Future Tense

The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) has a very interesting radio program called Future Tense.

A couple of months back they ran an interesting segment of regulating technologies.

The interviewee was Dr Matthew Sorrell from the University of Adelaide in Australia.

You can listen to the program here.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/how-regulatory-agencies-help-to-forecast-future-technologies/5359706#transcript


Or read what he has written here. http://theconversation.com/how-we-forecast-future-technologies-20313

This is the first person I have come across interested in the problem of regulating future technologies.

Making Innovation Policy Work ... well sort of.

The OECD and World Bank recently released a report called Making Innovation Policy Work.

For some time I have been looking for an easy example of my basic point in this blog that innovation policy only concerns itself with the production and adoption of innovation not the consequences.

Well this book is it. It doesn't come much clearer. An extract of the Preface reads.

The report recommends that we embed monitoring and evaluation in projects, beginning at the design stage in order to improve the quality and efficiency of public expenditures supporting innovation policy. It proposes that we cooperate closely with private and non-governmental actors, who are often better placed than governments to identify barriers and areas for productive investment or policy action. It suggests involving agencies and actors on the periphery of policy making to limit capture by vested interests, and to enable more creative and cooperative policies than those emerging from central agencies. Finally, it recommends that we share lessons early and periodically at the global level, as well as collect and deploy more data through rapid feedback and decision support.

Very nice but no word here about disruption, no word about changes to the way the economy works - just a souped up business as usual.

The Economist magazine on disruptive innovation policy

Back here, I said that we need new policies for a disruptive age.

My main point was:

Neo-Schumpeterians (innovationists) set themselves too easy a task if they say that the maximisation of the production of innovation will be good for growth and competitiveness in the long run but can give no guide to governments on transitions in periods of disruption (Brian Wixted)

Back in January 2014, no less than the Economist magazine said.

Anger about rising inequality is bound to grow, but politicians will find it hard to address the problem. Shunning progress would be as futile now as the Luddites’ protests against mechanised looms were in the 1810s, because any country that tried to stop would be left behind by competitors eager to embrace new technology. The freedom to raise taxes on the rich to punitive levels will be similarly constrained by the mobility of capital and highly skilled labour.

The main way in which governments can help their people through this dislocation is through education systems. One of the reasons for the improvement in workers’ fortunes in the latter part of the Industrial Revolution was because schools were built to educate them—a dramatic change at the time. Now those schools themselves need to be changed, to foster the creativity that humans will need to set them apart from computers. There should be less rote-learning and more critical thinking. Technology itself will help, whether through MOOCs (massive open online courses) or even video games that simulate the skills needed for work.The definition of “a state education” may also change. Far more money should be spent on pre-schooling, since the cognitive abilities and social skills that children learn in their first few years define much of their future potential. And adults will need continuous education. State education may well involve a year of study to be taken later in life, perhaps in stages.

Yet however well people are taught, their abilities will remain unequal, and in a world which is increasingly polarised economically, many will find their job prospects dimmed and wages squeezed. The best way of helping them is not, as many on the left seem to think, to push up minimum wages. Jacking up the floor too far would accelerate the shift from human workers to computers. Better to top up low wages with public money so that anyone who works has a reasonable income, through a bold expansion of the tax credits that countries such as America and Britain use.

Innovation has brought great benefits to humanity. Nobody in their right mind would want to return to the world of handloom weavers. But the benefits of technological progress are unevenly distributed, especially in the early stages of each new wave, and it is up to governments to spread them. In the 19th century it took the threat of revolution to bring about progressive reforms. Today’s governments would do well to start making the changes needed before their people get angry.

Couldn't have said it any better myself, but have they been reading this blog?

Drone Regulation in The USA

an update on Drone regulations .... recently the New Scientist ran an article about Drone regulations

Drone law: Flying into a legal twilight zone - tech - 15 May 2014 - New Scientist

This part of the article.
 ...

Emfinger and others like him could be forgiven for failing to anticipate the agency's ire. Though he is one of thousands of drone-owners in the US – with most craft being the small, quadcopter variety – there are no official regulations on how to operate them in the US. Even the current ban against flying them for commercial purposes, which Emfinger flouted, comes from a 2007 policy statement, not a law.

Under congressional order, the FAA must open national airspace to commercial and civilian drones by the end of 2015. In the meantime, enthusiasts are taking to the air with little understanding of what's allowed and what's not. As they do, they are showcasing the many benefits of civilian drones while risking running afoul of local authorities. "I'd describe this as a car crash in slow motion," says Matthew Waite, director of the Drone Journalism Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "I'm afraid the situation we're in right now, the longer that this takes, the more people are just going to flout the rules."

Other countries are adjusting faster to the new air traffic. In Germany, drone operators are required to obtain licences and abide by a set of safety and privacy regulations. In Canada, businesses that use drones must submit detailed flight plans.

Wow that was quick - the Google car goes the next step

I have said in the past in this blog that the Google car is coming, I just didn't expect it to quite be speeding up this way.

It has been announced that Google will be producing a number of its own vehicles to up the number of prototypes on the road.

See.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/28/google-reveals-driverless-car-prototype

and...
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/28/google-self-driving-car-how-does-it-work


What I will emphasise is that the second article includes the following comment.

What about legislation?One of the biggest hold-ups to the progression of the technology onto the open road of Britain, the US, Australia and the rest of the world will be legislation.
A law was passed in California over a year ago that made the testing and operation of self-driving vehicles on roads possible, as long as they had manual override controls. The Department of Motor Vehicles in California is expected to issue regulations on the operation of self-driving cars soon, after which self-driving cars may become a bit more common place. 

However, there is still much to work out, primarily revolving around what a passenger in a self-driving car and can’t do – will they have to be able to take control at any moment, for instance – as well as questions around what happens when an accident happens, who is at fault and who pays.

In the age of disruptive innovation, policy and regulation velocity matters. 

Uber, taxis, regulation the backlash...

Sorry to not keep this blog up to speed, but the flood of regulatory related news is a bit overwhelming and I tend to put it off.

Over the summer I plan to catch up a bit on the news but both drones and Bitcoin which I was blogging closely for a few months have really heated up.

Now it is Taxis apps. From Sydney Australia to London England, apps like Uber are as they say moving people. Its turning nasty in Europe with strikes and fights.

I feel sorry for the Taxi drivers - its tough economically but now apps like these will take their jobs. But this ain't the iceberg - that is still coming. Driverless cars will rally bite into the business models and probably sooner than people think.

Malware infects fridge

It has recently come to light that connected devices have been sending spam http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25780908 So malware can now infect your fridge - at least its communications system - can it also infect its control system?

The Current on CBC just did (20 January 2014)  a really well constructed program on the issue. http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2014/01/20/whats-hidden-among-the-internet-of-things/

Okay, so that is one issue your fridge gets infected. But there is another issue why do companies want to connect your fridge in the first place? They sell it as smart to you but what's in it for you - they want your data.

In an interview on the program Prof Avner Levin, Director of The Privacy and Cyber Crime Institute, at Ryerson voiced many of the concerns dear to this blog. The legal structures are not just out of date but the very concepts they are based on are last century.

One person interviewed on the program linked about called for more informed consent - but is that workable - we would be inundated with paper.

So another example of the need for a more concerted effort to research new legal concepts.So the story continues....