In my Dec. 19, 2011 posting, I wrote about a rapidly approaching deadline for Peter Thiel’s fellowship programme for people under the age of 20. Unusually, I now have some followup information, thanks to an Aug. 13, 2012 posting on the Foresight Institute blog. The finalists, 40 from over 1000 applicants, are appearing in a CNBC documentary, 20 Under 20, Transforming Tomorrow.
The documentary is airing in two parts on Aug. 13, 2012 for part one and Aug. 14, 2012 for a rerun of part one prior to airing part two which features (from the Foresight Institute posting),
Foresight CoFounder Christine Peterson and Director Desiree Dudley will appear in their role as mentors for the Thiel Foundation’s 20Under20 in CNBC’s documentary “20Under20: Transforming Tomorrow”. See these brilliant young people in CNBC’s upcoming documentary, 9-11pm EDT this Tuesday, August 14th! (It’s a 2-part documentary; the 1st episode actually first airs at 10pm EDT on Monday, but re-airs at 9pm EDT Tuesday before the second part at 10pm EDT.) Video trailer: http://youtu.be/F_YR7sfXjl0
If you prefer, you can watch the video here,
This is a very slick production and, maybe it’s the Canadian in me, the arrogance is breathtaking. It’s to be expected in the under-20 group and necessary if they are to deal with complex issues. The more experienced entrepreneurs are the ones I find shocking and somewhat out of touch. For example, it’s widely recognized that there are a number of possible causes for cancer, as such, there is no single ‘cure for cancer’ or ‘magic bullet’ despite what one of the entrepreneurs suggests in this trailer.
In general, one thinks of surveillance as an activity undertaken by the military or the police or some other arm of the state (a spy agency of some kind). The Nano Hummingbird, a drone from AeroVironment designed for the US Pentagon, would fit into any or all of those categories.
The inset screen shows you what is being seen via the hummingbird’s camera, while the larger screen image allows you to observe the Nano Hummingbird in action. I don’t know why they’ve used the word nano as part of the product unless it is for marketing purposes. The company’s description of the product is at a fairly high level and makes no mention of the technology, nano or otherwise, that makes the hummingbird drone’s capabilities possible (from the company’s Nano Hummingbird webpage),
AV [AeroVironment] is developing the Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) under a DARPA sponsored research contract to develop a new class of air vehicle systems capable of indoor and outdoor operation. Employing biological mimicry at an extremely small scale, this unconventional aircraft could someday provide new reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities in urban environments.
The Nano Hummingbird could be described as a traditional form surveillance as could the EyeSwipe iris scanners (mentioned in my Dec. 10, 2010 posting). The EyeSwipe allows the police, military, or other state agencies to track you with cameras that scan your retinas (they’ve had trials of this technology in Mexico).
A provocative piece by Nic Fleming for the journal, New Scientist, takes this a step further. Smartphone surveillance: The cop in your pocket can be found in the July 30, 2011 issue of New Scientist (preview here; the whole article is behind a paywall),
While many of us use smartphones to keep our social lives in order, they are also turning out to be valuable tools for gathering otherwise hard-to-get data. The latest smartphones bristle with sensors …
Apparently the police are wanting to crowdsource surveillance by having members of the public use their smartphones to track licence plate numbers, etc. and notify the authorities. Concerns about these activities are noted both in Fleming article and in the August 10, 2011 posting on the Foresight Institute blog,
“Christine Peterson, president of the Foresight Institute based in Palo Alto, California, warns that without safeguards, the data we gather about each other might one day be used to undermine rather than to protect our freedom. ‘We are moving to a new level of data collection that our society is not accustomed to,’ she says.”
Peterson’s comments about data collection struck me most particularly as I’ve noticed over the last several months a number of applications designed to make life ‘easier’ that also feature data collection (i. e., collection of one’s personal data). For example, there’s Percolate. From the July 7, 2011 article by Austin Carr for Fast Company,
Percolate, currently in its “double secret alpha” version, is a blogging platform that provides curated content for you to write about. The service taps into your RSS and Twitter feeds, culls content based on your interests–the stuff that “percolates up”–and then offers you the ability to share your thoughts on the subject with friends. “We’re trying to make it easy for anyone to create content,” Brier says, “to take away from the frustration of staring at that blank box and trying to figure out what to say.”
It not only removes the frustration, it removes at least some of the impetus for creativity. The service is being framed as a convenience. Coincidentally, it makes much easier for marketers or any one or any agency to track your activities.
This data collection can get a little more intimate than just your Twitter and RSS feeds. Your underwear can monitor your bodily functions (from the June 11, 2010 news item on Nanowerk),
A team of U.S. scientists has designed some new men’s briefs that may be comfortable, durable and even stylish but, unlike most underpants, may be able to save lives.
Printed on the waistband and in constant contact with the skin is an electronic biosensor, designed to measure blood pressure, heart rate and other vital signs.
The technology, developed by nano-engineering professor Joseph Wang of University of California San Diego and his team, breaks new ground in the field of intelligent textiles and is part of shift in focus in healthcare from hospital-based treatment to home-based management.
The method is similar to conventional screen-printing although the ink contains carbon electrodes.
The project is being funded by the U.S. military with American troops likely to be the first recipients.
“This specific project involves monitoring the injury of soldiers during battlefield surgery and the goal is to develop minimally invasive sensors that can locate, in the field, and identify the type of injury,” Wang told Reuters Television.
I realize that efforts such as the ‘smart underpants’ are developed with good intentions but if the data can be used to monitor your health status, it can be used to monitor you for other reasons.
While the military can insist its soldiers be monitored, civilian efforts are based on incentives. For example, Foodzy is an application that makes dieting fun. From the July 7, 2011 article by Morgan Clendaniel on Fast Company,
As more and more people join (Foodzy is aiming for 30,000 users by the end of the year and 250,000 by the end of 2012), you’ll also start being able to see what your friends are eating. This could be a good way to keep your intake of bits down, not wanting to embarrass yourself in front of your friends as you binge on some cookies, but Kamphuis [Marjolijn Kamphuis is one of the founders] sees a more social aspect to it: “On my dashboard I am able to see what the ‘food match’ between me and my friends is, the same way Last.FM has been comparing me and my friend’s music taste for ages! I am now able to share recipes with my friends or hook up with them in real life for dinner because I notice we have similar taste.”
That sure takes the discovery/excitement aspect out of getting to know someone. As I noted with my comments about Percolate, with more of our lives being mediated by applications of this nature, the easier we are to track.
Along a parallel track, there’s a campaign to remove anonymity and/or pseudonymity from the Internet. As David Sirota notes in his August 12, 2011 Salon essay about this trend, the expressed intention is to ensure civility and minimize bullying but there is at least one other consequence,
The big potential benefit of users having to attach real identities to their Internet personas is more constructive dialogue.
As Zuckerberg [Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook executive] and Schmidt [Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO] correctly suggest, online anonymity is primarily used by hate-mongers to turn constructive public discourse into epithet-filled diatribes. Knowing they are shielded from consequences, trolls feel empowered to spew racist, sexist and other socially unacceptable rhetoric that they’d never use offline. …
The downside, though, is that true whistle-blowers will lose one of their most essential tools.
Though today’s journalists often grant establishment sources anonymity to attack weaker critics, anonymity’s real social value is rooted in helping the powerless challenge the powerful. Think WikiLeaks, which exemplifies how online anonymity provides insiders the cover they need to publish critical information without fear of retribution. Eliminating such cover will almost certainly reduce the kind of leaks that let the public occasionally see inconvenient truths.
It’s not always about whistleblowing, some people prefer pseudonyms. Science writer and blogger, GrrlScientist, recently suffered a blow to her pseudonymity which was administered by Google (from her July 16, 2011 posting on the Guardian science blogs),
One week ago, my entire Google account was deactivated suddenly and without warning. I was not allowed to access gmail nor any other Google service until I surrendered my personal telephone number in exchange for reinstating access to my gmail account. I still cannot access many of my other accounts, such as Google+, Reader and Buzz. My YouTube account remains locked, too.
I was never notified as to what specifically had warranted this unexpected deactivation of my account. I only learned a few hours later that my account was shut down due to the name I use on my profile page, which you claim is a violation of your “community standards”. However, as stated on your own “display name” pages, I have not violated your community standards. I complied with your stated request: my profile name is “the name that [I] commonly go by in daily life.”
My name is a pseudonym, as I openly state on my profile. I have used GrrlScientist as my pseudonym since 2000 and it has a long track record. I have given public lectures in several countries, received mail in two countries, signed contracts, received monetary payments, published in a number of venues and been interviewed for news stories – all using my pseudonym. A recent Google search shows that GrrlScientist, as spelled, is unique in the world. This meets at least two of your stated requirements; (1) I am not impersonating anyone and (2) my name represents just one person.
GrrlScientist is not the only writer who prefers a pseudonym. Mark Twain did too. His real name was Samuel J. Clemens but widely known as Mark Twain, he was the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and many more books, short stories, and essays.
Minimzing bullying, ensuring civility, monitoring vital signs in battle situations, encouraging people to write, helping a friend stay on diet are laudable intentions but all of this leads to more data being collected about us and the potential for abusive use of this data.
The Foresight Institute’s 2011 annual conference (Foresight@Google: 25th Anniversary Conference and Celebration) this weekend (June 24-26, 2011) is their 25th anniversary. They are planning to webcast the Saturday (June 25, 2011) and Sunday (June 26, 2011) sessions. As the conference is held in Silicon Valley, California the sessions are on the Pacific Timezone. Here’s a look at the Saturday sessions (from the event schedule page),
9:00-9:15am “Nanotech: the Next 25 Years” Christine Peterson, President/CoFounder of Foresight
9:15-9:45am “Commercializing Nanotechnology”
KEYNOTE: James R. Von Ehr, II, President/Founder of Zyvex Labs
9:45-10:15am “New Synthetic Methods for Development of Nanoscale Materials” Matthew Francis, PhD, Rising star of nanotech at UC-Berkeley
Happy 25th anniversary to the Foresight Insitute@ Google conference!
There’s a fascinating study by Oxford sociologist Diego Gambetta and political scientist Steffen Hertog, of the London School of Economics, first published in 2008, where amongst other findings they noted a disproportionate number of engineers were found in right-wing groups that practice or advocate political violence. Since the 2008 publication, Gambetta and Hertog have continued the study and are preparing to publish a book on their work. Steven Curry at the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Spectrum recently (Sept. 15, 2010) interviewed Hertog about the findings. You can find the podcast here.
Thanks to Christine Peterson’s (Foresight Institute) Sept. 16, 2010 posting for pointing to this podcast and here are a couple of excerpts on her thoughts about the study,
I have not listened to this, but the obvious answer would seem to be that many people might wish to be effective terrorists, but only the more technical ones have the needed skills to carry out an action that causes significant harm. (I have often been thankful that the superb technical people I know appear to have no leanings in that direction.)
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For now, nanotechnologies are primarily being developed by people who are not likely to deploy them for terrorist purposes, but as time passes this will change. It took about a century for airplanes to be used outside traditional warfare to do major harm; probably that sequence will be faster for nanotechnologies.
I did listen to the podcast and Hertog was very careful to make clear that there are some nuances to be considered. First, the study was not focused on engineers or right-wing groups. As he points out in the podcast, left-wing groups also practice or advocate political violence but they don’t tend to have disproportionate numbers (as compared to what you’d expect from a random sampling of the population) of engineers. If I understand Hertog correctly, left-wing groups tend to attract students and graduates from the humanities and social sciences and can be just as successful with their attempts at political violence. (Note: In the Vancouver (Canada) area, there was the Squamish Five [aka Direct Action] in the early 1980s who firebombed three porn video outlets, a munitions manufacturer (located in the Toronto area), and a BC Hydro substation on Vancouver Island amongst other activities to protest capitalism and the failure of other forms of political activism. Not a single one of the ‘activists’ was an engineer. Wikipedia essay here.)
In much the same way that trying to establish simple causal relationships has led to some of the disappointments in gene therapy and other recent scientific endeavours (my Sept. 21, 2010 posting), Hertog is careful to provide some nuance to this social discussion.
The researchers broke down Islamist and other groups by country and found that in Middle Eastern countries engineers are held in high esteem so ambitious young people study to be engineers. High numbers of recently graduated engineers when coupled with a poor labour market in Middle Eastern countries that also host groups advocating/practicing political violence had a higher than expected proportion of engineers. In other words, the engineers’ job prospects were not good.The two Middle Eastern countries with the best labour markets for engineers didn’t have disproportionate numbers of engineers in right-wing groups advocating/ practicing political violence.
The researchers also noted that engineers regardless of their geographic location tend to be more politically right-wing than other occupations which, if they are frustrated, may predispose them to right-wing causes. By that token, I imagine that frustrated social scientists and humanities graduates would be predisposed to left-wing causes. In any event, having a predisposition to left-wing or right-wing causes and being frustrated in the labour market doesn’t guarantee that you will be practicing political violence. It’s not that simple but the study does provide some food for thought as we try to figure out why people are moved to political violence and whether we can find better ways to respond ahead of time. Bravo to Steven Curry and the IEEE for opening a discussion about this work.
Last week, three women were honoured for their work in nanoscience with L’Oréal Singapore for Women in Science Fellowships (from the news item on Nanowerk),
In its second year, the Fellowships is organised with the support of the Singapore National Commission for UNESCO and in partnership with the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). The Fellowships aim to recognise the significant contribution of talented women to scientific progress, encourage young women to pursue science as a career and promote their effective participation in the scientific development of Singapore.
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The three outstanding women were awarded fellowships worth S$20,000 to support them in their doctorate or post-doctorate research. This year’s National Fellows are:
– Dr. Low Hong Yee, 2010 L’Oréal Singapore For Women in Science National Fellow and Senior Scientist at A*STAR’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering. Her work in nanoimprint technology, an emerging technique in nanotechnology, focuses on eco solutions and brings to reality the ability to mimic and apply on synthetic surfaces the structure found in naturally occurring exteriors or skin such as the iridescent colours of a butterfly’s wings or the water-proofing of lotus leaves. This new development offers an eco-friendly, non-chemical method to improve the properties and functionalities of common plastic film.
– Dr. Madhavi Srinivasan, 2010 L’Oréal Singapore For Women in Science National Fellow and Assistant Professor at the Nanyang Technological University. Dr Srinivasan seeks to harness the power of nanoscale materials for the answer to the future of energy storage. Such technologies are vital for the future of a clean energy landscape. Its applications include powering electric vehicles, thus reducing overall CO2 emission, and reducing global warming or enhancing renewable energy sources (solar/wind), thus reducing pollution and tapping on alternative energy supplies.
– Dr. Yang Huiying, 2010 L’Oréal Singapore For Women in Science National Fellow and Assistant Professor at Singapore University of Technology and Design. Dr Yang’s fascination with the beauty of the nano-world prompted her research into the fabrication of metal oxide nanostructures, investigation of their optical properties, and the development of nanophotonics devices. These light emitting devices will potentially be an answer to the need for energy-saving and lower cost display screens, LED bulbs, TV and DVD players etc.
This announcement reminded me of a question I occasionally ask myself, why aren’t there more women mentioned prominently in the nanotechnology/nanoscience narratives? There are a few (the ones I’ve heard of are from the US: Christine Peterson/Foresight Institute; Mildred Dresselhaus, advisor to former US Pres. Bill Clinton; Kristen Kulinowski/Rice University and the Good Nano Guide, please let me know of any others that should be added to this list) just not as many as I would have expected.
On a somewhat related note, there was this blog post by one of the co-authors of the article, The Internet as a resource and support network for diverse geoscientists, which focused largely on women,
In the September issue of GSA Today, you can find our article on The Internet as a resource and support network for diverse geoscientists. We wrote the article with with the idea of reaching beyond the audience that already reads blogs (or attends education/diversity sessions at GSA), with the view that we might be able to open some eyes as to why time spent on-line reading and writing blogs and participating in Twitter might be a valuable thing for geoscientists to be doing. And, of course, we had some data to support our assertions.
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As a white woman geoscientist in academia, I have definitely personally and professionally benefited from my blog reading and writing time. (I even have a publication to show for it!) But I would to love to hear more from minority and outside-of-academia geoscientists about what blogs, Twitter, and other internet-based forms of support could be doing to better support you. As you can see from the paragraph above, what we ended up advocating was that institutional support for blogging and blog-reading would help increase participation. We thought that, with increased participation, more minority and outside-of-academia geosciences voices would emerge, helping others find support, community, role models, and mentoring in voices similar to their own. Meanwhile those of us closer to the white/academic end of the spectrum could learn from all that a diverse geoscientist community has to offer.
The 2-page article is open access and can be found here.
Meanwhile, women in technology should be taking this tack according to an article by Allyson Kapin on the Fast Company website,
We have a rampant problem in the tech world. It’s called the blame game. Here’s how it works. You ask the question, “Why aren’t there enough women in tech or launching startups?” From some you get answers like, “Because it’s an exclusive white boys club.” But others say, “Not true! It’s because women don’t promote their expertise enough and they are more risk averse.” How can we truly address the lack of women in tech and startups and develop realistic solutions if we continue to play this silly blame game?
Yesterday, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch wrote a blog post saying, “It doesn’t matter how old you are, what sex you are, what politics you support or what color you are. If your idea rocks and you can execute, you can change the world and/or get really, stinking rich.”
That’s a nice idea and if it were true then the amount of wealthy entrepreneurs would better match our population’s racial and gender demographics. The fact remains that in 2009 angel investors dished out $17.6 billion to fund startups. Wonder how many funded startups were women-run? 9.4%, according to the 2009 angel investor report from Center for Venture Research at University of New Hampshire. And only 6% of investor money funded startups run by people of color.
Yet Arrington says it’s because women just don’t want it enough and that he is sick and tired of being blamed for it. He also says TechCrunch has “beg[ged] women to come and speak” and participate in their events and reached out to communities but many women still decline.
Unfortunately, the article is expositing two different ideas (thank you Allyson Kapin for refuting Arrington’s thesis) and not relating them to each other. First, there is a ‘blame game’ which isn’t getting anyone anywhere and there are issues with getting women to speak on technology panels.There are some good suggestions in the article for how to deal with the 2nd problem while the first problem is left to rest.
Kapin is right, the blame game doesn’t work in anyone’s favour but then we have to develop some alternatives. I have something here from Science Cheerleader which offers a stereotype-breaking approach to dealing with some of the issues that women in science confront. Meet Christine,
Meet Crhstine (image found on sciencecheerleader.com
Meet Erica,
Meet Erica (image found on sciencecheerleader.com)
One of these women is a software engineer and the other is a biomedical engineer. Do visit Science Cheerleader to figure out which woman does what.
Changing the way women are perceived is a slow and arduous process and requires a great number of strategies along with the recognition that the strategies have to be adjusted as the nature of the prejudice/discrimination also changes in response to the strategies designed to counter it in the first place. For example, efforts like the L’Oréal fellowships for women have been described as reverse-discrimination since men don’t have access to the awards by reason of their gender while standard fellowship programmes are open to all. It’s true the programmes are open to all but we need to use a variety of ways (finding speakers for panels, special financial awards programmes, stereotype-breaking articles, refuting an uninformed statement, etc.) to encourage greater participation by women and the members of other groups that have traditionally not been included. After all, there’s a reason why most of the prominent Nobel science prize winners are white males and it’s not because they are naturally better at science.
When I first started investigating nanotechnology about four years ago, Bill Joy and his essay for Wired magazine, Why the future doesn’t need us, was suggested as a good place to start. As it turns out, I’ve waited until now to read that piece and only did so in the wake of Christine Peterson’s Foresight Institute August 11, 2010 posting about Joy and a TED talk that he gave in 2006.
It’s all old news but compelling nonetheless given the status that Joy’s 2000 essay still has. As for Joy’s TED Talk, it’s odd in the same way that his essay is odd, i.e., scrambled and all over the place. As I’ve often been accused of writing that way myself, I can’t be too critical of it.
His interest is much broader than nanotechnology although it is mentioned in the essay, if not the talk. The one element of his talk that has stayed with me is his focus on asymmetry and the danger posed by the ‘one to the many’. As he sees it, these new technologies which are becoming more and more easily accessible by anyone put a great deal of destructive power into one any one person’s hands. He also proposes more control as a remedy for this asymmetry.
Joy’s TED TAlk is here. While it was given in February 2006, it wasn’t posted online until November 2008. Since then it has generated continuous comment, the most recent being an August 8, 2010 comment.
The July 29 -31, 2010 Open Science Summit is almost upon us (first mentioned here in a June 29, 3010 posting). The summit organizers pose this notion to set the themes for their conference (from the summit’s home page),
Renowned physicist Freeman Dyson identifies two kinds of scientific revolutions, those driven by new concepts (theoretical), and those driven by new tools (technological).
In the last 500 years we’ve witnessed paradigm shattering conceptual shifts associated with names such as Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, and, Einstein. Simultaneously, the evolution of technology drives progress in unpredictable ways—Galileo borrowed principles from the technology of eye-glasses to pioneer the use of the telescope in astronomy, while Watson and Crick relied on Rosalind Franklin’s skill with X-ray diffraction (a tool from physics) to probe the structure of life. (Undoubtedly, Franklin’s contribution would have been more fully recognized under a true Open Science Paradigm.)
To this classification of scientific revolutions, we can now add a third kind, an Organizational Revolution, the advent of a truly “Open Science,” which will profoundly affect the pace and character of subsequent theory and tool-driven paradigm shifts.
Looking at the speakers scheduled, the summit offers an interesting range including Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute, Special Agent Edward You of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)*, Michael Eisen, co-founder of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), David Koepsell, author of Who Owns You?, and more. It does seem to be largely oriented to genomics, bioinformatics, and other biological sciences.
If you can’t attend in person, there will be live streaming by fora.tv, go here.
* The FBI is quite interested in reaching out to scientists as per my posting of May 25, 2010 about an article in The Scientist titled, SYNTHETIC BIO MEET “Fbio”; You may soon be visited by an FBI agent, or a scientist acting on behalf of one. Here’s why and written by Jill Frommer. The article is now behind a paywall.
At the latest count, over 2100 companies from 48 countries are involved in nanotechnology research, manufacturing or applications – a number that keeps growing at a considerable pace.
With more than 1100 companies, the U.S. is home to roughly half of all nanotechnology firms. 670 companies are in Europe, 230 in Asia and 210 elsewhere in the world. Within Europe, Germany is represented with 211 companies, followed by the U.K. with 146 companies.
Over 270 companies are involved in the manufacture of raw materials such as nanoparticles, nanofibers and -wires, carbon nanotubes, or quantum dots. More than 340 companies are active in life sciences and pharmaceutical fields. The vast majority with well over half of all companies are involved in manufacturing instruments, devices, or advanced materials and components.
The news item goes on to provide a definition for what constitutes a nanotechnology company which is timely in light of Dexter Johnson’s June 30, 2010 posting (What Is a Nanotechnology Company Anyway?) at Nanoclast,
I stopped for a moment after reading [in an investment notice he’d received] this term “nanotechnology company” to consider what might actually constitute such a thing. Is Toyota a nanotechnology company as some nanotechnology stock indices have claimed? Is IBM a nanotechnology company because they are doing research into using graphene and carbon nanotubes in electronics? How about all the instrumentation and microscopy companies that give us the tools to see and to work on the nanometer and angstrom scale, are they nanotechnology companies? What about the flood of nanomaterials companies that started making carbon nanotubes in their basements that were going to revolutionize industry?
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Despite figures ranging from one to three trillion dollars being dangled in front of people’s faces for the last 10 years, it doesn’t seem to have attracted the level of investment that would really make a difference in advancing the commercial aspirations of nanotechnologies if the recent PCAST meeting is any indication.
So the definition has an impact since entrepreneurs need to attract investment and, as more than one of the participants in the recent PCAST meeting noted, moving the discoveries from the laboratory to the market place is a labourious process where there is a significant dearth of investment interest for a phase described as the ‘valley of death’ or, as one participant termed it, the ‘lab gap’. (My post about that particular PCAST meeting ‘The Golden Triangle workshop’ is here.)
The same day Nanowerk announced its new nanotechnology company directory, Christine Peterson at the Foresight Institute posted an item about a venture capital group known for investing in nanotech and microsystems,
Small investors who want to invest in nanotech startups have for years turned to publicly-held venture group Harris & Harris Group, which has focused on private companies in nanotech and microsystems.
With the economy down, and initial public offerings (IPOs) more rare, this strategy is changing.
Peterson is commenting on a Wall Street Journal blog posting by Brian Gormley,
In a June 28 letter to shareholders, Chief Executive [of Harris & Harris Group] Douglas Jamison said many of its private holdings are maturely nicely. Even so, volatility and risk aversion in the public markets are making it difficult for these companies [nanotech and microsystems] to go public.
Although the firm plans to continue investing in private companies, “We currently do not plan to make an initial equity investment in a private company until we get increased visibility into the timing of liquidity for our privately held portfolio,” Jamison wrote in the letter.
The firm, which has 31 private investments in its portfolio, expects to gain such visibility later this year. Jamison was not available for comment Monday.
“With the lengthening time between investment and return on investment in private venture capital-backed companies, we need to find a way to generate returns with greater frequency,” Jamison said in the letter.
“As a public company, we should not count on investors to wait five years between liquidity events. We will seek to position our investments so that we can demonstrate positive returns on investments on an annual basis.”
The valley of death or lab gap seems to be getting wider while venture capitalists who do know the industry pull back. Meanwhile, a standard investor is likely to experience confusion about what the term nanotechnology company means and just how much that ‘market’ is liable to worth.
Christine Peterson from the Foresight Institute will be presenting on “Safety and Security Concerns, Open Source Biodefense” at 5:15 PM on Friday, July 30, 2010 at the first ever Open Science Summit being held at the University of California, Berkeley campus, July 29 – 31 2010. From the Open Science Summit website,
Despite nostalgic myths that Science is the realm of open inquiry, reasoned debate, and the pursuit of objective truth, it has always been politicized, though never to the dangerous degree attained just in the past decade. The viciousness of the fight over embryonic stem cell research, the conflict over creationism, and the politics of climate change are unprecedented new lows. Public confidence in science and technology is deeply shaken, as the outcry over genetically modified organisms attests. When biotechnology, the veritable “toolkit of life,” that could feed the hungry, heal the ill, and fuel the economy without despoiling the environment, is greeted with suspicion and downright hostility, we must acknowledge a deep failure. Citizens and consumers correctly worry that science has sold them out, as companies compromise safety and engineering standards in the dash to control the marketplace.
Beginning in the mid 1980’s a few judicial decisions, with no public or policy deliberation whatsoever, opened the floodgates to an exponential expansion in the filing of patents covering new subject matter and technologies that were never anticipated in the industrial age during which the system evolved. Indeed, there is a growing consensus that the unchecked proliferation of intellectual property rights is perversely out of touch with, and downright inimical to, the collaborative, cumulative, and interdependent essence of innovation in the 21st century’s networked knowledge economy. [emphasis mine] As the global economy struggles to find a new equilibrium after the financial meltdown, it is indisputable that old business models are unsustainable—this applies equally, indeed, especially, to technology and biomedicine, where cycles of over-hype, under-deliver, bubble then bust, have failed to produce cures for desperate, disappointed, and now disillusioned patients, bold proclamations of a “War on Cancer,” notwithstanding.
Then they start discussing alternative models and innovation,
In the last ten years, a collection of burgeoning movements has begun the herculean task of overhauling the outmoded institutions and worldviews that make up our global scientific governance system. Proponents of the Access to Knowledge movement (A2K) have united around the principle that data and knowledge are “anti-rivalrous,” the value of information increases as it spreads. Open Access Journals have demonstrated a new path for publishing that utilizes the power of the internet to instantly distribute ideas instead of imposing artificial scarcity to prop up old business models. “Health 2.0” entrepreneurs are seeking to apply the lessons of e-commerce to empower patients. However, these different efforts are each working on a piece of a problem without a view of the whole. It is not sufficient or realistic to tweak one component of the innovation system (eg, patent policy) and assume the others stay static. Instead, dynamic, interactive, nonlinear change is unfolding. The Open Science Summit is the first and only event to consider what happens throughout the entire innovation chain as reform in one area influences the prospects in others. In the best case scenario, a virtuous circle of mutually reinforcing shifts toward transparency and collaboration could unleash hitherto untapped reserves of human ingenuity.
I know it’s a little high-minded but it’s important to be idealistic every once in a while as I think your soul shrivels up otherwise. Unexpectedly, there’s a Canadian connection. I recognized two participating organizations (although there may be more) from Canada, the University of Calgary and the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia.
If you can’t attend, there will be a livestream by Fora.tv, you can find the details here.
On the heels my recent posting about human enhancement (here), I found an item on the Foresight Institute website about life extension. The poster, Christine Peterson, is responding to an article at The Mark (from their About page) “… Canada’s daily online forum for news, commentary, and debate.” The article, Nanotechnology and Life Extension; 70, 80, or 90 could be the new 64; but is living longer necessarily a good thing?, is by Kerry Bowman and Alan Warner. From the April 14, 2010 article,
It may sound like science fiction, but with innovations in medical nanotechnology, human beings could be looking at a life extension of years or even decades. Nanotech involves microsystems that work on a microscopic scale to potentially alter our physiology and drastically improve our immune systems through improved diagnostic and surgery techniques, gene therapy, cell repair, and more. In the future, we may even be able to use implanted devices to physiologically monitor our bodies – a breakthrough in disease prevention and treatment.
I find the piece a little problematic since these writers don’t seem to know much about nanotechnology or clinical medicine. As you can see in the excerpt that follows, they seem better versed in history,
Life extension is not new. In ancient Rome, the average lifespan was around 23 years; today, the average global life expectancy is 64 years. Demographers tell us there has been an average gain in life expectancy of about three months a year for the last 160 years and that this is steadily increasing. To date, life extension has not necessarily been intentional, often the by-product of our efforts to improve medicine or quality of the life of the elderly.
As far as I can tell, the writers don’t really need to mention nanotechnology as it’s irrelevant to their main topic, life extension which has been occurring and is continuing to do so for reasons entirely unrelated to nanotechnology. Christine Peterson offers a different perspective in her May 10, 2010 response,
There is a simple answer to this debating. Boomers should stick around, keep working, and help pay off the national debt(s). And while we’re at it, we can help clean up the environment. It’s not fair to leave these tasks as burdens on the next generation.
I applaud the sentiment. I’ve never understood why people so proudly proclaim the next generation as ‘hope for the future’ and then announce that the newbies will be responsible for fixing the previous generations’ mistakes.
