Are You Ready for A Future of Crises? NYU Report Says No

A provocative new report from NYU argues that the vast bulk of US government agencies, non-governmental organizations and businesses are not ready to respond to a growing array and frequency of crises. The study, titled Predicting Organizational Response to Crisis: Perspectives and Practices toward a Pathway to Preparedness (holy alliteration Batman!), reports on a telephone survey of 468 organizational leaders conducted for NYU by Princeton Survey Research Associates International.

Running on Copyright Infringement

Jackson Browne filed suit against John McCain, the RNC, and the Ohio National Republican Committee for using "Running on Empty" in an Obama attack ad without the artist's permission. Browne, a liberal, objected to the ad and the Ohio Republicans say they pulled it right away so they don't understand what all the fuss is about. Duh, guys, it's called politics. Oh right, and copyright law, something which McCain explicitly promises to protect from nasty pirates in his Technology Policy statement.

Playlist my way? Not quite.

At first glance, Universal Music's new "Playlist Your Way" program may look like the company is finally catching on to one of the things that fans and digital music mavens have wanted for a long time: options.

Will Open Science Make It Even Harder to Build Science Communities in China?

A pair of reports last week suggest that China's science community, while thriving, still has a long way to go before it becomes the kind of knowledge-circulating system needed to support world-class technical innovation.

An Arab Proverb About Forecasting

Working my way through Kishore Mahbubani's recent book, "The New Asian Hemisphere", and came upon this great Arab proverb on the topic of forecasting:

He who speaks about the future lies, even when he tells the truth.

At IFTF, there is a broad understanding based on experience, that no one can predict the future. But we rarely say that no one should... perhaps we need to be as aggressive about that as these ancient sages.

Social philanthropy or feel-good outsourcing?

The New York Times has a piece on Serebra Connect, a freelance computer work marketplace with a social philanthropy twist:

Spoofing Facebook in the Name of Politics

Telepresence as a Driver for Presence

Last year, I gave a talk at a major design expo on the future of presence. I argued that we need to be keenly aware of the historical relationship between new communications technologies and long-distance travel. Right now, the coincidence of high-definition, immersive videoconferencing and high fuel prices has many people excited about the potential for substituting telepresence for travel.

McKinsey's Pitch for a More Compact Urban China

The McKinsey Global Institute has just published a major report outlining four potential scenarios for urbanization in China.

Open Bioscience: Where Will the Distributed Scientists Go to Work?

IFTF researcher David Pescovitz shared an article from Nature News today that covers the proliferation of crowdsourced biodata sharing. Recent months have seen a flurry of launches of open, loosely structured repositories of complex biochemical pathways like WikiPathways, Protein Data Bank Wiki and WikiGene.

Me as a Word Graph

Wordle is sweeping it's way across the web, and while I've been a reluctant aficionado of tag clouds, this Java applet can turn any arbitrary set of text, web page, or del.icio.us feed and turn it into an -attractive- tag cloud. Yes, attractive is the operative word.

Here's the tag cloud of my del.icio.us feed, and I'm shocked at what an accurate fingerprint it is of my research interests over the last year.

Bioenergy Hubs for the 21st Century: The Latin Axis, From Sao Paulo to Havana

Joe Conason's recent piece in Salon makes a fairly compelling argument that normalizing relations with Cuba has become an immediate strategic priority, not because of Fidel's succession, but because it makes sense to secure a good supply of sugar cane for our ethanol needs before China makes an offer Raul can't refuse.

Chinese universities now top the NSF list of institutions sending students to American graduate schools

For decades, American graduate schools have attracted students from all over the world. Over time, of course, the origins of international graduate students has shifted. For years, the NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates has been following where Ph.D. recipients received their undergraduate degrees, and each year it publishes a list showing what universities and colleges graduate the largest number of students going on to get Ph.D.s in the U.S.

The latest survey shows that in 2006, two Chinese universities contributed more Ph.D. students to American graduate programs. This is notable because until now, American universities have dominated (but not monopolized) the top five slots.

Welcome to Digital Mobs

A husband writes an impassioned letter on one of the popular Internet bulletin boards denouncing a college student he suspects of having an affair with his wife.  Immediately, throngs of people join in the attack, and within days the numbers grow to tens of thousands, with “teams of strangers hunting down the student, hounding him out of his university, and causing the family to barricade themselves inside the home."  http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/03/.

Melting Icecaps and Global Oceans

If the Greenland icecap sees an even-more-significant melt, how soon do you need to pack your bags and head for the high country?