Image: Stew Dean, Flickr.

Here are five indicators, observations or articles that caught the eye of FA futurists today.

1. Using “big data” to evaluate the productivity of individual scientists may have unintended consequences. A recent editorial in Science argues that any automated scoring of an individual’s publication output discourages “risky and potentially groundbreaking work” and tends to steer scientists towards highly populated fields where they will have many peers who can cite their articles, boosting their apparent impact.
2. Researchers at MIT argue that automation may explain the pattern of economic growth that isn’t reflected in rising income that has prevailed in the United States in recent decades–and they warn that worse is to come.
3. New research from Pew shows that the roles of mothers and fathers in the US are converging. While mothers still do the bulk of childcare and fathers still do the bulk of paid work, the gap between how the genders spend their time is shrinking. And moms and dads are almost equally likely to say that balancing work and family remains challenging.
4. China has begun a carbon-trading experiment in seven cities.
5. Over the next 12 years, China plans to move 250 million people from rural areas in to cities. To put this in perspective, that number is about 2/3 the population of the United States

1. US researchers have developed an automated vaccine production facility that uses hydroponic irrigation to grow genetically modified tobacco plants for producing targeted biochemicals. This approach to biochemical production can cut the lead time for culturing new vaccines to approximately 6 weeks, increasing the turnaround time for producing future influenza vaccines.
2. Researchers may have found a way to avoid the time-consuming process of developing a new vaccine for each strain of flu that threatens a pandemic. The method, which involves squirting a harmless virus containing a gene for broadly effective antibody into patients’ noses, has been tested on mice and ferrets.
3. For the first time in the history of the United States, white deaths outnumbered births last year, due to low fertility. This milestone came ten years earlier than expected, and presages the demographic shifts of this century.
4. A new study by the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory found that iron fertilization of the ocean might not be the effective global warming mitigation technique it was thought to be. Diatoms in the ocean take in more iron than they need for photosynthesis, meaning that they are sucking up a lot of the iron needed to create algae blooms to remove and trap carbon from the air.
5. A recent Federal Court ruling in NY State may put many unpaid internships in legal jeopardy. Companies that fail to structure their unpaid internships as genuine learning opportunities could be found to be in violation of Federal minimum wage laws.
   

   Image: Chintermeyer, Flickr.

Image: Jim68000, Flickr.

Here are five indicators, observations or articles that caught the eye of FA futurists today.

1. Smartphones now have a majority of marketshare in the US. A new survey from Pew Center for Internet and American Life found that 56% of adult mobile users in the US own mobile devices running iOS, Android or Windows 8 operating systems, up from 46% in 2012, and 35% in 2011.
2. Some US electric utility companies are seeking rate changes for solar homes that sell electricity back to the grid on sunny days, arguing that these customers aren’t paying their fair share of the cost for building and maintaining power stations and transmission lines. The request may be symptomatic of the long-term threat that distributed solar power generation poses to the business model of electric utilities.
3. The Chief IT architect at Google strenuously denies that there is any direct or indirect cooperation with the purported PRISM internet surveillance system of the USGOV. If both the PRISM leak information and the Google denials are factually correct, it would imply that widespread internet surveillance is occurring at key nodes of the US internet backbone.
4. A report suggests that the natural gas boom underway in the US might be replicable in many parts of the world.
5. A report from the International Energy Agency, a global energy think tank, recommends four steps to curb global warming that governments should put in place by 2015, five years before a UN climate deal now under negotiation would take effect. The IEA recommends aggressive energy conservation, reducing the use of coal-fired power plants, curbing methane emissions, and lowering subsidies for consumption of fossil fuels.

Image: Stew Dean, Flickr.

1. Association of Professional Futurists member Andrew Curry pointed out a 2011 paper from Microsoft and the University of New South Wales, “Six Provocations for Big Data,” that offers “critical questions about what all this data means, who gets access to it, how it is deployed, and to what ends.”
2. Scott Smith discusses some obstacles on the way to the sharing economy – if it is on its way at all.
3. An amusing perspective on what would happen if all news sites started to look like Buzzfeed. Given the desperate need for mainstream media sites to attract web traffic, this may be less of a joke and more like a dystopian scenario for the future of online news.
4. A researcher suggests six limitations of big data.
5. Slate offers an interesting juxtaposition of stories–“The Glorious Future of Shopping” extolling the rapturous possibilities of online shopping with same-day delivery, including access to “the long tail of groceries,” and a story citing Costco CEO Craig Jelinek’s recent comments that no one can figure out how to do same-day grocery delivery profitably. (Slate points out that betting against Amazon and its AmazonFresh service may be risky.)

Image: Jellaluna, Flickr.

1. Social media sites are continuing to pursue advertising as a way of increasing revenue.  But what are social media’s obligations to the advertisers they attract?  As companies and organizations continue to advertise both in general and to targeted audiences, the question of a safe space to advertise becomes a complex but important consideration.
2. A recent article from McKinsey describes “the coming era of ‘on-demand’ marketing,” in which consumer’s brand experiences will be tightly integrated between the physical and digital worlds. The article includes a scenario illustrating consumer-marketing interactions in 2020.
3. A flood of fake Asian-manufactured drugs are driving Africans back to traditional medicine.
4. GLXY-13 is molecularly similar to the street drug ketamine (i.e. “Special K), but the compound has shown to be effective in relieving depression symptoms in only one hour, without the negative side effects of Ketamine or the SSRI family of anti-depressants. The drug is currently in phase 2 human clinical trials. There are over 20 other NDMA modulators similar to GLXY-13, offering a new research area for pharmaceutical research and development.
5. Amazon has announced plans to expand its Amazon Fresh home grocery delivery service, with tests runs in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The service already runs in Amazon’s home city of Seattle. While there are already extant grocery delivery services, Amazon’s size, purchasing power, experience and existing customer base means that this could be a disruptive move not just for grocery delivery, but overall grocery retailing

Image: Losmininos, Flickr.

1. An opinion piece for MIT Technology Review notes that while “big data” has the potential to enable economic and social progress, we must be careful not to become so enamored of data that we “fail to appreciate its inherent ability to mislead,” e.g., by drawing conclusions based on faulty inputs.
2. Jaron Lanier worries that “free information” may erode some of our basic social structures, including the middle class.
3. Mathematician Eric Weinstein has developed a “Theory of Everything” that unifies general relativity and quantum mechanics. Unlike many ideas in theoretical physics, Weinstein’s new theory provides testable predictions for new categories of subatomic particles that could substantively support or falsify his model.
4. Tesla Motors has announced plans to expand its nationwide network of charging stations for its electric cars. Tesla plans to triple the number of current stations by the end of June and have stations in most major North American cities within six months. Charging is free for Tesla owners.
5. Further blurring the boundary between online and real world, Pepsi has unveiled a vending machine that will dispense a free bottle based on a consumer “Liking” Pepsi on Facebook. Consumers can either log into their Facebook accounts on their smartphones or using a touchscreen mounted on the vending machine.

Image: Megan Ann, Flickr.

Here are five indicators, observations or articles that caught the eye of FA futurists today.

1. Aspiration and reality, while many people have a goal of healthier eating and avoiding high calorie fats, the truth can be quite different.  McDonald’s has admitted that while salads make up a large part of image enhancement into healthy food, it only represents 2 to 3 percent of sales.
2. In another step towards the Internet of Things, a start-up called August will offer a smart door lock. The $199 dollar Bluetooth device installs on an existing deadbolt and allows homeowners to give temporary access to guests or tradespeople, control access remotely, and keep a log of entries and exits.
3. In a useful insight into regulatory thinking, the U.S. Department of Transportation has defined five levels of vehicle automation; few new cars are at level 0, and many are already at level 2.
4. Drone airlines? The EU is financing a €30 million research project into developing airline flight decks that only require one pilot.The project is looking at how to reduce costs and pilot error through the use of a what amounts to an automated co-pilot. 
5. The Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have created a robot bee, called RoboBee, that could eventually be used for pollination, search-and-rescue, or spying.

Image: Matti Mattila, Flickr.

1. Anton Walhman speculates about the future of Google’s Chrome operating system. According to Walhman, Google is likely to expand the range of tablets and smartphones that are powered by Chrome, providing consumers with an OS that can be controlled by Google and offer a seamless user experience between different devices. Within a few years, Apple iOS, the open source Android OS, and Google’s Chrome could be the primary choices for portable touch-interface computing.
2. A recent German study concluded that obesity can begin in the womb.  Babies that are over 4 kg or 8 pounds are twice as likely to become obese later in life.  This may be a more important factor than the weight of parents or grandparents.
3. The 2013 Internet Trends report from Mary Meeker of VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers has been released. Among other data points, the reports cites Internet user growth of 8%, year-over-year to 2.4 billion global users. [Slideshow]
4. Adam Penenberg at PandoDaily looks at a possible future where Google Glass and quantum computing merge, resulting in, among other things, de facto telepathy.
5. The longstanding consumer trend towards convenient products seems to be alive and well–and perhaps reaching new extremes. According to IRI data for the 52 weeks ending March 24, the microwave popcorn market grew less than 1%, while ready-to-eat popcorn grew by almost 12%. Advertising Age hypothesizes that “today even a few minutes [wait] might be too long for some consumers”.

Image: Alan Levine, Flickr.

1. The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative will be led by NIH, DARPA, and NSF, with a proposed budget of $100 million in the next fiscal year. According to President Obama the new project will give “scientists the tools they need to get a dynamic picture of the brain in action and better understand how we think and how we learn and how we remember. And that knowledge could be–will be–transformative.”
2. A new report from McKinsey Global Institute identifies “12 technologies that could drive truly massive economic transformations and disruptions in the coming years.” The five estimated to have the greatest economic impact in 2025: mobile Internet, automation of knowledge work, Internet of things, cloud, and advanced robotics.
3. The Chinese government may be moving to reduce its role in the economy in a significant way, a move one expert calls “radical stuff.”
4. The quantified-self movement–in which people use mobile devices and apps to self-track a wide range of wellness indicators, from miles jogged to quality of sleep to happiness levels–is about to take a major leap into a new arena: health tracking. By 2020 health self-tracking will likely be one of the largest categories of mobile apps, and an integral facet of patient-directed healthcare, as consumers use apps to help manage chronic conditions like diabetes, support family caregiving, monitor pregnancy, etc.
5. According to a New York Times story, ecologists are mapping the microorganisms that cohabit with humans in indoor spaces. “Once ecologists have more thoroughly identified indoor species, they hope to come up with strategies to scientifically manage homes, by eliminating harmful taxa and fostering species beneficial to our health.”

Image: Squidish, Flickr.

1. An effort by ExxonMobil and Craig Ventner’s Synthetic Genomics to develop algae based biofuels is heading back to the drafting board. As a general rule, alternative biofuel technologies that look promising in the laboratory tend to fail when scaled up to industrially scaled fuel production.
2. Researchers have developed a new one-step process for inserting multiple genes into bacteria. The process, dubbed “clonetegration,” could dramatically reduce the time and effort required to engineer genetically modified bacteria.
3. A Chilean research team has created the first 3D printed object based on the thoughts of the user. The team linked a brain computer interface to as 3D printer, and the wearer was able to control the production of a simple object using thoughts picked up by the interface. This could lead to a more simple “think it, print it” version of 3D printing.
4. A “bookless” library is set to open in a rural Texas county. The BiblioTech will have hundreds of e-readers to loan out, as well as screens on site for users to read on. The library is seen as a test in how to provide library services to communities, that can’t afford the cost of buying printed books.
5. A futurist offers a positive long-term scenario for Africa, in which issues of infrastructure and agriculture have been overcome.