These two robots, developed by Boston Dynamics, are Youtooobing:
I can imagine this one (called the Sand Flea) being used by the military and police for sending in cameras and other spy equipment in an urban landscape. The Big Dog (below) is something I really could use when I am gardening – a container on its back, and a voice interface so I could tell it to go empty itself in the compost bin when it is full of garden refuse.
War is not what it used to be. Both the implicit trends and explicit strategy has gone from large-army movements – the invasion of Iraq may be the last large-scale invasion we will see for quite a while – to smaller-unit conflict management and “surgical” actions, such as the raid on Osama bin Laden. This is partially a result of technological evolution (advanced weapons demand much training, making conscripted soldiers, who become civilians just as they have learned how to operate them), partially a change in warfare – more and more conflicts are asymmetric, with urban or rural guerillas facing a traditional military force, hiding among the civilians and forcing the regular army to either be ruthless or to win hearts and minds.
In both cases, war is expensive for the decision-makers. Today’s young men do not have four brothers and face a career of back-breaking work on the family farm or in a factory or mine – prospects that might make a military career, however the peril, look interesting. With less than two children per woman being the average in European countries, parents (and to a certain extent society, through education) have way to much invested in each individual to squander them on unnecessary and unimportant actions.
This might change: New weapons such as remote-controlled and even automatic drones with pilots sitting halfway around the world, out of harms way, means that the price for war (both in money and lives, of soldiers as well as innocent bystanders) has been significantly reduced. So far, this form of remote warfare has been an American forte, but the weapons are becoming available for smaller countries, first in NATO, then in other countries. I predict that Norway, for one, will scale back its very expensive and politically complicated purchase of advanced, manned F-35 fighters and instead see if more of their needs can be met with the cheaper drones – a disruptive innovation in more than one sense.
This evolution is slightly worrying, for a number of reasons: First, the lower cost of war may make military solutions more tempting to politicians – bloodless or not. Second (and in the longer term more scary) automated weapons can, like all automatic systems, malfunction in unpredictable ways and you can even envision them turning against you, as has happened with anti-aircraft missiles. You really don’t want rogue drones with malicious intent out there, whether it is inserted by hackers or come about through unintended systems interactions. Third, the low price and standard components of the weapon systems may mean that they, in time, will be available not just to large nations, but also to the guerillas and terrorists they were invented to confront. Imagine a home-made drone with cheap technology as the new Kalashnikov – solid, simple and able to make up in numbers what it lacks in sophistication.
I don’t know if remote weapons need a solid infrastructure of communications technology, in particular networks (satellites, cellphone networks, wi-fi) or if they can be controlled with direct radio transmission. There is quite a lot of data that needs to go across, in close to real time – but given the falling cost and increasing range of of digital wireless communication, it is not too hard to imagine that these weapons could be cheap, perhaps even built from standard parts by insurgents themselves, both for spying and for weapons delivery.
Small and cheap has a tendency to carry the day, and enemies learn from each other. Let’s just hope that Steven Pinker is right – and avoid thinking too much on the suppressive possibilities of autonomous weapon systems.
This is the original version of Gotye’s Somebody That I Used to Know:
The video is elegant, sexy and interesting. How to improve it? Well, here is a cover version by a homegrown little band called Walk off the Earth:
I actually like this version of the song better – even without the video. But they are both great. And there you have it – the beauty of art, evolving where people take what others have done and put their own spin on it. Brilliant.
Incidentally, the reason I found these videos is entirely due to my youngest daughter. Just so you don’t think I have the first idea about music. Or anything else.
Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a tour de force history of the birth of the modern computer – and, specifically, the role of Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study in it. Their “IAS machine” was a widely copied design, forming the basis for many research computers and IBM’s early 701 model.We hear of John von Neumann (who tragically died of cancer at 53), Alan Turing (stripped of his security clearing and probably driven to suicide at 41), Stan Ulam, and many others, some famous, some (quite undeservedly) less so. I continue to be amazed at how far ahead some of the thinkers were – Alan Turing discussed multiprocessor and evolutionary approaches to artificial intelligence in 1946, for example.
On a side note, I was pleased to see that a number of Norwegian academics, mostly within meteorology, played an important part in the development and use of the IAS computer. Nils Aall Baricelli, an Italian-Norwegian, was someone I previously had not heard of, one of those thinkers who is way ahead of his time and (perhaps because he was independently wealthy and led a somewhat nomadic academic existence, hence may have been considered something of a dilettante, though Dyson certainly don’t see him as such and credits him with the ability to see a possible way from programmed computer to independently learning mechanism (and, perhaps at some point, organism).
The book is a bit uneven – partly standard history, partly relatively deep computer science discussions (some of them certainly over my head), and partly – with no warning – brilliant leaps of extrapolating visioneering into both what computers have meant for us as a species and what they might mean in the future. It also shows some of the power struggles that take place in academics, and the important role IAS played in the development of the hydrogen bomb.
All in all, an excellent history of the early days of computing – a more recent history than many are aware of. As George Dyson says in his Ted lecture (below) in 2003: “If these people hadn’t done it, someone else would have. It was an idea whose time had come.” That may be true, but it takes nothing away from the tremendous achievements of the early pioneers.
On Friday and Saturday I had one of the most intense teaching experiences of my life – the Participant-Centered Learning seminar at the Harvard Business School. This two-day seminar, with about 50 students from more than 30 institutions, is an introduction into case teaching – but for the course leaders, it is an exercise in meta-thinking.
When you teach a case, you need monitor processes, in real time, on at least two levels: The case problem itself (and cases can be complicated, you need to know them well); and your own performance as a teacher – are you reaching your teaching objectives, and is the way you lead the discussion furthering them. Practice helps, but like with all things new, leading discussions takes a lot of thinking until it gradually becomes a habit and is done more by in central nervous system that the front cortex.
Teaching about case teaching, on the other hand, introduces many new levels. Not only do you have students who are watching your every step – i.e., how you teach, not to look for airtime opportunities – but the aim of the course it to use case teaching techniques to illustrate the teaching techniques that would deal with the problems outlined in the underlying case. (Adding to that, of course, as any good teacher should monitor him- or herself for ways you can make the teaching better the next time.)
At the end of the course, I felt as if I had just finished a long car drive in a car where the gears and pedals had been switched around, every direction decision and subsequent execution requiring copious amounts of conscious processing. Reputedly, the brain consumes 20-24% of the body’s energy, and I certainly felt that way when I got home, barely able to do anything more than sack out in front of the computer with a glass of good red wine and a few old Top Gear episodes.
That being said, however, the whole experience was also extremely invigorating. The students were interested, energetic, and from admirably diverse backgrounds, from US elite institutions through low-cost regional online educators to universities in China, Turkey and Denmark. It was also interesting to have the full resources of a Harvard case classroom at my disposal – in particular, having ample blackboards (9, as a matter of fact,) old-fashioned but so much better in every way, including sightlines. Having a great room changes how you teach – though I will have learn how to exploit the room better, especially the boards, should there be a next time.
But all in all, a most enjoyable experience. As I have previously written, I think good discussion teaching is a source of differentiation and competitive advantage for both teachers and institutions. I stand by that view, all the more so for my experience this weekend.
One of the joys of living in Boston is the seafood, which is deliciously and not too expensively (at least by Norwegian standards) available lots of places.
This picture is from today’s dinner with the MIT CISR team, shot by my eminent colleague Martin Mocker, and, I think, accurately conveys the splendor of the “lobster bake” and my appreciation of it. A “lobster bake” is a traditional New England lobster dinner with a delicious cup of “clam chowdah” as an appetizer and a plate of littlenecks, clams, chorizo (to give the sweet seafood a little contrast), corn on the cob and, of course, a medium-sized lobster.
Note – Legal is no longer available at terminal C! Your best bet is probably to eat somewhere outside the airport… This picture is from the Legal Seafood in Kendall Square – but the most convenient location for lobster, for me at least, is the Legal Seafood restaurant in terminal C at Logan airport. Since the flights to Europe normally leave at 8-8:30 pm, my preferred way to fly is was to check in early, walk over to Terminal C, and feast on inexpensive seafood and decent local beer or a dry white wine. This frees you from the need to eat airline food and puts you in a calm and collected and rather sleepy frame of mind before taking off.
Highly recommended!
Today I hosted a brown bag lunch with researchers from BI’s Technology Strategy group and MIT CISR. The objective was to get to know each other, but every meeting needs a topic, so I asked people to bring their computers and share a few smart things, useful web sites and other things they have discovered, that people wouldn’t know about.
Here is a list of some of the smart tricks and tools people came up with:
The fun thing with a little meeting like this is that everyone comes away with at least one or two things they hadn’t thought about – which is more than you can say for most meetings.
The week before last was spent on Hawai’i (Oahu, to be precise), courtesy of an old collection of American Airlines points, that fact that we are in the US and hence already have paid for half the flight, and a week’s break in daughter number three’s high school schedule.
The goal for the trip was simple: New Facebook profile pictures for father and daughter – standing up on a surfboard. To this end, we had signed up for two days of surf classes with Hawaiian Fire, an eminent surf school run by firefighters. Their classes take place on the southeast side of Oahu, at a beach where waves are consistent and the water reasonably shallow – as a novice, you can always jump off the board and stand on the bottom. (In practice, you want to be a little careful, always landing flat in the water, since there are rocks and corals on the bottom.)
To make a short story short, we both made it into vertical – daughter number three rather faster and better than her top-heavy father.
And lastly, let it be said that despite, in certain aspects, feeling a bit like Las Vegas (at least the brand-name shopping areas of Waikiki), Hawai’i has a distinct culture, a refreshingly laid-back attitude, fantastic nature (we particularly enjoyed exploring the North Shore and the Tantalus/Round Top drive) and an extremely enjoyable climate. It is only to wonder that not many more people live there…
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
If you are only going to read one book on psychology this decade – this should be it!
Daniel Kahneman’s new book Thinking Fast and Slow is one of those books you intend to read while taking notes, then just blow through it knowing full well you’ll have to go back and re-read it at least once per year just to swap it all in again. It sums up a lifetime of research into the surprisingly irrational ways we humans make decisions. Kahneman is a founder of experimental economics and received a Nobel price for it.
The book gives an overview of the various ways we make decisions, illustrated with many counterintuitive examples. Its central premise is that humans have two different decision systems: System 1, which is intuitive, fast, and easy, and System 2, which is rational, effortful, and lazy. We can also divide human models into two: Econs (classic Economic Man) and Humans (subject to all of Kahneman’s follies, and then some). And we have two selves: The experiencing self (living in the present) and the remembering self (living in the interpreted past).
Kahneman lays out these concepts, then show, through examples and research summaries, how they interact and influence our decisions. The intellectual stimulation and the practical implications for how we make the important and not so important decisions in our lives are immense – as an example, check this blog post on pricing experiments.
Highly recommended!
(more notes to follow, methinks)
(If you want a really good review – read Freeman Dyson in the New York Review of Books.)
I am rather passionate about case teaching. Not only does it provide a much richer learning experience for the student, especially within fields that involved in analyzing complex human situations, but it much more interesting for me as a teacher to do case discussions t hat it is to lecture. Not that I don’t enjoy lecturing – do it all the time – but after a while you start to feel like a DVD player on repeat, wondering how much the students get out of listening to you in person rather than seeing a video. In the give-and-take of the case classroom, you learn new things all the time, and so do the students. For example, by about the 15th time I taught a short case about outsourcing, a student came up with a solution neither I nor anyone else had thought about until then. And just a few weeks ago, in China, a mathematically inclined student surprised me with a new solution to a rather long-winded example I use to demonstrate certain aspects of telecommunications competition.
I share that passion with my friend and colleague Bill Schiano, and together we have worked for years on how to do case teaching in situations where you do not have the rich infrastructure, streamlined processes and shared culture of the Harvard Business School – including, in a modest way, trying to influence our colleagues to adopt the method, our students to accept it, and the administration and management of our respective schools to create the infrastructure and processes necessary for it.
In a few weeks (March 16-17, to be precise) we will get an opportunity to further spread the good word, by teaching the course The Art and Craft of Participant-Centered Learning, at the Harvard Business School. We will teach it together with Professor Jim Heskett, a true master of case teaching. The course is over two days – and as of today (March 2) there are still a few places available, details to be found here. (Note that the course is only open to teachers at degree-granting institutions.)
I am quite looking forward to the experience. I have taught classes on case teaching before, but not in this environment and to such an eclectic group (about 50 teachers from many universities and countries.) It feels like giving something back to the institution that taught me, but also as a rather enjoyable challenge, and quite an honor.
It is a sad fact in academia today that good teaching is under-rewarded, at least officially. I think this is a stage we are going through – and that good teaching, specifically discussion facilitation, will be much more important as the competitive climate between business schools hardens (as it will). Lectures and factual information can be delivered over the Internet, in the form of videos, animations, or voice-assisted slide shows. As information can be distributed more and more cost-free, the local lecturer stands in danger of being disrupted – rather than listen to some random teacher on a subject, why not see a video of the best in the field.
The complex interaction of the discussion class room can, as of yet, not be done remotely – at least not with the quality and intensity a co-located discussion warrants. Local institutions of learning, to maintain their competitive place and current pricing, will have to master discussion facilitation and participant-centered learning. Students will demand it, not just in business, but in an increasing number of fields – medicine and social services, public leadership and administration, military, political science, to a certain extent engineering and natural sciences. The case method may be the most explicit of form of participant-centered learning, with its tailored cases and specially built classrooms – but I firmly believe this method will spread out as a way for teachers – even the more average of us – to add value in a unique and enjoyable way way.
Applied Abstractions 