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VCs' next big things: Big data, drugs, and education | Internet & Media
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Some of Silicon Valley's greatest minds used an interesting piece of hardware to vote on which trends will rule the tech world: ping pong paddles. The Churchill Club, a business and technology forum, hosted discussion here Tuesday night, along with Forbes magazine, to pick the brains of Kevin Efrusy, Bing Gordon, Reid Hoffman, Steve Jurvetson, and Peter Thiel. With a few hundred people seated in the grand ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara, each investor presented his case for two ideas for what he thought would be a dominating tech trend for the next five years. The pitches were accompanied by approval ratings collected via green and red cards at attendees' tables and a survey done by TwitPolls.com, a Twitter polling service. Not surprisingly, Thiel had big ideas, with his most popular one of the night being the growing trend of bioinformatics, which uses computers to revolutionize the creation of pharmaceutical drugs. Corrected at 1:45 a.m.
Kurzweil Music Systems
Kurzweil Music Systems is a company that produces electronic musical instruments for professionals and home users. Founded in 1982 by Raymond Kurzweil, a developer of reading machines for the blind, the company made use of many of the technologies originally designed for reading machines and adapted them to musical purposes. They released their first instrument, the K250 in 1983, and have continued producing new instruments ever since. The company was acquired by Young Chang in 1990. Hyundai acquired Young Chang in 2006 and in January 2007 has appointed Raymond Kurzweil as Chief Strategy Officer of Kurzweil Music Systems.[1] Products[edit] K250 synthesizer[edit] The company launched the K250 synthesizer/sampler in 1984: while limited by today's standards and quite expensive, it was considered to be the first really successful attempt to emulate the complex sound of a grand piano. K150 synthesizer[edit] K1xxx synthesizers[edit] K2xxx synthesizers[edit] K2600 (1999) on home studio PC88 on stage
SIN Graph - Countdown to SIN Logarithmic
Chart Countdown to Singularity, Events expressed as Time before Present (Years) on the X axis and Time to Next Event (Years) on the Y axis, Logarithmic Plot Page 17, Linear Plot page 18. Source: M.T. Rosing, "13C-Depleted carbon microparticles in >3700-Ma sea-floor sedimentary rocks from west greenland," Science 283.5402 (January 29, 1999): 674-6, See also H. Furnes et al., "Early life recorded in archean pillow lavas," Science 304.5670 (April 23, 2004):578-81; M.T. B. Y Kimura, "Examining time trends in the Oldowan technology at Beds I and II, Olduvai Gorge," Journal of Human Evolution 43.3 (September 2002):291-321. A.M. Dennis O'Neil, " Evolution of Modern Humans: Early Archaic Homo sapiens," T.D. D. O. Dennis O'Neil, " Evolution of Modern Humans: Early Modern Human Culture," Bar-Yosef, O. 2002, "The Upper Paleolithic revolution," Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 363-393. H. E.
Top ten global skill shortages
Financial and budgetary, IT and green skills top the list of ten skills that Hays’ global offices and clients commonly identify as being in the greatest demand. “Talent shortages are a global problem,” said Charles Logan, Director at Hays. “We operate in 32 countries and these skills are the ones that our clients globally say are in most demand. For anyone considering their career options in our globalised economy, these are the skills to focus on. “Our list is broken down by “soft” and “hard” (job-specific) skills and it shows there is a common global perception that candidates do not have a sufficient standard of soft skills. Hays’ top ten global skills shortage list is: Soft skills• Languages: A common theme among sectors and countries is the need for additional language skills. About HaysHays plc (the "Group") is a leading global professional recruiting group. As at 31 December 2011, the Group employed 7,988 staff operating from 247 offices in 32 countries across 20 specialisms.
RAY KURZWEIL - That Singularity Guy - Vice Magazine
In the year 2050, if Ray Kurzweil is right, nanoscopic robots will be zooming throughout our capillaries, transforming us into nonbiological humans. We will be able to absorb and retain the entirety of the universe’s knowledge, eat as much as we want without gaining weight, shape-shift into just about any physical form imaginable, live free from disease, and die at the time of our choosing. All of this will be thrust on us by something that Kurzweil calls the Singularity, a theorized point in time in the not-so-distant future when machines become vastly superior to humans in every way, aka the emergence of true artificial intelligence. These grand-scale premonitions are largely based on Kurzweil’s law of accelerating returns, which states that the development of technology has been increasing exponentially since the beginning of time. Sure, but most of the folks I know who’ve been laid off in the past six months won’t be able to afford the next iPhone. Creepy.
m e t a m o r p h o p t i c s
Fears over skills shortages in key science and language subjects - Latest News, Education
Katherine Donnelly – Updated 02 December 2012 12:37 PM And the situation is expected to get even worse from this year as teacher cuts force schools to consider dropping these key subjects. As the boost to maths performance among this year's Leaving Certificate candidates was celebrated yesterday, the new concerns were highlighted. The 56,000 school-leavers receiving results yesterday included almost 11,000 awarded 25 bonus points for achieving a minimum D grade in maths at higher level. That was done as an incentive to students because of the dire need for higher maths standards to fill jobs in the economy. Subjects such as physics and chemistry are also taking on a new importance, with growing demand from employers for graduates with such skills. And languages are in unprecedented demand among multinational and domestic export companies operating in a global economy. There has been an ongoing slide in the number of Leaving Certificate students taking physics. Cuts Irish Independent
Ray Kurzweil & Moore's law
Moore's law
Moore's law is the observation that, over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. The law is named after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore, who described the trend in his 1965 paper.[1][2][3] His prediction has proven to be accurate, in part because the law is now used in the semiconductor industry to guide long-term planning and to set targets for research and development.[4] The capabilities of many digital electronic devices are strongly linked to Moore's law: processing speed, memory capacity, sensors and even the number and size of pixels in digital cameras.[5] All of these are improving at roughly exponential rates as well. The period is often quoted as 18 months because of Intel executive David House, who predicted that chip performance would double every 18 months (being a combination of the effect of more transistors and their being faster).[9] History[edit] Gordon Moore in 2004 Network capacity.
