Charter Research Networks: Monday, May 28, 2018
Washington – Three years ago today the first Charter Research Networks were launched in the United States. They were designed to accelerate the trip from innovation to medical treatment by making it dramatically easier for individuals with life threatening conditions to participate with researchers in finding a cure for their disease.
So why did these networks generate so much controversy? To answer this question we need to go back almost two decades to the 1999 death of Jesse Gelsinger from complications following his treatment in the world’s first gene therapy trial. Gelsinger’s death was a tragedy, but the greater tragedy was the response from the medical community. This response had a much more deadly reaction than the immune response that took Jesse Gelsinger’s life.
Over ten years later, researchers were still haunted by the specter of this trial as they dared to launch the second embryonic stem cell trial in a privately funded effort by Geron Corporation in 2010. (38) A 2009 study by Hearst Media estimated the number of annual deaths from medical error at 200,000 (39) – the estimated total deaths that can be attached to the reaction of the medical community to Jesse Gelsinger’s death will undoubtedly be several times that number when the report “Gene Therapy Delayed: The True Cost of Excess Caution” is published later next month.
The first Charter Research Network was inspired by the visionary Stand Up To Cancer (40) initiative. The small team of young researchers who put that network together had grown up on social networking technology and had no patience with a collection of human trial processes that appeared perfectly content to sacrifice an unlimited number of future lives to avoid the possibility of making research mistakes today. Instead, they seized on a concept pioneered by the visionary economist Paul Romer as “charter cities” and adapted it to medical research. The Stand Up To Cancer Manifesto; encourages us to; “Take our wild impossible dreams – and make them possible” this captures the essence of what charter research networks stand for today.
39. Harmon, Katherine. Deaths from avoidable medical errors more than double in past decade. Scientific American Magazine. August 10, 2009, 2009.
40. Wikipedia. Stand Up to Cancer. Wikipedia.org. [Online] September 13, 2010. [Cited: September 13, 2010.] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Su2c.
Managing Our Infoassets: Friday, July 31, 2020
New York – We take individual control of personal information for granted today, but it didn’t really exist less than a decade ago. At that time, the Infoasset Management Industry erupted in reaction to a series of search advertising and behavioral targeting scandals. Now our infoasset managers routinely negotiate with product producers on our behalf using the instructions we provide in our profiles. And, as we all know from the historic Personal Copyright Ruling, they aggressively pursue legal action against those who attempt to misuse our personal information on either an individual or class action basis.
Twenty years ago Google was among the first to dramatically demonstrate the “value” of personal information by selling access to our search terms in return for a market valuation that soared to over $250 billion at one time. A national survey by the Infoasset Industry Association last year estimated the total value of personal information assets in the US alone at over $4 trillion. With an average management fee of 2%, this agrees with last year’s reported US revenues for the infoasset management industry at $80.2 billion.
When the SEC assumed regulatory control of the industry in 2016 they were simply formalizing what Google had already proven – trading in information is real money! Today’s it’s clear that the role of the infoasset management industry in upending the cozy world of web advertising was only the tip of the iceberg.
The insights that are growing out of the fact that we now control “all” of our personal information are amazing. The launch of HealCapsules for example was accelerated by at least five years according to informed sources due to the powerful Infoasset Trials App. The early applications in infoasset access featured cloud based intelligence engines that personalized our product experiences. Fueled by infoassets the next generation Personal Enterprise Networks are empowering us to act as the conductors of our own global symphony of enterprise relationships. The impact of this historic transformation on everything from health care to political corruption is truly stunning.
Wellgnosis – The First In-Vivo Security System: Monday, March 2, 2020
Chennai – In just the 30 days since the Wellgnosis launch this 24/7/365 security system for your body has attracted 80 million users globally. Of course it has helped that the core technology for the Wellgnosis service is the daily HealCapsule released last year. Thanks to creative packaging with nutritional supplements and vitamins HealCapsules are used regularly by over 100 million people. Within seconds of taking these tiny pills the tests inside the capsule begin transmitting signals to your HealCapsule App. The data is then aggregated and monitored by Wellgnosis. Messages are triggered or calls scheduled from nurses and doctors as appropriate.
Wellgnosis monitoring makes it possible to catch infections or other medical problems early enough to take preventive measures while only involving health care professionals when necessary. And if you don’t think that pathogens are working just as hard as your new Wellgnosis security system, take a glance at the event logs! You’ll see how a variety of pathogens entered your body but most were promptly eliminated by your immune system. The Wellgnosis system doesn’t actually become alarmed until certain critical thresholds are breached which point to a pending viral, bacterial or other threat. The system can even order mild antibiotic prescriptions when an early stage bacterial infection is detected. Wellgnosis was inspired by early wellness pioneers like Dr. John Travis founder of The Wellness Inventory. (71)
The social networking aspects of the Wellgnosis service are now making it possible for employers, schools, restaurants, bars, and other public spaces to require a “Wellgnosis Green” signal certifying that you are in good health and not contagious as a condition of admission. The Wellgnosis Worksite service is designed to reduce workplace illness by putting employees on “remote work” if they don’t register a “Wellgnosis Green” signal. WHO statisticians issued a report this morning estimating the explosive popularity of the Wellgnosis service could reduce global flu deaths alone by 80,000 annually by the 2022 flu season.
(72) Amory B. Lovins, E. Kyle Datta, Odd-Even Bustnes, Jonathan G. Koomey, Nathan J. Glasgow. Winning the Oil End Game. s.l. : Rocky Mountain Institute, 2004. 1881071103.
Will Our Products Be Proud of Us? – Monday, June 21, 2038
Shanghai – It’s ironic really. At the turn of the century there were many who were willing to believe in the prospect of a “technological singularity” where machine intelligence passed up that of humans. And yet those same visionaries often seemed pessimistic about the prospects for mere humans to harness these new intelligence structures to solve some of mankind’s biggest problems. Over the past three years the first wave of truly intelligent products has washed over the planet startling many people in remote areas with their self-directed actions while turning the world’s “regulatory” frameworks upside down. Was it really that far-fetched to imagine that the rise of super intelligence might allow us to create products that evolve and improve themselves? For some reason this trajectory for intelligence innovation seemed a bit too mundane. It didn’t conjure the same “clash of civilizations” drama that the malevolent human styled super intelligence beings suggested.
As we watch entire product cycles take place within a matter of hours instead of the months or years that human product development teams required, we’re reminded again that the products themselves have a tremendous advantage. Their specialized sense structures allow them to immediately process usage data and compare their individual analytics with their entire peer product network. This communication network also accelerates innovation by routinely borrowing techniques and technologies from other product domains. The net result is a pattern of rapid combinatorial evolution. Humans still play a role in most products by doing what human beings actually do best – imagining entirely new product systems.
As we watch products pass along evolutionary improvements to new generations of their own species that consume less resources while improving performance, it’s hard to be too disappointed that we may still be about 10 years away from re-producing true “human” intelligence outside of a human mind – right on track with an influential 2011 study produced by Dr. Nick Bostrom at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute. (90) While that will certainly be a remarkable accomplishment, we do already have almost 9 billion of those minds roaming the planet today. What I really want to know is; 100 years from now… will our products be proud of us?
90. Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg. Oxford University. Machine Intelligence Survey. [Online] Oxford University – Future of Humanity Institute, January 2011. [Cited: May 25, 2011.] http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/21516/MI_survey.pdf
MolecuMeals Food Processor: Tuesday, February 12, 2028
Paris – This morning’s demonstration of the MolecuMeals food processor truly lived up to the hype. An all-star cast of master chefs representing every major cuisine in the world was not just present at the event – they were cooking! Well, a more accurate description might be to say that they were running their proprietary recipe programs and the MolecuMeals processor was doing all the work.
MolecuMeals is a sleek countertop device that looks remarkably like a 20th century microwave oven. The MolecuBlocks cartridges slide into a sleekly hidden set of drawers just under the door to provide the “building blocks.” These contain the food molecules (glucose, gamma cyclodextrin, volatiles or aroma molecules, etc.) that the machine uses to make your meal. This is in stark contrast to the bulky containers that hang off the sides of the larger scale devices that have been turning out a stunning variety of food products in factories over the past two years. With molecular manufacturing less than three years old, who would have dreamed that it would already be this delicious?
I took a break from sampling MolecuMeals’ culinary outputs to visit with some of the technicians who were offering fully immersive nano-scale rides through a MolecuMeals processor as it creates a Beef Wellington. I love the evolution of terminology, we no longer “cook” Beef Wellington; the more accurate description is that we now “create” it. When PETA awarded the first In Vitro Meat Prize in 2014 the meat was literally grown using biological reactions inside large vats. When MolecuMeals creates Beef Wellington, the beef is being assembled from molecular building blocks using virtually the same manufacturing techniques employed in building a pair of shoes. The key structures that allow us to assemble our food began evolving 18 years ago when Sir Fraser Stoddart, then a professor at Northwestern University, discovered a highly structured, stackable, edible nano framework (49) made entirely of starch, salt, and alcohol.
A fascinating feature in the MolecuMeals Programming Language allows home users to interact with a fully immersive virtual kitchen to combine ingredients and prepare the meal. The cook can then store the meal preparation steps and “replay” that exact recipe in the future. The art of cooking lives on!
(49) Nothwestern University News, Edible Nanostructures
From PM’s to Cloud Manufacturing: Monday, August 15, 2033
Hong Kong – The rise of Personal Manufacturing (PM) in the mid twenty teens initially followed a trajectory similar to that traveled by PC’s 40 years earlier and cell phones 20 years earlier. The first devices were curiosity pieces capable of printing off a few consumer electronics products and too expensive for the average consumer. A key problem was that many manufacturing processes required the use of specialized machines and materials that were too infrequently used to be cost effective for home use – even with innovations in miniaturization.
Then with the introduction of OctManufacturing Modules in the late 2020’s it became possible to configure manufacturing processes “on demand” in response to incoming signals from personal enterprise networks. Created from programmable materials, OctManufacturing Modules assemble and disassemble themselves in response to demand patters and the parts produced by these processes are routed to their final assembly points via RTVs and the global Guanway tube transport network. OctMaufacturing Modules are assembled from trillions, sometimes hundreds of quadrillions of blood cell sized (about 10,000 nanometers across) octet robots that move themselves into position and lock arms to form a solid structure. Over the past five years these smart little robots (each one has an on board computer more powerful than the average high end desktop computer of 20 years ago.
The average time from order to finished product delivery for most manufactured products is now just under two hours globally. The key of course to orchestrating this global ballet of manufacturing equipment and the accompanying raw materials needed to feed these processes is the signals that come from our personal enterprise network (PEN) apps and the predictive models tied to those signals. The visionary columnist and author Tom Friedman (82) coined the term “cloud manufacturing” over 20 years ago to describe how start-up companies orchestrated manufacturing resources anywhere in the world. What we’ve done is to take this one step further by making both the software and the machinery itself programmable using the tiny octet nanobot.
VitaMerc – Engage Our Members: Thursday, December 3, 2020
San Francisco – VitaMerc will be launching their initial public offering (IPO) tomorrow. In less than four years they have become one of the world’s most important “employers” even though their full time employee base is less than 2,000 people. But last year they helped 80 million people find meaningful employment.
So what is VitaMerc? Are they a social network? VitaMerc got its start as a social hub for people either actively looking for a new job or unhappy in some way with their existing work and wondering if there is something more to life. The word employ is from the Latin verb impicare – to enfold or engage. But, according to a 2008 survey of “Worker Passion” by Deloitte, (59) 80% of US workers were disengaged. VitaMerc’s genuine commitment as expressed in their three word mission statement – Engage Our Members (EOM) – was infectious. People began to dare to imagine that they too could actually be engaged at work. The VitaMerc community is not only filled with stories of people leaving a dead in job for something better but also countless stories of people reinventing their existing jobs.
Maybe it’s an employment service? When VitaMerc started placing their members in jobs they didn’t operate like the typical employment service. Instead of seeking job listings from employers, VitaMerc took stock of their member’s talents and went out in search of organizations or projects in need of those talents – even when those organizations didn’t always know it yet. VitaMerc also raised money for companies to complete revenue generating projects using a new class of financial products called FLOs – Flexible Limited Ownership securities. These securities generated revenue for VitaMerc, jobs for their members, and a dynamic tool for sharing equity with employees in a targeted way.
As a global service VitaMerc has been instrumental in helping to clean up some very bad forms of child labor abuse by supporting standards like those pioneered by Dan Viederman of Verité (60) for auditing global supply chains for fair employment practices. But a funny thing happened to VitaMerc on their way to becoming the Google of employment…their members love them!
OctInteriors Announces Release 3.0: Sunday, September 4, 2033
Redmond – The release this morning of version 3.0 of OctInteriors was a little bit of let down. Yes, it did correct most of the issues associated with Instant Room Reconfiguration (IRR). The new Interior Design Processor has eliminated the embarrassing furniture jumbles that occurred in release 2.0 from not correctly disassembling replaced room furniture before new items were generated. But, when we tested IRR on transforming an Italian marble floor into a hardwood floor, the transformation took almost two minutes. We also noted several blemishes in the finish that had to be corrected using Spot Reconfiguration (we intentionally left a few dog chew toys on the floor during the test). Spot Reconfiguration took us another minute – not exactly instant!
But, if we turn back the clock forty years to when J. Storrs Hall wrote his pioneering paper “Utility Fog: The Stuff that Dreams Are Made Of” (7) in 1993 it looks like version 3.0 comes pretty close to matching that dream. The idea that we can replace all interior design elements – floor covering, wall covering, furniture, draperies, bedding, everything – with an army of quadrillions of programmable nanobots the size of human cells would have struck 20th century designers as lunacy. But that’s exactly what we’ve done with these tiny nanobots nicknamed – octlets. And we still aren’t satisfied with the programming interface are we? Of course OctInteriors is named for the strong octet truss structure that these tiny nanobots form when they join arms. The octet crystal structure was invented by technology visionary Buckminster Fuller in the mid 20th century before these structures had been observed in nature.
What’s next? The long anticipated release 3.0 of OctExteriors is planned in time for this year’s holiday shopping season. And, for the first time, both OctInteriors and OctExteriors will work with the same programmable octlets – no more customized octlets! Early rumors suggest that an entire 2,400 square foot home can be assembled in less than eight minutes.
7. Hall, J. Storrs. Utility Fog: The Stuff that Dreams Are Made Of. Kurzweil AI Website. [Online] Kurzweil AI, 1993. [Cited: October 29, 2010.] http://www.kurzweilai.net/utility-fog-the-stuff-that-dreams-are-made-of.
The Pursuit of Happiness: Saturday, July 4, 2026
Philadelphia – Two hundred and fifty years ago last month when Thomas Jefferson sat down to draft the Declaration of Independence. He drew on the work of a number of great thinkers. But it was Jefferson’s imagination that transformed John Locke’s – Life, Liberty, and Property – into the unalienable rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. It was almost poetry. Property may have resonated with the landed members of the First Continental Congress. But Jefferson believed that this document should speak to all of us. Everybody could relate to the pursuit of happiness.
In a December 2009 article that appeared in Nature, the research team of Elizabeth Tricomi, Antonio Rangel, Colin F. Camerer and John P. O’Doherty (61) reported on a remarkable discovery. The human brain appeared to be wired for equality. They used fMRI brain images to demonstrate that a rich person was happier to see a reward going to a poor person than to her or himself.
In retrospect this shouldn’t have been that surprising. We’d seen many examples of wealthy individuals giving away the lion’s share of their wealth to benefit others. But then, a little over ten years ago a group of wealthy individuals launched “The Happiness Project” based on a simple principle – everyone on earth had an unalienable right to access the global enterprise system to produce a quality standard of living for themselves and their families. Or, stated another way, everyone on earth had an unalienable right to The Pursuit of Happiness.
As the Happiness Project has developed over the past decade, it has demonstrated a remarkable power to unite people from every corner of the political spectrum around the common goal of building “on-ramps” to the global enterprise system that create true “equality of opportunity” everywhere in the world. On this 250th anniversary of the founding of America there is a palpable sense that we may have at long last realized our true destiny by making Jefferson’s vision of the Pursuit of Happiness a possibility for everyone on earth.
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