Five Interesting Things: Today’s Scan Hits
Back from a summer break, here are five indicators, observations or articles that caught the eye of FA futurists today.
- The head of the Federal Trade Commission has called for an investigation of the impact of “patent trolling” activities because there is little hard data about the costs and benefits of such activities, including their impact on business innovation.
- Patrick Tucker writes about probabilistic mapping.
- Recent research suggests that memories are re-shaped every time they are recalled; it may be possible to change the emotional impact of a memory by adding to it or recalling it in a different context. This is a radical notion that might offer, for example, new PTSD treatments that don’t involve drugs.
- A Guardian piece on how algorithms shape our lives; the concept of emergent discrimination is one we’ve thought about a bit at FA.
- Data traffic to mobile handsets is expected triple by 2017, reaching 21 exabytes annually, driven by increased video watching and web browsing, according to analysts from Strategy Analytics.