Tag Archives: Carlo Ratti

EmTech México 2013

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MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) produces an annual emerging technologies conference (EmTech) on its own home ground of Cambridge, MA and also in India (mentioned in my Mar. 5, 2010 posting; scroll down 2/3 of the way), in China, in Spain (mentioned in my Oct. 28, 2011 posting; scroll down about 1/4 of the way) and, of particular interest to me, in México.

The ‘nanotechnology’ bombings in México in 2011 and in early 2013, mentioned most recently in my Mar. 14, 2013 posting, provide an interesting backdrop to the upcoming conference (EmTech México 29-30 mayo, 2013 • Ciudad de México).

The speaker list for the conference is, as expected, heavy with MIT faculty but it also boasts someone I’ve featured here from time to time, Tim Harper of Cientifica. Here’s the description they have for Tim (from the EmTech México speaker [biography] page),

Tim Harper es uno de los principales expertos en la comercialización de nanotecnología y de tecnologías emergentes. Le interesan además la biología sintética, la medicina regenerativa y la geoingeniería.

Harper es un emprendedor, inversor en tecnologías emergentes y asesor gubernamental en materia de estrategia tecnológica. Es fundador y CEO de Cientifica, la empresa más respetada a nivel mundial en materia de información nanotecnológica y pronósticos meteorológicos. Harper fue cofundador de la empresa Nanosight, donde desarrolló un innovador sistema de detección de nanopartículas.

Perteneció al  equipo de  ingenieros de la Agencia Espacial Europea en el centro de I+D en Norrdwijk (Países Bajos). Allí contribuyó decisivamente al lanzamiento del primer microscopio de fuerza atómica en el espacio, donde nunca se había analizado el polvo cósmico.

En 1999, Harper organizó en Sevilla (España) la primera conferencia del mundo sobre inversión en nanotecnología. Desde entonces dirige con éxito el World Nanoeconomic Congress en cuatro continentes. En el año 2002 fundó la European NanoBusiness Association, una sociedad sin ánimo de lucro cuyo objetivo es promover la competitividad europea en materia de nanotecnología.

I gather the conference will be held  in Spanish. My skills in this language are almost nonexistent but relying heavily on my poor French, here’s a rough translation of the first paragraph,

Tim Harper is an expert on the commercialization of nanotechnology and other emerging technologies. He also maintains a professional interest in the fields of synthetic biology, regenerative medicine, and geoengineering.

Here are a few of the other speakers listed on the EmTech México conference’s Ponentes page,

  • Jason Pontin, Director de MIT Technology Review
  • Mario Molina, Premio Nobel de Química (1995)
  • Niels Van Duinen, Director de Desarrollo de Negocio Internacional de Philips Lighting
  • Carlo Ratti, Director del grupo Senseable City Lab en el MIT
  • Marcelo Coelho, Diseñador e investigador del grupo Fluid Interfaces en el MIT Media Lab
  • Juan Pablo Puerta, Director de Ingenería, Etsy
  • Marisa Viveros, Vicepresidenta de Cyber Security Innovation de IBM

You can check out all of the Emtech conferences on this page.

One last note, MIT has its own baggage viz the recent suicide of Aaron Swartz. This essay on Wikipedia offers one of the more neutral descriptions. I’ve excerpted the introduction, (Note: Links and footnotes have been removed),

Aaron Hillel Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) was an American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist.

Swartz was involved in the development of the web feed format RSS,[ the organization Creative Commons,] the website framework web.py and the social news site Reddit, in which he was an equal partner after its merger with his Infogami company. Swartz also focused on sociology, civic awareness and activism. In 2010, he became a research fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Research Lab on Institutional Corruption, directed by Lawrence Lessig. He founded the online group Demand Progress, known for its campaign against the Stop Online Piracy Act.

On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested by MIT police on state breaking-and-entering charges, in connection with the systematic downloading of academic journal articles from JSTOR. Federal prosecutors eventually charged him with two counts of wire fraud and 11 violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, charges carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines plus 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution and supervised release.

On January 11, 2013, two years after his initial arrest, Swartz was found dead in his Crown Heights, Brooklyn apartment, where he had hanged himself.

MIT president L. Rafael Reif has since ordered a review of MIT’s role in the tragedy noted in the Wikipedia essay and elsewhere. The essay on Aaron Swartz offers a fairly comprehensive overview of Swartz’s life and accomplishments, as well as, his legal situation and the circumstances surrounding his death.

A suicide is a complex event and it is not possible to hold any one person or institution to blame, tempting as it may be. Nonetheless, it must be said that it seems oddly dissonant that MIT which prides itself on its technological advancements  and membership in an elite, forward-thinking research community would be party to an action where prosecutors seemed more intent on punishment than on any principle of law relating to research and its dissemination. Whatever one thinks of Swartz’s actions, it is clear he was acting out of a spirit of civil disobedience (trying to set publicly funded research free).

In fact, the emerging technologies of yesteryear are have social impacts today such that the ways in which we view research and the scientific process are changing prompting questions such as ‘Who gets access to information and ideas?’ and, as  importantly, ‘When?’

I wonder if any of these events, the multiple bombings in México and MIT’s role in the Swartz case and suicide will have any sort of impact on this conference. I doubt it; there wasn’t a single philosopher on the speaker’s list.

Jason Pontin

Director de MIT Technology Review

Cloud project for London 2012 Olympics includes Umberto Eco?; University of Toronto researchers work on nano nose; Nano safety research centre in Scotland

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Shades of the 19th century! One of the teams competing to build a 2012 Olympics tourist attraction for London’s east end has proposed digital clouds. According to the article (Digital cloud plan for city skies) by Jonathan Fildes, online here at BBC News,

The construction would include 120m- (400ft-) tall mesh towers and a series of interconnected plastic bubbles that can be used to display images and data.

The Cloud, as it is known, would also be used [as] an observation deck and park

The idea of displaying images and data on clouds isn’t entirely new,

… the prospect of illuminated messages on the slate of the heavens … most fascinated experts and layman. “Imagine the effect,” speculated the Electrical Review [Dec. 31, 1892], “if a million people saw in gigantic characters across the clouds such words as ‘BEWARE OF PROTECTION’ and “FREE TRADE LEADS TO H–L!”

(The passage is from Carolyn Marvin’s book, When old technologies were new.) I’m not sure what protection refers to but the reference to free trade still feels fresh.

I always find technology connections to the past quite interesting as similar ideas pop up independently from time to time and I’d be willing to bet the 2012 cloud team has no idea that displaying messages on clouds had been proposed as far back as the 1890s.

The current project has some interesting twists. The team is proposing to fund it with micro-donations from millions of people. From the BBC article,

“It’s really about people coming together to raise the Cloud,” Carlo Ratti, one of the architects behind the design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) told BBC News.

“We can build our Cloud with £5m or £50m. The flexibility of the structural system will allow us to tune the size of the Cloud to the level of funding that is reached.”

The size of the structure will evolve depending on the number of contributions, he said.

The cloud will not consume power from the city’s grid.

“Many tall towers have preceded this, but our achievement is the high degree of transparency, the minimal use of material and the vast volume created by the spheres,” said professor Joerg Schleich, the structural engineer behind the towers.

Professor Schleich was responsible for the Olympic Stadium in Munich as well as numerous lightweight towers built to the same design as the Cloud.

The structure would also be used to harvest all the energy it produces according to Professor Ratti.

“It would be a zero power cloud,” he said.

The team in addition to designers, scientists, and engineers includes Umberto Eco, a philosopher, semiotician, novelist, medievalist, and literary critic.

Yes, they have a writer on the team for a truly interdisciplinary approach. Or not. Eco may have lent his name to the project and not been an active participant. Still, I’m much encouraged by Eco’s participation (regardless of the amount or type) in this project as I think writers have, for the most part, been fusty and slow to engage with the changes we’re all experiencing.

At the University of Toronto (U of T), researchers are working on a project that they hope will be of interest to NASA ([US] National Aeronautics and Space Administration). From the news item on Azonano,

Thankfully, there is no failure to launch at U of T’s new electron beam nanolithography facility where researchers are already developing smaller-than-tiny award-winning devices to improve disease diagnoses and enhance technology that impacts fields as varied as space exploration, the environment, health care and information and media technologies.

One of these novel nano-devices, being developed by PhD student Muhammad Alam, is an optical nose that is capable of detecting multiple gases. Alam hopes it will be used by NASA one day.

Alam is working on a hydrogen sensor which can be used to detect the gas. Hydrogen is used in many industries and its use is rising so there is great interest in finding ways to handle it more safely and effectively. As for NASA, sometimes those rockets don’t get launched because they detect a hydrogen leak that didn’t actually happen. The U of T ‘nose’ promises to be more reliable than the current sensors in use.

Scotland is hosting one of the first nanomaterials research centres in the UK. From the news item on Nanowerk,

Professor Anne Glover, Chief Scientific Adviser for Scotland officially launched the new centre today (Wednesday, November 11) at Edinburgh Napier’s Craighouse Campus.
She said: “Given the widespread use of nanomaterials in [a] variety of everyday products, it is essential for us to fully understand them and their potential impacts. This centre is one of the first in the UK to bring together nano-science research across human, environment, reproductive health and microbiology to ensure the safe and sustainable ongoing use of nanotechnology.”
Director of the Centre for Nano Safety, Professor Vicki Stone said: “Nanomaterials are used in a diverse range of products from medicines and water purifiers to make-up, food, paints, clothing and electronics. It is therefore essential that we fully understand their longterm impact. We are dedicated to understanding the ongoing health and environmental affects of their use and then helping shape future policy for their development. The launch of this new centre is a huge step forward in this important area of research.”

It’s hard to see these initiatives (I mentioned more in yesterday’s [Nov. 10, 2009] posting) in the UK and Europe and not contrast them harshly with the Canadian scene. There may be large scale public engagement, public awareness, safety initiatives, etc. for nanotechnology in Canada but nobody is giving out any information about it.