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2006 is heading for the finish line -- hope it's been a good year for all of you. To all our readers, thanks for your continued support and interest. And especially to the consultants who make up our talent communities, our special thanks for making it a great year.
Happy New Year and best wishes for further success in 2007 from New Equities and Analysts International.
Technology futurist and author Ray Kurzweil offers a thought-provoking vision of the not-so-distant-future:
Kurzweil told a keynote audience at last week's SCO6 supercomputing conference that nanobots will roam our blood streams fixing diseased or aging organs, while computers will back up our human memories and rejuvenate our bodies by keeping us young in appearance and health.
The author of the book The Singularity Is Near, Kurzweil says within a quarter of a century, non-biological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence. He predicts that it will then soar past human ability because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge.
In an interview with InformationWeek, Kurzweil said people and computers will intermix with nanobots, blood cell-sized robots, that will be integrated into everything from our clothing to our bodies and brains. People simply need to live long enough—another 15 to 30 years—to live forever. Think of it as replacing everyone's "human body version 1.0" with nanotechnology that will repair or replace ailing or aging tissue, he says. Parts will become easily replaceable.
"A $1,000 worth of computation in the 2020s will be 1,000 times more powerful than the human brain," says Kurzweil, adding that in 25 years we'll have multiplied our computational power by a billion. "Fifteen years from now, it'll be a very different world. We'll have cured cancer and heart disease, or at least rendered them to manageable chronic conditions that aren't life threatening. We'll get to the point where we can stop the aging process and stave off death."
Kurzweil even goes out on a limb and predicts that nanotechnology will yield a cure for the common cold.
Comedian Stephen Colbert, who introduced the term "truthiness" into the collective vocabulary, pulls a stunt that demonstrates the perils of collaborative editing:
Stephen Colbert decided to take on Wikipedia tonight, and discuss his vision for a new "Wikiality," where the masses create the facts they want to believe in. And did they ever. At the conclusion of the amusing segment, Colbert instructs his audience to find the Wikipedia entry on elephants, and edit it to say that "the number of elephants has tripled in the last six months." Not surprisingly, plenty of people went to either make the edit, or to see if had been made.
Colbert's prank underscores the inherent risks in using collaborative environments for knowledge-sharing: accuracy can be easily subverted by authors intent on causing mischief. This is counterbalanced by the opportunity for multiple contributors to amplify a body of knowledge. It all comes down to the trustworhiness of the community providing that knowledge.
Update: According to Business 2.0, Wikipedia was quick to lock down the affected pages: "In this battle of truth vs. truthiness, truth ended up with the upper hand."
Fast Company has a thought-provoking article by Adam L. Penenberg on the shape of the next internet boom, one based on all that excess bandwidth left over from the first internet boom/bubble:
Broadband Internet use in the United States jumped from 6% in June 2000 to more than 30% in 2003. Today, more than half of us have access to broadband at home or work. (Most of us, significantly, signed up for it after the dotcom crash.) Now, instead of engaging in theoretical thumb sucking about "what broadband will mean," we're doing something with it. And unlike the 1990s, when experiments failed because entrepreneurs misunderstood the Internet's usefulness, or because it simply wasn't ready, we're working with a known quantity. It took 30 years for electricity to have a serious impact on the U.S. economy, after all, but by 1930, virtually every home had juice and it was driving refrigerators, toasters, lamps, radios, and other appliances. As Henry Blodget put it, our exuberance, irrational or otherwise, builds industries.
We are about to experience a similar, but vastly accelerated, process. With the data pipes open, though, we'll quickly see what our companies are made of. Those most adept at leveraging all of that capacity within their own markets are most likely to flourish over the coming decade and beyond. It's an almost Darwinian challenge.
According to Penenberg, the new economy will be divided among the "natural teches, eager adapters and foot draggers". Some companies (think Google, Apple or Microsoft) "have broadband in their veins". Others (think Wal-Mart) have caught on quickly, and are eagerly embracing ways to wire their business models. And still others (think newspapers and book publishers) are terrified of what a broadband world will mean to their continued market dominance.
The article also explores the social, political, workforce and privacy implications of an economy increasingly intertwined with an abundance of bandwidth. Penenberg doesn't paint an entirely rosy picture; there will be challenges as well as benefits, as our personal information becomes itself one more commodity on the open market.
In the context of the pace of technological development, the crash and burn of the Internet economy of the '90s looks in retrospect like nothing more than a mere breather. Now, as we all sort out what we can do with that leftover excess capacity, is when things really start to get interesting.
New Equities wishes all of our readers a happy and prosperous 2006. We hope that the coming year holds new and exciting opportunities for us all.
If Bill Gates wants to save the world (see post immediately below), he might want to start with New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina has left a lasting imprint of devastation, with a death toll estimated in the thousands and an economic impact already visible at your nearest gas pump, and that will be felt for some time to come.
If you are looking for ways to help or donate, Instapundit has an extensive list of relief agencies.
UPDATE: Employees of Analysts International (of which New Equities is a division) can donate through the American Red Cross. During the month of September, Analysts International will match employee contributions up to a total of $50,000. Details here.
A recent article in the International Herald Tribune calls to our attention an interesting development in the world of finance -- investing in human potential, not in the abstract sense, but as a bona fide financial instrument:
The pitch goes something like this: Imagine investing in business superstars when they are just starting out, the way people do with athletes or music celebrities. What if a scout had spotted Bill Gates when he was 18 and given him money for books and college tuition, in exchange for a cut of his later earnings?
"Would you rather invest your money in the S&P 500 or would you rather invest in a whole class of Harvard College undergrads, a whole class of ex-McKinsey partners?" asked Patrick Chung, a graduate of Harvard business and law schools. "The rate of return on those people is much higher."
As conceived by a handful of venture capitalists worldwide, human capital investments are an alternative to loans and grants in which students and young entrepreneurs apply for private funds to cover tuition or startup costs. Besides money, recipients tap into a network of well-placed investors who have a direct stake in their success. In exchange, they pay a percentage of their accumulated net worth for up to 15 years.
Think of it as a stock or mutual fund powered by the world's best and brightest. So far investors have contributed over $30 million and the first graduates have returned around $800,000. Many are still in school and their funds have not reached maturity, but default rates have been low, entrepreneurs said.
How often have we heard the phrase "our employees are our greatest asset"? If this type of investing proves to be lucrative, it would take that statement out of the realm of business cliches and place it firmly into the realm of ROI.
