Tag Archives: Facebook

The metaverse or not

The ‘metaverse’ seems to be everywhere these days (especially since Facebook has made a number of announcements bout theirs (more about that later in this posting).

At this point, the metaverse is very hyped up despite having been around for about 30 years. According to the Wikipedia timeline (see the Metaverse entry), the first one was a MOO in 1993 called ‘The Metaverse’. In any event, it seems like it might be a good time to see what’s changed since I dipped my toe into a metaverse (Second Life by Linden Labs) in 2007.

(For grammar buffs, I switched from definite article [the] to indefinite article [a] purposefully. In reading the various opinion pieces and announcements, it’s not always clear whether they’re talking about a single, overarching metaverse [the] replacing the single, overarching internet or whether there will be multiple metaverses, in which case [a].)

The hype/the buzz … call it what you will

This September 6, 2021 piece by Nick Pringle for Fast Company dates the beginning of the metaverse to a 1992 science fiction novel before launching into some typical marketing hype (for those who don’t know, hype is the short form for hyperbole; Note: Links have been removed),

The term metaverse was coined by American writer Neal Stephenson in his 1993 sci-fi hit Snow Crash. But what was far-flung fiction 30 years ago is now nearing reality. At Facebook’s most recent earnings call [June 2021], CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company’s vision to unify communities, creators, and commerce through virtual reality: “Our overarching goal across all of these initiatives is to help bring the metaverse to life.”

So what actually is the metaverse? It’s best explained as a collection of 3D worlds you explore as an avatar. Stephenson’s original vision depicted a digital 3D realm in which users interacted in a shared online environment. Set in the wake of a catastrophic global economic crash, the metaverse in Snow Crash emerged as the successor to the internet. Subcultures sprung up alongside new social hierarchies, with users expressing their status through the appearance of their digital avatars.

Today virtual worlds along these lines are formed, populated, and already generating serious money. Household names like Roblox and Fortnite are the most established spaces; however, there are many more emerging, such as Decentraland, Upland, Sandbox, and the soon to launch Victoria VR.

These metaverses [emphasis mine] are peaking at a time when reality itself feels dystopian, with a global pandemic, climate change, and economic uncertainty hanging over our daily lives. The pandemic in particular saw many of us escape reality into online worlds like Roblox and Fortnite. But these spaces have proven to be a place where human creativity can flourish amid crisis.

In fact, we are currently experiencing an explosion of platforms parallel to the dotcom boom. While many of these fledgling digital worlds will become what Ask Jeeves was to Google, I predict [emphasis mine] that a few will match the scale and reach of the tech giant—or even exceed it.

Because the metaverse brings a new dimension to the internet, brands and businesses will need to consider their current and future role within it. Some brands are already forging the way and establishing a new genre of marketing in the process: direct to avatar (D2A). Gucci sold a virtual bag for more than the real thing in Roblox; Nike dropped virtual Jordans in Fortnite; Coca-Cola launched avatar wearables in Decentraland, and Sotheby’s has an art gallery that your avatar can wander in your spare time.

D2A is being supercharged by blockchain technology and the advent of digital ownership via NFTs, or nonfungible tokens. NFTs are already making waves in art and gaming. More than $191 million was transacted on the “play to earn” blockchain game Axie Infinity in its first 30 days this year. This kind of growth makes NFTs hard for brands to ignore. In the process, blockchain and crypto are starting to feel less and less like “outsider tech.” There are still big barriers to be overcome—the UX of crypto being one, and the eye-watering environmental impact of mining being the other. I believe technology will find a way. History tends to agree.

Detractors see the metaverse as a pandemic fad, wrapping it up with the current NFT bubble or reducing it to Zuck’s [Jeffrey Zuckerberg and Facebook] dystopian corporate landscape. This misses the bigger behavior change that is happening among Gen Alpha. When you watch how they play, it becomes clear that the metaverse is more than a buzzword.

For Gen Alpha [emphasis mine], gaming is social life. While millennials relentlessly scroll feeds, Alphas and Zoomers [emphasis mine] increasingly stroll virtual spaces with their friends. Why spend the evening staring at Instagram when you can wander around a virtual Harajuku with your mates? If this seems ridiculous to you, ask any 13-year-old what they think.

Who is Nick Pringle and how accurate are his predictions?

At the end of his September 6, 2021 piece, you’ll find this,

Nick Pringle is SVP [Senior Vice President] executive creative director at R/GA London.

According to the R/GA Wikipedia entry,

… [the company] evolved from a computer-assisted film-making studio to a digital design and consulting company, as part of a major advertising network.

Here’s how Pringle sees our future, his September 6, 2021 piece,

By thinking “virtual first,” you can see how these spaces become highly experimental, creative, and valuable. The products you can design aren’t bound by physics or marketing convention—they can be anything, and are now directly “ownable” through blockchain. …

I believe that the metaverse is here to stay. That means brands and marketers now have the exciting opportunity to create products that exist in multiple realities. The winners will understand that the metaverse is not a copy of our world, and so we should not simply paste our products, experiences, and brands into it.

I emphasized “These metaverses …” in the previous section to highlight the fact that I find the use of ‘metaverses’ vs. ‘worlds’ confusing as the words are sometimes used as synonyms and sometimes as distinctions. We do it all the time in all sorts of conversations but for someone who’s an outsider to a particular occupational group or subculture, the shifts can make for confusion.

As for Gen Alpha and Zoomer, I’m not a fan of ‘Gen anything’ as shorthand for describing a cohort based on birth years. For example, “For Gen Alpha [emphasis mine], gaming is social life,” ignores social and economic classes, as well as, the importance of locations/geography, e.g., Afghanistan in contrast to the US.

To answer the question I asked, Pringle does not mention any record of accuracy for his predictions for the future but I was able to discover that he is a “multiple Cannes Lions award-winning creative” (more here).

A more measured view of the metaverse

An October 4, 2021 article (What is the metaverse, and do I have to care? One part definition, one part aspiration, one part hype) by Adi Robertson and Jay Peters for The Verge offers a deeper dive into the metaverse (Note: Links have been removed),

In recent months you may have heard about something called the metaverse. Maybe you’ve read that the metaverse is going to replace the internet. Maybe we’re all supposed to live there. Maybe Facebook (or Epic, or Roblox, or dozens of smaller companies) is trying to take it over. And maybe it’s got something to do with NFTs [non-fungible tokens]?

Unlike a lot of things The Verge covers, the metaverse is tough to explain for one reason: it doesn’t necessarily exist. It’s partly a dream for the future of the internet and partly a neat way to encapsulate some current trends in online infrastructure, including the growth of real-time 3D worlds.

Then what is the real metaverse?

There’s no universally accepted definition of a real “metaverse,” except maybe that it’s a fancier successor to the internet. Silicon Valley metaverse proponents sometimes reference a description from venture capitalist Matthew Ball, author of the extensive Metaverse Primer:

“The Metaverse is an expansive network of persistent, real-time rendered 3D worlds and simulations that support continuity of identity, objects, history, payments, and entitlements, and can be experienced synchronously by an effectively unlimited number of users, each with an individual sense of presence.”

Facebook, arguably the tech company with the biggest stake in the metaverse, describes it more simply:

“The ‘metaverse’ is a set of virtual spaces where you can create and explore with other people who aren’t in the same physical space as you.”

There are also broader metaverse-related taxonomies like one from game designer Raph Koster, who draws a distinction between “online worlds,” “multiverses,” and “metaverses.” To Koster, online worlds are digital spaces — from rich 3D environments to text-based ones — focused on one main theme. Multiverses are “multiple different worlds connected in a network, which do not have a shared theme or ruleset,” including Ready Player One’s OASIS. And a metaverse is “a multiverse which interoperates more with the real world,” incorporating things like augmented reality overlays, VR dressing rooms for real stores, and even apps like Google Maps.

If you want something a little snarkier and more impressionistic, you can cite digital scholar Janet Murray — who has described the modern metaverse ideal as “a magical Zoom meeting that has all the playful release of Animal Crossing.”

But wait, now Ready Player One isn’t a metaverse and virtual worlds don’t have to be 3D? It sounds like some of these definitions conflict with each other.

An astute observation.

Why is the term “metaverse” even useful? “The internet” already covers mobile apps, websites, and all kinds of infrastructure services. Can’t we roll virtual worlds in there, too?

Matthew Ball favors the term “metaverse” because it creates a clean break with the present-day internet. [emphasis mine] “Using the metaverse as a distinctive descriptor allows us to understand the enormity of that change and in turn, the opportunity for disruption,” he said in a phone interview with The Verge. “It’s much harder to say ‘we’re late-cycle into the last thing and want to change it.’ But I think understanding this next wave of computing and the internet allows us to be more proactive than reactive and think about the future as we want it to be, rather than how to marginally affect the present.”

A more cynical spin is that “metaverse” lets companies dodge negative baggage associated with “the internet” in general and social media in particular. “As long as you can make technology seem fresh and new and cool, you can avoid regulation,” researcher Joan Donovan told The Washington Post in a recent article about Facebook and the metaverse. “You can run defense on that for several years before the government can catch up.”

There’s also one very simple reason: it sounds more futuristic than “internet” and gets investors and media people (like us!) excited.

People keep saying NFTs are part of the metaverse. Why?

NFTs are complicated in their own right, and you can read more about them here. Loosely, the thinking goes: NFTs are a way of recording who owns a specific virtual good, creating and transferring virtual goods is a big part of the metaverse, thus NFTs are a potentially useful financial architecture for the metaverse. Or in more practical terms: if you buy a virtual shirt in Metaverse Platform A, NFTs can create a permanent receipt and let you redeem the same shirt in Metaverse Platforms B to Z.

Lots of NFT designers are selling collectible avatars like CryptoPunks, Cool Cats, and Bored Apes, sometimes for astronomical sums. Right now these are mostly 2D art used as social media profile pictures. But we’re already seeing some crossover with “metaverse”-style services. The company Polygonal Mind, for instance, is building a system called CryptoAvatars that lets people buy 3D avatars as NFTs and then use them across multiple virtual worlds.

If you have the time, the October 4, 2021 article (What is the metaverse, and do I have to care? One part definition, one part aspiration, one part hype) is definitely worth the read.

Facebook’s multiverse and other news

Since starting this post sometime in September 2021, the situation regarding Facebook has changed a few times. I’ve decided to begin my version of the story from a summer 2021 announcement.

On Monday, July 26, 2021, Facebook announced a new Metaverse product group. From a July 27, 2021 article by Scott Rosenberg for Yahoo News (Note: A link has been removed),

Facebook announced Monday it was forming a new Metaverse product group to advance its efforts to build a 3D social space using virtual and augmented reality tech.

Facebook’s new Metaverse product group will report to Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s vice president of virtual and augmented reality [emphasis mine], who announced the new organization in a Facebook post.

Facebook, integrity, and safety in the metaverse

On September 27, 2021 Facebook posted this webpage (Building the Metaverse Responsibly by Andrew Bosworth, VP, Facebook Reality Labs [emphasis mine] and Nick Clegg, VP, Global Affairs) on its site,

The metaverse won’t be built overnight by a single company. We’ll collaborate with policymakers, experts and industry partners to bring this to life.

We’re announcing a $50 million investment in global research and program partners to ensure these products are developed responsibly.

We develop technology rooted in human connection that brings people together. As we focus on helping to build the next computing platform, our work across augmented and virtual reality and consumer hardware will deepen that human connection regardless of physical distance and without being tied to devices. 

Introducing the XR [extended reality] Programs and Research Fund

There’s a long road ahead. But as a starting point, we’re announcing the XR Programs and Research Fund, a two-year $50 million investment in programs and external research to help us in this effort. Through this fund, we’ll collaborate with industry partners, civil rights groups, governments, nonprofits and academic institutions to determine how to build these technologies responsibly. 

..

Where integrity and safety are concerned Facebook is once again having some credibility issues according to an October 5, 2021 Associated Press article (Whistleblower testifies Facebook chooses profit over safety, calls for ‘congressional action’) posted on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) news online website.

Rebranding Facebook’s integrity and safety issues away?

It seems Facebook’s credibility issues are such that the company is about to rebrand itself according to an October 19, 2021 article by Alex Heath for The Verge (Note: Links have been removed),

Facebook is planning to change its company name next week to reflect its focus on building the metaverse, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

The coming name change, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about at the company’s annual Connect conference on October 28th [2021], but could unveil sooner, is meant to signal the tech giant’s ambition to be known for more than social media and all the ills that entail. The rebrand would likely position the blue Facebook app as one of many products under a parent company overseeing groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and more. A spokesperson for Facebook declined to comment for this story.

Facebook already has more than 10,000 employees building consumer hardware like AR glasses that Zuckerberg believes will eventually be as ubiquitous as smartphones. In July, he told The Verge that, over the next several years, “we will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.”

A rebrand could also serve to further separate the futuristic work Zuckerberg is focused on from the intense scrutiny Facebook is currently under for the way its social platform operates today. A former employee turned whistleblower, Frances Haugen, recently leaked a trove of damning internal documents to The Wall Street Journal and testified about them before Congress. Antitrust regulators in the US and elsewhere are trying to break the company up, and public trust in how Facebook does business is falling.

Facebook isn’t the first well-known tech company to change its company name as its ambitions expand. In 2015, Google reorganized entirely under a holding company called Alphabet, partly to signal that it was no longer just a search engine, but a sprawling conglomerate with companies making driverless cars and health tech. And Snapchat rebranded to Snap Inc. in 2016, the same year it started calling itself a “camera company” and debuted its first pair of Spectacles camera glasses.

If you have time, do read Heath’s article in its entirety.

An October 20, 2021 Thomson Reuters item on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) news online includes quotes from some industry analysts about the rebrand,

“It reflects the broadening out of the Facebook business. And then, secondly, I do think that Facebook’s brand is probably not the greatest given all of the events of the last three years or so,” internet analyst James Cordwell at Atlantic Equities said.

“Having a different parent brand will guard against having this negative association transferred into a new brand, or other brands that are in the portfolio,” said Shankha Basu, associate professor of marketing at University of Leeds.

Tyler Jadah’s October 20, 2021 article for the Daily Hive includes an earlier announcement (not mentioned in the other two articles about the rebranding), Note: A link has been removed,

Earlier this week [October 17, 2021], Facebook announced it will start “a journey to help build the next computing platform” and will hire 10,000 new high-skilled jobs within the European Union (EU) over the next five years.

“Working with others, we’re developing what is often referred to as the ‘metaverse’ — a new phase of interconnected virtual experiences using technologies like virtual and augmented reality,” wrote Facebook’s Nick Clegg, the VP of Global Affairs. “At its heart is the idea that by creating a greater sense of “virtual presence,” interacting online can become much closer to the experience of interacting in person.”

Clegg says the metaverse has the potential to help unlock access to new creative, social, and economic opportunities across the globe and the virtual world.

In an email with Facebook’s Corporate Communications Canada, David Troya-Alvarez told Daily Hive, “We don’t comment on rumour or speculation,” in regards to The Verge‘s report.

I will update this posting when and if Facebook rebrands itself into a ‘metaverse’ company.

***See Oct. 28, 2021 update at the end of this posting and prepare yourself for ‘Meta’.***

Who (else) cares about integrity and safety in the metaverse?

Apparently, the international legal firm, Norton Rose Fulbright also cares about safety and integrity in the metaverse. Here’s more from their July 2021 The Metaverse: The evolution of a universal digital platform webpage,

In technology, first-mover advantage is often significant. This is why BigTech and other online platforms are beginning to acquire software businesses to position themselves for the arrival of the Metaverse.  They hope to be at the forefront of profound changes that the Metaverse will bring in relation to digital interactions between people, between businesses, and between them both. 

What is the Metaverse? The short answer is that it does not exist yet. At the moment it is vision for what the future will be like where personal and commercial life is conducted digitally in parallel with our lives in the physical world. Sounds too much like science fiction? For something that does not exist yet, the Metaverse is drawing a huge amount of attention and investment in the tech sector and beyond.  

Here we look at what the Metaverse is, what its potential is for disruptive change, and some of the key legal and regulatory issues future stakeholders may need to consider.

What are the potential legal issues?

The revolutionary nature of the Metaverse is likely to give rise to a range of complex legal and regulatory issues. We consider some of the key ones below. As time goes by, naturally enough, new ones will emerge.

Data

Participation in the Metaverse will involve the collection of unprecedented amounts and types of personal data. Today, smartphone apps and websites allow organisations to understand how individuals move around the web or navigate an app. Tomorrow, in the Metaverse, organisations will be able to collect information about individuals’ physiological responses, their movements and potentially even brainwave patterns, thereby gauging a much deeper understanding of their customers’ thought processes and behaviours.

Users participating in the Metaverse will also be “logged in” for extended amounts of time. This will mean that patterns of behaviour will be continually monitored, enabling the Metaverse and the businesses (vendors of goods and services) participating in the Metaverse to understand how best to service the users in an incredibly targeted way.

The hungry Metaverse participant

How might actors in the Metaverse target persons participating in the Metaverse? Let us assume one such woman is hungry at the time of participating. The Metaverse may observe a woman frequently glancing at café and restaurant windows and stopping to look at cakes in a bakery window, and determine that she is hungry and serve her food adverts accordingly.

Contrast this with current technology, where a website or app can generally only ascertain this type of information if the woman actively searched for food outlets or similar on her device.

Therefore, in the Metaverse, a user will no longer need to proactively provide personal data by opening up their smartphone and accessing their webpage or app of choice. Instead, their data will be gathered in the background while they go about their virtual lives. 

This type of opportunity comes with great data protection responsibilities. Businesses developing, or participating in, the Metaverse will need to comply with data protection legislation when processing personal data in this new environment. The nature of the Metaverse raises a number of issues around how that compliance will be achieved in practice.

Who is responsible for complying with applicable data protection law? 

In many jurisdictions, data protection laws place different obligations on entities depending on whether an entity determines the purpose and means of processing personal data (referred to as a “controller” under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)) or just processes personal data on behalf of others (referred to as a “processor” under the GDPR). 

In the Metaverse, establishing which entity or entities have responsibility for determining how and why personal data will be processed, and who processes personal data on behalf of another, may not be easy. It will likely involve picking apart a tangled web of relationships, and there may be no obvious or clear answers – for example:

Will there be one main administrator of the Metaverse who collects all personal data provided within it and determines how that personal data will be processed and shared?
Or will multiple entities collect personal data through the Metaverse and each determine their own purposes for doing so? 

Either way, many questions arise, including:

How should the different entities each display their own privacy notice to users? 
Or should this be done jointly? 
How and when should users’ consent be collected? 
Who is responsible if users’ personal data is stolen or misused while they are in the Metaverse? 
What data sharing arrangements need to be put in place and how will these be implemented?

There’s a lot more to this page including a look at Social Media Regulation and Intellectual Property Rights.

One other thing, according to the Norton Rose Fulbright Wikipedia entry, it is one of the ten largest legal firms in the world.

How many realities are there?

I’m starting to think we should talking about RR (real reality), as well as, VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), MR (mixed reality), and XR (extended reality). It seems that all of these (except RR, which is implied) will be part of the ‘metaverse’, assuming that it ever comes into existence. Happily, I have found a good summarized description of VR/AR/MR/XR in a March 20, 2018 essay by North of 41 on medium.com,

Summary: VR is immersing people into a completely virtual environment; AR is creating an overlay of virtual content, but can’t interact with the environment; MR is a mixed of virtual reality and the reality, it creates virtual objects that can interact with the actual environment. XR brings all three Reality (AR, VR, MR) together under one term.

If you have the interest and approximately five spare minutes, read the entire March 20, 2018 essay, which has embedded images illustrating the various realities.

Alternate Mixed Realities: an example

TransforMR: Pose-Aware Object Substitution for Composing Alternate Mixed Realities (ISMAR ’21)

Here’s a description from one of the researchers, Mohamed Kari, of the video, which you can see above, and the paper he and his colleagues presented at the 20th IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2021 (from the TransforMR page on YouTube),

We present TransforMR, a video see-through mixed reality system for mobile devices that performs 3D-pose-aware object substitution to create meaningful mixed reality scenes in previously unseen, uncontrolled, and open-ended real-world environments.

To get a sense of how recent this work is, ISMAR 2021 was held from October 4 – 8, 2021.

The team’s 2021 ISMAR paper, TransforMR Pose-Aware Object Substitution for Composing Alternate Mixed Realities by Mohamed Kari, Tobias Grosse-Puppendah, Luis Falconeri Coelho, Andreas Rene Fender, David Bethge, Reinhard Schütte, and Christian Holz lists two educational institutions I’d expect to see (University of Duisburg-Essen and ETH Zürich), the surprise was this one: Porsche AG. Perhaps that explains the preponderance of vehicles in this demonstration.

Space walking in virtual reality

Ivan Semeniuk’s October 2, 2021 article for the Globe and Mail highlights a collaboration between Montreal’s Felix and Paul Studios with NASA (US National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and Time studios,

Communing with the infinite while floating high above the Earth is an experience that, so far, has been known to only a handful.

Now, a Montreal production company aims to share that experience with audiences around the world, following the first ever recording of a spacewalk in the medium of virtual reality.

The company, which specializes in creating virtual-reality experiences with cinematic flair, got its long-awaited chance in mid-September when astronauts Thomas Pesquet and Akihiko Hoshide ventured outside the International Space Station for about seven hours to install supports and other equipment in preparation for a new solar array.

The footage will be used in the fourth and final instalment of Space Explorers: The ISS Experience, a virtual-reality journey to space that has already garnered a Primetime Emmy Award for its first two episodes.

From the outset, the production was developed to reach audiences through a variety of platforms for 360-degree viewing, including 5G-enabled smart phones and tablets. A domed theatre version of the experience for group audiences opened this week at the Rio Tinto Alcan Montreal Planetarium. Those who desire a more immersive experience can now see the first two episodes in VR form by using a headset available through the gaming and entertainment company Oculus. Scenes from the VR series are also on offer as part of The Infinite, an interactive exhibition developed by Montreal’s Phi Studio, whose works focus on the intersection of art and technology. The exhibition, which runs until Nov. 7 [2021], has attracted 40,000 visitors since it opened in July [2021?].

At a time when billionaires are able to head off on private extraterrestrial sojourns that almost no one else could dream of, Lajeunesse [Félix Lajeunesse, co-founder and creative director of Felix and Paul studios] said his project was developed with a very different purpose in mind: making it easier for audiences to become eyewitnesses rather than distant spectators to humanity’s greatest adventure.

For the final instalments, the storyline takes viewers outside of the space station with cameras mounted on the Canadarm, and – for the climax of the series – by following astronauts during a spacewalk. These scenes required extensive planning, not only because of the limited time frame in which they could be gathered, but because of the lighting challenges presented by a constantly shifting sun as the space station circles the globe once every 90 minutes.

… Lajeunesse said that it was equally important to acquire shots that are not just technically spectacular but that serve the underlying themes of Space Explorers: The ISS Experience. These include an examination of human adaptation and advancement, and the unity that emerges within a group of individuals from many places and cultures and who must learn to co-exist in a high risk environment in order to achieve a common goal.

If you have the time, do read Semeniuk’s October 2, 2021 article in its entirety. You can find the exhibits (hopefully, you’re in Montreal) The Infinite here and Space Explorers: The ISS experience here (see the preview below),

The realities and the ‘verses

There always seems to be a lot of grappling with new and newish science/technology where people strive to coin terms and define them while everyone, including members of the corporate community, attempts to cash in.

The last time I looked (probably about two years ago), I wasn’t able to find any good definitions for alternate reality and mixed reality. (By good, I mean something which clearly explicated the difference between the two.) It was nice to find something this time.

As for Facebook and its attempts to join/create a/the metaverse, the company’s timing seems particularly fraught. As well, paradigm-shifting technology doesn’t usually start with large corporations. The company is ignoring its own history.

Multiverses

Writing this piece has reminded me of the upcoming movie, “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” (Wikipedia entry). While this multiverse is based on a comic book, the idea of a Multiverse (Wikipedia entry) has been around for quite some time,

Early recorded examples of the idea of infinite worlds existed in the philosophy of Ancient Greek Atomism, which proposed that infinite parallel worlds arose from the collision of atoms. In the third century BCE, the philosopher Chrysippus suggested that the world eternally expired and regenerated, effectively suggesting the existence of multiple universes across time.[1] The concept of multiple universes became more defined in the Middle Ages.

Multiple universes have been hypothesized in cosmology, physics, astronomy, religion, philosophy, transpersonal psychology, music, and all kinds of literature, particularly in science fiction, comic books and fantasy. In these contexts, parallel universes are also called “alternate universes”, “quantum universes”, “interpenetrating dimensions”, “parallel universes”, “parallel dimensions”, “parallel worlds”, “parallel realities”, “quantum realities”, “alternate realities”, “alternate timelines”, “alternate dimensions” and “dimensional planes”.

The physics community has debated the various multiverse theories over time. Prominent physicists are divided about whether any other universes exist outside of our own.

Living in a computer simulation or base reality

The whole thing is getting a little confusing for me so I think I’ll stick with RR (real reality) or as it’s also known base reality. For the notion of base reality, I want to thank astronomer David Kipping of Columbia University in Anil Ananthaswamy’s article for this analysis of the idea that we might all be living in a computer simulation (from my December 8, 2020 posting; scroll down about 50% of the way to the “Are we living in a computer simulation?” subhead),

… there is a more obvious answer: Occam’s razor, which says that in the absence of other evidence, the simplest explanation is more likely to be correct. The simulation hypothesis is elaborate, presuming realities nested upon realities, as well as simulated entities that can never tell that they are inside a simulation. “Because it is such an overly complicated, elaborate model in the first place, by Occam’s razor, it really should be disfavored, compared to the simple natural explanation,” Kipping says.

Maybe we are living in base reality after all—The Matrix, Musk and weird quantum physics notwithstanding.

To sum it up (briefly)

I’m sticking with the base reality (or real reality) concept, which is where various people and companies are attempting to create a multiplicity of metaverses or the metaverse effectively replacing the internet. This metaverse can include any all of these realities (AR/MR/VR/XR) along with base reality. As for Facebook’s attempt to build ‘the metaverse’, it seems a little grandiose.

The computer simulation theory is an interesting thought experiment (just like the multiverse is an interesting thought experiment). I’ll leave them there.

Wherever it is we are living, these are interesting times.

***Updated October 28, 2021: D. (Devindra) Hardawar’s October 28, 2021 article for engadget offers details about the rebranding along with a dash of cynicism (Note: A link has been removed),

Here’s what Facebook’s metaverse isn’t: It’s not an alternative world to help us escape from our dystopian reality, a la Snow Crash. It won’t require VR or AR glasses (at least, not at first). And, most importantly, it’s not something Facebook wants to keep to itself. Instead, as Mark Zuckerberg described to media ahead of today’s Facebook Connect conference, the company is betting it’ll be the next major computing platform after the rise of smartphones and the mobile web. Facebook is so confident, in fact, Zuckerberg announced that it’s renaming itself to “Meta.”

After spending the last decade becoming obsessed with our phones and tablets — learning to stare down and scroll practically as a reflex — the Facebook founder thinks we’ll be spending more time looking up at the 3D objects floating around us in the digital realm. Or maybe you’ll be following a friend’s avatar as they wander around your living room as a hologram. It’s basically a digital world layered right on top of the real world, or an “embodied internet” as Zuckerberg describes.

Before he got into the weeds for his grand new vision, though, Zuckerberg also preempted criticism about looking into the future now, as the Facebook Papers paint the company as a mismanaged behemoth that constantly prioritizes profit over safety. While acknowledging the seriousness of the issues the company is facing, noting that it’ll continue to focus on solving them with “industry-leading” investments, Zuckerberg said: 

“The reality is is that there’s always going to be issues and for some people… they may have the view that there’s never really a great time to focus on the future… From my perspective, I think that we’re here to create things and we believe that we can do this and that technology can make things better. So we think it’s important to to push forward.”

Given the extent to which Facebook, and Zuckerberg in particular, have proven to be untrustworthy stewards of social technology, it’s almost laughable that the company wants us to buy into its future. But, like the rise of photo sharing and group chat apps, Zuckerberg at least has a good sense of what’s coming next. And for all of his talk of turning Facebook into a metaverse company, he’s adamant that he doesn’t want to build a metaverse that’s entirely owned by Facebook. He doesn’t think other companies will either. Like the mobile web, he thinks every major technology company will contribute something towards the metaverse. He’s just hoping to make Facebook a pioneer.

“Instead of looking at a screen, or today, how we look at the Internet, I think in the future you’re going to be in the experiences, and I think that’s just a qualitatively different experience,” Zuckerberg said. It’s not quite virtual reality as we think of it, and it’s not just augmented reality. But ultimately, he sees the metaverse as something that’ll help to deliver more presence for digital social experiences — the sense of being there, instead of just being trapped in a zoom window. And he expects there to be continuity across devices, so you’ll be able to start chatting with friends on your phone and seamlessly join them as a hologram when you slip on AR glasses.

D. (Devindra) Hardawar’s October 28, 2021 article provides a lot more details and I recommend reading it in its entirety.

2018 Canadian Science Policy Conference (Nov. 7 – 9, 2018) highlights and Council of Canadian Academies: a communications job, a report, and more

This is a going to a science policy heavy posting with both a conference and the latest report from the Canadian Council of Academies (CCA).

2018 Canadian Science Policy Conference

As I noted in my March 1, 2018 posting, this is the fourth year in a row that the conference is being held in Ottawa and the theme for this 10th edition is ‘Building Bridges Between Science, Policy and Society‘.

The dates are November 7 -9, 2018 and as the opening draws closer I’m getting more ‘breathlessly enthusiastic’ announcements. Here are a few highlights from an October 23, 2018 announcement received via email,

CSPC 2018 is honoured to announce that the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science and Sport, will be delivering the keynote speech of the Gala Dinner on Thursday, November 8 at 7:00 PM. Minister Duncan will also hand out the 4th Science Policy Award of Excellence to the winner of this year’s competition.

CSPC 2018 features 250 speakers, a record number, and above is the breakdown of the positions they hold, over 43% of them being at the executive level and 57% of our speakers being women.

*All information as of October 15, 2018

If you think that you will not meet any new people at CSPC and all of the registrants are the same as last year, think again!

Over 57% of  registrants are attending the conference for the FIRST TIME!

Secure your spot today!

*All information as of October 15, 2018

Here’s more from an October 31, 2018 announcement received via email,

One year after her appointment as Canada’s Chief Science Advisor, Dr. Mona Nemer will discuss her experience with the community. Don’t miss this opportunity.

[Canadian Science Policy Centre editorials in advance of conference]

Paul Dufour
“Evidence and Science in Parliament–Looking Back at CSPC and Moving Forward”

Dr. Tom Corr
“Commercializing Innovation in Canada: Advancing in the Right Direction”

Joseph S Sparling, PhD
“Reimagining the Canadian Postdoctoral Training System”

Milton Friesen
“Conspiring Together for Good: Institutional Science and Religion”

Joseph Tafese
“Science and the Next Generation : Science and Inclusivity, Going beyond the Slogans”

Eva Greyeyes
“Opinion Editorial for CSPC, November 2018”

Monique Crichlow
Chris Loken

“Policy Considerations Towards Converged HPC-AI Platforms”

Should you be in the Ottawa area November 7 – 9, 2018, it’s still possible to register.

**Update November 6, 2018: The 2018 CSPC is Sold Out!**

Council of Canadian Academies: job and the ‘managing innovation’ report

Let’s start with the job (from the posting),

October 17, 2018

Role Title:      Director of Communications
Deadline:       November 5, 2018
Salary:            $115,000 to $165,000

About the Council of Canadian Academies
The Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) is a not-for-profit organization that conducts assessments of evidence on scientific topics of public interest to inform decision-making in Canada.

Role Summary
The CCA is seeking an experienced communications professional to join its senior management team as Director of Communications. Reporting to the President and CEO, the Director is responsible for developing and implementing a communications plan for the organization that promotes and highlights the CCA’s work, brand, and overall mission to a variety of potential users and stakeholders; overseeing the publication and dissemination of high-quality hard copy and online products; and providing strategic advice to the President and CCA’s Board, Committees, and Panels. In fulfilling these responsibilities, the Director of Communications is expected to work with a variety of interested groups including the media, the broad policy community, government, and non-governmental organizations.

Key Responsibilities and Accountabilities
Under the direction of the President and CEO, the Director leads a small team of communications and publishing professionals to meet the responsibilities and accountabilities outlined below.

Strategy Development and External Communications
• Develop and execute an overall strategic communications plan for the organization that promotes and highlights the CCA’s work, brand, and overall mission.
• Oversee the CCA’s presence and influence on digital and social platforms including the development and execution of a comprehensive content strategy for linking CCA’s work with the broader science and policy ecosystem with a focus on promoting and disseminating the findings of the CCA’s expert panel reports.
• Provide support, as needed for relevant government relations activities including liaising with communications counterparts, preparing briefing materials, responding to requests to share CCA information, and coordinating any appearances before Parliamentary committees or other bodies.
• Harness opportunities for advancing the uptake and use of CCA assessments, including leveraging the strengths of key partners particularly the founding Academies.

Publication and Creative Services
• Oversee the creative services, quality control, and publication of all CCA’s expert panel reports including translation, layout, quality assurance, graphic design, proofreading, and printing processes.
• Oversee the creative development and publication of all CCA’s corporate materials including the Annual Report and Corporate Plan through content development, editing, layout, translation, graphic design, proofreading, and printing processes.

Advice and Issues Management
• Provide strategic advice and support to the President’s Office, Board of Directors, Committees, and CCA staff about increasing the overall impact of CCA expert panel reports, brand awareness, outreach opportunities, and effective science communication.
• Provide support to the President by anticipating project-based or organizational issues, understanding potential implications, and suggesting strategic management solutions.
• Ensure consistent messages, style, and approaches in the delivery of all internal and external communications across the organization.

Leadership
• Mentor, train, and advise up to five communications and publishing staff on a day-to-day basis and complete annual performance reviews and planning.
• Lead the development and implementation of all CCA-wide policy and procedures relating to all aspects of communications and publishing.
• Represent the issues, needs, and ongoing requirements for the communications and publishing staff as a member of the CCA senior management team.

Knowledge Requirements
The Director of Communications requires:
• Superior knowledge of communications and public relations principles – preferably as it applies in a non-profit or academic setting;
• Extensive experience in communications planning and issues management;
• Knowledge of current research, editorial, and publication production standards and procedures including but not limited to: translation, copy-editing, layout/design, proofreading and publishing;
• Knowledge of evaluating impact of reports and assessments;
• Knowledge in developing content strategy, knowledge mobilization techniques, and creative services and design;
• Knowledge of human resource management techniques and experience managing a team;
• Experience in coordinating, organizing and implementing communications activities including those involving sensitive topics;
• Knowledge of the relationships and major players in Canada’s intramural and extramural science and public policy ecosystem, including awareness of federal science departments and Parliamentary committees, funding bodies, and related research groups;
• Knowledge of Microsoft Office Suite, Adobe Creative Suite, WordPress and other related programs;
• Knowledge of a variety of social media platforms and measurement tools.

Skills Requirements
The Director of Communications must have:
• Superior time and project management skills
• Superior writing skills
• Superior ability to think strategically regarding how best to raise the CCA’s profile and ensure impact of the CCA’s expert panel reports
• Ability to be flexible and adaptable; able to respond quickly to unanticipated demands
• Strong advisory, negotiation, and problem-solving skills
• Strong skills in risk mitigation
• Superior ability to communicate in both written and oral forms, effectively and diplomatically
• Ability to mentor, train, and provide constructive feedback to direct reports

Education and Experience
This knowledge and skillset is typically obtained through the completion of a post-secondary degree in Journalism, Communications, Public Affairs or a related field, and/or a minimum of 10
years of progressive and related experience. Experience in an organization that has addressed topics in public policy would be valuable.

Language Requirements: This position is English Essential. Fluency in French is a strong asset.

To apply to this position please send your CV and cover letter to careers@scienceadvice.ca before November 5, 2018. The cover letter should answer the following questions in 1,000 words or less:

1. How does your background and work experience make you well-suited for the position of Director of Communications at CCA?
2. What trends do you see emerging in the communications field generally, and in science and policy communications more specifically? How might CCA take advantage of these trends and developments?
3. Knowing that CCA is in the business of conducting assessments of evidence on important policy topics, how do you feel communicating this type of science differs from communicating other types of information and knowledge?

Improving Innovation Through Better Management

The Council of Canadian Academies released their ‘Improving Innovation Through Better Management‘ report on October 18, 2018..As some of my regular readers (assuming there are some) might have predicted, I have issues.

There’s a distinct disconnection between the described problem and the questions to be answered. From the ‘Improving Innovation Through Better Management‘ summary webpage,

While research is world-class and technology start-ups are thriving, few companies grow and mature in Canada. This cycle — invent and sell, invent and sell — allows other countries to capture much of the economic and social benefits of Canadian-invented products, processes, marketing methods, and business models. …

So, the problem is ‘invent and sell’. Leaving aside the questionable conclusion that other countries are reaping the benefits of Canadian innovation (I’ll get back to that shortly), what questions could you ask about how to break the ‘invent and sell, invent and sell’ cycle? Hmm, maybe we should ask, How do we break the ‘invent and sell’ cycle in Canada?

The government presented two questions to deal with the problem and no, how to break the cycle is not one of the questions. From the ‘Improving Innovation Through Better Management‘ summary webpage,

… Escaping this cycle may be aided through education and training of innovation managers who can systematically manage ideas for commercial success and motivate others to reimagine innovation in Canada.

To understand how to better support innovation management in Canada, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) asked the CCA two critical questions: What are the key skills required to manage innovation? And, what are the leading practices for teaching these skills in business schools, other academic departments, colleges/polytechnics, and industry?

As lawyers, journalists, scientists, doctors, librarians, and anyone who’s ever received misinformation can tell you, asking the right questions can make a big difference.

As for the conclusion that other countries are reaping the benefits of Canadian innovation, is there any supporting data? We enjoy a very high standard of living and have done so for at least a couple of generations. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has a Better Life Index, which ranks well-being on these 11 dimensions (from the OECD Better Life Index entry on Wikipedia), Note: Links have been removed,

  1. Housing: housing conditions and spendings (e.g. real estate pricing)
  2. Income: household income and financial wealth
  3. Jobs: earnings, job security and unemployment
  4. Community: quality of social support network
  5. Education: education and what you get out of it
  6. Environment: quality of environment (e.g. environmental health)
  7. Governance: involvement in democracy
  8. Health
  9. Life Satisfaction: level of happiness
  10. Safety: murder and assault rates
  11. Work-life balance

In 2017, the index ranked Canada as fifth in the world while the US appears to have slipped from a previous ranking of 7th to 8th. (See these Wikipedia entries with relevant subsections for rankings:  OECD Better Life Index; Rankings, 2017 ranking and Standard of living in the United States, Measures, 3rd paragraph.)

This notion that other countries are profiting from Canadian innovation while we lag behind has been repeated so often that it’s become an article of faith and I never questioned it until someone else challenged me. This article of faith is repeated internationally and sometimes seems that every country in the world is worried that someone else will benefit from their national innovation.

Getting back to the Canadian situation, we’ve decided to approach the problem by not asking questions about our article of faith or how to break the ‘invent and sell’ cycle. Instead of questioning an assumption and producing an open-ended question, we have these questions (1) What are the key skills required to manage innovation? (2) And, what are the leading practices for teaching these skills in business schools, other academic departments, colleges/polytechnics, and industry?

in my world that first question, would be a second tier question, at best. The second question, presupposes the answer: more training in universities and colleges. I took a look at the report’s Expert Panel webpage and found it populated by five individuals who are either academics or have strong ties to academe. They did have a workshop and the list of participants does include people who run businesses, from the Improving Innovation Through Better Management‘ report (Note: Formatting has not been preserved),

Workshop Participants

Max Blouw,
Former President and Vice-Chancellor of
Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, ON)

Richard Boudreault, FCAE,
Chairman, Sigma Energy
Storage (Montréal, QC)

Judy Fairburn, FCAE,
Past Board Chair, Alberta Innovates;
retired EVP Business Innovation & Chief Digital Officer,
Cenovus Energy Inc. (Calgary, AB)

Tom Jenkins, O.C., FCAE,
Chair of the Board, OpenText
(Waterloo, ON)

Sarah Kaplan,
Director of the Institute for Gender and the
Economy and Distinguished Professor, Rotman School of
Management, University of Toronto (Toronto, ON)

Jean-Michel Lemieux,
Senior Vice President of Engineering,
Shopify Inc. (Ottawa, ON)

Elicia Maine,
Academic Director and Professor, i2I, Beedie
School of Business, Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, BC)

Kathy Malas,
Innovation Platform Manager, CHU
Sainte Justine (Montréal, QC)

John L. Mann, FCAE,
Owner, Mann Consulting
(Blenheim, ON)

Jesse Rodgers,
CEO, Volta Labs (Halifax, NS)

Creso Sá,
Professor of Higher Education and Director of
the Centre for the Study of Canadian and International
Higher Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education,
University of Toronto (Toronto, ON)

Dhirendra Shukla,
Professor and Chair, J. Herbert Smith
Centre for Technology Management & Entrepreneurship,
Faculty of Engineering, University of New Brunswick
(Fredericton, NB)

Dan Sinai,
Senior Executive, Innovation, IBM Canada
(Toronto, ON)

Valerie Walker,
Executive Director, Business/Higher
Education Roundtable (Ottawa, ON)

J. Mark Weber,
Eyton Director, Conrad School of
Entrepreneurship & Business, University of Waterloo
(Waterloo, ON)

I am a little puzzled by the IBM executive’s presence (Dan Sinai) on this list. Wouldn’t Canadians holding onto their companies be counterproductive to IBM’s interests? As for John L. Mann, I’ve not been able to find him or his consulting company online. it’s unusual not to find any trace of an individual or company online these days.

In all there were nine individuals representing academic or government institutions in this list. The gender balance is 10 males and five females for the workshop participants and three males and two females for the expert panel. There is no representation from the North or from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, or Newfoundland.

If they’re serious about looking at how to use innovation to drive higher standards of living, why aren’t there any people from Asian countries where they have been succeeding at that very project? South Korea and China come to mind.

I’m sure there are some excellent ideas in the report, I just wish they’d taken their topic to heart and actually tried to approach innovation in Canada in an innovative fashion.

Meanwhile, Vancouver gets another technology hub, from an October 30, 2018 article by Kenneth Chan for the Daily Hive (Vancouver [Canada]), Note: Links have been removed,

Vancouver’s rapidly growing virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) tech sectors will greatly benefit from a new VR and AR hub created by Launch Academy.

The technology incubator has opened a VR and AR hub at its existing office at 300-128 West Hastings Street in downtown, in partnership with VR/AR Association Vancouver. Immersive tech companies have access to desk space, mentorship programs, VR/AR equipment rentals, investor relations connected to Silicon Valley [emphasis mine], advisory services, and community events and workshops.

Within the Vancouver tech industry, the immersive sector has grown from 15 companies working in VR and AR in 2015 to 220 organizations today.

Globally, the VR and AR market is expected to hit a value of $108 billion by 2021, with tech giants like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft [emphasis mine] investing billions into product development.

In the Vancouver region, the ‘invent and sell’ cycle can be traced back to the 19th century.

One more thing, as I was writing this piece I tripped across this news: “$7.7-billion pact makes Encana more American than Canadian‘ by Geoffrey Morgan. It’s in the Nov. 2, 2018 print edition of the Vancouver Sun’s front page for business. “Encana Corp., the storied Canadian company that had been slowly transitioning away from Canada and natural gas over the past few years under CEO [Chief Executive Officer] Doug Suttles, has pivoted aggressively to US shale basins. … Suttles, formerly as BP Plc. executive, moved from Calgary [Alberta, Canada] to Denver [Colorado, US], though the company said that was for personal reasons and not a precursor to relocation of Encana’s headquarters.”  Yes, that’s quite believable. By the way, Suttles has spent* most of his life in the US (Wikipedia entry).

In any event, it’s not just Canadian emerging technology companies that get sold or somehow shifted out of Canada.

So, should we break the cycle and, if so, how are we going to do it?

*’spend’ corrected to ‘spent’ on November 6, 2018.

The joys of an electronic ‘pill’: Could Canadian Olympic athletes’ training be hacked?

Lori Ewing (Canadian Press) in an  August 3, 2018 article on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation news website, heralds a new technology intended for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo (Japan) but being tested now for the 2018 North American, Central American and Caribbean Athletics Association (NACAC) Track & Field Championships, known as Toronto 2018: Track & Field in the 6ix (Aug. 10-12, 2018) competition.

It’s described as a ‘computerized pill’ that will allow athletes to regulate their body temperature during competition or training workouts, from the August 3, 2018 article,

“We can take someone like Evan [Dunfee, a race walker], have him swallow the little pill, do a full four-hour workout, and then come back and download the whole thing, so we get from data core temperature every 30 seconds through that whole workout,” said Trent Stellingwerff, a sport scientist who works with Canada’s Olympic athletes.

“The two biggest factors of core temperature are obviously the outdoor humidex, heat and humidity, but also exercise intensity.”

Bluetooth technology allows Stellingwerff to gather immediate data with a handheld device — think a tricorder in “Star Trek.” The ingestible device also stores measurements for up to 16 hours when away from the monitor which can be wirelessly transmitted when back in range.

“That pill is going to change the way that we understand how the body responds to heat, because we just get so much information that wasn’t possible before,” Dunfee said. “Swallow a pill, after the race or after the training session, Trent will come up, and just hold the phone [emphasis mine] to your stomach and download all the information. It’s pretty crazy.”

First off, it’s probably not a pill or tablet but a gelcap and it sounds like the device is a wireless biosensor. As Ewing notes, the device collects data and transmits it.

Here’s how the French company, BodyCap, supplying the technology describes their product, from the company’s e-Celsius Performance webpage, (assuming this is the product being used),

Continuous core body temperature measurement

Main applications are:

Risk reduction for people in extreme situations, such as elite athletes. During exercise in a hot environment, thermal stress is amplified by the external temperature and the environment’s humidity. The saturation of the body’s thermoregulation mechanism can quickly cause hyperthermia to levels that may cause nausea, fainting or death.

Performance optimisation for elite athletes.This ingestible pill leaves the user fully mobile. The device keeps a continuous record of temperature during training session, competition and during the recovery phase. The data can then be used to correlate thermoregulation with performances. This enable the development of customised training protocols for each athlete.

e-Celsius Performance® can be used for all sports, including water sports. Its application is best suited to sports that are physically intensive like football, rugby, cycling, long distance running, tennis or those that take place in environments with extreme temperature conditions, like diving or skiing.

e-Celsius Performance®, is a miniaturised ingestible electronic pill that wirelessly transmits a continuous measurement of gastrointestinal temperature. [emphasis mine]

The data are stored on a monitor called e-Viewer Performance®. This device [emphases mine] shows alerts if the measurement is outside the desired range. The activation box is used to turn the pill on from standby mode and connect the e-Celsius Performance pill with the monitor for data collection in either real time or by recovery from the internal memory of e-Celsius Performance®. Each monitor can be used with up to three pills at once to enable extended use.

The monitor’s interface allows the user to download data to a PC/ Mac for storage. The pill is safe, non-invasive and easy to use, leaving the gastric system after one or two days, [emphasis mine] depending on individual transit time.

I found Dunfee’s description mildly confusing but that can be traced to his mention of wireless transmission to a phone. Ewing describes a handheld device which is consistent with the company’s product description. There is no mention of the potential for hacking but I would hope Athletics Canada and BodyCap are keeping up with current concerns over hacking and interference (e.g., Facebook/Cambridge Analytica, Russians and the 2016 US election, Roberto Rocha’s Aug. 3, 2018 article for CBC titled: Data sheds light on how Russian Twitter trolls targeted Canadians, etc.).

Moving on, this type of technology was first featured here in a February 11, 2014 posting (scroll down to the gif where an electronic circuit dissolves in water) and again in a November 23, 2015 posting about wearable and ingestible technologies but this is the first real life application I’ve seen for it.

Coincidentally, an August 2, 2018 Frontiers [Publishing] news release on EurekAlert announced this piece of research (published in June 2018) questioning whether we need this much data and whether these devices work as promoted,

Wearable [and, in the future, ingestible?] devices are increasingly bought to track and measure health and sports performance: [emphasis mine] from the number of steps walked each day to a person’s metabolic efficiency, from the quality of brain function to the quantity of oxygen inhaled while asleep. But the truth is we know very little about how well these sensors and machines work [emphasis mine]– let alone whether they deliver useful information, according to a new review published in Frontiers in Physiology.

“Despite the fact that we live in an era of ‘big data,’ we know surprisingly little about the suitability or effectiveness of these devices,” says lead author Dr Jonathan Peake of the School of Biomedical Sciences and Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia. “Only five percent of these devices have been formally validated.”

The authors reviewed information on devices used both by everyday people desiring to keep track of their physical and psychological health and by athletes training to achieve certain performance levels. [emphases mine] The devices — ranging from so-called wrist trackers to smart garments and body sensors [emphasis mine] designed to track our body’s vital signs and responses to stress and environmental influences — fall into six categories:

  • devices for monitoring hydration status and metabolism
  • devices, garments and mobile applications for monitoring physical and psychological stress
  • wearable devices that provide physical biofeedback (e.g., muscle stimulation, haptic feedback)
  • devices that provide cognitive feedback and training
  • devices and applications for monitoring and promoting sleep
  • devices and applications for evaluating concussion

The authors investigated key issues, such as: what the technology claims to do; whether the technology has been independently validated against some recognized standards; whether the technology is reliable and what, if any, calibration is needed; and finally, whether the item is commercially available or still under development.

The authors say that technology developed for research purposes generally seems to be more credible than devices created purely for commercial reasons.

“What is critical to understand here is that while most of these technologies are not labeled as ‘medical devices’ per se, their very existence, let alone the accompanying marketing, conveys a sensibility that they can be used to measure a standard of health,” says Peake. “There are ethical issues with this assumption that need to be addressed.” [emphases mine]

For example, self-diagnosis based on self-gathered data could be inconsistent with clinical analysis based on a medical professional’s assessment. And just as body mass index charts of the past really only provided general guidelines and didn’t take into account a person’s genetic predisposition or athletic build, today’s technology is similarly limited.

The authors are particularly concerned about those technologies that seek to confirm or correlate whether someone has sustained or recovered from a concussion, whether from sports or military service.

“We have to be very careful here because there is so much variability,” says Peake. “The technology could be quite useful, but it can’t and should never replace assessment by a trained medical professional.”

Speaking generally again now, Peake says it is important to establish whether using wearable devices affects people’s knowledge and attitude about their own health and whether paying such close attention to our bodies could in fact create a harmful obsession with personal health, either for individuals using the devices, or for family members. Still, self-monitoring may reveal undiagnosed health problems, said Peake, although population data is more likely to point to false positives.

“What we do know is that we need to start studying these devices and the trends they are creating,” says Peake. “This is a booming industry.”

In fact, a March 2018 study by P&S Market Research indicates the wearable market is expected to generate $48.2 billion in revenue by 2023. That’s a mere five years into the future.”

The authors highlight a number of areas for investigation in order to develop reasonable consumer policies around this growing industry. These include how rigorously the device/technology has been evaluated and the strength of evidence that the device/technology actually produces the desired outcomes.

“And I’ll add a final question: Is wearing a device that continuously tracks your body’s actions, your brain activity, and your metabolic function — then wirelessly transmits that data to either a cloud-based databank or some other storage — safe, for users? Will it help us improve our health?” asked Peake. “We need to ask these questions and research the answers.”

The authors were not examining ingestible biosensors nor were they examining any issues related to data about core temperatures but it would seem that some of the same issues could apply especially if and when this technology is brought to the consumer market.

Here’s a link to the and a citation for the paper,

Critical Review of Consumer Wearables, Mobile Applications, and Equipment for Providing Biofeedback, Monitoring Stress, and Sleep in Physically Active Populations by Jonathan M. Peake, Graham Kerr, and John P. Sullivan. Front. Physiol., 28 June 2018 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2018.00743

This paper is open access.

AI (artificial intelligence) for Good Global Summit from May 15 – 17, 2018 in Geneva, Switzerland: details and an interview with Frederic Werner

With all the talk about artificial intelligence (AI), a lot more attention seems to be paid to apocalyptic scenarios: loss of jobs, financial hardship, loss of personal agency and privacy, and more with all of these impacts being described as global. Still, there are some folks who are considering and working on ‘AI for good’.

If you’d asked me, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) would not have been my first guess (my choice would have been United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO]) as an agency likely to host the 2018 AI for Good Global Summit. But, it turns out the ITU is a UN (United Nations agency) and, according to its Wikipedia entry, it’s an intergovernmental public-private partnership, which may explain the nature of the participants in the upcoming summit.

The news

First, there’s a May 4, 2018 ITU media advisory (received via email or you can find the full media advisory here) about the upcoming summit,

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now widely identified as being able to address the greatest challenges facing humanity – supporting innovation in fields ranging from crisis management and healthcare to smart cities and communications networking.

The second annual ‘AI for Good Global Summit’ will take place 15-17 May [2018] in Geneva, and seeks to leverage AI to accelerate progress towards the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and ultimately benefit humanity.

WHAT: Global event to advance ‘AI for Good’ with the participation of internationally recognized AI experts. The programme will include interactive high-level panels, while ‘AI Breakthrough Teams’ will propose AI strategies able to create impact in the near term, guided by an expert audience of mentors representing government, industry, academia and civil society – through interactive sessions. The summit will connect AI innovators with public and private-sector decision-makers, building collaboration to take promising strategies forward.

A special demo & exhibit track will feature innovative applications of AI designed to: protect women from sexual violence, avoid infant crib deaths, end child abuse, predict oral cancer, and improve mental health treatments for depression – as well as interactive robots including: Alice, a Dutch invention designed to support the aged; iCub, an open-source robot; and Sophia, the humanoid AI robot.

WHEN: 15-17 May 2018, beginning daily at 9 AM

WHERE: ITU Headquarters, 2 Rue de Varembé, Geneva, Switzerland (Please note: entrance to ITU is now limited for all visitors to the Montbrillant building entrance only on rue Varembé).

WHO: Confirmed participants to date include expert representatives from: Association for Computing Machinery, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Cambridge University, Carnegie Mellon, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Consumer Trade Association, Facebook, Fraunhofer, Google, Harvard University, IBM Watson, IEEE, Intellectual Ventures, ITU, Microsoft, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Partnership on AI, Planet Labs, Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab, University of California at Berkeley, University of Tokyo, XPRIZE Foundation, Yale University – and the participation of “Sophia” the humanoid robot and “iCub” the EU open source robotcub.

The interview

Frederic Werner, Senior Communications Officer at the International Telecommunication Union and** one of the organizers of the AI for Good Global Summit 2018 kindly took the time to speak to me and provide a few more details about the upcoming event.

Werner noted that the 2018 event grew out of a much smaller 2017 ‘workshop’ and first of its kind, about beneficial AI which this year has ballooned in size to 91 countries (about 15 participants are expected from Canada), 32 UN agencies, and substantive representation from the private sector. The 2017 event featured Dr. Yoshua Bengio of the University of Montreal  (Université de Montréal) was a featured speaker.

“This year, we’re focused on action-oriented projects that will help us reach our Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. We’re looking at near-term practical AI applications,” says Werner. “We’re matchmaking problem-owners and solution-owners.”

Academics, industry professionals, government officials, and representatives from UN agencies are gathering  to work on four tracks/themes:

In advance of this meeting, the group launched an AI repository (an action item from the 2017 meeting) on April 25, 2018 inviting people to list their AI projects (from the ITU’s April 25, 2018? AI repository news announcement),

ITU has just launched an AI Repository where anyone working in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) can contribute key information about how to leverage AI to help solve humanity’s greatest challenges.

This is the only global repository that identifies AI-related projects, research initiatives, think-tanks and organizations that aim to accelerate progress on the 17 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

To submit a project, just press ‘Submit’ on the AI Repository site and fill in the online questionnaire, providing all relevant details of your project. You will also be asked to map your project to the relevant World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) action lines and the SDGs. Approved projects will be officially registered in the repository database.

Benefits of participation on the AI Repository include:

WSIS Prizes recognize individuals, governments, civil society, local, regional and international agencies, research institutions and private-sector companies for outstanding success in implementing development oriented strategies that leverage the power of AI and ICTs.

Creating the AI Repository was one of the action items of last year’s AI for Good Global Summit.

We are looking forward to your submissions.

If you have any questions, please send an email to: ai@itu.int

“Your project won’t be visible immediately as we have to vet the submissions to weed out spam-type material and projects that are not in line with our goals,” says Werner. That said, there are already 29 projects in the repository. As you might expect, the UK, China, and US are in the repository but also represented are Egypt, Uganda, Belarus, Serbia, Peru, Italy, and other countries not commonly cited when discussing AI research.

Werner also pointed out in response to my surprise over the ITU’s role with regard to this AI initiative that the ITU is the only UN agency which has 192* member states (countries), 150 universities, and over 700 industry members as well as other member entities, which gives them tremendous breadth of reach. As well, the organization, founded originally in 1865 as the International Telegraph Convention, has extensive experience with global standardization in the information technology and telecommunications industries. (See more in their Wikipedia entry.)

Finally

There is a bit more about the summit on the ITU’s AI for Good Global Summit 2018 webpage,

The 2nd edition of the AI for Good Global Summit will be organized by ITU in Geneva on 15-17 May 2018, in partnership with XPRIZE Foundation, the global leader in incentivized prize competitions, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and sister United Nations agencies including UNESCO, UNICEF, UNCTAD, UNIDO, Global Pulse, UNICRI, UNODA, UNIDIR, UNODC, WFP, IFAD, UNAIDS, WIPO, ILO, UNITAR, UNOPS, OHCHR, UN UniversityWHO, UNEP, ICAO, UNDP, The World Bank, UN DESA, CTBTOUNISDRUNOG, UNOOSAUNFPAUNECE, UNDPA, and UNHCR.

The AI for Good series is the leading United Nations platform for dialogue on AI. The action​​-oriented 2018 summit will identify practical applications of AI and supporting strategies to improve the quality and sustainability of life on our planet. The summit will continue to formulate strategies to ensure trusted, safe and inclusive development of AI technologies and equitable access to their benefits.

While the 2017 summit sparked the first ever inclusive global dialogue on beneficial AI, the action-oriented 2018 summit will focus on impactful AI solutions able to yield long-term benefits and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. ‘Breakthrough teams’ will demonstrate the potential of AI to map poverty and aid with natural disasters using satellite imagery, how AI could assist the delivery of citizen-centric services in smart cities, and new opportunities for AI to help achieve Universal Health Coverage, and finally to help achieve transparency and explainability in AI algorithms.

Teams will propose impactful AI strategies able to be enacted in the near term, guided by an expert audience of mentors representing government, industry, academia and civil society. Strategies will be evaluated by the mentors according to their feasibility and scalability, potential to address truly global challenges, degree of supporting advocacy, and applicability to market failures beyond the scope of government and industry. The exercise will connect AI innovators with public and private-sector decision-makers, building collaboration to take promising strategies forward.

“As the UN specialized agency for information and communication technologies, ITU is well placed to guide AI innovation towards the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development ​Goals. We are providing a neutral close quotation markplatform for international dialogue aimed at ​building a ​common understanding of the capabilities of emerging AI technologies.​​” Houlin Zhao, Secretary General ​of ITU​

Should you be close to Geneva, it seems that registration is still open. Just go to the ITU’s AI for Good Global Summit 2018 webpage, scroll the page down to ‘Documentation’ and you will find a link to the invitation and a link to online registration. Participation is free but I expect that you are responsible for your travel and accommodation costs.

For anyone unable to attend in person, the summit will be livestreamed (webcast in real time) and you can watch the sessions by following the link below,

https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/AI/2018/Pages/webcast.aspx

For those of us on the West Coast of Canada and other parts distant to Geneva, you will want to take the nine hour difference between Geneva (Switzerland) and here into account when viewing the proceedings. If you can’t manage the time difference, the sessions are being recorded and will be posted at a later date.

*’132 member states’ corrected to ‘192 member states’ on May 11, 2018 at 1500 hours PDT.

*Redundant ‘and’ removed on July 19, 2018.

Socially responsible AI—it’s time says University of Manchester (UK) researchers

A May 10, 2018 news item on ScienceDaily describes a report on the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ being released by the University of Manchester,

The development of new Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is often subject to bias, and the resulting systems can be discriminatory, meaning more should be done by policymakers to ensure its development is democratic and socially responsible.

This is according to Dr Barbara Ribeiro of Manchester Institute of Innovation Research at The University of Manchester, in On AI and Robotics: Developing policy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a new policy report on the role of AI and Robotics in society, being published today [May 10, 2018].

Interestingly, the US White House is hosting a summit on AI today, May 10, 2018, according to a May 8, 2018 article by Danny Crichton for TechCrunch (Note: Links have been removed),

Now, it appears the White House itself is getting involved in bringing together key American stakeholders to discuss AI and those opportunities and challenges. …

Among the confirmed guests are Facebook’s Jerome Pesenti, Amazon’s Rohit Prasad, and Intel’s CEO Brian Krzanich. While the event has many tech companies present, a total of 38 companies are expected to be in attendance including United Airlines and Ford.

AI policy has been top-of-mind for many policymakers around the world. French President Emmanuel Macron has announced a comprehensive national AI strategy, as has Canada, which has put together a research fund and a set of programs to attempt to build on the success of notable local AI researchers such as University of Toronto professor George Hinton, who is a major figure in deep learning.

But it is China that has increasingly drawn the attention and concern of U.S. policymakers. The country and its venture capitalists are outlaying billions of dollars to invest in the AI industry, and it has made leading in artificial intelligence one of the nation’s top priorities through its Made in China 2025 program and other reports. …

In comparison, the United States has been remarkably uncoordinated when it comes to AI. …

That lack of engagement from policymakers has been fine — after all, the United States is the world leader in AI research. But with other nations pouring resources and talent into the space, DC policymakers are worried that the U.S. could suddenly find itself behind the frontier of research in the space, with particular repercussions for the defense industry.

Interesting contrast: do we take time to consider the implications or do we engage in a race?

While it’s becoming fashionable to dismiss dichotomous questions of this nature, the two approaches (competition and reflection) are not that compatible and it does seem to be an either/or proposition.

A May 10, 2018 University of Manchester press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, expands on the theme of responsibility and AI,

Dr Ribeiro adds because investment into AI will essentially be paid for by tax-payers in the long-term, policymakers need to make sure that the benefits of such technologies are fairly distributed throughout society.

She says: “Ensuring social justice in AI development is essential. AI technologies rely on big data and the use of algorithms, which influence decision-making in public life and on matters such as social welfare, public safety and urban planning.”

“In these ‘data-driven’ decision-making processes some social groups may be excluded, either because they lack access to devices necessary to participate or because the selected datasets do not consider the needs, preferences and interests of marginalised and disadvantaged people.”

On AI and Robotics: Developing policy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a comprehensive report written, developed and published by Policy@Manchester with leading experts and academics from across the University.

The publication is designed to help employers, regulators and policymakers understand the potential effects of AI in areas such as industry, healthcare, research and international policy.

However, the report doesn’t just focus on AI. It also looks at robotics, explaining the differences and similarities between the two separate areas of research and development (R&D) and the challenges policymakers face with each.

Professor Anna Scaife, Co-Director of the University’s Policy@Manchester team, explains: “Although the challenges that companies and policymakers are facing with respect to AI and robotic systems are similar in many ways, these are two entirely separate technologies – something which is often misunderstood, not just by the general public, but policymakers and employers too. This is something that has to be addressed.”

One particular area the report highlights where robotics can have a positive impact is in the world of hazardous working environments, such a nuclear decommissioning and clean-up.

Professor Barry Lennox, Professor of Applied Control and Head of the UOM Robotics Group, adds: “The transfer of robotics technology into industry, and in particular the nuclear industry, requires cultural and societal changes as well as technological advances.

“It is really important that regulators are aware of what robotic technology is and is not capable of doing today, as well as understanding what the technology might be capable of doing over the next -5 years.”

The report also highlights the importance of big data and AI in healthcare, for example in the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

Lord Jim O’Neill, Honorary Professor of Economics at The University of Manchester and Chair of the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance explains: “An important example of this is the international effort to limit the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The AMR Review gave 27 specific recommendations covering 10 broad areas, which became known as the ‘10 Commandments’.

“All 10 are necessary, and none are sufficient on their own, but if there is one that I find myself increasingly believing is a permanent game-changer, it is state of the art diagnostics. We need a ‘Google for doctors’ to reduce the rate of over prescription.”

The versatile nature of AI and robotics is leading many experts to predict that the technologies will have a significant impact on a wide variety of fields in the coming years. Policy@Manchester hopes that the On AI and Robotics report will contribute to helping policymakers, industry stakeholders and regulators better understand the range of issues they will face as the technologies play ever greater roles in our everyday lives.

As far as I can tell, the report has been designed for online viewing only. There are none of the markers (imprint date, publisher, etc.) that I expect to see on a print document. There is no bibliography or list of references but there are links to outside sources throughout the document.

It’s an interesting approach to publishing a report that calls for social justice, especially since the issue of ‘trust’ is increasingly being emphasized where all AI is concerned. With regard to this report, I’m not sure I can trust it. With a print document or a PDF I have markers. I can examine the index, the bibliography, etc. and determine if this material has covered the subject area with reference to well known authorities. It’s much harder to do that with this report. As well, this ‘souped up’ document also looks like it might be easy to change something without my knowledge. With a print or PDF version, I can compare the documents but not with this one.

The Royal Bank of Canada reports ‘Humans wanted’ and some thoughts on the future of work, robots, and artificial intelligence

It seems the Royal Bank of Canada ((RBC or Royal Bank) wants to weigh in and influence what is to come with regard to what new technologies will bring us and how they will affect our working lives.  (I will be offering my critiques of the whole thing.)

Launch yourself into the future (if you’re a youth)

“I’m not planning on being replaced by a robot.” That’s the first line of text you’ll see if you go to the Royal Bank of Canada’s new Future Launch web space and latest marketing campaign and investment.

This whole endeavour is aimed at ‘youth’ and represents a $500M investment. Of course, that money will be invested over a 10-year period which works out to $50M per year and doesn’t seem quite so munificent given how much money Canadian banks make (from a March 1, 2017 article by Don Pittis for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation [CBC] news website),

Yesterday [February 28, 2017] the Bank of Montreal [BMO] said it had made about $1.5 billion in three months.

That may be hard to put in context until you hear that it is an increase in profit of nearly 40 per cent from the same period last year and dramatically higher than stock watchers had been expecting.

Not all the banks have done as well as BMO this time. The Royal Bank’s profits were up 24 per cent at $3 billion. [emphasis mine] CIBC [Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce] profits were up 13 per cent. TD [Toronto Dominion] releases its numbers tomorrow.

Those numbers would put the RBC on track to a profit of roughly $12B n 2017. This means  $500M represents approximately 4.5% of a single year’s profits which will be disbursed over a 10 year period which makes the investment work out to approximately .45% or less than 1/2 of one percent. Paradoxically, it’s a lot of money and it’s not that much money.

Advertising awareness

First, there was some advertising (in Vancouver at least),

[downloaded from http://flinflononline.com/local-news/356505]

You’ll notice she has what could be described as a ‘halo’. Is she an angel or, perhaps, she’s an RBC angel? After all, yellow and gold are closely associated as colours and RBC sports a partially yellow logo. As well, the model is wearing a blue denim jacket, RBC’s other logo colour.

Her ‘halo’ is intact but those bands of colour bend a bit and could be described as ‘rainbow-like’ bringing to mind ‘pots of gold’ at the end of the rainbow.  Free association is great fun and allows people to ascribe multiple and/or overlapping ideas and stories to the advertising. For example, people who might not approve of imagery that hearkens to religious art might have an easier time with rainbows and pots of gold. At any rate, none of the elements in images/ads are likely to be happy accidents or coincidence. They are intended to evoke certain associations, e.g., anyone associated with RBC will be blessed with riches.

The timing is deliberate, too, just before Easter 2018 (April 1), suggesting to some us, that even when the robots arrive destroying the past, youth will rise up (resurrection) for a new future. Or, if you prefer, Passover and its attendant themes of being spared and moving to the Promised Land.

Enough with the semiotic analysis and onto campaign details.

Humans Wanted: an RBC report

It seems the precursor to Future Launch, is an RBC report, ‘Humans Wanted’, which itself is the outcome of still earlier work such as this Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship (BII+E) report, Future-proof: Preparing young Canadians for the future of work, March 2017 (authors: Creig Lamb and Sarah Doyle), which features a quote from RBC’s President and CEO (Chief Executive Officer) David McKay,

“Canada’s future prosperity and success will rely on us harnessing the innovation of our entire talent pool. A huge part of our success will depend on how well we integrate this next generation of Canadians into the workforce. Their confidence, optimism and inspiration could be the key to helping us reimagine traditional business models, products and ways of working.”  David McKay, President and CEO, RBC

There are a number of major trends that have the potential to shape the future of work, from climate change and resource scarcity to demographic shifts resulting from an aging population and immigration. This report focuses on the need to prepare Canada’s youth for a future where a great number of jobs will be rapidly created, altered or made obsolete by technology.

Successive waves of technological advancements have rocked global economies for centuries, reconfiguring the labour force and giving rise to new economic opportunities with each wave. Modern advances, including artificial intelligence and robotics, once again have the potential to transform the economy, perhaps more rapidly and more dramatically than ever before. As past pillars of Canada’s economic growth become less reliable, harnessing technology and innovation will become increasingly important in driving productivity and growth. 1, 2, 3

… (p. 2 print; p. 4 PDF)

The Brookfield Institute (at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada) report is worth reading if for no other reason than its Endnotes. Unlike the RBC materials, you can find the source for the information in the Brookfield report.

After Brookfield, there was the RBC Future Launch Youth Forums 2017: What We Learned  document (October 13, 2017 according to ‘View Page Info’),

In this rapidly changing world, there’s a new reality when it comes to work. A degree or diploma no longer guarantees a job, and some of the positions, skills and trades of today won’t exist – or be relevant – in the future.

Through an unprecedented 10-year, $500 million commitment, RBC Future LaunchTM  is focused on driving real change and preparing today’s young people for the future world of work, helping them access the skills, job experience and networks that will enable their success.

At the beginning of this 10-year journey RBC® wanted to go beyond research and expert reports to better understand the regional issues facing youth across Canada and to hear directly from young people and organizations that work with them. From November 2016 to May 2017, the RBC Future Launch team held 15 youth forums across the country, bringing together over 430 partners, including young people, to uncover ideas and talk through solutions to address the workforce gaps Canada’s youth face today.

Finally,  a March 26, 2018 RBC news release announces the RBC report: ‘Humans Wanted – How Canadian youth can thrive in the age of disruption’,

Automation to impact at least 50% of Canadian jobs in the next decade: RBC research

Human intelligence and intuition critical for young people and jobs of the future

  • Being ‘human’ will ensure resiliency in an era of disruption and artificial intelligence
  • Skills mobility – the ability to move from one job to another – will become a new competitive advantage

TORONTO, March 26, 2018 – A new RBC research paper, Humans Wanted – How Canadian youth can thrive in the age of disruption, has revealed that 50% of Canadian jobs will be disrupted by automation in the next 10 years.

As a result of this disruption, Canada’s Gen Mobile – young people who are currently transitioning from education to employment – are unprepared for the rapidly changing workplace. With 4 million Canadian youth entering the workforce over the next decade, and the shift from a jobs economy to a skills economy, the research indicates young people will need a portfolio of “human skills” to remain competitive and resilient in the labour market.

“Canada is at a historic cross-roads – we have the largest generation of young people coming into the workforce at the very same time technology is starting to impact most jobs in the country,” said Dave McKay, President and CEO, RBC. “Canada is on the brink of a skills revolution and we have a responsibility to prepare young people for the opportunities and ambiguities of the future.”

‘There is a changing demand for skills,” said John Stackhouse, Senior Vice-President, RBC. “According to our findings, if employers and the next generation of employees focus on foundational ‘human skills’, they’ll be better able to navigate a new age of career mobility as technology continues to reshape every aspect of the world around us.”

Key Findings:

  • Canada’s economy is on target to add 2.4 million jobs over the next four years, virtually all of which will require a different mix of skills.
  • A growing demand for “human skills” will grow across all job sectors and include: critical thinking, co-ordination, social perceptiveness, active listening and complex problem solving.
  • Rather than a nation of coders, digital literacy – the ability to understand digital items, digital technologies or the Internet fluently – will be necessary for all new jobs.
  • Canada’s education system, training programs and labour market initiatives are inadequately designed to help Canadian youth navigate the new skills economy, resulting in roughly half a million 15-29 year olds who are unemployed and another quarter of a million who are working part-time involuntarily.
  • Canadian employers are generally not prepared, through hiring, training or retraining, to recruit and develop the skills needed to ensure their organizations remain competitive in the digital economy.

“As digital and machine technology advances, the next generation of Canadians will need to be more adaptive, creative and collaborative, adding and refining skills to keep pace with a world of work undergoing profound change,” said McKay. “Canada’s future prosperity depends on getting a few big things right and that’s why we’ve introduced RBC Future Launch.”

RBC Future Launch is a decade-long commitment to help Canadian youth prepare for the jobs of tomorrow. RBC is committed to acting as a catalyst for change, bringing government, educators, public sector and not-for-profits together to co-create solutions to help young people better prepare for the future of the work through “human skills” development, networking and work experience.

Top recommendations from the report include:

  • A national review of post-secondary education programs to assess their focus on “human skills” including global competencies
  • A national target of 100% work-integrated learning, to ensure every undergraduate student has the opportunity for an apprenticeship, internship, co-op placement or other meaningful experiential placement
  • Standardization of labour market information across all provinces and regions, and a partnership with the private sector to move skills and jobs information to real-time, interactive platforms
  • The introduction of a national initiative to help employers measure foundational skills and incorporate them in recruiting, hiring and training practices

Join the conversation with Dave McKay and John Stackhouse on Wednesday, March 28 [2018] at 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. EDT at RBC Disruptors on Facebook Live.

Click here to read: Humans Wanted – How Canadian youth can thrive in the age of disruption.

About the Report
RBC Economics amassed a database of 300 occupations and drilled into the skills required to perform them now and projected into the future. The study groups the Canadian economy into six major clusters based on skillsets as opposed to traditional classifications and sectors. This cluster model is designed to illustrate the ease of transition between dissimilar jobs as well as the relevance of current skills to jobs of the future.

Six Clusters
Doers: Emphasis on basic skills
Transition: Greenhouse worker to crane operator
High Probability of Disruption

Crafters: Medium technical skills; low in management skills
Transition: Farmer to plumber
Very High Probability of Disruption

Technicians: High in technical skills
Transition: Car mechanic to electrician
Moderate Probability of Disruption

Facilitators: Emphasis on emotional intelligence
Transition: Dental assistant to graphic designer
Moderate Probability of Disruption

Providers: High in Analytical Skills
Transition: Real estate agent to police officer
Low Probability of Disruption

Solvers: Emphasis on management skills and critical thinking
Transition: Mathematician to software engineer
Minimal Probability of Disruption

About RBC
Royal Bank of Canada is a global financial institution with a purpose-driven, principles-led approach to delivering leading performance. Our success comes from the 81,000+ employees who bring our vision, values and strategy to life so we can help our clients thrive and communities prosper. As Canada’s biggest bank, and one of the largest in the world based on market capitalization, we have a diversified business model with a focus on innovation and providing exceptional experiences to our 16 million clients in Canada, the U.S. and 34 other countries. Learn more at rbc.com.‎

We are proud to support a broad range of community initiatives through donations, community investments and employee volunteer activities. See how at http://www.rbc.com/community-sustainability/.

– 30 – 

The report features a lot of bulleted points, airy text (large fonts and lots of space between the lines), inoffensive graphics, and human interest stories illustrating the points made elsewhere in the text.

There is no bibliography or any form of note telling you where to find the sources for the information in the report. The 2.4M jobs mentioned in the news release are also mentioned in the report on p. 16 (PDF) and is credited in the main body of the text to the EDSC. I’m not up-to-date on my abbreviations but I’m pretty sure it does not stand for East Doncaster Secondary College or East Duplin Soccer Club. I’m betting it stands for Employment and Social Development Canada. All that led to visiting the EDSC website and trying (unsuccessfully) to find the report or data sheet used to supply the figures RBC quoted in their report and news release.

Also, I’m not sure who came up with or how they developed the ‘crafters, ‘doers’, ‘technicians’, etc. categories.

Here’s more from p. 2 of their report,

CANADA, WE HAVE A PROBLEM. [emphasis mine] We’re hurtling towards the 2020s with perfect hindsight, not seeing what’s clearly before us. The next generation is entering the workforce at a time of profound economic, social and technological change. We know it. [emphasis mine] Canada’s youth know it. And we’re not doing enough about it.

RBC wants to change the conversation, [emphasis mine] to help Canadian youth own the 2020s — and beyond. RBC Future Launch is our 10-year commitment to that cause, to help young people prepare for and navigate a new world of work that, we believe, will fundamentally reshape Canada. For the better. If we get a few big things right.

This report, based on a year-long research project, is designed to help that conversation. Our team conducted one of the biggest labour force data projects [emphasis mine] in Canada, and crisscrossed the country to speak with students and workers in their early careers, with educators and policymakers, and with employers in every sector.

We discovered a quiet crisis — of recent graduates who are overqualified for the jobs they’re in, of unemployed youth who weren’t trained for the jobs that are out there, and young Canadians everywhere who feel they aren’t ready for the future of work.

Sarcasm ahead

There’s nothing like starting your remarks with a paraphrased quote from a US movie about the Apollo 13 spacecraft crisis as in, “Houston, we have a problem.” I’ve always preferred Trudeau (senior) and his comment about ‘keeping our noses out of the nation’s bedrooms’. It’s not applicable but it’s more amusing and a Canadian quote to boot.

So, we know we’re having a crisis which we know about but RBC wants to tell us about it anyway (?) and RBC wants to ‘change the conversation’. OK. So how does presenting the RBC Future Launch change the conversation? Especially in light of the fact, that the conversation has already been held, “a year-long research project … Our team conducted one of the biggest labour force data projects [emphasis mine] in Canada, and crisscrossed the country to speak with students and workers in their early careers, with educators and policymakers, and with employers in every sector.” Is the proposed change something along the lines of ‘Don’t worry, be happy; RBC has six categories (Doers, Crafters, Technicians, Facilitators, Providers, Solvers) for you.’ (Yes, for those who recognized it, I’m referencing I’m referencing Bobby McFerrin’s hit song, Don’t Worry, Be Happy.)

Also, what data did RBC collect and how do they collect it? Could Facebook and other forms of social media have been involved? (My March 29, 2018 posting mentions the latest Facebook data scandal; scroll down about 80% of the way.)

There are the people leading the way and ‘changing the conversation’ as it were and they can’t present logical, coherent points. What kind of conversation could they possibly have with youth (or anyone else for that matter)?

And, if part of the problem is that employers are not planning for the future, how does Future Launch ‘change that part of the conversation’?

RBC Future Launch

Days after the report’s release,there’s the Future Launch announcement in an RBC March 28, 2018 news release,

TORONTO, March 28, 2017 – In an era of unprecedented economic and technological change, RBC is today unveiling its largest-ever commitment to Canada’s future. RBC Future Launch is a 10-year, $500-million initiative to help young people gain access and opportunity to the skills, job experience and career networks needed for the future world of work.

“Tomorrow’s prosperity will depend on today’s young people and their ability to take on a future that’s equally inspiring and unnerving,” said Dave McKay, RBC president and CEO. “We’re sitting at an intersection of history, as a massive generational shift and unprecedented technological revolution come together. And we need to ensure young Canadians are prepared to help take us forward.”

Future Launch is a core part of RBC’s celebration of Canada 150, and is the result of two years of conversations with young Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

“Young people – Canada’s future – have the confidence, optimism and inspiration to reimagine the way our country works,” McKay said. “They just need access to the capabilities and connections to make the 21st century, and their place in it, all it should be.”

Working together with young people, RBC will bring community leaders, industry experts, governments, educators and employers to help design solutions and harness resources for young Canadians to chart a more prosperous and inclusive future.

Over 10 years, RBC Future Launch will invest in areas that help young people learn skills, experience jobs, share knowledge and build resilience. The initiative will address the following critical gaps:

  • A lack of relevant experience. Too many young Canadians miss critical early opportunities because they’re stuck in a cycle of “no experience, no job.” According to the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., 83 per cent of educators believe youth are prepared for the workforce, but only 34 per cent of employers and 44 per cent of young people agree. RBC will continue to help educators and employers develop quality work-integrated learning programs to build a more dynamic bridge between school and work.
  • A lack of relevant skills. Increasingly, young people entering the workforce require a complex set of technical, entrepreneurial and social skills that cannot be attained solely through a formal education. A 2016 report from the World Economic Forum states that by 2020, more than a third of the desired core skill-sets of most occupations will be different from today — if that job still exists. RBC will help ensure young Canadians gain the skills, from critical thinking to coding to creative design, that will help them integrate into the workplace of today, and be more competitive for the jobs of tomorrow.
  • A lack of knowledge networks. Young people are at a disadvantage in the job market if they don’t have an opportunity to learn from others and discover the realities of jobs they’re considering. Many have told RBC that there isn’t enough information on the spectrum of jobs that are available. From social networks to mentoring programs, RBC will harness the vast knowledge and goodwill of Canadians in guiding young people to the opportunities that exist and will exist, across Canada.
  • A lack of future readiness. Many young Canadians know their future will be defined by disruption. A new report, Future-proof: Preparing young Canadians for the future of work, by the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship, found that 42 per cent of the Canadian labour force is at a high risk of being affected by automation in the next 10 to 20 years. Young Canadians are okay with that: they want to be the disruptors and make the future workforce more creative and productive. RBC will help to create opportunities, through our education system, workplaces and communities at large to help young Canadians retool, rethink and rebuild as the age of disruption takes hold.

By helping young people unlock their potential and launch their careers, RBC can assist them with building a stronger future for themselves, and a more prosperous Canada for all. RBC created The Launching Careers Playbook, an interactive, digital resource focused on enabling young people to reach their full potential through three distinct modules: I am starting my career; I manage interns and I create internship programs. The Playbook shares the design principles, practices, and learnings captured from the RBC Career Launch Program over three years, as well as the research and feedback RBC has received from young people and their managers.

More information on RBC Future Launch can be found at www.rbc.com/futurelaunch.

Weirdly, this news release is the only document which gives you sources for some of RBC’s information. If you should be inclined, you can check the original reports as cited in the news release and determine if you agree with the conclusions the RBC people drew from them.

Cynicism ahead

They are planning to change the conversation, are they? I can’t help wondering what return they’re (RBC)  expecting to make on their investment ($500M over10 years). The RBC is prominently displayed not only on the launch page but in several of the subtopics listed on the page.

There appears to be some very good and helpful information although much of it leads you to using a bank for one reason or another. For example, if you’re planning to become an entrepreneur (and there is serious pressure from the government of Canada on this generation to become precisely that), then it’s very handy that you have easy access to RBC from any of the Future Launch pages. As well, you can easily apply for a job at or get a loan from RBC after you’ve done some of the exercises on the website and possibly given RBC a lot of data about yourself.

For anyone who believes I’m being harsh about the bank, you might want to check out a March 15, 2017 article by Erica Johnson for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Go Public website. It highlights just how ruthless Canadian banks can be,

Employees from all five of Canada’s big banks have flooded Go Public with stories of how they feel pressured to upsell, trick and even lie to customers to meet unrealistic sales targets and keep their jobs.

The deluge is fuelling multiple calls for a parliamentary inquiry, even as the banks claim they’re acting in customers’ best interests.

In nearly 1,000 emails, employees from RBC, BMO, CIBC, TD and Scotiabank locations across Canada describe the pressures to hit targets that are monitored weekly, daily and in some cases hourly.

“Management is down your throat all the time,” said a Scotiabank financial adviser. “They want you to hit your numbers and it doesn’t matter how.”

CBC has agreed to protect their identities because the workers are concerned about current and future employment.

An RBC teller from Thunder Bay, Ont., said even when customers don’t need or want anything, “we need to upgrade their Visa card, increase their Visa limits or get them to open up a credit line.”

“It’s not what’s important to our clients anymore,” she said. “The bank wants more and more money. And it’s leading everyone into debt.”

A CIBC teller said, “I am expected to aggressively sell products, especially Visa. Hit those targets, who cares if it’s hurting customers.”

….

Many bank employees described pressure tactics used by managers to try to increase sales.

An RBC certified financial planner in Guelph, Ont., said she’s been threatened with pay cuts and losing her job if she doesn’t upsell enough customers.

“Managers belittle you,” she said. “We get weekly emails that highlight in red the people who are not hitting those sales targets. It’s bullying.”

Some TD Bank employees told CBC’s Go Public they felt they had to break the law to keep their jobs. (Aaron Harris/Reuters)

Employees at several RBC branches in Calgary said there are white boards posted in the staff room that list which financial advisers are meeting their sales targets and which advisers are coming up short.

A CIBC small business associate who quit in January after nine years on the job said her district branch manager wasn’t pleased with her sales results when she was pregnant.

While working in Waterloo, Ont., she says her manager also instructed staff to tell all new international students looking to open a chequing account that they had to open a “student package,” which also included a savings account, credit card and overdraft.

“That is unfair and not the law, but we were told to do it for all of them.”

Go Public requested interviews with the CEOs of the five big banks — BMO, CIBC, RBC, Scotiabank and TD — but all declined.

If you have the time, it’s worth reading Johnson’s article in its entirety as it provides some fascinating insight into Canadian banking practices.

Final comments and an actual ‘conversation’ about the future of work

I’m torn, It’s good to see an attempt to grapple with the extraordinary changes we are likely to see in the not so distant future. It’s hard to believe that this Future Launch initiative is anything other than a self-interested means of profiting from fears about the future and a massive public relations campaign designed to engender good will. Doubly so since the very bad publicity the banks including RBC garnered last year (2017), as mentioned in the Johnson article.

Also, RBC and who knows how many other vested interests appear to have gathered data and information which they’ve used to draw any number of conclusions. First, I can’t find any information about what data RBC is gathering, who else might have access, and what plans, if any, they have to use it. Second, RBC seems to have predetermined how this ‘future of work’ conversation needs to be changed.

I suggest treading as lightly as possible and keeping in mind other ‘conversations’ are possible. For example, Mike Masnick at Techdirt has an April 3, 2018 posting about a new ‘future of work’ initiative,

For the past few years, there have been plenty of discussions about “the future of work,” but they tend to fall into one of two camps. You have the pessimists, who insist that the coming changes wrought by automation and artificial intelligence will lead to fewer and fewer jobs, as all of the jobs of today are automated out of existence. Then, there are the optimists who point to basically every single past similar prediction of doom and gloom due to innovation, which have always turned out to be incorrect. People in this camp point out that technology is more likely to augment than replace human-based work, and vaguely insist that “the jobs will come.” Whether you fall into one of those two camps — or somewhere in between or somewhere else entirely — one thing I’d hope most people can agree on is that the future of work will be… different.

Separately, we’re also living in an age where it is increasingly clear that those in and around the technology industry must take more responsibility in thinking through the possible consequences of the innovations they’re bringing to life, and exploring ways to minimize the harmful results (and hopefully maximizing the beneficial ones).

That brings us to the project we’re announcing today, Working Futures, which is an attempt to explore what the future of work might really look like in the next ten to fifteen years. We’re doing this project in partnership with two organizations that we’ve worked with multiples times in the past: Scout.ai and R Street.

….

The key point of this project: rather than just worry about the bad stuff or hand-wave around the idea of good stuff magically appearing, we want to really dig in — figure out what new jobs may actually appear, look into what benefits may accrue as well as what harms may be dished out — and see if there are ways to minimize the negative consequences, while pushing the world towards the beneficial consequences.

To do that, we’re kicking off a variation on the classic concept of scenario planning, bringing together a wide variety of individuals with different backgrounds, perspectives and ideas to run through a fun and creative exercise to imagine the future, while staying based in reality. We’re adding in some fun game-like mechanisms to push people to think about where the future might head. We’re also updating the output side of traditional scenario planning by involving science fiction authors, who obviously have a long history of thinking up the future, and who will participate in this process and help to craft short stories out of the scenarios we build, making them entertaining, readable and perhaps a little less “wonky” than the output of more traditional scenario plans.

There you have it; the Royal Bank is changing the conversation and Techdirt is inviting you to join in scenario planning and more.

AI fairytale and April 25, 2018 AI event at Canada Science and Technology Museum*** in Ottawa

These days it’s all about artificial intelligence (AI) or robots and often, it’s both. They’re everywhere and they will take everyone’s jobs, or not, depending on how you view them. Today, I’ve got two artificial intelligence items, the first of which may provoke writers’ anxieties.

Fairytales

The Princess and the Fox is a new fairytale by the Brothers Grimm or rather, their artificially intelligent surrogate according to an April 18, 2018 article on the British Broadcasting Corporation’s online news website,

It was recently reported that the meditation app Calm had published a “new” fairytale by the Brothers Grimm.

However, The Princess and the Fox was written not by the brothers, who died over 150 years ago, but by humans using an artificial intelligence (AI) tool.

It’s the first fairy tale written by an AI, claims Calm, and is the result of a collaboration with Botnik Studios – a community of writers, artists and developers. Calm says the technique could be referred to as “literary cloning”.

Botnik employees used a predictive-text program to generate words and phrases that might be found in the original Grimm fairytales. Human writers then pieced together sentences to form “the rough shape of a story”, according to Jamie Brew, chief executive of Botnik.

The full version is available to paying customers of Calm, but here’s a short extract:

“Once upon a time, there was a golden horse with a golden saddle and a beautiful purple flower in its hair. The horse would carry the flower to the village where the princess danced for joy at the thought of looking so beautiful and good.

Advertising for a meditation app?

Of course, it’s advertising and it’s ‘smart’ advertising (wordplay intended). Here’s a preview/trailer,

Blair Marnell’s April 18, 2018 article for SyFy Wire provides a bit more detail,

“You might call it a form of literary cloning,” said Calm co-founder Michael Acton Smith. Calm commissioned Botnik to use its predictive text program, Voicebox, to create a new Brothers Grimm story. But first, Voicebox was given the entire collected works of the Brothers Grimm to analyze, before it suggested phrases and sentences based upon those stories. Of course, human writers gave the program an assist when it came to laying out the plot. …

“The Brothers Grimm definitely have a reputation for darkness and many of their best-known tales are undoubtedly scary,” Peter Freedman told SYFY WIRE. Freedman is a spokesperson for Calm who was a part of the team behind the creation of this story. “In the process of machine-human collaboration that generated The Princess and The Fox, we did gently steer the story towards something with a more soothing, calm plot and vibe, that would make it work both as a new Grimm fairy tale and simultaneously as a Sleep Story on Calm.” [emphasis mine]

….

If Marnell’s article is to be believed, Peter Freedman doesn’t hold much hope for writers in the long-term future although we don’t need to start ‘battening down the hatches’ yet.

You can find Calm here.

You can find Botnik  here and Botnik Studios here.

 

AI at Ingenium [Canada Science and Technology Museum] on April 25, 2018

Formerly known (I believe) [*Read the comments for the clarification] as the Canada Science and Technology Museum, Ingenium is hosting a ‘sold out but there will be a livestream’ Google event. From Ingenium’s ‘Curiosity on Stage Evening Edition with Google – The AI Revolution‘ event page,

Join Google, Inc. and the Canada Science and Technology Museum for an evening of thought-provoking discussions about artificial intelligence.

[April 25, 2018
7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. {ET}
Fees: Free]

Invited speakers from industry leaders Google, Facebook, Element AI and Deepmind will explore the intersection of artificial intelligence with robotics, arts, social impact and healthcare. The session will end with a panel discussion and question-and-answer period. Following the event, there will be a reception along with light refreshments and networking opportunities.

The event will be simultaneously translated into both official languages as well as available via livestream from the Museum’s YouTube channel.

Seating is limited

THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT. Please join us for the livestream from the Museum’s YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/cstmweb *** April 25, 2018: I received corrective information about the link for the livestream: https://youtu.be/jG84BIno5J4 from someone at Ingenium.***

Speakers

David Usher (Moderator)

David Usher is an artist, best-selling author, entrepreneur and keynote speaker. As a musician he has sold more than 1.4 million albums, won 4 Junos and has had #1 singles singing in English, French and Thai. When David is not making music, he is equally passionate about his other life, as a Geek. He is the founder of Reimagine AI, an artificial intelligence creative studio working at the intersection of art and artificial intelligence. David is also the founder and creative director of the non-profit, the Human Impact Lab at Concordia University [located in Montréal, Québec]. The Lab uses interactive storytelling to revisualize the story of climate change. David is the co-creator, with Dr. Damon Matthews, of the Climate Clock. Climate Clock has been presented all over the world including the United Nations COP 23 Climate Conference and is presently on a three-year tour with the Canada Museum of Science and Innovation’s Climate Change Exhibit.

Joelle Pineau (Facebook)

The AI Revolution:  From Ideas and Models to Building Smart Robots
Joelle Pineau is head of the Facebook AI Research Lab Montreal, and an Associate Professor and William Dawson Scholar at McGill University. Dr. Pineau’s research focuses on developing new models and algorithms for automatic planning and learning in partially-observable domains. She also applies these algorithms to complex problems in robotics, health-care, games and conversational agents. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research and the Journal of Machine Learning Research and is currently President of the International Machine Learning Society. She is a AAAI Fellow, a Senior Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and in 2016 was named a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists by the Royal Society of Canada.

Pablo Samuel Castro (Google)

Building an Intelligent Assistant for Music Creators
Pablo was born and raised in Quito, Ecuador, and moved to Montreal after high school to study at McGill. He stayed in Montreal for the next 10 years, finished his bachelors, worked at a flight simulator company, and then eventually obtained his masters and PhD at McGill, focusing on Reinforcement Learning. After his PhD Pablo did a 10-month postdoc in Paris before moving to Pittsburgh to join Google. He has worked at Google for almost 6 years, and is currently a research Software Engineer in Google Brain in Montreal, focusing on fundamental Reinforcement Learning research, as well as Machine Learning and Music. Aside from his interest in coding/AI/math, Pablo is an active musician (https://www.psctrio.com), loves running (5 marathons so far, including Boston!), and discussing politics and activism.

Philippe Beaudoin (Element AI)

Concrete AI-for-Good initiatives at Element AI
Philippe cofounded Element AI in 2016 and currently leads its applied lab and AI-for-Good initiatives. His team has helped tackle some of the biggest and most interesting business challenges using machine learning. Philippe holds a Ph.D in Computer Science and taught virtual bipeds to walk by themselves during his postdoc at UBC. He spent five years at Google as a Senior Developer and Technical Lead Manager, partly with the Chrome Machine Learning team. Philippe also founded ArcBees, specializing in cloud-based development. Prior to that he worked in the videogame and graphics hardware industries. When he has some free time, Philippe likes to invent new boardgames — the kind of games where he can still beat the AI!

Doina Precup (Deepmind)

Challenges and opportunities for the AI revolution in health care
Doina Precup splits her time between McGill University, where she co-directs the Reasoning and Learning Lab in the School of Computer Science, and DeepMind Montreal, where she leads the newly formed research team since October 2017.  She got her BSc degree in computer science form the Technical University Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and her MSc and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where she was a Fulbright fellow. Her research interests are in the areas of reinforcement learning, deep learning, time series analysis, and diverse applications of machine learning in health care, automated control and other fields. She became a senior member of AAAI in 2015, a Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning in 2016 and a Senior Fellow of CIFAR in 2017.

Interesting, oui? Not a single expert from Ottawa or Toronto. Well, Element AI has an office in Toronto. Still, I wonder why this singular focus on AI in Montréal. After all, one of the current darlings of AI, machine learning, was developed at the University of Toronto which houses the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR),  the institution in charge of the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy and the Vector Institutes (more about that in my March 31,2017 posting).

Enough with my musing: For those of us on the West Coast, there’s an opportunity to attend via livestream from 4 pm to 7 pm on April 25, 2018 on xxxxxxxxx. *** April 25, 2018: I received corrective information about the link for the livestream: https://youtu.be/jG84BIno5J4 and clarification as the relationship between Ingenium and the Canada Science and Technology Museum from someone at Ingenium.***

For more about Element AI, go here; for more about DeepMind, go here for information about parent company in the UK and the most I dug up about their Montréal office was this job posting; and, finally , Reimagine.AI is here.

The Hedy Lamarr of international research: Canada’s Third assessment of The State of Science and Technology and Industrial Research and Development in Canada (2 of 2)

Taking up from where I left off with my comments on Competing in a Global Innovation Economy: The Current State of R and D in Canada or as I prefer to call it the Third assessment of Canadas S&T (science and technology) and R&D (research and development). (Part 1 for anyone who missed it).

Is it possible to get past Hedy?

Interestingly (to me anyway), one of our R&D strengths, the visual and performing arts, features sectors where a preponderance of people are dedicated to creating culture in Canada and don’t spend a lot of time trying to make money so they can retire before the age of 40 as so many of our start-up founders do. (Retiring before the age of 40 just reminded me of Hollywood actresses {Hedy] who found and still do find that work was/is hard to come by after that age. You may be able but I’m not sure I can get past Hedy.) Perhaps our business people (start-up founders) could take a leaf out of the visual and performing arts handbook? Or, not. There is another question.

Does it matter if we continue to be a ‘branch plant’ economy? Somebody once posed that question to me when I was grumbling that our start-ups never led to larger businesses and acted more like incubators (which could describe our R&D as well),. He noted that Canadians have a pretty good standard of living and we’ve been running things this way for over a century and it seems to work for us. Is it that bad? I didn’t have an  answer for him then and I don’t have one now but I think it’s a useful question to ask and no one on this (2018) expert panel or the previous expert panel (2013) seems to have asked.

I appreciate that the panel was constrained by the questions given by the government but given how they snuck in a few items that technically speaking were not part of their remit, I’m thinking they might have gone just a bit further. The problem with answering the questions as asked is that if you’ve got the wrong questions, your answers will be garbage (GIGO; garbage in, garbage out) or, as is said, where science is concerned, it’s the quality of your questions.

On that note, I would have liked to know more about the survey of top-cited researchers. I think looking at the questions could have been quite illuminating and I would have liked some information on from where (geographically and area of specialization) they got most of their answers. In keeping with past practice (2012 assessment published in 2013), there is no additional information offered about the survey questions or results. Still, there was this (from the report released April 10, 2018; Note: There may be some difference between the formatting seen here and that seen in the document),

3.1.2 International Perceptions of Canadian Research
As with the 2012 S&T report, the CCA commissioned a survey of top-cited researchers’ perceptions of Canada’s research strength in their field or subfield relative to that of other countries (Section 1.3.2). Researchers were asked to identify the top five countries in their field and subfield of expertise: 36% of respondents (compared with 37% in the 2012 survey) from across all fields of research rated Canada in the top five countries in their field (Figure B.1 and Table B.1 in the appendix). Canada ranks fourth out of all countries, behind the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany, and ahead of France. This represents a change of about 1 percentage point from the overall results of the 2012 S&T survey. There was a 4 percentage point decrease in how often France is ranked among the top five countries; the ordering of the top five countries, however, remains the same.

When asked to rate Canada’s research strength among other advanced countries in their field of expertise, 72% (4,005) of respondents rated Canadian research as “strong” (corresponding to a score of 5 or higher on a 7-point scale) compared with 68% in the 2012 S&T survey (Table 3.4). [pp. 40-41 Print; pp. 78-70 PDF]

Before I forget, there was mention of the international research scene,

Growth in research output, as estimated by number of publications, varies considerably for the 20 top countries. Brazil, China, India, Iran, and South Korea have had the most significant increases in publication output over the last 10 years. [emphases mine] In particular, the dramatic increase in China’s output means that it is closing the gap with the United States. In 2014, China’s output was 95% of that of the United States, compared with 26% in 2003. [emphasis mine]

Table 3.2 shows the Growth Index (GI), a measure of the rate at which the research output for a given country changed between 2003 and 2014, normalized by the world growth rate. If a country’s growth in research output is higher than the world average, the GI score is greater than 1.0. For example, between 2003 and 2014, China’s GI score was 1.50 (i.e., 50% greater than the world average) compared with 0.88 and 0.80 for Canada and the United States, respectively. Note that the dramatic increase in publication production of emerging economies such as China and India has had a negative impact on Canada’s rank and GI score (see CCA, 2016).

As long as I’ve been blogging (10 years), the international research community (in particular the US) has been looking over its shoulder at China.

Patents and intellectual property

As an inventor, Hedy got more than one patent. Much has been made of the fact that  despite an agreement, the US Navy did not pay her or her partner (George Antheil) for work that would lead to significant military use (apparently, it was instrumental in the Bay of Pigs incident, for those familiar with that bit of history), GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and more.

Some comments about patents. They are meant to encourage more innovation by ensuring that creators/inventors get paid for their efforts .This is true for a set time period and when it’s over, other people get access and can innovate further. It’s not intended to be a lifelong (or inheritable) source of income. The issue in Lamarr’s case is that the navy developed the technology during the patent’s term without telling either her or her partner so, of course, they didn’t need to compensate them despite the original agreement. They really should have paid her and Antheil.

The current patent situation, particularly in the US, is vastly different from the original vision. These days patents are often used as weapons designed to halt innovation. One item that should be noted is that the Canadian federal budget indirectly addressed their misuse (from my March 16, 2018 posting),

Surprisingly, no one else seems to have mentioned a new (?) intellectual property strategy introduced in the document (from Chapter 2: Progress; scroll down about 80% of the way, Note: The formatting has been changed),

Budget 2018 proposes measures in support of a new Intellectual Property Strategy to help Canadian entrepreneurs better understand and protect intellectual property, and get better access to shared intellectual property.

What Is a Patent Collective?
A Patent Collective is a way for firms to share, generate, and license or purchase intellectual property. The collective approach is intended to help Canadian firms ensure a global “freedom to operate”, mitigate the risk of infringing a patent, and aid in the defence of a patent infringement suit.

Budget 2018 proposes to invest $85.3 million over five years, starting in 2018–19, with $10 million per year ongoing, in support of the strategy. The Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development will bring forward the full details of the strategy in the coming months, including the following initiatives to increase the intellectual property literacy of Canadian entrepreneurs, and to reduce costs and create incentives for Canadian businesses to leverage their intellectual property:

  • To better enable firms to access and share intellectual property, the Government proposes to provide $30 million in 2019–20 to pilot a Patent Collective. This collective will work with Canada’s entrepreneurs to pool patents, so that small and medium-sized firms have better access to the critical intellectual property they need to grow their businesses.
  • To support the development of intellectual property expertise and legal advice for Canada’s innovation community, the Government proposes to provide $21.5 million over five years, starting in 2018–19, to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. This funding will improve access for Canadian entrepreneurs to intellectual property legal clinics at universities. It will also enable the creation of a team in the federal government to work with Canadian entrepreneurs to help them develop tailored strategies for using their intellectual property and expanding into international markets.
  • To support strategic intellectual property tools that enable economic growth, Budget 2018 also proposes to provide $33.8 million over five years, starting in 2018–19, to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, including $4.5 million for the creation of an intellectual property marketplace. This marketplace will be a one-stop, online listing of public sector-owned intellectual property available for licensing or sale to reduce transaction costs for businesses and researchers, and to improve Canadian entrepreneurs’ access to public sector-owned intellectual property.

The Government will also consider further measures, including through legislation, in support of the new intellectual property strategy.

Helping All Canadians Harness Intellectual Property
Intellectual property is one of our most valuable resources, and every Canadian business owner should understand how to protect and use it.

To better understand what groups of Canadians are benefiting the most from intellectual property, Budget 2018 proposes to provide Statistics Canada with $2 million over three years to conduct an intellectual property awareness and use survey. This survey will help identify how Canadians understand and use intellectual property, including groups that have traditionally been less likely to use intellectual property, such as women and Indigenous entrepreneurs. The results of the survey should help the Government better meet the needs of these groups through education and awareness initiatives.

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office will also increase the number of education and awareness initiatives that are delivered in partnership with business, intermediaries and academia to ensure Canadians better understand, integrate and take advantage of intellectual property when building their business strategies. This will include targeted initiatives to support underrepresented groups.

Finally, Budget 2018 also proposes to invest $1 million over five years to enable representatives of Canada’s Indigenous Peoples to participate in discussions at the World Intellectual Property Organization related to traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, an important form of intellectual property.

It’s not wholly clear what they mean by ‘intellectual property’. The focus seems to be on  patents as they are the only intellectual property (as opposed to copyright and trademarks) singled out in the budget. As for how the ‘patent collective’ is going to meet all its objectives, this budget supplies no clarity on the matter. On the plus side, I’m glad to see that indigenous peoples’ knowledge is being acknowledged as “an important form of intellectual property” and I hope the discussions at the World Intellectual Property Organization are fruitful.

As for the patent situation in Canada (from the report released April 10, 2018),

Over the past decade, the Canadian patent flow in all technical sectors has consistently decreased. Patent flow provides a partial picture of how patents in Canada are exploited. A negative flow represents a deficit of patented inventions owned by Canadian assignees versus the number of patented inventions created by Canadian inventors. The patent flow for all Canadian patents decreased from about −0.04 in 2003 to −0.26 in 2014 (Figure 4.7). This means that there is an overall deficit of 26% of patent ownership in Canada. In other words, fewer patents were owned by Canadian institutions than were invented in Canada.

This is a significant change from 2003 when the deficit was only 4%. The drop is consistent across all technical sectors in the past 10 years, with Mechanical Engineering falling the least, and Electrical Engineering the most (Figure 4.7). At the technical field level, the patent flow dropped significantly in Digital Communication and Telecommunications. For example, the Digital Communication patent flow fell from 0.6 in 2003 to −0.2 in 2014. This fall could be partially linked to Nortel’s US$4.5 billion patent sale [emphasis mine] to the Rockstar consortium (which included Apple, BlackBerry, Ericsson, Microsoft, and Sony) (Brickley, 2011). Food Chemistry and Microstructural [?] and Nanotechnology both also showed a significant drop in patent flow. [p. 83 Print; p. 121 PDF]

Despite a fall in the number of parents for ‘Digital Communication’, we’re still doing well according to statistics elsewhere in this report. Is it possible that patents aren’t that big a deal? Of course, it’s also possible that we are enjoying the benefits of past work and will miss out on future work. (Note: A video of the April 10, 2018 report presentation by Max Blouw features him saying something like that.)

One last note, Nortel died many years ago. Disconcertingly, this report, despite more than one reference to Nortel, never mentions the company’s demise.

Boxed text

While the expert panel wasn’t tasked to answer certain types of questions, as I’ve noted earlier they managed to sneak in a few items.  One of the strategies they used was putting special inserts into text boxes including this (from the report released April 10, 2018),

Box 4.2
The FinTech Revolution

Financial services is a key industry in Canada. In 2015, the industry accounted for 4.4%

of Canadia jobs and about 7% of Canadian GDP (Burt, 2016). Toronto is the second largest financial services hub in North America and one of the most vibrant research hubs in FinTech. Since 2010, more than 100 start-up companies have been founded in Canada, attracting more than $1 billion in investment (Moffatt, 2016). In 2016 alone, venture-backed investment in Canadian financial technology companies grew by 35% to $137.7 million (Ho, 2017). The Toronto Financial Services Alliance estimates that there are approximately 40,000 ICT specialists working in financial services in Toronto alone.

AI, blockchain, [emphasis mine] and other results of ICT research provide the basis for several transformative FinTech innovations including, for example, decentralized transaction ledgers, cryptocurrencies (e.g., bitcoin), and AI-based risk assessment and fraud detection. These innovations offer opportunities to develop new markets for established financial services firms, but also provide entry points for technology firms to develop competing service offerings, increasing competition in the financial services industry. In response, many financial services companies are increasing their investments in FinTech companies (Breznitz et al., 2015). By their own account, the big five banks invest more than $1 billion annually in R&D of advanced software solutions, including AI-based innovations (J. Thompson, personal communication, 2016). The banks are also increasingly investing in university research and collaboration with start-up companies. For instance, together with several large insurance and financial management firms, all big five banks have invested in the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Kolm, 2017).

I’m glad to see the mention of blockchain while AI (artificial intelligence) is an area where we have innovated (from the report released April 10, 2018),

AI has attracted researchers and funding since the 1960s; however, there were periods of stagnation in the 1970s and 1980s, sometimes referred to as the “AI winter.” During this period, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), under the direction of Fraser Mustard, started supporting AI research with a decade-long program called Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Society, [emphasis mine] which was active from 1983 to 1994. In 2004, a new program called Neural Computation and Adaptive Perception was initiated and renewed twice in 2008 and 2014 under the title, Learning in Machines and Brains. Through these programs, the government provided long-term, predictable support for high- risk research that propelled Canadian researchers to the forefront of global AI development. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Canadian research output and impact on AI were second only to that of the United States (CIFAR, 2016). NSERC has also been an early supporter of AI. According to its searchable grant database, NSERC has given funding to research projects on AI since at least 1991–1992 (the earliest searchable year) (NSERC, 2017a).

The University of Toronto, the University of Alberta, and the Université de Montréal have emerged as international centres for research in neural networks and deep learning, with leading experts such as Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio. Recently, these locations have expanded into vibrant hubs for research in AI applications with a diverse mix of specialized research institutes, accelerators, and start-up companies, and growing investment by major international players in AI development, such as Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. Many highly influential AI researchers today are either from Canada or have at some point in their careers worked at a Canadian institution or with Canadian scholars.

As international opportunities in AI research and the ICT industry have grown, many of Canada’s AI pioneers have been drawn to research institutions and companies outside of Canada. According to the OECD, Canada’s share of patents in AI declined from 2.4% in 2000 to 2005 to 2% in 2010 to 2015. Although Canada is the sixth largest producer of top-cited scientific publications related to machine learning, firms headquartered in Canada accounted for only 0.9% of all AI-related inventions from 2012 to 2014 (OECD, 2017c). Canadian AI researchers, however, remain involved in the core nodes of an expanding international network of AI researchers, most of whom continue to maintain ties with their home institutions. Compared with their international peers, Canadian AI researchers are engaged in international collaborations far more often than would be expected by Canada’s level of research output, with Canada ranking fifth in collaboration. [p. 97-98 Print; p. 135-136 PDF]

The only mention of robotics seems to be here in this section and it’s only in passing. This is a bit surprising given its global importance. I wonder if robotics has been somehow hidden inside the term artificial intelligence, although sometimes it’s vice versa with robot being used to describe artificial intelligence. I’m noticing this trend of assuming the terms are synonymous or interchangeable not just in Canadian publications but elsewhere too.  ’nuff said.

Getting back to the matter at hand, t he report does note that patenting (technometric data) is problematic (from the report released April 10, 2018),

The limitations of technometric data stem largely from their restricted applicability across areas of R&D. Patenting, as a strategy for IP management, is similarly limited in not being equally relevant across industries. Trends in patenting can also reflect commercial pressures unrelated to R&D activities, such as defensive or strategic patenting practices. Finally, taxonomies for assessing patents are not aligned with bibliometric taxonomies, though links can be drawn to research publications through the analysis of patent citations. [p. 105 Print; p. 143 PDF]

It’s interesting to me that they make reference to many of the same issues that I mention but they seem to forget and don’t use that information in their conclusions.

There is one other piece of boxed text I want to highlight (from the report released April 10, 2018),

Box 6.3
Open Science: An Emerging Approach to Create New Linkages

Open Science is an umbrella term to describe collaborative and open approaches to
undertaking science, which can be powerful catalysts of innovation. This includes
the development of open collaborative networks among research performers, such
as the private sector, and the wider distribution of research that usually results when
restrictions on use are removed. Such an approach triggers faster translation of ideas
among research partners and moves the boundaries of pre-competitive research to
later, applied stages of research. With research results freely accessible, companies
can focus on developing new products and processes that can be commercialized.

Two Canadian organizations exemplify the development of such models. In June
2017, Genome Canada, the Ontario government, and pharmaceutical companies
invested $33 million in the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) (Genome Canada,
2017). Formed in 2004, the SGC is at the forefront of the Canadian open science
movement and has contributed to many key research advancements towards new
treatments (SGC, 2018). McGill University’s Montréal Neurological Institute and
Hospital has also embraced the principles of open science. Since 2016, it has been
sharing its research results with the scientific community without restriction, with
the objective of expanding “the impact of brain research and accelerat[ing] the
discovery of ground-breaking therapies to treat patients suffering from a wide range
of devastating neurological diseases” (neuro, n.d.).

This is exciting stuff and I’m happy the panel featured it. (I wrote about the Montréal Neurological Institute initiative in a Jan. 22, 2016 posting.)

More than once, the report notes the difficulties with using bibliometric and technometric data as measures of scientific achievement and progress and open science (along with its cousins, open data and open access) are contributing to the difficulties as James Somers notes in his April 5, 2018 article ‘The Scientific Paper is Obsolete’ for The Atlantic (Note: Links have been removed),

The scientific paper—the actual form of it—was one of the enabling inventions of modernity. Before it was developed in the 1600s, results were communicated privately in letters, ephemerally in lectures, or all at once in books. There was no public forum for incremental advances. By making room for reports of single experiments or minor technical advances, journals made the chaos of science accretive. Scientists from that point forward became like the social insects: They made their progress steadily, as a buzzing mass.

The earliest papers were in some ways more readable than papers are today. They were less specialized, more direct, shorter, and far less formal. Calculus had only just been invented. Entire data sets could fit in a table on a single page. What little “computation” contributed to the results was done by hand and could be verified in the same way.

The more sophisticated science becomes, the harder it is to communicate results. Papers today are longer than ever and full of jargon and symbols. They depend on chains of computer programs that generate data, and clean up data, and plot data, and run statistical models on data. These programs tend to be both so sloppily written and so central to the results that it’s [sic] contributed to a replication crisis, or put another way, a failure of the paper to perform its most basic task: to report what you’ve actually discovered, clearly enough that someone else can discover it for themselves.

Perhaps the paper itself is to blame. Scientific methods evolve now at the speed of software; the skill most in demand among physicists, biologists, chemists, geologists, even anthropologists and research psychologists, is facility with programming languages and “data science” packages. And yet the basic means of communicating scientific results hasn’t changed for 400 years. Papers may be posted online, but they’re still text and pictures on a page.

What would you get if you designed the scientific paper from scratch today? A little while ago I spoke to Bret Victor, a researcher who worked at Apple on early user-interface prototypes for the iPad and now runs his own lab in Oakland, California, that studies the future of computing. Victor has long been convinced that scientists haven’t yet taken full advantage of the computer. “It’s not that different than looking at the printing press, and the evolution of the book,” he said. After Gutenberg, the printing press was mostly used to mimic the calligraphy in bibles. It took nearly 100 years of technical and conceptual improvements to invent the modern book. “There was this entire period where they had the new technology of printing, but they were just using it to emulate the old media.”Victor gestured at what might be possible when he redesigned a journal article by Duncan Watts and Steven Strogatz, “Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks.” He chose it both because it’s one of the most highly cited papers in all of science and because it’s a model of clear exposition. (Strogatz is best known for writing the beloved “Elements of Math” column for The New York Times.)

The Watts-Strogatz paper described its key findings the way most papers do, with text, pictures, and mathematical symbols. And like most papers, these findings were still hard to swallow, despite the lucid prose. The hardest parts were the ones that described procedures or algorithms, because these required the reader to “play computer” in their head, as Victor put it, that is, to strain to maintain a fragile mental picture of what was happening with each step of the algorithm.Victor’s redesign interleaved the explanatory text with little interactive diagrams that illustrated each step. In his version, you could see the algorithm at work on an example. You could even control it yourself….

For anyone interested in the evolution of how science is conducted and communicated, Somers’ article is a fascinating and in depth look at future possibilities.

Subregional R&D

I didn’t find this quite as compelling as the last time and that may be due to the fact that there’s less information and I think the 2012 report was the first to examine the Canadian R&D scene with a subregional (in their case, provinces) lens. On a high note, this report also covers cities (!) and regions, as well as, provinces.

Here’s the conclusion (from the report released April 10, 2018),

Ontario leads Canada in R&D investment and performance. The province accounts for almost half of R&D investment and personnel, research publications and collaborations, and patents. R&D activity in Ontario produces high-quality publications in each of Canada’s five R&D strengths, reflecting both the quantity and quality of universities in the province. Quebec lags Ontario in total investment, publications, and patents, but performs as well (citations) or better (R&D intensity) by some measures. Much like Ontario, Quebec researchers produce impactful publications across most of Canada’s five R&D strengths. Although it invests an amount similar to that of Alberta, British Columbia does so at a significantly higher intensity. British Columbia also produces more highly cited publications and patents, and is involved in more international research collaborations. R&D in British Columbia and Alberta clusters around Vancouver and Calgary in areas such as physics and ICT and in clinical medicine and energy, respectively. [emphasis mine] Smaller but vibrant R&D communities exist in the Prairies and Atlantic Canada [also referred to as the Maritime provinces or Maritimes] (and, to a lesser extent, in the Territories) in natural resource industries.

Globally, as urban populations expand exponentially, cities are likely to drive innovation and wealth creation at an increasing rate in the future. In Canada, R&D activity clusters around five large cities: Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, Ottawa, and Calgary. These five cities create patents and high-tech companies at nearly twice the rate of other Canadian cities. They also account for half of clusters in the services sector, and many in advanced manufacturing.

Many clusters relate to natural resources and long-standing areas of economic and research strength. Natural resource clusters have emerged around the location of resources, such as forestry in British Columbia, oil and gas in Alberta, agriculture in Ontario, mining in Quebec, and maritime resources in Atlantic Canada. The automotive, plastics, and steel industries have the most individual clusters as a result of their economic success in Windsor, Hamilton, and Oshawa. Advanced manufacturing industries tend to be more concentrated, often located near specialized research universities. Strong connections between academia and industry are often associated with these clusters. R&D activity is distributed across the country, varying both between and within regions. It is critical to avoid drawing the wrong conclusion from this fact. This distribution does not imply the existence of a problem that needs to be remedied. Rather, it signals the benefits of diverse innovation systems, with differentiation driven by the needs of and resources available in each province. [pp.  132-133 Print; pp. 170-171 PDF]

Intriguingly, there’s no mention that in British Columbia (BC), there are leading areas of research: Visual & Performing Arts, Psychology & Cognitive Sciences, and Clinical Medicine (according to the table on p. 117 Print, p. 153 PDF).

As I said and hinted earlier, we’ve got brains; they’re just not the kind of brains that command respect.

Final comments

My hat’s off to the expert panel and staff of the Council of Canadian Academies. Combining two previous reports into one could not have been easy. As well, kudos to their attempts to broaden the discussion by mentioning initiative such as open science and for emphasizing the problems with bibliometrics, technometrics, and other measures. I have covered only parts of this assessment, (Competing in a Global Innovation Economy: The Current State of R&D in Canada), there’s a lot more to it including a substantive list of reference materials (bibliography).

While I have argued that perhaps the situation isn’t quite as bad as the headlines and statistics may suggest, there are some concerning trends for Canadians but we have to acknowledge that many countries have stepped up their research game and that’s good for all of us. You don’t get better at anything unless you work with and play with others who are better than you are. For example, both India and Italy surpassed us in numbers of published research papers. We slipped from 7th place to 9th. Thank you, Italy and India. (And, Happy ‘Italian Research in the World Day’ on April 15, 2018, the day’s inaugural year. In Italian: Piano Straordinario “Vivere all’Italiana” – Giornata della ricerca Italiana nel mondo.)

Unfortunately, the reading is harder going than previous R&D assessments in the CCA catalogue. And in the end, I can’t help thinking we’re just a little bit like Hedy Lamarr. Not really appreciated in all of our complexities although the expert panel and staff did try from time to time. Perhaps the government needs to find better ways of asking the questions.

***ETA April 12, 2018 at 1500 PDT: Talking about missing the obvious! I’ve been ranting on about how research strength in visual and performing arts and in philosophy and theology, etc. is perfectly fine and could lead to ‘traditional’ science breakthroughs without underlining the point by noting that Antheil was a musician, Lamarr was as an actress and they set the foundation for work by electrical engineers (or people with that specialty) for their signature work leading to WiFi, etc.***

There is, by the way, a Hedy-Canada connection. In 1998, she sued Canadian software company Corel, for its unauthorized use of her image on their Corel Draw 8 product packaging. She won.

More stuff

For those who’d like to see and hear the April 10, 2017 launch for “Competing in a Global Innovation Economy: The Current State of R&D in Canada” or the Third Assessment as I think of it, go here.

The report can be found here.

For anyone curious about ‘Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story’ to be broadcast on May 18, 2018 as part of PBS’s American Masters series, there’s this trailer,

For the curious, I did find out more about the Hedy Lamarr and Corel Draw. John Lettice’s December 2, 1998 article The Rgister describes the suit and her subsequent victory in less than admiring terms,

Our picture doesn’t show glamorous actress Hedy Lamarr, who yesterday [Dec. 1, 1998] came to a settlement with Corel over the use of her image on Corel’s packaging. But we suppose that following the settlement we could have used a picture of Corel’s packaging. Lamarr sued Corel earlier this year over its use of a CorelDraw image of her. The picture had been produced by John Corkery, who was 1996 Best of Show winner of the Corel World Design Contest. Corel now seems to have come to an undisclosed settlement with her, which includes a five-year exclusive (oops — maybe we can’t use the pack-shot then) licence to use “the lifelike vector illustration of Hedy Lamarr on Corel’s graphic software packaging”. Lamarr, bless ‘er, says she’s looking forward to the continued success of Corel Corporation,  …

There’s this excerpt from a Sept. 21, 2015 posting (a pictorial essay of Lamarr’s life) by Shahebaz Khan on The Blaze Blog,

6. CorelDRAW:
For several years beginning in 1997, the boxes of Corel DRAW’s software suites were graced by a large Corel-drawn image of Lamarr. The picture won Corel DRAW’s yearly software suite cover design contest in 1996. Lamarr sued Corel for using the image without her permission. Corel countered that she did not own rights to the image. The parties reached an undisclosed settlement in 1998.

There’s also a Nov. 23, 1998 Corel Draw 8 product review by Mike Gorman on mymac.com, which includes a screenshot of the packaging that precipitated the lawsuit. Once they settled, it seems Corel used her image at least one more time.

The Hedy Lamarr of international research: Canada’s Third assessment of The State of Science and Technology and Industrial Research and Development in Canada (1 of 2)

Before launching into the assessment, a brief explanation of my theme: Hedy Lamarr was considered to be one of the great beauties of her day,

“Ziegfeld Girl” Hedy Lamarr 1941 MGM *M.V.
Titles: Ziegfeld Girl
People: Hedy Lamarr
Image courtesy mptvimages.com [downloaded from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034415/mediaviewer/rm1566611456]

Aside from starring in Hollywood movies and, before that, movies in Europe, she was also an inventor and not just any inventor (from a Dec. 4, 2017 article by Laura Barnett for The Guardian), Note: Links have been removed,

Let’s take a moment to reflect on the mercurial brilliance of Hedy Lamarr. Not only did the Vienna-born actor flee a loveless marriage to a Nazi arms dealer to secure a seven-year, $3,000-a-week contract with MGM, and become (probably) the first Hollywood star to simulate a female orgasm on screen – she also took time out to invent a device that would eventually revolutionise mobile communications.

As described in unprecedented detail by the American journalist and historian Richard Rhodes in his new book, Hedy’s Folly, Lamarr and her business partner, the composer George Antheil, were awarded a patent in 1942 for a “secret communication system”. It was meant for radio-guided torpedoes, and the pair gave to the US Navy. It languished in their files for decades before eventually becoming a constituent part of GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology.

(The article goes on to mention other celebrities [Marlon Brando, Barbara Cartland, Mark Twain, etc] and their inventions.)

Lamarr’s work as an inventor was largely overlooked until the 1990’s when the technology community turned her into a ‘cultish’ favourite and from there her reputation grew and acknowledgement increased culminating in Rhodes’ book and the documentary by Alexandra Dean, ‘Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (to be broadcast as part of PBS’s American Masters series on May 18, 2018).

Canada as Hedy Lamarr

There are some parallels to be drawn between Canada’s S&T and R&D (science and technology; research and development) and Ms. Lamarr. Chief amongst them, we’re not always appreciated for our brains. Not even by people who are supposed to know better such as the experts on the panel for the ‘Third assessment of The State of Science and Technology and Industrial Research and Development in Canada’ (proper title: Competing in a Global Innovation Economy: The Current State of R&D in Canada) from the Expert Panel on the State of Science and Technology and Industrial Research and Development in Canada.

A little history

Before exploring the comparison to Hedy Lamarr further, here’s a bit more about the history of this latest assessment from the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA), from the report released April 10, 2018,

This assessment of Canada’s performance indicators in science, technology, research, and innovation comes at an opportune time. The Government of Canada has expressed a renewed commitment in several tangible ways to this broad domain of activity including its Innovation and Skills Plan, the announcement of five superclusters, its appointment of a new Chief Science Advisor, and its request for the Fundamental Science Review. More specifically, the 2018 Federal Budget demonstrated the government’s strong commitment to research and innovation with historic investments in science.

The CCA has a decade-long history of conducting evidence-based assessments about Canada’s research and development activities, producing seven assessments of relevance:

The State of Science and Technology in Canada (2006) [emphasis mine]
•Innovation and Business Strategy: Why Canada Falls Short (2009)
•Catalyzing Canada’s Digital Economy (2010)
•Informing Research Choices: Indicators and Judgment (2012)
The State of Science and Technology in Canada (2012) [emphasis mine]
The State of Industrial R&D in Canada (2013) [emphasis mine]
•Paradox Lost: Explaining Canada’s Research Strength and Innovation Weakness (2013)

Using similar methods and metrics to those in The State of Science and Technology in Canada (2012) and The State of Industrial R&D in Canada (2013), this assessment tells a similar and familiar story: Canada has much to be proud of, with world-class researchers in many domains of knowledge, but the rest of the world is not standing still. Our peers are also producing high quality results, and many countries are making significant commitments to supporting research and development that will position them to better leverage their strengths to compete globally. Canada will need to take notice as it determines how best to take action. This assessment provides valuable material for that conversation to occur, whether it takes place in the lab or the legislature, the bench or the boardroom. We also hope it will be used to inform public discussion. [p. ix Print, p. 11 PDF]

This latest assessment succeeds the general 2006 and 2012 reports, which were mostly focused on academic research, and combines it with an assessment of industrial research, which was previously separate. Also, this third assessment’s title (Competing in a Global Innovation Economy: The Current State of R&D in Canada) makes what was previously quietly declared in the text, explicit from the cover onwards. It’s all about competition, despite noises such as the 2017 Naylor report (Review of fundamental research) about the importance of fundamental research.

One other quick comment, I did wonder in my July 1, 2016 posting (featuring the announcement of the third assessment) how combining two assessments would impact the size of the expert panel and the size of the final report,

Given the size of the 2012 assessment of science and technology at 232 pp. (PDF) and the 2013 assessment of industrial research and development at 220 pp. (PDF) with two expert panels, the imagination boggles at the potential size of the 2016 expert panel and of the 2016 assessment combining the two areas.

I got my answer with regard to the panel as noted in my Oct. 20, 2016 update (which featured a list of the members),

A few observations, given the size of the task, this panel is lean. As well, there are three women in a group of 13 (less than 25% representation) in 2016? It’s Ontario and Québec-dominant; only BC and Alberta rate a representative on the panel. I hope they will find ways to better balance this panel and communicate that ‘balanced story’ to the rest of us. On the plus side, the panel has representatives from the humanities, arts, and industry in addition to the expected representatives from the sciences.

The imbalance I noted then was addressed, somewhat, with the selection of the reviewers (from the report released April 10, 2018),

The CCA wishes to thank the following individuals for their review of this report:

Ronald Burnett, C.M., O.B.C., RCA, Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des
lettres, President and Vice-Chancellor, Emily Carr University of Art and Design
(Vancouver, BC)

Michelle N. Chretien, Director, Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Design
Technologies, Sheridan College; Former Program and Business Development
Manager, Electronic Materials, Xerox Research Centre of Canada (Brampton,
ON)

Lisa Crossley, CEO, Reliq Health Technologies, Inc. (Ancaster, ON)
Natalie Dakers, Founding President and CEO, Accel-Rx Health Sciences
Accelerator (Vancouver, BC)

Fred Gault, Professorial Fellow, United Nations University-MERIT (Maastricht,
Netherlands)

Patrick D. Germain, Principal Engineering Specialist, Advanced Aerodynamics,
Bombardier Aerospace (Montréal, QC)

Robert Brian Haynes, O.C., FRSC, FCAHS, Professor Emeritus, DeGroote
School of Medicine, McMaster University (Hamilton, ON)

Susan Holt, Chief, Innovation and Business Relationships, Government of
New Brunswick (Fredericton, NB)

Pierre A. Mohnen, Professor, United Nations University-MERIT and Maastricht
University (Maastricht, Netherlands)

Peter J. M. Nicholson, C.M., Retired; Former and Founding President and
CEO, Council of Canadian Academies (Annapolis Royal, NS)

Raymond G. Siemens, Distinguished Professor, English and Computer Science
and Former Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing, University of
Victoria (Victoria, BC) [pp. xii- xiv Print; pp. 15-16 PDF]

The proportion of women to men as reviewers jumped up to about 36% (4 of 11 reviewers) and there are two reviewers from the Maritime provinces. As usual, reviewers external to Canada were from Europe. Although this time, they came from Dutch institutions rather than UK or German institutions. Interestingly and unusually, there was no one from a US institution. When will they start using reviewers from other parts of the world?

As for the report itself, it is 244 pp. (PDF). (For the really curious, I have a  December 15, 2016 post featuring my comments on the preliminary data for the third assessment.)

To sum up, they had a lean expert panel tasked with bringing together two inquiries and two reports. I imagine that was daunting. Good on them for finding a way to make it manageable.

Bibliometrics, patents, and a survey

I wish more attention had been paid to some of the issues around open science, open access, and open data, which are changing how science is being conducted. (I have more about this from an April 5, 2018 article by James Somers for The Atlantic but more about that later.) If I understand rightly, they may not have been possible due to the nature of the questions posed by the government when requested the assessment.

As was done for the second assessment, there is an acknowledgement that the standard measures/metrics (bibliometrics [no. of papers published, which journals published them; number of times papers were cited] and technometrics [no. of patent applications, etc.] of scientific accomplishment and progress are not the best and new approaches need to be developed and adopted (from the report released April 10, 2018),

It is also worth noting that the Panel itself recognized the limits that come from using traditional historic metrics. Additional approaches will be needed the next time this assessment is done. [p. ix Print; p. 11 PDF]

For the second assessment and as a means of addressing some of the problems with metrics, the panel decided to take a survey which the panel for the third assessment has also done (from the report released April 10, 2018),

The Panel relied on evidence from multiple sources to address its charge, including a literature review and data extracted from statistical agencies and organizations such as Statistics Canada and the OECD. For international comparisons, the Panel focused on OECD countries along with developing countries that are among the top 20 producers of peer-reviewed research publications (e.g., China, India, Brazil, Iran, Turkey). In addition to the literature review, two primary research approaches informed the Panel’s assessment:
•a comprehensive bibliometric and technometric analysis of Canadian research publications and patents; and,
•a survey of top-cited researchers around the world.

Despite best efforts to collect and analyze up-to-date information, one of the Panel’s findings is that data limitations continue to constrain the assessment of R&D activity and excellence in Canada. This is particularly the case with industrial R&D and in the social sciences, arts, and humanities. Data on industrial R&D activity continue to suffer from time lags for some measures, such as internationally comparable data on R&D intensity by sector and industry. These data also rely on industrial categories (i.e., NAICS and ISIC codes) that can obscure important trends, particularly in the services sector, though Statistics Canada’s recent revisions to how this data is reported have improved this situation. There is also a lack of internationally comparable metrics relating to R&D outcomes and impacts, aside from those based on patents.

For the social sciences, arts, and humanities, metrics based on journal articles and other indexed publications provide an incomplete and uneven picture of research contributions. The expansion of bibliometric databases and methodological improvements such as greater use of web-based metrics, including paper views/downloads and social media references, will support ongoing, incremental improvements in the availability and accuracy of data. However, future assessments of R&D in Canada may benefit from more substantive integration of expert review, capable of factoring in different types of research outputs (e.g., non-indexed books) and impacts (e.g., contributions to communities or impacts on public policy). The Panel has no doubt that contributions from the humanities, arts, and social sciences are of equal importance to national prosperity. It is vital that such contributions are better measured and assessed. [p. xvii Print; p. 19 PDF]

My reading: there’s a problem and we’re not going to try and fix it this time. Good luck to those who come after us. As for this line: “The Panel has no doubt that contributions from the humanities, arts, and social sciences are of equal importance to national prosperity.” Did no one explain that when you use ‘no doubt’, you are introducing doubt? It’s a cousin to ‘don’t take this the wrong way’ and ‘I don’t mean to be rude but …’ .

Good news

This is somewhat encouraging (from the report released April 10, 2018),

Canada’s international reputation for its capacity to participate in cutting-edge R&D is strong, with 60% of top-cited researchers surveyed internationally indicating that Canada hosts world-leading infrastructure or programs in their fields. This share increased by four percentage points between 2012 and 2017. Canada continues to benefit from a highly educated population and deep pools of research skills and talent. Its population has the highest level of educational attainment in the OECD in the proportion of the population with
a post-secondary education. However, among younger cohorts (aged 25 to 34), Canada has fallen behind Japan and South Korea. The number of researchers per capita in Canada is on a par with that of other developed countries, andincreased modestly between 2004 and 2012. Canada’s output of PhD graduates has also grown in recent years, though it remains low in per capita terms relative to many OECD countries. [pp. xvii-xviii; pp. 19-20]

Don’t let your head get too big

Most of the report observes that our international standing is slipping in various ways such as this (from the report released April 10, 2018),

In contrast, the number of R&D personnel employed in Canadian businesses
dropped by 20% between 2008 and 2013. This is likely related to sustained and
ongoing decline in business R&D investment across the country. R&D as a share
of gross domestic product (GDP) has steadily declined in Canada since 2001,
and now stands well below the OECD average (Figure 1). As one of few OECD
countries with virtually no growth in total national R&D expenditures between
2006 and 2015, Canada would now need to more than double expenditures to
achieve an R&D intensity comparable to that of leading countries.

Low and declining business R&D expenditures are the dominant driver of this
trend; however, R&D spending in all sectors is implicated. Government R&D
expenditures declined, in real terms, over the same period. Expenditures in the
higher education sector (an indicator on which Canada has traditionally ranked
highly) are also increasing more slowly than the OECD average. Significant
erosion of Canada’s international competitiveness and capacity to participate
in R&D and innovation is likely to occur if this decline and underinvestment
continue.

Between 2009 and 2014, Canada produced 3.8% of the world’s research
publications, ranking ninth in the world. This is down from seventh place for
the 2003–2008 period. India and Italy have overtaken Canada although the
difference between Italy and Canada is small. Publication output in Canada grew
by 26% between 2003 and 2014, a growth rate greater than many developed
countries (including United States, France, Germany, United Kingdom, and
Japan), but below the world average, which reflects the rapid growth in China
and other emerging economies. Research output from the federal government,
particularly the National Research Council Canada, dropped significantly
between 2009 and 2014.(emphasis mine)  [p. xviii Print; p. 20 PDF]

For anyone unfamiliar with Canadian politics,  2009 – 2014 were years during which Stephen Harper’s Conservatives formed the government. Justin Trudeau’s Liberals were elected to form the government in late 2015.

During Harper’s years in government, the Conservatives were very interested in changing how the National Research Council of Canada operated and, if memory serves, the focus was on innovation over research. Consequently, the drop in their research output is predictable.

Given my interest in nanotechnology and other emerging technologies, this popped out (from the report released April 10, 2018),

When it comes to research on most enabling and strategic technologies, however, Canada lags other countries. Bibliometric evidence suggests that, with the exception of selected subfields in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) such as Medical Informatics and Personalized Medicine, Canada accounts for a relatively small share of the world’s research output for promising areas of technology development. This is particularly true for Biotechnology, Nanotechnology, and Materials science [emphasis mine]. Canada’s research impact, as reflected by citations, is also modest in these areas. Aside from Biotechnology, none of the other subfields in Enabling and Strategic Technologies has an ARC rank among the top five countries. Optoelectronics and photonics is the next highest ranked at 7th place, followed by Materials, and Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, both of which have a rank of 9th. Even in areas where Canadian researchers and institutions played a seminal role in early research (and retain a substantial research capacity), such as Artificial Intelligence and Regenerative Medicine, Canada has lost ground to other countries.

Arguably, our early efforts in artificial intelligence wouldn’t have garnered us much in the way of ranking and yet we managed some cutting edge work such as machine learning. I’m not suggesting the expert panel should have or could have found some way to measure these kinds of efforts but I’m wondering if there could have been some acknowledgement in the text of the report. I’m thinking a couple of sentences in a paragraph about the confounding nature of scientific research where areas that are ignored for years and even decades then become important (e.g., machine learning) but are not measured as part of scientific progress until after they are universally recognized.

Still, point taken about our diminishing returns in ’emerging’ technologies and sciences (from the report released April 10, 2018),

The impression that emerges from these data is sobering. With the exception of selected ICT subfields, such as Medical Informatics, bibliometric evidence does not suggest that Canada excels internationally in most of these research areas. In areas such as Nanotechnology and Materials science, Canada lags behind other countries in levels of research output and impact, and other countries are outpacing Canada’s publication growth in these areas — leading to declining shares of world publications. Even in research areas such as AI, where Canadian researchers and institutions played a foundational role, Canadian R&D activity is not keeping pace with that of other countries and some researchers trained in Canada have relocated to other countries (Section 4.4.1). There are isolated exceptions to these trends, but the aggregate data reviewed by this Panel suggest that Canada is not currently a world leader in research on most emerging technologies.

The Hedy Lamarr treatment

We have ‘good looks’ (arts and humanities) but not the kind of brains (physical sciences and engineering) that people admire (from the report released April 10, 2018),

Canada, relative to the world, specializes in subjects generally referred to as the
humanities and social sciences (plus health and the environment), and does
not specialize as much as others in areas traditionally referred to as the physical
sciences and engineering. Specifically, Canada has comparatively high levels
of research output in Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, Public Health and
Health Services, Philosophy and Theology, Earth and Environmental Sciences,
and Visual and Performing Arts. [emphases mine] It accounts for more than 5% of world researchin these fields. Conversely, Canada has lower research output than expected
in Chemistry, Physics and Astronomy, Enabling and Strategic Technologies,
Engineering, and Mathematics and Statistics. The comparatively low research
output in core areas of the natural sciences and engineering is concerning,
and could impair the flexibility of Canada’s research base, preventing research
institutions and researchers from being able to pivot to tomorrow’s emerging
research areas. [p. xix Print; p. 21 PDF]

Couldn’t they have used a more buoyant tone? After all, science was known as ‘natural philosophy’ up until the 19th century. As for visual and performing arts, let’s include poetry as a performing and literary art (both have been the case historically and cross-culturally) and let’s also note that one of the great physics texts, (De rerum natura by Lucretius) was a multi-volume poem (from Lucretius’ Wikipedia entry; Note: Links have been removed).

His poem De rerum natura (usually translated as “On the Nature of Things” or “On the Nature of the Universe”) transmits the ideas of Epicureanism, which includes Atomism [the concept of atoms forming materials] and psychology. Lucretius was the first writer to introduce Roman readers to Epicurean philosophy.[15] The poem, written in some 7,400 dactylic hexameters, is divided into six untitled books, and explores Epicurean physics through richly poetic language and metaphors. Lucretius presents the principles of atomism; the nature of the mind and soul; explanations of sensation and thought; the development of the world and its phenomena; and explains a variety of celestial and terrestrial phenomena. The universe described in the poem operates according to these physical principles, guided by fortuna, “chance”, and not the divine intervention of the traditional Roman deities.[16]

Should you need more proof that the arts might have something to contribute to physical sciences, there’s this in my March 7, 2018 posting,

It’s not often you see research that combines biologically inspired engineering and a molecular biophysicist with a professional animator who worked at Peter Jackson’s (Lord of the Rings film trilogy, etc.) Park Road Post film studio. An Oct. 18, 2017 news item on ScienceDaily describes the project,

Like many other scientists, Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., the Founding Director of the Wyss Institute, [emphasis mine] is concerned that non-scientists have become skeptical and even fearful of his field at a time when technology can offer solutions to many of the world’s greatest problems. “I feel that there’s a huge disconnect between science and the public because it’s depicted as rote memorization in schools, when by definition, if you can memorize it, it’s not science,” says Ingber, who is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). [emphasis mine] “Science is the pursuit of the unknown. We have a responsibility to reach out to the public and convey that excitement of exploration and discovery, and fortunately, the film industry is already great at doing that.”

“Not only is our physics-based simulation and animation system as good as other data-based modeling systems, it led to the new scientific insight [emphasis mine] that the limited motion of the dynein hinge focuses the energy released by ATP hydrolysis, which causes dynein’s shape change and drives microtubule sliding and axoneme motion,” says Ingber. “Additionally, while previous studies of dynein have revealed the molecule’s two different static conformations, our animation visually depicts one plausible way that the protein can transition between those shapes at atomic resolution, which is something that other simulations can’t do. The animation approach also allows us to visualize how rows of dyneins work in unison, like rowers pulling together in a boat, which is difficult using conventional scientific simulation approaches.”

It comes down to how we look at things. Yes, physical sciences and engineering are very important. If the report is to be believed we have a very highly educated population and according to PISA scores our students rank highly in mathematics, science, and reading skills. (For more information on Canada’s latest PISA scores from 2015 see this OECD page. As for PISA itself, it’s an OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] programme where 15-year-old students from around the world are tested on their reading, mathematics, and science skills, you can get some information from my Oct. 9, 2013 posting.)

Is it really so bad that we choose to apply those skills in fields other than the physical sciences and engineering? It’s a little bit like Hedy Lamarr’s problem except instead of being judged for our looks and having our inventions dismissed, we’re being judged for not applying ourselves to physical sciences and engineering and having our work in other closely aligned fields dismissed as less important.

Canada’s Industrial R&D: an oft-told, very sad story

Bemoaning the state of Canada’s industrial research and development efforts has been a national pastime as long as I can remember. Here’s this from the report released April 10, 2018,

There has been a sustained erosion in Canada’s industrial R&D capacity and competitiveness. Canada ranks 33rd among leading countries on an index assessing the magnitude, intensity, and growth of industrial R&D expenditures. Although Canada is the 11th largest spender, its industrial R&D intensity (0.9%) is only half the OECD average and total spending is declining (−0.7%). Compared with G7 countries, the Canadian portfolio of R&D investment is more concentrated in industries that are intrinsically not as R&D intensive. Canada invests more heavily than the G7 average in oil and gas, forestry, machinery and equipment, and finance where R&D has been less central to business strategy than in many other industries. …  About 50% of Canada’s industrial R&D spending is in high-tech sectors (including industries such as ICT, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and automotive) compared with the G7 average of 80%. Canadian Business Enterprise Expenditures on R&D (BERD) intensity is also below the OECD average in these sectors. In contrast, Canadian investment in low and medium-low tech sectors is substantially higher than the G7 average. Canada’s spending reflects both its long-standing industrial structure and patterns of economic activity.

R&D investment patterns in Canada appear to be evolving in response to global and domestic shifts. While small and medium-sized enterprises continue to perform a greater share of industrial R&D in Canada than in the United States, between 2009 and 2013, there was a shift in R&D from smaller to larger firms. Canada is an increasingly attractive place to conduct R&D. Investment by foreign-controlled firms in Canada has increased to more than 35% of total R&D investment, with the United States accounting for more than half of that. [emphasis mine]  Multinational enterprises seem to be increasingly locating some of their R&D operations outside their country of ownership, possibly to gain proximity to superior talent. Increasing foreign-controlled R&D, however, also could signal a long-term strategic loss of control over intellectual property (IP) developed in this country, ultimately undermining the government’s efforts to support high-growth firms as they scale up. [pp. xxii-xxiii Print; pp. 24-25 PDF]

Canada has been known as a ‘branch plant’ economy for decades. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, it means that companies from other countries come here, open up a branch and that’s how we get our jobs as we don’t have all that many large companies here. Increasingly, multinationals are locating R&D shops here.

While our small to medium size companies fund industrial R&D, it’s large companies (multinationals) which can afford long-term and serious investment in R&D. Luckily for companies from other countries, we have a well-educated population of people looking for jobs.

In 2017, we opened the door more widely so we can scoop up talented researchers and scientists from other countries, from a June 14, 2017 article by Beckie Smith for The PIE News,

Universities have welcomed the inclusion of the work permit exemption for academic stays of up to 120 days in the strategy, which also introduces expedited visa processing for some highly skilled professions.

Foreign researchers working on projects at a publicly funded degree-granting institution or affiliated research institution will be eligible for one 120-day stay in Canada every 12 months.

And universities will also be able to access a dedicated service channel that will support employers and provide guidance on visa applications for foreign talent.

The Global Skills Strategy, which came into force on June 12 [2017], aims to boost the Canadian economy by filling skills gaps with international talent.

As well as the short term work permit exemption, the Global Skills Strategy aims to make it easier for employers to recruit highly skilled workers in certain fields such as computer engineering.

“Employers that are making plans for job-creating investments in Canada will often need an experienced leader, dynamic researcher or an innovator with unique skills not readily available in Canada to make that investment happen,” said Ahmed Hussen, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.

“The Global Skills Strategy aims to give those employers confidence that when they need to hire from abroad, they’ll have faster, more reliable access to top talent.”

Coincidentally, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, etc. have announced, in 2017, new jobs and new offices in Canadian cities. There’s a also Chinese multinational telecom company Huawei Canada which has enjoyed success in Canada and continues to invest here (from a Jan. 19, 2018 article about security concerns by Matthew Braga for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) online news,

For the past decade, Chinese tech company Huawei has found no shortage of success in Canada. Its equipment is used in telecommunications infrastructure run by the country’s major carriers, and some have sold Huawei’s phones.

The company has struck up partnerships with Canadian universities, and say it is investing more than half a billion dollars in researching next generation cellular networks here. [emphasis mine]

While I’m not thrilled about using patents as an indicator of progress, this is interesting to note (from the report released April 10, 2018),

Canada produces about 1% of global patents, ranking 18th in the world. It lags further behind in trademark (34th) and design applications (34th). Despite relatively weak performance overall in patents, Canada excels in some technical fields such as Civil Engineering, Digital Communication, Other Special Machines, Computer Technology, and Telecommunications. [emphases mine] Canada is a net exporter of patents, which signals the R&D strength of some technology industries. It may also reflect increasing R&D investment by foreign-controlled firms. [emphasis mine] [p. xxiii Print; p. 25 PDF]

Getting back to my point, we don’t have large companies here. In fact, the dream for most of our high tech startups is to build up the company so it’s attractive to buyers, sell, and retire (hopefully before the age of 40). Strangely, the expert panel doesn’t seem to share my insight into this matter,

Canada’s combination of high performance in measures of research output and impact, and low performance on measures of industrial R&D investment and innovation (e.g., subpar productivity growth), continue to be viewed as a paradox, leading to the hypothesis that barriers are impeding the flow of Canada’s research achievements into commercial applications. The Panel’s analysis suggests the need for a more nuanced view. The process of transforming research into innovation and wealth creation is a complex multifaceted process, making it difficult to point to any definitive cause of Canada’s deficit in R&D investment and productivity growth. Based on the Panel’s interpretation of the evidence, Canada is a highly innovative nation, but significant barriers prevent the translation of innovation into wealth creation. The available evidence does point to a number of important contributing factors that are analyzed in this report. Figure 5 represents the relationships between R&D, innovation, and wealth creation.

The Panel concluded that many factors commonly identified as points of concern do not adequately explain the overall weakness in Canada’s innovation performance compared with other countries. [emphasis mine] Academia-business linkages appear relatively robust in quantitative terms given the extent of cross-sectoral R&D funding and increasing academia-industry partnerships, though the volume of academia-industry interactions does not indicate the nature or the quality of that interaction, nor the extent to which firms are capitalizing on the research conducted and the resulting IP. The educational system is high performing by international standards and there does not appear to be a widespread lack of researchers or STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) skills. IP policies differ across universities and are unlikely to explain a divergence in research commercialization activity between Canadian and U.S. institutions, though Canadian universities and governments could do more to help Canadian firms access university IP and compete in IP management and strategy. Venture capital availability in Canada has improved dramatically in recent years and is now competitive internationally, though still overshadowed by Silicon Valley. Technology start-ups and start-up ecosystems are also flourishing in many sectors and regions, demonstrating their ability to build on research advances to develop and deliver innovative products and services.

You’ll note there’s no mention of a cultural issue where start-ups are designed for sale as soon as possible and this isn’t new. Years ago, there was an accounting firm that published a series of historical maps (the last one I saw was in 2005) of technology companies in the Vancouver region. Technology companies were being developed and sold to large foreign companies from the 19th century to present day.

Part 2