T e c h n o T r e n d s

The New MMMM "Amino Acid" of Our Societal, Organizational and Economic "DNA" Q: HOW TO BE RECOMBINED?

2010-07-17T09:07:00.004+01:00

V6R2010 from Dassault Systèmes

2009-07-05T16:06:00.007+01:00

DASSAULT SYSTEMES is the worldwide PLM leader and an exiting software innovator. SolidWorks, CATIA, SIMULIA, DELMIA, ENOVIA & 3DVIA solutions empower users to create, share and experience in 3D.

Obama100 - IT to the Rescue

2009-04-24T12:47:00.011+01:00

For week from April 27th - then the Obama Administration will be 100 days in charge - Recovery.gov will host a national dialogue to engage the public, solution providers, and state, local and tribal partners in answering the question:

What ideas, tools, and approaches can make Recovery.gov a place where the public can monitor the expenditure and use of recovery funds?

In this national online dialogue participants from across the IT community - leading information technology (IT) vendors, thinkers, and consumers - will be able to recommend, discuss, and vote on the best ideas, tools, and approaches. Their input can directly impact how Recovery.gov operates and ensure that our economic recovery is the most transparent and accountable in history.

Microsoft Techfest 2009

2009-03-02T13:36:00.001+01:00

Once-in-a-Lifetime Crisis

2009-02-07T16:50:00.003+01:00

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told a retreat of House Democrats in Williamsburg, Va. "There is a lot of history around that, and frankly if you stop and think about it, 1837, '73, '29, 2008, it's almost exactly a whole lifetime between each of the major economic difficulties that we face."

Ballmer said that economic growth in the last 25 years was fueled by innovation, globalization, and debt--and that the current levels of debt were unsustainable. "In 1929, for example, just before the stock market crash, the private debt-to-GDP ratio was 160 percent," he said. "Last year, private sector debt as a percentage of the GDP: 300 percent, far more leverage."

His warning of a protracted downturn that could become a depression comes amid a stock market that is down by more than 40 percent from its October 2007 peak, and housing prices in many metro areas that have been falling consistently since July 2006--a feat not equalled since the Great Depression.

"In my view, what we now have will be a fundamental economic reset," he said. "The economy is going to have to re-establish itself at a level of spending that reflects the real value of underlying assets before we can all start growing again at a healthy rate."

A Smart Grid Fairy Tale

2009-02-04T10:04:00.000+01:00

Among the many claims made for the "economic stimulus" package now before Congress is that it will "jump-start" a "bigger, better, smarter" electric grid, enabling Americans to use energy more efficiently. The package commits $4.5 billion to this, to help finance 3,000 miles of transmission lines and 40 million "smart meters."

Sounds great, however, $4.5 billion is a pittance. An industry study in 2004 — surely outdated — put the price tag of modernizing the grid at $165 billion. More important, the "smart grid" isn't mainly a matter of building new transmission lines or installing new meters.

While a great idea, it's basically a software project," says economist Marc Levinson of J.P. Morgan. "The reason utilities aren't pushing it faster is not lack of money or will, but because there are lots of technical issues and also important compatibility problems so that the various companies' grids can communicate freely with one another."

Source: Robert J. Samuelson in Newsweek.

Economic Crisis To Hit Politics

2009-02-01T14:05:00.004+01:00

There is no magic bullet for this economic crisis, no magic bailout package, no magic stimulus. We have woven such a tangled financial mess with subprime mortgages wrapped in complex bonds and derivatives, pumped up with leverage, and then globalized to the far corners of the earth that, much as we want to think this will soon be over, that is highly unlikely.

The fact that there is no single pill doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be done. We need a stimulus big enough to create more jobs. We need to remove toxic assets from bank balance sheets. We need the Treasury to close the insolvent banks, merge the weak ones and strengthen the healthy few. And we need to do each one right.

But even then, the turnaround will be neither quick nor painless. Indeed, the whispers are that what has been an exclusively economic crisis up to now may soon morph into a domino of political crises.

Source: Thomas L. Friedman.

China Bigger Than German Economy

2009-01-14T13:22:00.004+01:00

China has taken Germany's spot as the world's third-largest economy after the United States and Japan.

Total GDP figures were revised upwards to 3.76 trillion dollars. Germany's GDP was just below 2.49 trillion.

Geeks Bearing Gifts

2009-01-11T15:20:00.002+01:00

Whether you love the computer world the way it is, or consider it a nightmare honkytonk prison, you'll giggle and rage at Ted Nelson's telling of computer history, its personalities and infights.

Computer movies, music, 3D; the eternal fight between Jobs and Gates; the tangled stories of the Internet and the World Wide Web; all these and more are punchily told.

Depression Looming In Bearish Economy

2009-01-05T14:40:00.004+01:00

Well said, Paul Krugman:

“If we don’t act swiftly and boldly,” declared President-elect Barack Obama in his latest weekly address, “we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double-digit unemployment.” If you ask me, he was understating the case.

We weren’t supposed to find ourselves in this situation. For many years most economists believed that preventing another Great Depression would be easy.

Here’s my nightmare scenario: It takes Congress months to pass a stimulus plan, and the legislation that actually emerges is too cautious. As a result, the economy plunges for most of 2009, and when the plan finally starts to kick in, it’s only enough to slow the descent, not stop it. Meanwhile, deflation is setting in, while businesses and consumers start to base their spending plans on the expectation of a permanently depressed economy.

Obama: Internet Key to Economic Recovery

2008-12-07T14:50:00.002+01:00

This morning, after President-Elect Obama laid out the key parts of his economic recovery plan during his weekly address, he turned to the Internet and told the country that he intends to “renew our information superhighway.”

“It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption. Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online, and they’ll get that chance when I’m President - because that’s how we’ll strengthen America’s competitiveness in the world,” he said.

Source: Lidija Davis.

Global Trends 2025

2008-11-22T13:13:00.003+01:00

From the National Intelligence Council's 2025 project:

1 - The whole international system—as constructed following WWII—will be revolutionized. Not only will new players—Brazil, Russia, India and China— have a seat at the international high table, they will bring new stakes and rules of the game.

2 - The unprecedented transfer of wealth roughly from West to East now under way will continue for the foreseeable future.

3 - Unprecedented economic growth, coupled with 1.5 billion more people, will put pressure on resources—particularly energy, food, and water—raising the specter of scarcities emerging as demand outstrips supply.

4 - The potential for conflict will increase owing partly to political turbulence in parts of the greater Middle East.

U.S. In Deep Recession

2008-11-18T11:53:00.005+01:00

The U.S. economy entered a recession in April. It will last 14 months, which would make it one of the longest recessions since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Only the 16-month recessions in the mid-1970s and early 1980s were longer. Even though the economy was technically growing in April this year it would not be unprecedented for the National Bureau of Economic Research to declare a recession was occurring then.

The NBER measures recessions by "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy," rather than the traditional definition of two consecutive quarters of falling GDP.

Source: Reuters.

GM Bankruptcy No Option

2008-11-16T15:56:00.003+01:00

A study by the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) estimates that in case of a GM bankruptcy 2.5 million jobs would be lost in the first year. The logic: if any of the "Big Three" went bankrupt, many suppliers would also fail; because car companies share suppliers, all U.S.-based manufacturers would suffer crippling parts shortages.

Read Robert J. Samuelson's How to Bail Out General Motors.

Time for Fiscal Stimulus

2008-11-02T12:17:00.003+01:00

From "When Consumers Capitulate" by Paul Krugman:

The ongoing efforts to bail out the financial system, even if they work, won’t do more than slightly mitigate the problem. Maybe some consumers will be able to keep their credit cards, but as we’ve seen, Americans were overextended even before banks started cutting them off.

No, what the economy needs now is something to take the place of retrenching consumers. That means a major fiscal stimulus. And this time the stimulus should take the form of actual government spending rather than rebate checks that consumers probably wouldn’t spend.

This Could Make 1929 Look Like A Walk In The Park

2008-10-27T10:53:00.005+01:00

A chorus of economists has begun to warn that the world's central banks are fighting the wrong war, and perhaps risk a policy error of epochal proportions.

"Liquidity doesn't do anything in this situation," says Anna Schwartz, the doyenne of US monetarism and life-time student (with Milton Friedman) of the Great Depression.

"It cannot deal with the underlying fear that lots of firms are going bankrupt. The banks and the hedge funds have not fully acknowledged who is in trouble. That is the critical issue," she adds.

York professor Peter Spencer, chief economist for the ITEM Club, says the global authorities have just weeks to get this right, or trigger disaster.

"The central banks are rapidly losing control. By not cutting interest rates nearly far enough or fast enough, they are allowing the money markets to dictate policy. We are long past worrying about moral hazard," he says.

"They still have another couple of months before this starts imploding. Things are very unstable and can move incredibly fast. I don't think the central banks are going to make a major policy error, but if they do, this could make 1929 look like a walk in the park," he adds.

The Bank of England knows the risk. Markets director Paul Tucker says the crisis has moved beyond the collapse of mortgage securities, and is now eating into the bedrock of banking capital. "We must try to avoid the vicious circle in which tighter liquidity conditions, lower asset values, impaired capital resources, reduced credit supply, and slower aggregate demand feed back on each other," he says.

Source: Telegraph

Last Chance to Avert Great Depression

2008-10-12T19:19:00.004+01:00

Via Economistsview.Typepad.Com:

Prosperity To End Just Around The Corner?

2008-10-03T09:33:00.003+01:00

Congress's initial rejection of the Bush Administration's $700 billion bailout plan calls to mind an unhappy precedent. Back in 1930, the Senate passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which raised duties on some 20,000 imported goods. Historians define this as one of the critical steps that led to the Great Depression — a tipping point when the world realized that partisan self-interest had trumped global leadership on Capitol Hill.

It's fair to ask whether America's lawmakers could do it again. The bursting of the debt-fueled property bubble and the crippling losses suffered by banks, together with the political dithering of recent days, have set in motion a chain reaction that, in the worst-case scenario, could lead to something like a 21st century version of the Depression — even if a bailout package does eventually get approved.

Anyone looking at the bail-out package as the salvation for the banking system or the U.S. economy is dead wrong. The problems in the economy and the banking system have gone far beyond what the package can fix.

There is a crisis of confidence in the financial system, and that won’t be fixed by the bail-out package. There is a crisis of confidence in political leadership. There is a well deserved mistrust of Wall Street and others whose greed and recklessness got us into this mess. And there are signs the U.S. economy continues to get worse, including house prices which continue to decline.

And we know it’s not just a U.S. problem. There are fears of a worldwide recession.

According to George Magnus, senior economic adviser at UBS, about 40 percent of OECD economies are in effect already in recession. He puts it all down to deleveraging, as banks cuts back on their lending.

Congress Rejects Wall Street Bailout

2008-09-29T20:29:00.002+01:00

U.S. lawmakers in the House of Representatives voted against the biggest proposed government intervention in the U.S. economy since the Great Depression of 1929.

Government officials, Treasury chiefs and political leaders from both sides of the political divide thought they had agreed Sunday on the details of a $700 billion rescue plan that would prop up the nation's ailing financial system -- and be supported in the House of Representatives.

As it became apparent the vote was lost, the Dow plunged about 500 points on the day.

Who should take the call?

2008-09-29T10:31:00.004+01:00

It’s 3 a.m., a few months into 2009, and the phone in the White House rings. Several big hedge funds are about to fail, says the voice on the line, and there’s likely to be chaos when the market opens. Whom do you trust to take that call?

I’m not being melodramatic. The bailout plan released yesterday is a lot better than the proposal Henry Paulson first put out — sufficiently so to be worth passing. But it’s not what you’d actually call a good plan, and it won’t end the crisis. The odds are that the next president will have to deal with some major financial emergencies.

Read all of Paul Krugman's analysis.

US's National Innovation Deficit

2008-09-01T10:57:00.002+01:00

Though Ms. Estrin, the former chief technology officer of Cisco Systems, generally is not an alarmist, she has become more and more concerned about the state of her country and its innovation. Vint Cerf agrees: “There is a remarkable telescoping in of vision and an unwillingness to make long-term bets,” and Robert Compton, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur, feels that the United States is losing its innovation edge to China and India.

Read Another Voice Warns of an Innovation Slowdown.

Economic slowdown weighs on oil market

2008-08-15T16:48:00.002+01:00

Oil prices dropped below $114 a barrel as investors speculated slowing economic growth in the world's largest economies will continue to undermining global crude demand.

Europe's biggest economies -- Germany, France and Italy -- all contracted in the second quarter. Japan said this week its gross domestic product also shrank in the April-June period. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported a bigger-than-expected drop in gasoline supplies, but also said U.S. demand for refined fuel products continues to fall.

Read this Businessweek article.

Germany's Sinking Economy

2008-08-02T10:43:00.002+01:00

After three years of economic growth and job creation, the Germany economy is starting to upend. Although the industrial sector may still have orders to fill, there is a dearth of new orders coming in at the moment, turnover is declining and profits sinking.

The speed with which the economy is deteriorating is almost unprecedented -- with economists not having seen it go down this fast in years. During the second quarter, Germany had shrinkage of between 0.7 and 1.5 percent, government experts estimate. If the trend continues during the current quarter, then Germany will meet the technical definition for a recession.

Source: Der Spiegel.

Thinkernet Launched

2008-07-26T15:00:00.003+01:00

The Thinkernet is Internet Evolution’s moderated blogosphere, where the leading minds of the Internet blog and exchange opinions – as well as interacting with registered members of the Internet Evolution site via message boards.

More than 60 of the Internet’s leading luminaries have signed on to blog on the Thinkernet – including world famous authors, entertainment executives, economists, politicians, CIOs, investors, activists, and Internet entrepreneurs.

Shades of the 1930s

2008-07-20T11:47:00.006+01:00

It certainly seems like 1933. As happened 75 years ago, Wall Street—after two terms of a business-friendly Republican president—self-immolated on a pyre of greed, incompetence and excessive optimism. The troubles thought to be contained to a particular sector (stocks then, subprime mortgages now) spread throughout the entire financial system. And with confidence shattered, the federal government stepped in with unprecedented efforts.

The New Deal left behind plenty of important landmarks, from the Appalachian Trail to Hoover Dam. But its financial infrastructure has proved just as important. The Banking Act of 1933 created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and forced member banks to submit to regulation. The Securities and Exchange Act (1934) brought forth a body to oversee the nation's stock exchanges. Later in the decade, Fannie Mae was established to revive the dormant mortgage market.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play a huge role in the mortgage business by lending cash and guaranteeing loans made by others. But with the spread of the mortgage crises their stocks have plummeted in recent weeks, and questions have been raised as to whether the government would do what it implied it would all along when it established the two government sponsored organizations: stand behind their debt. Federal reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, a scholar of the epic financial meltdown of the Great Depression, and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson gave an emphatic "yes," as they described to occasionally hostile Congress members their plans to allow Fannie and Freddie to borrow money from the Federal Reserve, and to empower the Treasury Department to buy (and buoy) the companies' stock and stand behind their $5.2 trillion in debt.

Read the whole Newsweek article here.

Infectious Exuberance

2008-07-13T12:04:00.002+01:00

America, from its inception, was a speculation,” begins the historian Aaron M. Sakolski’s 1932 classic, The Great American Land Bubble. George Washington himself was a land speculator, Sakolski notes, and by Washington’s time it was widely perceived that America would eventually be populated much more densely by vast numbers of immigrants, leading many investors to dream of rapidly rising land prices. Waves of speculative mania swept towns, cities, and regions from the 18th century onward, even along the vast and empty frontier. Up, up went the prices. And then, inevitably, down.

Read Robert J. Shiller's article in The Atlantic: "Financial bubbles are like epidemics— and we should treat them both the same way."

An Amazing 60-90 Billion Euros

2008-07-05T12:05:00.004+01:00

European banks may find it necessary to raise between 60 and 90 billion euros (94-141 billion dollars) to shore up their finances in the face of a nearly year-long credit crisis.

The Secret of Bill Gates' Success

2008-06-21T11:52:00.006+01:00

Nice homage from the BBC. And by all means also check Fortune, as well as the Reuters coverage of the moment supreme of Bill actually saying goodbye on Friday, Jun 27, 2008. Plus the hilarious official "leaving" video featuring Bono, Clooney, Hillary, Obama and others.

Less jobs & surging fuel prices . . .

2008-06-18T20:01:00.005+01:00

. . . they may just be the beginning of bigger problems for the US and global economy.

Rising oil prices combined with falling wages will force governments and citizens to tighten their belts. If inflation strikes, governments and citizens will have little choice but adapt by purchasing smaller cars or bicycling, adjusting eating habits and pursuing a simpler lifestyle.

Whole story here.

New Oil Price Shock

2008-06-07T13:37:00.003+01:00

Energy ministers are meeting in Japan a day after a record one-day jump in the crude oil price, to $139 a barrel.

Under pressure from the US, Japan, China, India and South Korea have agreed on the need to end fuel subsidies, blamed for boosting demand.

US energy secretary Samuel Bodman said the price surge was a "shock" but not a crisis, amid fears the oil price spike could help tip some of the world's economies into recession.

Some suggest crude oil could reach $150 a barrel by July.

The Mutually Reinforcing Housing and Oil Shock

2008-05-29T11:33:00.002+01:00

The twin shocks from housing and oil have become mutually reinforcing, potentially turning what may be a mild recession into something more threatening. Even those economists who think the U.S. might dodge a recession are concerned.

Crazy prices at the pump are pushing even the survivors over the edge. "They're asking, 'Do I put gas in my car or do I pay this utility bill or do I pay the mortgage?'

Read this BusinessWeek article.

Microsoft's Innovation Engine

2008-05-25T10:56:00.003+01:00

"Ultimately the goal of Microsoft Research is to make sure Microsoft is still here in 10 years," says Rick Rashid, charged with overseeing research worldwide. Rashid made the comments as Microsoft offered a glimpse at some of the projects aimed at ensuring the company goes from strength-to-strength, including:
= Programming for kids
= Botnet detection
= LaserTouch
= E-Science in the cloud
= Tablet PC
= Privacy Integrated Queries
= WorldWide Telescope
= Bilingual Built-ins that Break Language Barriers
. . . and more

Shell Energy Scenarios to 2050

2008-05-16T10:27:00.003+01:00

In 2100 the world’s energy system will be drastically different from today’s. Renewable and nuclear energy will be more widely used and humans will have found ways of dealing with air pollution and greenhouse gasses. Doesn’t sound too bad does it? But of course much depends on how we get there. Shell have outlined two possible routes in their new Scenarios to 2050: Scramble and Blueprints.

In the first route, Scramble, nations rush to secure energy resources for themselves, fearing that energy security is a zero-sum game, with clear winners and losers. Policymakers pay little attention to curbing energy consumption, supplies run short and greenhouse gas emissions are not addressed until major shocks trigger political reactions. Too little too late? You bet.

The second scenario however, Blueprints, is more positive. Coalitions emerge to take on the challenges of economic development, energy security, and environmental pollution through cross-border cooperation. National governments introduce efficiency standards, taxes, and other policy instruments to improve the environmental performance of buildings, vehicles, and transport fuels.

Services:
= Download the PPT
= Watch our video about the two scenarios, Scramble and Blueprints, with Jeremy Bentham, VP, Global Business Environment
= Download the PDF of the Shell Energy Scenarios 2050
= Download the video transcript
= More

From Anti-Americanism to Post-Americanism

2008-05-04T16:41:00.004+01:00

Look around. The world's tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn't make the top ten. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world's ten richest people are American. These lists are arbitrary and a bit silly, but consider that only ten years ago, the United States would have serenely topped almost every one of these categories.

It's true China is booming, Russia is growing more assertive, terrorism is a threat. But if America is losing the ability to dictate to this new world, it has not lost the ability to lead.

Read Fareed Zakaria's The Rise of the Rest.

The Cognitive Age

2008-05-02T17:46:00.003+01:00

Hillary Clinton summarized the narrative this week: “They came for the steel companies and nobody said anything. They came for the auto companies and nobody said anything. They came for the office companies, people who did white-collar service jobs, and no one said anything. And they came for the professional jobs that could be outsourced, and nobody said anything.”

The globalization paradigm has turned out to be very convenient for politicians. It allows them to blame foreigners for economic woes. It allows them to pretend that by rewriting trade deals, they can assuage economic anxiety. It allows them to treat economic and social change as a great mercantilist competition, with various teams competing for global supremacy, and with politicians starring as the commanding generals.

But there's a problem with the way the globalization paradigm has evolved. It doesn't really explain most of what is happening in the world.

We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked.

The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?

Read it all here.

Luminaries look to future web at its 15th anniversary

2008-05-01T11:12:00.006+01:00

Tim Berners-Lee, W3C
Nigel Shadbolt, University of Southampton
Wendy Hall, University of Southampton
David Belanger, AT&T
Kai-Fu Lee, Google China
Mitchell Baker, Mozilla
Mark Bernstein, Parc
Robert Cailliau, Cern
Robert Scoble, blogger
Tim O’Reilly, Web 2.0 inventor

Read it all here.

Climate Change: A Shameful Lack of Urgency

2008-04-20T13:52:00.004+01:00

It’s hard to argue with Michael Specter, in a recent New Yorker piece on carbon footprints, when he says: “Personal choices, no matter how virtuous [N.B.!], cannot do enough. It will also take laws and money.” So it will. Yet it is no less accurate or hardheaded to say that laws and money cannot do enough, either; that it will also take profound changes in the way we live. Why? Because the climate-change crisis is at its very bottom a crisis of lifestyle — of character, even. The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices, most of them made by us (consumer spending represents 70 percent of our economy), and most of the rest of them made in the name of our needs and desires and preferences.

For us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of how we’re living our lives suggests we’re not really serious about changing — something our politicians cannot fail to notice. They will not move until we do. Indeed, to look to leaders and experts, to laws and money and grand schemes, to save us from our predicament represents precisely the sort of thinking — passive, delegated, dependent for solutions on specialists — that helped get us into this mess in the first place. It’s hard to believe that the same sort of thinking could now get us out of it.

Read it all here in The New York Times.

Mega Regions Rule

2008-04-12T14:15:00.005+01:00

"When people talk about economic competitiveness, the focus tends to be on nation states, but this focus is off the mark. The real driving force of the world economy is a new and incredibly powerful economic unit: the mega-region.

While there are 191 nations in the world, just 40 significant mega-regions power the global economy. Home to more than one-fifth of the world's population, these 40 megas account for two-thirds of global economic output and more than 85% of all global innovation.

The world's largest mega is Greater Tokyo, with 55 million people and $2.5 trillion in economic activity. Next is the 500-mile Boston-Washington corridor, with some 54 million people and $2.2 trillion in output. Also in the top 10 are mega-regions that run from Chicago to Pittsburgh, Atlanta to Charlotte, Miami to Tampa, and L.A. to San Diego. Outside of the U.S., you can find megas around Amsterdam, London, Osaka and Nagoya, Milan, Rome and Turin, and Frankfurt and Stuttgart."

All this is certainly not new, but still: interesting findings from Richard Florida.

America 2050 is here.

Brand New Global Warming Solutions Unavoidable

2008-04-06T13:26:00.003+01:00

Jeffrey D. Sachs is economist and the head of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. In a recent article in Scientific American he states:

“Even with a cutback in wasteful energy spending, our current technologies cannot support both a decline in carbon dioxide emissions and an expanding global economy. If we try to restrain emissions without a fundamentally new set of technologies, we will end up stifling economic growth, including the development prospects for billions of people.”

Being Human 2020

2008-04-05T11:31:00.005+01:00

By 2020 the terms "interface" and "user" will be obsolete as computers merge ever closer with humans.

It is one prediction in a Microsoft-backed report drawn from the discussions of 45 academics from the fields of computing, science, sociology and psychology.

Article plus movie here.
Report plus crew info here.
Report itself here.

RECESSION The Movie

2008-03-28T16:07:00.004+01:00

From the guys who brought you "The Iraq War", comes a sequel unlike anything you've ever seen: RECESSION !
Here.

COMMON WEALTH Economics for a Crowded Planet

2008-03-16T14:29:00.004+01:00

The challenges of sustainable development - protecting the environment, stabilizing the world's population, narrowing the gaps of rich and poor and ending extreme poverty – will render passé the very idea of competing nation-states that scramble for markets, power and resources.

Read this letter to Jeffrey Sachs.

Hillary Clinton: recession here now

2008-03-15T12:00:00.005+01:00

President Bush, seeking to bolster faith in the economy amid fears of a recession, acknowledged on Friday the United States was going through hard times but said growth would resume over the long run because economic fundamentals were sound.

Democratic presidential candidate Clinton countered that much of the country was already in a recession.

With oil prices at record highs, the mortgage market on the verge of meltdown and the specter of recession looming, Bush has been scrambling to halt the slide in the economy.

Read it all here.

The End of Oil As We Know It

2008-03-06T18:42:00.004+01:00

From the New York Times:

The Age of Oil is at an end. Maybe not this year. Maybe not for five years. But signs of the coming collapse are evident.

Start at the White House. There, a week ago, President Bush touted tax breaks for oil companies that have just posted the largest profits in the history of American business. Yet he was dumbstruck when asked about the prospect of $4-a-gallon gasoline, a price that will force many families to choose between food and basic travel.

“Wait — what did you just say?”, the president asked after a reporter solicited his advice for Americans facing that price, which was predicted by many analysts.

Ten Emerging technologies 2008

2008-02-29T13:27:00.002+01:00

Technology Review presents the 10 technologies that they think are most likely to change the way we live.

1 Modeling Surprise Combining massive quantities of data, insights into human psychology, and machine learning can help manage surprising events, says Microsoft's Eric Horvitz.

2 Probabilistic Chips Krishna Palem thinks a little uncertainty in chips could extend battery life in mobile devices--and maybe the duration of Moore's Law, too.

3 NanoRadio Alex Zettl's tiny radios, built from nanotubes, could improve everything from cell phones to medical diagnostics.

4 Wireless Power Physicist Marin Soljacic is working toward a world of wireless electricity.

5 Atomic Magnetometers John Kitching's tiny magnetic-field sensors will take MRI where it's never gone before.

6 Offline Web Applications Adobe's Kevin Lynch believes that computing applications will become more powerful when they take advantage of the browser and the desktop.

7 Graphene Transistors A new form of carbon being pioneered by Walter de Heer of Georgia Tech could lead to speedy, compact computer processors.

8 Connectomics Jeff Lichtman hopes to elucidate brain development and disease with new technologies that illuminate the web of neural circuits.

9 Reality Mining Sandy Pentland is using data gathered by cell phones to learn about human behavior.

10 Cellulolytic Enzymes Frances Arnold is designing better enzymes for making biofuels from cellulose.

Read it all here.

One 100 Dollars A F*ckin Barrel !

2008-02-19T23:42:00.014+01:00

H O L Y $ H I F T . . .

Tech Pioneers 2008

2008-02-14T11:41:00.004+01:00

Here.

Sudden Climate Shifts Expected

2008-02-05T12:55:00.000+01:00

Many of Earth's climate systems will undergo a series of sudden shifts this century as a result of human-induced climate change. A number of these shifts could occur this century. Society should not be lulled into a false sense of security by the idea that climate change will be a gradual process.

The work by an international team appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Great Recession of 2008

2008-01-21T23:27:00.000+01:00

No one can be sure when a recession has begun, or when it has ended. The NBER designates the beginning of a recession months after it has started and designates its ending months (or sometimes years) after it has ended.

An inaccurate forecast of whether or not there is a recession today will not be proved false for 12 months or more. Read this article, which was published a month ago.

Ben Bernanke's book on The Great Depression.

US Recession A Fact

2008-01-08T11:27:00.000+01:00

The US has entered its first full-blown economic recession in 16 years, according to investment bank Merrill Lynch.

This is how a recession works.

A Wireless & Mobile 2008

2008-01-02T14:27:00.000+01:00

In 2008 these are the five technologies that definitely will take off, BBC News predicts: Web To Go, Ultra Mobile PCs, IPTV, WIMAX and Mobile VOIP.

Click to enlarge picture.

Jeff Bell on Halo 3

2007-12-24T11:37:00.000+01:00

Jeff Bell of Microsoft was in charge of the Halo 3 launch and in his WOMMA Summit 3 keynote provided a detailed overview of the program--very impressive. In this interview he touches on the elements of the launch, the relationship between online and offline activities, and taking risks in marketing.

Sea Level Back to Future

2007-12-18T16:49:00.000+01:00

In the journal Nature Geoscience, which launches in January 2008, researchers say the true maximum sea level rise could be 164 cm, about twice what the IPCC proposes.

They looked at what happened more than 100,000 years ago - the last time Earth was this warm.

Read the BBC coverage.

THE ICE-FREE ARCTIC

2007-12-16T21:34:00.000+01:00

There is much talk of when the ocean will be totally free of ice in summer. Some scientists think it might be as soon as 2013.

Others, who find that date a little early, say ice-free summers almost certainly will come sooner than many people thought possible.

Read it all here.

Al Gore & IPCC Get Nobel Prize

2007-12-10T17:24:00.000+01:00

Look here.

Paul Krugman's Razor

2007-12-03T17:40:00.000+01:00

The financial crisis took a brief vacation in September and October, but is back with a vengeance.

Never seen financial insiders this spooked — not even in 1997-99, when economic dominoes seemed to be falling all around the world.

This time, market players are truly horrified. Suddenly they realize that no one can grasp the financial system anymore.

Read it all.

Human Development Report 2007/2008

2007-11-28T16:43:00.000+01:00

"Climate change is the defining human development challenge of the 21st Century. There is a window of opportunity for avoiding the most damaging climate change impacts, but that window is closing: the world has less than a decade to change course. Actions taken — or not taken — in the years ahead will have a profound bearing on the future course of human development. The world lacks neither the financial resources nor the technological capabilities to act. What is missing is a sense of urgency, human solidarity and collective interest."

Look here.

Click to enlarge. Picture's source is here.

ENERGY VISION 2020: S h a m e l e s s Bush Propaganda

2007-11-25T12:25:00.000+01:00

This looks quite interesting, anyone no doubt will agree . . .

"In 2020, world population has grown to 7.5 billion people, the global economy is approaching $80 trillion, and the wireless Internet 4.0 is now connecting almost half of humanity.

Synergies among nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science have dramatically improved the human condition by increasing the availability of energy, food, and water and by connecting people and information anywhere, anytime."

However, it appears to be really shameless propaganda for the Bush dynasty . . .

"Jeb Bush gave his 2020 State of the Union address as the 47th president of the USA. Jeb Bush was the former governor of Florida, younger brother of George W. Bush and second son of George H. W. Bush.

He underlined the great progress made in terms of energy independence and energy diversification in the USA. He highlighted that even though neither the hydrogen economy nor nuclear fusion have yet come to happen, the USA is almost self sufficient in power consumption thanks to advances in biotechnology and nanotechnology."

U N B E L I E V A B L E !

SECRETARY-GENERAL BAN KI-MOON: "Climate Change As Frightening As A Science Fiction Movie"

2007-11-17T13:30:00.000+01:00

Today the world's scientists have spoken clearly and with one voice: climate change may bring "abrupt and irreversible" impacts, including the fast melting of glaciers and species extinctions.

Even if levels of CO2 in the atmosphere stayed where they are now, research showed sea levels would rise by between 0.4 and 1.4 metres simply because water expands as it warms.

However, carbon dioxide emissions are rising faster than they were a decade ago.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has just been on a trip to see ice shelves breaking up in Antarctica and the melting Torres del Paine glaciers in Chile. He also visited the Amazon rainforest, which he said was being "suffocated" by global warming.

"These scenes are as frightening as a science fiction movie," Ban said. "But they are even more terrifying, because they are real."

The latest scientific knowledge on the causes and effects of climate change will be put before environment ministers in Bali, Indonesia, next month -- a meeting which is likely to agree a two-year strategy to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

Stiglitz: Worst President Ever

2007-11-10T13:17:00.000+01:00

"Bush's fiscal irresponsibility fostered irresponsibility in everyone else. Credit was shoveled out the door, and subprime mortgages were made available to anyone this side of life support. Credit-card debt mounted to a whopping $900 billion by the summer of 2007.

The Federal Reserve Board stepped on the accelerator in a historically unprecedented way, driving interest rates down to 1 percent. In real terms, taking inflation into account, interest rates actually dropped to negative 2 percent. The predictable result was a consumer spending spree."

Read every single word here.

Future America: Jetsons or Waltons?

2007-10-20T10:31:00.000+01:00

What happened to the future? Weren’t things supposed to be cooler by now, smarter, safer? Raised on a steady diet of science fiction, overzealous politicians and corporate hype, Americans expected to be living in The Jetsons — but instead find themselves stuck in a scarier version of The Waltons.

Read this interesting Special Report on The Future, brought to us by Forbes Magazine.

Another mustread is this first chapter of the book Future Files: A History of the Next 50 Years.

WAKING LIFE: 1st Artificial Life To Be Announced

2007-10-08T14:47:00.000+01:00

Reportedly Dr Craig Venter, the DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth.

Also be sure to watch this extremely cool video prediction: scene 6 from "Waking Life".

LIVING WITHOUT OIL: Now Available In The Dutch Edition

2007-09-27T17:30:00.000+01:00

Look here.
The English language edition is under way!
The book was officially introduced at the Shell HQ in Amsterdam.

Adjiedj Bakas and Rob Creemers in "Living Without Oil / Leven Zonder Olie" together present the trends in energy production and energy consumption in today’s world. Is there an energy crisis to be expected and when? How long can we use oil and gas and when is it necessary to change the energy consumption? How to reduce CO2 and prevent the changes in climate we might expect in the near future? This book is the ultimate answer to Al Gore’s book An unconvenient truth. It is visionary, yet practical and inspirational: what are the real energy alternatives? What is the state of the art? What are the future scenario’s and future trends in energy consumption? Which new energy inventions are due? With cases and inspiring examples. The book is designed as a "magazine in a book": it is full colour, richly illustrated, with a foamcover and luxuriously designed.

Also vistit the LivingWithoutOil weblog, which BTW isn't ours.

Greenspan on 2030

2007-09-16T13:24:00.000+01:00

From Alan Greenspan's new book "The Age of Turbulence":

"Adaptation is in our nature, a fact that leads me to be deeply optimistic about our future. [ . . . ] Progress is not automatic, however; it will demand future adaptations as yet unimaginable."

Monumental Multimedia Documentary

2007-09-11T16:56:00.000+01:00

Here.

Totally New Digital Products Ahead

2007-09-11T14:48:00.000+01:00

Cramming more data into less space on a memory chip or a hard drive has been the crucial force propelling consumer electronics companies to make ever smaller devices.

If Stuart Parkin proves successful in his current quest at the San Jose IBM Research Center, he will create a “universal” computer memory, one that can potentially replace dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, and flash memory chips, and even make a “disk drive on a chip” possible.

It could begin to replace flash memory in three to five years. Not only would it allow every consumer to carry data equivalent to a college library on small portable devices, but a tenfold or hundredfold increase in memory would undoubtedly unleash the creativity of engineers who would develop totally new entertainment, communication and information products.

The Worldwide Credit Crunch

2007-09-01T09:24:00.000+01:00

From the International Herald Tribune on the US homeowner woes that can be felt throughout the world:

Different lives on different continents. But all of them, in this astonishingly interconnected world, are being swept up in a worldwide credit crunch that have raised fears of a financial meltdown.

Bad lending decisions to ordinary folks in places like Minnesota and New Jersey have been tearing through world economies like a tsunami, causing stock markets to plummet, threatening pensions, and affecting the prices of everything from oil to refrigerators.

The Future Of Work

2007-08-11T17:56:00.000+01:00

The U.S. and the global economies are coming to a crossroads that no one could have anticipated just a few years ago. Globalization and technology together are creating the potential for startling changes in how we do our jobs and the offices we do them in. Offshoring, for one, means work can be broken into smaller tasks and redistributed around the world. And the rapid growth of broader, richer channels of communication—including virtual worlds—is transforming what it means to be "at work."

Read this article: "Which Way To The Future?"

The whole "The Future of Work" file is here.

Pumping Money As Markets Slide

2007-08-10T20:24:00.001+01:00

Central banks worldwide have injected at least $326.3 billion in the past 48 hours to prevent markets from spinning into a global liquidity squeeze.

Want to know more???

Paul Krugman concedes at the moment "Very Scary Things" are happening.

The Last Oil Shock

2007-07-27T14:07:00.000+01:00

David Strahan's provocative book "The Last Oil Shock" is meant to be "A Survival Guide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man". Homo Petrolicus is finished an we have no alternative. Even Shell's Jeroen van der Veer agrees: "the age of easy oil is over".

Internet Doomsday Scenario

2007-07-21T15:52:00.000+01:00

Click here.

Charles Stross: Crystals Will Keep Our Memories

2007-07-15T10:42:00.000+01:00

UK science fiction writer Charles Stross, author of novels Accelerando and Singularity Sky, posits a future in which all human experience is recorded on devices the size of a grain of sand.

Consider a carbon crystal, created (and edited) one atom at a time by nanomachinery; there are two stable isotopes of carbon, and we can use a Carbon-12 atom to represent a binary 0 and a Carbon-13 atom to represent a binary 1.

One gram of this substance could store 10 to the power 21 bytes (887,808 petabytes) - the equivalent storage of more than 11 billion typical PCs.

Watch Live Earth on MSN

2007-07-07T13:09:00.000+01:00

Just click here to go there.

FROM CNN Al Gore @ Larry King Live

2007-07-07T12:54:00.000+01:00

Click here to enjoy Al Gore's comments on the Live Earth event.

LIVE EARTH May Set New Stage for Web Viewing

2007-07-07T11:21:00.000+01:00

The Live Earth event this Saturday is set to reach millions more people than previous global productions with its reach boosted by the fast-growing power of Web video sharing and social networks.

Organizers estimate television broadcasts of the live concerts staged to raise awareness about climate change will be available to up to 2 billion people although there is no estimate of how many people will actually watch the shows.

Madonna's 'HEY YOU' is here. Enjoy!

OECD: Offshoring and Cheap Imports May Hurt

2007-06-24T12:38:00.000+01:00

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Globalization may be hurting low-skilled workers in the U.S. and Europe enough that politicians in both places may find it increasingly hard to sell voters on the benefits of free trade and open markets, says one of the world's leading economic institutes.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based institute backed by the governments of 30 leading industrialized countries, is a staunch believer in free trade, which most economists believe makes all countries richer overall, including those with high wages.

But in its annual labor study, the OECD acknowledges growing popular unease about globalization.

At virtually the same time Der Spiegel addresses the German 'labor paradox' and wonders where all the skilled workers have gone.

'Workers', George Grosz

Web Inventor Gets Queen's Honour

2007-06-14T12:53:00.000+01:00

The inventor of the world wide web has been awarded the Order of Merit, one of the UK's most prestigious honours. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who launched the first website in 1991, joins an elite group who have received the honour from the Queen for exceptional contributions in arts, sciences and other areas.

The British academic invented the web's address system and layout in Switzerland in 1991, ultimately revolutionising global communication.

Previously, he was named Greatest Briton at a ceremony in 2004.

Get the whole story here.

Real Cost of Offshoring

2007-06-08T14:38:00.000+01:00

U.S. data show that moving jobs overseas hasn't hurt the economy. Here's why those stats are wrong.

China Puts Economy First!

2007-06-04T13:00:00.001+01:00

China promises to better control emissions of greenhouse gases, unveiling its first national program to combat global warming, but rejects mandatory caps on emissions as unfair to countries still trying to catch up with the developed West. So to the Chinese, climate targets should in no way spoil their economic growth.

China Conquers Africa

2007-05-31T13:27:00.000+01:00

From "Der Spiegel:"

China imports everything the continent produces: tropical hardwoods, oil, metals and even a small amount of cotton. Africa's five most resource-rich countries - Angola, South Africa, Sudan, Equatorial Guinea and Congo - account for more than 80 percent of all African exports to China.

In return Africa gets cheap, mass-produced items, basic consumer goods like household devices, television sets and clothing. From South African supermarket shelves to Uganda's flea markets, the products with the strange characters printed on their packaging are available everywhere. In fact the flood of cheap Chinese goods has already destroyed the textile industries in Swaziland and Lesotho.

NEW GORE BOOK The Assault on Reason

2007-05-17T13:28:00.000+01:00

From the book via TIME Magazine:

"The democratization of knowledge by the print medium brought the Enlightenment. Now, broadband interconnection is supporting decentralized processes that reinvigorate democracy. We can see it happening before our eyes: As a society, we are getting smarter. Networked democracy is taking hold. You can feel it. We the people—as Lincoln put it, "even we here"—are collectively still the key to the survival of America's democracy."

"THE ASSAULT ON REASON" is a visionary analysis of how the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism, and blind faith has combined with the degration of the public sphere to create an environment dangerously hostile to reason
At the time George W. Bush ordered American forces to invade Iraq, 70 percent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was linked to 9/11. Voters in Ohio, when asked by pollsters to list what stuck in their minds about the campaign, most frequently named two Bush television ads that played to fears of terrorism.

We live in an age when the thirty-second television spot is the most powerful force shaping the electorate's thinking, and America is in the hands of an administration less interested than any previous administration in sharing the truth with the citizenry. Related to this and of even greater concern is this administration's disinterest in the process by which the truth is ascertained, the tenets of fact-based reasoning-first among them an embrace of open inquiry in which unexpected and even inconvenient facts can lead to unexpected conclusions.

How did we get here? How much damage has been done to the functioning of our democracy and its role as steward of our security? Never has there been a worse time for us to lose the capacity to face the reality of our long-term challenges, from national security to the economy, from issues of health and social welfare to the environment. As The Assault on Reason shows us, we have precious little time to waste.

Gore's larger goal in this book is to explain how the public sphere itself has evolved into a place hospitable to reason's enemies, to make us more aware of the forces at work on our own minds, and to lead us to an understanding of what we can do, individually and collectively, to restore the rule of reason and safeguard our future. Drawing on a life's work in politics as well as on the work of experts across a broad range of disciplines, Al Gore has written a farsighted and powerful manifesto for clear thinking.

North Pole Swimming within 13 Years

2007-05-02T23:23:00.000+01:00

The Arctic ice cap is melting much faster than expected and is now about 30 years ahead of predictions made by IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

CO2 and Information Technology

2007-05-02T22:53:00.000+01:00

The global IT industry accounts for 2 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions - the same amount the world's aviation industry churns out, according to analyst house Gartner.

Click here to read the full article.

Greenhouse Effect Predicted in 1953

2007-04-30T23:10:00.000+01:00

Click on the picture to enlarge.
The source is here.

Intelligent Energy

2007-04-30T15:04:00.000+01:00

Sense some differences in approach between Europe and the US.

Today is Earth Day

2007-04-22T16:46:00.000+01:00

Check EarthDay.Net, calling for urgent climate action.

Google had this picture:

Boston Consulting Group Positive on China's Global Potential

2007-04-22T16:04:00.000+01:00

Boston Consulting Group's Jim Hemerling says China is emerging as a global R&D and innovation hub in its own right. Sourcing execs take note!

Also read: 'Asia to spawn tech breakthroughs', which lays out Bill Gates's opininion.

Friedman on Green Offshoring

2007-04-17T16:43:00.000+01:00

Go read the Friedman interview with YaleGlobal on March 30. The question is who gets to do the work. “If whatever can be done will be done,” he says, “the biggest competition is between you and your imagination.” In the latest edition of his book, Friedman lists nine categories of jobs available to citizens of the flat world. One of those categories, he says, will be green jobs, anything green.

With millions of people pursuing the consumer dream, he says, “we’re going to burn up, heat up, choke up the planet faster than even Al Gore predicts.” According to Friedman, this development has implications: “Green design, green consulting, green manufacturing, green science, is going to have a huge new middle opportunity.”

First Commercial Quantum Computer

2007-04-09T15:21:00.000+01:00

D:Wave Systems, the Quantum Computer Company presented the first commercial QC machine on February 13, and made it to the New York Times on Easter Day.

IPCC: Millions at Risk

2007-04-08T11:12:00.000+01:00

The first and worst impacts of climate change are being felt by the poor in the developing world. Drought in sub-Saharan Africa, floods in China and India, and a near tripling of people affected by extreme weather and other natural disasters globally in the last two decades, almost all in the developing world, affecting those who are most vulnerable and least able to cope.

A nice two-page overview together with several links is this Greenpeace briefing.

Don't miss the British Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.

April 6: A new IPCC climate report warns time is running out:

Huge numbers of people will be at risk due to sea level rise, storm surge and river flooding in the Asian Megadeltas such as the Ganges-Brahmaputra (Bangladesh) and the Zhujiang (Pearl River).

Warming of more than another degree could commit the world to multi-metre sea level rise over several centuries from the partial or total loss of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets.

Huge coastal dislocation would result and could be triggered by emissions made in the next several decades.

Made In China

2007-03-29T15:07:00.000+01:00

'Is China now poised to turn the 21st century into its century? Or will it, despite its phenomenal nearly two-digit annual growth over the past 15 years, rejoin the human race with a slower economy? Or is it possible that its powerful locomotive will, as Japan’s did, shift into reverse gear?'

Read Jagdish Bhaghwati's book review in the New York Times.

Ice Caps Gone By 2040?

2007-03-28T20:28:00.000+01:00

Newsweek reports:
"It's not clear that we can do anything about it. Our only option, it seems, is to study the ice caps before there's far less of them to study."

TOP 100 Most Influential People in IT

2007-03-27T18:05:00.000+01:00

The slide show is here.
And this is how they were ranked.

Newclimates.com

2007-03-27T17:42:00.000+01:00

New Climates will present new and existing artworks responding to the relationship between art, global climate change and networked culture. This curatorial weblog will create a flexible and open-ended space to address these ideas at a time when climate change has become a vital concern among artists.
Launching March – May 2007

New Focus for Light

2007-03-18T12:49:00.000+01:00

Stunning developments in hi-res; MIT Technology Review reports . . .

'Kenneth Crozier and Federico Capasso have created light-focusing optical antennas that could lead to DVDs that hold hundreds of movies.

Capasso and Crozier's optical antennas could have far-reaching and unpredictable implications, from superdense optical storage to superhigh-resolution optical microscopes. Enabling engineers to simply and cheaply break the diffraction limit has made the many applications that rely on light shine that much brighter.'
Want to know more? Look for Plasmonic Laser Antenna.

Climate Change in Brief

2007-03-13T22:04:00.000+01:00

From the BBC on the following five issues:

Climate forecast

Greenhouse effect

Carbon cycle

Feedback effects

Gulf Stream

Global Warming Swindle?

2007-03-10T14:45:00.000+01:00

Make sure to look here and here and here and here to learn about the anti IPCC arguments. Apparently these can be easily refuted.

CALLING ALL ADVENTURE SEEKERS!
Do you lie in bed at night worrying about climate change? Or have you never really given it a second thought?

Channel 4 and Outline Productions are planning a unique eco-challenge, and we're looking for interesting characters from all walks of life to take part. It doesn't matter if you're very green, not green at all or somewhere in the middle.

This is your chance to make a difference and be seen doing it on television!

Filming will take place in June for this exciting new series which will see ten strangers striving for survival in a hostile environment and helping put the world to rights.

The challenge will be tough, but it will be a unique experience. You do not have to be ultra-fit to take part, but all successful applicants will be required to undertake a medical.

There will be a prize for the winner of the series.

From 2004 . . .for the Polar Year that Just Started

2007-03-08T18:38:00.000+01:00

Click here to obtain the full report.

CLIMATE CHANGE Impact More Extensive than Thought

2007-03-02T22:47:00.000+01:00

Global climate change is happening faster than previously believed and its impact is worse than expected, information from an as-yet unpublished draft of the long-awaited second part of a United Nations report obtained by Spiegel Online reveals. No region of the planet will be spared and some will be hit especially hard.

The Future of the World Wide Web

2007-03-02T21:14:00.000+01:00

Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, spoke about his experience, his views, and his vision of the future during a congressional subcommittee hearing which is the first in a series on the 'Digital Future of the United States.'

For example, Berners-Lee talked about a world in which a cell phone would use radio technology to communicate with everyday objects wrapped in surfaces equipped with digital billboard technology. The phones could determine whether surfaces are known or safe venues for projecting personal information like calendars.