“After nearly a decade of research on the business uses of social technologies, executives say these tools are more integrated into their organizations’ work than ever before—and that the most sophisticated of these tools, message-based platforms, are gaining traction.”
Reason at Fight Aging! discusses the need to fund and support advocacy as much as research. Ultimately profressional advocacy and marketing could help popularize the field. Currently advocacy is left to a handful of volunteers and zealous individuals and that is not an optimal strategy for growth.
Useful activities in our community can be powered either by zealotry or by money. Zealotry has the advantage of being cheap, but the profound disadvantages of being rare, unreliable, and never quite optimally opinionated for the task at hand. Set a zealot to a challenge and you get the output the zealot decides upon, and only for so long as he or she is suitably motivated by whatever internal alchemy is at work in that particular case. Sustainable, reliable, long-term zealots only exist in stories. Money, on the other hand, has the disadvantage of being expensive, but for for so long as income is greater than expenditure, it can be used to produce reliable, sustainable, long-term outcomes. Changing the world always starts with the zealots, but the whole point of the subsequent bootstrapping process is to transition to money rather than zealotry as a power source just about as rapidly as possible. The future is defined by the few visionaries who care greatly enough to set aside their lives to work upon it, but it is enacted by the vastly greater number of people who take a paycheck and go home at the end of the work day.
To the extent we agree that the advocacy, fundraising, and other matters accomplished via Fight Aging! are good things, we’d like to see more of this taking place. More of it, and not dependent on the fickle motivations of zealots. Ultimately that means finding ways to do what Fight Aging! does, but for profit, with money. In this I do not mean Fight Aging! itself, which will be powered by zealotry until such time as the alchemy fails, at which point it will vanish just like everything else does in time, but something like it, and preferably dozens of varied somethings. Experimentation and diversity drive progress, and we won’t find out exactly what it is that Fight Aging! is doing suboptimally without the existence of many other attempts at the same types of initiative.
In the years that I have been running Fight Aging!, I’ve seen many longevity science interest and news sites come and go. Zealotry has a short half-life. When it comes to the money side of the house, things haven’t been much better, however. The typical ad-supported sites roll over and die fairly quickly; there never was enough money in that to do it for a niche interest such as ours over the past fifteen years. Their business models fail, and they linger a little while on the fumes of zealotry until that also departs. The initiatives that try sponsorship from the “anti-aging” marketplace tend to last longer, but are so corrupted by that revenue that they quickly lose all possible usefulness and relevance. You can’t take money from people pushing interventions that do not work and still speak with correctness and authority.
Continue reading “Envisaging For-Profit Alternatives to Fight Aging! and Similar Initiatives” »
At a Royal Aeronautical Society lecture in London, Airbus revealed more details about its ambitious plans for Urban Air Mobility. Are we on the cusp of a revolution in air transport? TIM ROBINSON reports.
In 2025, could your Airbus A350-1000 long-haul business flight to Heathrow end with you stepping off the aircraft, going through passport control and instead of getting stuck in road works, underground strikes or overcrowded trains, see you hop inside a comfortable, quiet, electric-powered VTOL aerial taxi which would whisk you in under 20 minutes to a helipad the other side of London? Science fiction right?
What sounds like Blade Runner or even the Jetsons, is only five to seven years away from being a practical reality, according to Mark Cousin, SVP Head of Flight Demonstrators, Airbus CTO at a recent Rotorcraft Group lecture at the Royal Aeronautical Society. “We believe that these vehicles will be technically feasible well before 2025,” he said.
Self-driving cars are pretty cool. Really, who wouldn’t want to spend their daily commute surfing social media, chatting with friends or finishing the Netflix series they were watching at 4 am the night before? It all sounds virtually utopian. But what if there is a dark side to self-driving cars? What if self-driving cars kill the jobs? ALL the jobs?
In this video series, the Galactic Public Archives takes bite-sized looks at a variety of terms, technologies, and ideas that are likely to be prominent in the future. Terms are regularly changing and being redefined with the passing of time. With constant breakthroughs and the development of new technology and other resources, we seek to define what these things are and how they will impact our future.
The automotive industry is undergoing a period of rapid and radical transformation fueled by a range of technological innovations, digital advancements and wave after wave of new entrants and alternative business models; as a result, the entire sector is seeing major disruption.
The vital question for governments around the world, whatever their country’s economic situation, needs to be: what is the future of work in an era of exponential technological development?
“ “I was trained by my coaches that my competitor is my enemy. The truth is, they are my fellow competitors. Without them, there is no competition. We’re striving together.” ”
The study’s design faced constraints. The constitution ordains equality for all, so getting permission to afford some welfare recipients special treatment was difficult. That limitation, and a budget of only €20m (plus diverted welfare funds that would have otherwise gone to the recipients), restricted the sample size to just 2,000 people. Mr Kangas frets that might prove too small to be statistically robust. And it limits the questions the study can investigate.
JUHA JARVINEN, an unemployed young father in a village near Jurva, in western Finland, brims with ideas for earning a living. He has just agreed to paint the roofs of two neighbours’ houses. His old business, making decorative window frames, went bust a few years ago. Having paid off debts, he recently registered another, to produce videos for clients.
Mr Jarvinen says that for six years he hoped to start a new business but it was impossible. The family got by on his wife’s wages as a nurse, plus unemployment and child benefits. He had a few job offers from local businesses, which are mainly in forestry, furniture and metalwork. But anything less than a permanent, well-paid post made no sense, since it would jeopardise his welfare payments. To re-enroll for benefits later would be painfully slow.
➡🖒⛧Well worth a listen!⛧🖒⬅.
Robots moving deeper into the American workplace—how much decision-making will we turn over to machines?
For all the change that has come with the digital revolution – in the ways we work and communicate and do business – the real impact still lies ahead. Computers – machines themselves – are become smarter all the time. That intelligence is being wired into real world action. That’s overturning giant companies. It’s moving in on what we thought only humans could do. Andrew McAfee and Eric Brynjolfsson are on it. It’s exciting. And terrifying. This hour On Point: intelligent machines move in. — Tom Ashbrook
I’m scheduled to give a short speech here tomorrow in Los Angeles. I’ve been told it’s a free event with fun festivities and food. My talk should be sometime between 12:30PM and 1:30PM. Join me in celebrating seniors and telling them about the importance of maximum longevity.
Free Food! Free Classic Car Show! Free Concert! Free Giveaways! Free Entertainment! Father’s Day Tribute! Veterans Tribute! Free Seminars! Surprise Special Guest!!!!!
Saturday, June 17th 2017, from 11am to 3pm at the “Expo” Ahmanson Senior Center, “Next to the LA Coliseum”, 3990 Bill Robertson Ln, Los Angeles CA 90037 - Seniors on the Move Today and Care Match America, along with many Partners, will host the first “Love a Senior Day!”
