind-blowing – it’s what we need. More and more of our lives are becoming interactive and exciting. The internet is spoiling us – it’s harder to pay attention to events that aren’t fun, challenging, and connected to others. Let’s face it, many of us find exercise boring and overly difficult. Why ride your bike for an hour when it’s easier to troll YouTube? Exer-gaming is a great step towards making exercising as engaging as the digital world, but it’s the social connectivity that really has the chance to make it a challenger to internet-fueled inactivity. Expect more gym equipment, full body video games, and virtual sports to jump on the social networking bandwagon in the future.

Now if they could only find a bicycle that lets you pedal and write blog posts at the same time, I would be set.

[image credits: IF Holdings]

[video credits: IF Holdings]

[sources: IF Holdings, Press Release via BusinessWire]

Dan Sheniak from Wieden + Kennedy on the future of the big idea [with 6 cool videos]

I spent the day at the Ninemsn Digital Marketing Summit - possibly the first event I've been to this year where I wasn't a speaker. See my separate posts on Jeffrey Cole's presentation and notes from other presentations at the Summit.

In the afternoon Dan Sheniak, Global Media Director at Wieden + Kennedy, talked about the future of the big idea in a world of fragmented media, liberally using examples from their recent work, notably for Nike and Old Spice. Here are some notes from his presentation together with some of the videos he showed.

We are living in a communications revolution. Complex, evolving, chasing rather than leading, more questions than answers.

We are all feeling the same things.

Tougher to impact consumers in this fragmented world.

It all starts with having a meaningful relationship between a brand and a consumer. For example, Nike's relationship with athletes, with their mission making athletes better.

Before we had thre of four ways to tell a story. Today, we have a million ways to do it. If your ideas stinks, then is can stink in a million different ways.

It all starts with a big idea.

Dan told the story of how the original Old Spice 'I'm on a horse' TV commercial was used as a springboard into perhaps the most successful social media campaign ever. The bottom line was an increase of 107% in sales of Old Spice over the course of the initial TV ad and subsequent YouTube viral campaign.

Collaboration across disciplines brings bigger ideas. Need to create mini-think-tanks of designers, technologists, creatives and more.

Collaboration = More inventive. More experiential. More open and engaging.

Lance Armstrong launched the cancer support organization Livestrong with the help of Nike, with presence across multiple mainstream and social media platforms. To the point of collaboration, one of the diverse group brainstorming the initial ideas for the campaign suggested using a robot on the Tour de France to share people's tweets of support on the road.

Can your brand be bold? Can your brand take people being bold back?

Dan went on to talk about basketballer' LeBron James' decision to shift to Miami Heat from Cleveland Cavaliers. The negative response on social media was extreme, leading to Nike to engage Wieden + Kennedy to reframe the conversation.

The ad shifted sentiment to be primarily positive for LeBron, and the campaign was broadly taken up, by among others South Park.

'When you make something no one hates, no one loves it.' Tibor Kalman

Ideas have the opportunity for consumers to have a deeper experience with your brand. Setting up your point of view has to integrate with allowing consumers to engage with your brand in a natural way.

Making an Impact in the Digital and Social Media Communications Era: Panel at Ketchum Global Media Network in New York

I was recently on a panel at Ketchum's Global Media Network meeting in New York with Chrystia Freeland, Global Editor-at-Large at Reuters News and former US editor of Financial Times, and John Mervin, head of the BBC News bureau in New York, moderated by Nicholas Scibetta, Partner and Global Director of the Global Media Network. The topic was Technology and the Global Media Landscape: Making an Impact in the Digital and Social Media Communications Era.

It was a fantastic discussion which covered a lot of territory. Below are quick unedited snippets I managed to capture during the panel, sitting with my iPad and keyboard on my lap on the stage.

The biggest trend is globalization. IBM illustrates this. From 2003 to today its staff in India has risen from 7,000 to 75,000, whereas its US workforce has fallen by 30,000 to 100,000.

Quoting Ken Lerer of Huffington Post: 25 years ago it took 25 years to build a brand, 10 years ago it took 10 years. Today it takes 1 year to build a brand.

The cross-shareholdings between Russian DST, China's Tencent and South Africa's Naspers provide a great illustration of increasing capital flows across developing markets.

We are heading towards partisan, point of view and personality journalism. Big question for newsrooms today is how much personality can we tolerate? News organizations are grappling with this. The massive shift to partisan journalism is most accentuated in the US, far less in other countries.

Will we lose a shared platform where people can have a discussion? This can result in a skewed perspective. People are getting their information more than ever before from partisan journalists. The political candidates are only allowing supporters to interview them. Since Sarah Palin was interviewed by Katie Couric, she has only allowed interviews from aligned people.

Nicholas raised Chrystia's excellent article in Columbia Journalism Review on The rise of private news, which raises the distinction between business news and consumer news. Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters have excellent business models, and are looking for a news voice. Shifting this into consumer space, for example with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, can feed their core business model. Consumer news is looking to move into business news, which can be better monetized. New York Times with Dealbook and many others are seeking to do that.

Is social media changing what stories are run? Professional editors are looking to see what people are interested in, though still using their judgment to select what is important. There is now real-time feedback.

With the rise of social curation, people become their own editors. The question arises whether news organizations should still seek to cover all news, if everyone is using multiple sources. Should they specialize?

Jimmy Wales said that if you can do it in your pajamas then you won't be paid for it. Just as porn is being disrupted by citizen pornographers, journalism is being disrupted by bloggers. Something that is still valuable is the impartial journalist interviewing someone in a studio. Some bloggers are journalists, others are not. A hedge fund manager asked for his best news source, mentioned not a newspaper but Michael Petty, a blogger on China.

Some PR people seem to still want to control the discussion, perhaps through fear of the shift to open.

Huffington Post has been great at building a community, getting many people who want to comment, who feel engaged with the other readers. It allows people to build their own brand.

Submitted video is useful, but it needs a professional to build a narrative. Journalists want to do the storytelling - that is the fun stuff - but perhaps there is an oversupply of this. There is a huge effort to create big landscape stories, and it's not always worth it.

Further explanation and answers to 6 questions on the Newspaper Extinction Timeline after one million views

Well the Newspaper Extinction Timeline we launched a couple of weeks ago has certainly made an impression. Given the 50,000 views we've had on my blog alone, plus the extensive uptake by mainstream media around the world (a partial list at the bottom of this post) it's a pretty safe estimate that it has been seen over one million times so far. Some of our other visuals such as our Web 2.0 Framework and Future of Media Strategic Framework have had well over 500,000 views, but the Newspaper Extinction Timeline has quickly transcended these.

Click on image to download full framework

The framework has attracted both brickbats and bouquets. However it has been significantly misunderstood, so it's worth going into some further explanations and clarifications.

Why so specific?

I expect the Newspaper Extinction Timeline to be wrong in the detail. While we think it's likely to be mainly right I would be amazed if we get much precisely right. That is because the future is inherently unpredictable. We're not trying to pretend that it isn't, and that's why for long-term strategy projects we favor scenario planning as a tool to identify and acknowledge the full scope of uncertainty. However as I noted earlier, precise forecasts can help people to engage with ideas, and hopefully move them to action. The key intentions of the timeline were to bring to life the shift from news-on-paper and the diversity of global media markets.

What does 'insignificant' mean?

A number have asked what me to define 'insignificant', presumably so they can in 2017 and subsequent years check and see whether I was right or wrong. I don't think that's very useful - in a decade or two people will be able to judge either that I was broadly right, or broadly wrong. If I was slightly wrong then that would still be pretty good, and worth alerting. However, so I can be held to account, I will make this specific: By insignificant I mean that non-customized mass-dsitributed news-on-paper will account for less than 2% of media revenues. This is not a great definition for a number of reasons, but is an equivalent level to when most media and marketing people thought online was an insignificant medium.

What are the primary drivers of this shift?

Many of the commentators on the timeline seem to have missed the second page of the framework, which provides some of the factors that were taken into account in creating the timeline.

Click on image to download full framework

I will expand more on the details of the analysis behind the timeline later, however the two biggest reasons for the global decline of news-on-paper are:

- Shift to digital interfaces. The shift from paper to digital devices such as tablets, and more importantly high-quality digital paper, as interfaces to news. Tablets will be given away for free (with strings attached) very soon, and digital paper will supplant paper by the end of the decade in many developed countries.

- Changing economics of newspapers. The economics of newspapers are on the verge of collapse in many countries. In developed countries newspapers have largely lost classifieds revenue, are experiencing rapid decrease in display advertising, and are losing readers apace. There are substantial fixed costs in newspaper production, with in most the majority of the costs production and distribution. With rapidly declining revenue, and in many countries significant debt to service in addition to high fixed and variable costs, printing newspapers will not be economically viable. While there may be many people who still want to buy and read newspapers, those newspapers may not be available. The fact of demand does not mean there will be supply of newspapers in their current form.

Where's the data?

A number of commentators have said that these predictions are not supported by data. I find that a strange comment, since we have no data on the future. We do have data on the present, and below I have listed a few of the sources we used for our analysis. Some seem to think that trend extrapolation can be useful, but that is dumb - the economic dynamics of newspapers go through discontinuities as readers decrease.

Selected data sources:

World Association of Newspapers World Press Trends 2010 report: Data for every country on newspaper circulation, advertising revenue,

Newspaper Association of America and other country newspaper industry associations: The best data is from the US market though there is some other good country data.

International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Statistics: Data for every country on internet and mobile usage

CIA World Factbook (and similar sources): Population, urbanization, economy, demographics etc.

OECD State of Newspapers: Analysis and data on the current state and future of newspapers in OECD countries.

Press freedom index: Media openness

Consumer behavior: a wide variety of surveys and reports such as TNS Digital Life, Deloitte State of the Media Democracy, and the Global Web Index.

Will newspapers in the rest of world all die in 2040?

Many seem to be interpreting the diagam that the countries marked in the legend against 2040+ are predicted to become insignificant in the year 2040. Newspapers in these countries will reach the threshold in 2040 OR LATER. In some cases this will be past the end of this century.

What should we do about it?

That's exactly the right question, as Earl Wilkinson eloquently wrote in response to the timeline. The most important point of all is that this is about the extinction of news-on-paper, not journalists or the organizations that provide us with news. We are inexorably moving to a global media economy. As I wrote a few months ago, I believe overall media revenues will soar. The news organizations of today are better positioned than anyone else to take that opportunity. But extremely rapid and deft action is required for that.

In coming months we will be creating substantial detailed content on what news organizations need to do to take that opportunity.

Below is a partial list of outlets that have published or commented on the Newspaper Extinction Timeline. Other than a few exceptions, I have only included mainstream media and not the many individual blog mentions.

233Grados: Un mundo sin prensa en papel, a mediados de siglo

ABC Espana: La muerte de los periodicos

The Australian: Deadline for newspapers as digital publications rise

The Bangkok Bugle: NEWSPAPERS IN THAILAND TO DIE IN 2037

Bilgi Cagi: Ölemedi gitti şu gazeteler!

Brand Republic: Digital to kill US and UK newspapers before 2020

The Business Times: Rising to the media challenge

BuzzFeed: Newspaper Extinction Timeline

Central Valley Business Times: AUDIO INTERVIEW: Futurist names the years when the newspapers die

Chaskor: Апокалипсис уже очень скоро

Comment: Hét éve van hátra az amerikai printlapoknak

Cyberpresse.ca: Les journaux canadiens mourront en…2020