From the report: "Fast-growing South–South trade and investment is an
opportunity to ramp up developing countries’ abilities to master market-useful
technologies and to bolster their abilities to innovate new products and
services, an UNCTAD
report says. The Technology and
Innovation Report 2012, subtitled Innovation, Technology and
South–South Collaboration, was released today. South–South economic cooperation
is one of the major global economic developments of the past two decades.
Exchanges between developing countries accounted for 55 per cent of global
trade in 2010, as compared to 41 per cent in 1995, and this trend is already
leading to useful diffusions of technology and innovative capacity, the Report
says. Increased South–South exchange can lead to greater technological sharing,
in a variety of ways. A first important channel is the import of goods, the
Report says, which are used by importing countries to improve their production
processes through copying and reverse engineering. Global production networks
and foreign direct investment (FDI) are other factors that could promote
transfers of technology and technological development in countries." Read more
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Mapping Creates Jobs and Drives Global Economic Growth
In summary, the global geo services industry is valued at up to $270 billion per year and pays out $90 billion in wages. In the U.S., it employs more than 500,000 people and is worth $73 billion. The infographic below illustrates some examples of the many benefits of maps, whether it’s improving agriculture irrigation systems or helping emergency response teams save lives." Read more
Power and the Internet
From the article: "All disruptive technologies upset traditional power
balances, and the Internet is no exception. The standard story is that it
empowers the powerless, but that's only half the story. The Internet empowers
everyone. Powerful institutions might be slow to make use of that new power,
but since they are powerful, they can use it more effectively. Governments and
corporations have woken up to the fact that not only can they use the Internet,
they can control it for their interests. Unless we start deliberately debating
the future we want to live in, and information technology in enabling that
world, we will end up with an Internet that benefits existing power structures
and not society in general." Read more
U.S. Kids Need Computer-Science Education
By 2018, there will be nearly three times as many job openings requiring computer science knowledge than qualified applicants. This goes well beyond just becoming a professional programmer -- learning computer science can teach problem solving skills, new ways of breaking down complex scenarios, and a means to build something tangible in our software-driven age." Read more
Hackers in China Attacked The Times for Last 4 Months
….The timing of the attacks coincided with the reporting for
a Times investigation,
published online on Oct. 25, that found that the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, had accumulated a fortune
worth several billion dollars through business dealings." Read more
Consumers Now Trust Microsoft More than Apple with Their Privacy
Samson, Ted. "Consumers Now Trust Microsoft More than Apple with Their Privacy." InfoWorld, January 29, 2013.
From the article: "Big-name tech companies including Hewlett-Packard, Amazon,
IBM, eBay, Intuit, Microsoft, and Mozilla are among the 20 most-trusted
organizations among American consumers, according to Ponemon Institute's "2012 Most Trusted Companiesfor Privacy." Meanwhile, companies who've made the list
in years past -- such as Apple, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Dell -- didn't
make the cut this time around." Read more
Smartphone Users' Privacy Betrayed By Their Gadget Sensors, Says Study
From the article: "Research into smartphone security has revealed that your
phone's sensors could help criminals unlock your stolen gadget.
And, given that these elements all come as standard on most smartphonemodels, and are not subject to the same controls as other phone functions, they
are a bigger security risk. The study was carried out by a visiting professor
at Swarthmore College,
who analyzed data captured from a smartphone's accelerometer--that's
the gadget that analyzes the direction your phone is tilting or moving and
turns the screen accordingly, and used for games like Doodle Jump--and
found it could be used to work out where someone tapped the screen." Read more
Who Owns, Controls Social Media Activity?
From the article: "Now that the use
of social media is part of the TV newsroom norm, the industry is wrestling with
the next wave of issues associated with the medium — hashing out matters ranging
from who owns on-air personalities’ Facebook accounts to delineating between
professional and personal tweets.
Individuals on
all sides of the equation, from station group owners to newsroom staffers, are
pushing to add more structure to the use of social media both on and off the
job, primarily so the practice doesn’t come back to bite them, industry
watchers say.
The lack of
industry wide standards regulating social media practices also is starting to
create unexpected problems, particularly for anchors and reporters who, to some
degree, are winging it." Read more
EU Data Supervisor Wants Greater Powers
From the article: "The European
Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Peter Hustinx, has unveiled a two-year
strategy aiming to promote a “data protection culture,” increase oversight of
EU institutions, and cut red tape.
Speaking at an
event in Brussels alongside EU justice commissioner Vivianne Reding and EU home
affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, Hustinx on Tuesday (22 January) said
the strategy is designed to make the EDPS more efficient and effective." Read more
Open Data Economy: Eight Business Models for Open Data and Insight from Deloitte UK
From the article: "The first response concerned Deloitte’s ongoing research into open data in the United Kingdom [PDF], conducted in
collaboration with the Open Data Institute.
Harvey Lewis, one of the primary investigators for the research project,
recently wrote about some of Deloitte’s preliminary findings at the Open
Government Partnership’s blog in a post on “open growth.” To date,
Deloitte has not found the quantitative evidence the team needs to definitely
demonstrate the economic value of open data. That said, the team found much of
interest in the space." Read more
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Gartner: Social Business Efforts Largely Unsuccessful So Far
From the article: "Many large companies are embracing internal social networks, but for the
most part, they're not getting much from them, according to analyst firm
Gartner.
By 2016, some 50% of enterprises "will have internal Facebook-like
social networks," and 30% of these will be considered to be as crucial as
email and telephones, a Gartner study announced on Tuesday states.
However, through 2015, 80% "of social business efforts will not achieve the intended benefits due to inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on technology," according to the report." Read more
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Protecting Online Freedom as the Internet Turns 30
It’s during anniversaries like these that we have a chance to take stock of this remarkable network and the people who make it what it is.
As the Internet enters its middle years, we users can no longer take it for granted. It’s more than a cloud. It’s people, technology and physical infrastructure. As with any infrastructure, the Internet needs protection and maintenance to survive; otherwise the wires and signals that send digital communications will cease to function. The online community also needs protections — to prevent our ideas from being blocked, our identities from being hijacked and our wallets from being picked." Read more
Twitter Gives Up User Data to Feds 69% of the Time
The total number of information requests increased to 1,009 during the second half of 2012, up from 849 during the first half of the year, according to Twitter's transparency report. Government requests for content removal also increased to 42 from just six." Read more
Digitization, Innovation, and Copyright: What is the Agenda?
From the report: "This essay discusses the need for research on the consequences of
digitization, as well as the impact of alternative policies governing the
creation and use of digital information. This agenda focuses on the development
of research to investigate the economics of digitization, to analyze the
governance of intellectual property in this sector, particularly through
copyright, and to pioneer approaches to analyzing measurement of digitization.
This agenda overlaps with many related open questions in organizational and
strategy research." Read more
What Google's Transparency Report Doesn't Tell Us
The company's latest report, released on Wednesday, shows that the U.S. government again led other nations in submitting the most requests for user data with Google. In the second half of 2012, the U.S. put in 8,438 requests for Internet user data, up 6% from the 7,979 requests it placed in the first six months of the year.
Between 2011 and 2012, U.S. data requests from Google increased by more than 30%....
Google's transparency reports do not include requests for user data made by the government under the U.S. Patriot Act, the Foreign Intelligence SurveillanceAmendment Act or through the use of National Security Letters (NSLs). Most of the requests made via these statutes are tied to national security issues and often compel providers to disclose far more data than ECPA subpoenas and court orders permit." Read more
5 Findings in ONC HIE Research
From the article: "The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has
published research that aims to help providers and professionals better
understand several high-impact services that can sustain health information
exchange organizations.
The research is
meant to help professionals who are putting in place health information
exchange (HIE) with policy, technical and business-related skills related
to query-based exchange, push notification and subscription services, provider
directories, master data management and consumer engagement." Read more
Monday, January 28, 2013
More Using Electronics to Track Their Health
“The explosion of mobile devices means that more Americans have an opportunity to start tracking health data in an organized way,” said Susannah Fox, an associate director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, which was to release the national study on Monday. Many of the people surveyed said the experience had changed their overall approach to health." Read more
See also
Using Twitter to Track the Flu: Researchers Find a Better Way to Screen the Tweets
To address this problem, Johns Hopkins computer scientists and researchers in the School of Medicine have developed a new tweet-screening method that not only delivers real-time data on flu cases, but also filters out online chatter that is not linked to actual flu infections. Comparing their method, which is based on analysis of 5,000 publicly available tweets per minute, to other Twitter-based tracking tools, the Johns Hopkins researchers say their real-time results track more closely with government disease data that takes much longer to compile." Read more
More Than 700 Million Smartphones Shipped in 2012 as Apple, Samsung Dominate
Samsung shipped an estimated 213 million smartphones — roughly 30 percent of the market — according toStrategy Analytics.
Apple, meanwhile, saw its shipments rise 46 percent to 135.8 million, giving the company about the same 19 percent of the market it had a year earlier." Read more
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Big Data Brings Big Privacy Concerns
From the article: "Wary of privacy implications of massive data collection
systems, the Senate Commerce Committee plans to continue a probe of the
industry, coinciding with a separate inquiry underway at the Federal Trade
Commission." Read more
Data Privacy Day 2013: Microsoft Releases Privacy Trends Study and Video Series
"Data Privacy Day 2013: Microsoft Releases Privacy Trends Study and Video Series." Networked World, January 23, 2013.
From the article: "To celebrate Data Privacy Day 2013, Microsoft commissioned a survey
of 1,000 U.S. adults "to better understand people's online privacy
perceptions and expectations." The research study showed that
privacy is becoming more important to people. They want and need more control
of their personal information. Sadly, less than half of all adults ‘mostly’ or
‘totally understand’ how to protect themselves online." Read more
Big Data and Cloud Computing Empower Smart Machines to Do Human Work, Take Human Jobs
From the article: "From giant corporations to university libraries to start-up
businesses, employers are using rapidly improving technology to do tasks that
humans used to do. That means millions of workers are caught in a competition
they can’t win against machines that keep getting more powerful, cheaper and easier
to use." Read more
Airbnb And The Unstoppable Rise Of The Share Economy
From the article: "The “gig economy,” the plethora of microjobs fueled by
online marketplaces offering and filling an array of paid errands and office
chores, has been well-documented, and sites like TaskRabbit, Execand Amazon’s Mechanical Turk continue
to grow apace. What Larson finds himself in, however, is something
lesser-noticed and potentially far more disruptive–a share economy , where
asset owners use digital clearinghouses to capitalize the unused capacity of
things they already have, and consumers rent from their peers rather than rent
or buy from a company." Read more
Preparing for the Worst: Author Martin Ford Imagines a Future when Machines Have All the Jobs
From the article: "Martin Ford saw it everywhere, even in his own business.
Smarter machines and better software were helping companies do more work
with fewer people. His Silicon Valley software firm used to put its programs on
disks and ship them to customers. The disks were made, packaged and delivered
by human beings. Now Ford’s customers can just download the software to their
computers — no disks, no packaging, no delivery workers.
… He suggests imposing massive taxes on companies, which would be paying far
less in wages thanks to automation, and distributing the proceeds to those left
unemployed by technology. That would give them money to spend to keep the
economy spinning.
To prevent the creation of a massive, idle underclass, Ford suggests paying
incentives for people to keep going to school and to behave in ways that benefit
the environment and society.
He admits his ideas are “fairly radical and political untenable ... But I
don’t believe there are any easy conventional solutions.” Read more
How to Get America Online
From the article: "ON Monday, President Obama said that during his second term, Americans would
act together to “build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring
new jobs and businesses to our shores” and that “we cannot cede to other
nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries — we must
claim its promise.”
The president is right that digital communication networks — especially high-capacity
fiber networks reaching American homes and businesses — can be a powerful
economic engine. But we are far away from being able to realize that vision,
even as we cede the advantage such technology offers to other countries." Read more
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Managing Crowd Innovation in Public Administration
From the report: "Governments all
over the world have discovered the world of social media, for better or for
worse. Whereas some of them are making every effort to prevent the
unhierarchical and therefore uncontrollable (dissident) opinion-forming process
in Web 2.0, others are looking for ways of putting the potentialities of this
new opening-up of communication to use. One approach that is increasingly being
tried out is opening up innovation processes in government.
However, this opening-up of innovation processes is anything but trivial. It
requires a thoroughly thought-out strategy and thus confronts government
systems with extensive challenges if it is not to suffer the same fate as other
unsuccessful attempts at reform in the past. In our essay, we reflect on the
consequences of these challenges for public managers." Read more
Personal Information Markets and Privacy: A New Model to Solve the Controversy
From the report: "From
the early days of the information economy, personal data has been its most
valuable asset. Despite data protection laws, companies trade personal
information and often intrude on the privacy of individuals. As a result,
consumers become more and more irritated and concerned. They feel out of
control and lose trust in electronic environments. Technologists, economists
and regulators are struggling to develop solutions that meet businesses’ demand
for more personal information while maintaining privacy. However, no promising
proposals seem to be in sight. A vision of how internet
economics can accommodate privacy is elusive. We would like to break this
helpless cycle and propose a 3-tier market model for personal information
markets with privacy. In our model, clear roles, rights and obligations for all
actors re-establish trust. The 1st market tier, ‘relationship space’, enables
data subjects and visible business partners to build trusting relationships.
The 2nd market tier, ‘service space’, supports 1st tier relationships with
distributed information processing. The 3rd tier is called ‘rich information
space’. Here, anonymized personal information will drive innovative
socio-inspired services, and companies can freely exchange non-identified data
without restrictions. To transition to this model, we show how existing
privacy-enhancing technologies and legal requirements can be integrated." Read more
Informational Capabilities - The Missing Link for the Impact of ICT on Development
From the article: "Under
what conditions can information and communications technologies (ICTs) enhance
the well-being of poor communities? The paper designs an alternative evaluation
framework (AEF) that applies Sen’s capability approach to the study of ICTs in
order to place people’s well-being, rather than technology at the center of the
study. The AEF develops an impact chain that examines the mechanisms by which
access to, and meaningful use of, ICTs can enhance peoples “informational
capabilities” and can lead to improvements in people’s human and social
capabilities. This approach thus uses peoples’ human capabilities, rather than
measures of access or usage, as its principal evaluative space. Based on
empirical evidence from rural communities’ uses of ICTs in Bolivia, the study
concludes that enhancing people’s informational capabilities is the most
critical factor determining the impact of ICTs on their well-being. The
findings indicate that improved informational capabilities, like literacy, do
enhance the human capabilities of the poor and marginalized to make strategic
life choices to achieve the lifestyle they value. Evaluating the impact of ICTs
in terms of capabilities thus reveals that there is no direct relationship
between improved access to, and use of, ICTs and enhanced well-being; ICTs lead
to improvements in people’s lives only when informational capabilities are
transformed into expanded human and social capabilities in the economic,
political, social, organizational and cultural dimensions of their lives." Read more
China Aims to Create Electronics Giants
From the article: "China's industry
ministry on Tuesday set an aggressive goal of forging global giants in the
electronics sector within the next two years through mergers and alliances, and
reiterated a longstanding push for Chinese companies to explore overseas
acquisitions.
China is pushing
to consolidate its electronics industry in a bid to create the next tech giant.
The WSJ's Paul Mozur tells us how far the country still has to go to compete
with the likes of Apple and Samsung.
The target for
the electronics sector is part of a wider plan to consolidate China's
fragmented major industries, including steel, shipping, automobiles, cement and
aluminum. Overcapacity in heavy industries has been blamed for amplifying a
sharp slowdown in growth in the past two years." Read more
State of the Internet: The Broadband Future Is Faster, but Still Unevenly Distributed
From the article: "We may not be a gigabit nation yet when it comes to
broadband, but the latest data from Akamai shows that the
the number of broadband connections over 10 Mbps — what Akamai dubs “high
broadband” has grown by 73 percent from the third quarter of 2011 to the third
quarter of 2012. The country has also see a 20 percent overall increase in
average speed to 7.2 Mbps over the past year, but the number of people
who have adopted broadband (measured at anything above 4 Mbps) was 62 percent,
which puts the U.S. at No. 12 in the worldwide rankings when it comes to
adoption and No. 9 when it comes to average speeds." Read more
Your Gadgets Are Slowly Breaking the Internet
Talbot, David. "Your Gadgets Are Slowly Breaking the Internet." MIT Technology Review, January 9, 2013.
From the article: "Behind all the dazzling mobile-ready electronics products on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week is a looming problem: how to make the networks that support all these wireless devices function robustly and efficiently.
With less fanfare than you’d see in Vegas, potential solutions are arising in labs in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and New Brunswick, New Jersey. The grand challenge is to overhaul the Internet to better serve an expected flood of 15 billion network-connected devices by 2015—many of them mobile—up from five billion today, according to Intel estimates." Read more
State of the Web: Why can’t Washington craft better Internet laws?
From the article: "The tragic suicide of programmer and activist Aaron Swartz,
who was charged with multiple computer crime felonies prior to his death, has
reignited calls for Washington to craft better Internet-related legislation.
Many laws on the books are seen as outdated, misaligned with reality, and just
plain crazy. There has to be a better way, or so the theory goes. But what if
there isn’t? What if the lawmaking process, by its very nature, cannot handle
the fast-paced world of the Internet and the cultural shifts that go along with
it? What then?" Read more
China’s Information Challenge
From the article: "To maintain monopoly control of political power in a country
with a hard-charging economy, fast-growing middle class and the rising
expectations they create, party officials will do all they can to monitor and
manage the flow of information within the country and across its borders. This
is especially important for a new generation of leaders now assuming their
posts, officials who know that public expectations for good governance have
never been higher. But with more than half a billion Chinese citizens now
online, more than 300 million active on Weibo (China’s Twitter) and an
increasingly ineffective “great firewall,” assertions of control over words and
ideas reflect little more than wishful thinking." Read more
Checklists Can Help in Surgical Crises, Too: Study
From the article: "By using simulation technology, researchers were able to
show something previously thought impossible to prove: the benefits of using
surgical checklists in an operating room emergency.
In an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality-funded study, a team of researchers observed 17 surgical teams participating in 106 staged crises. The researchers found there was stricter adherence to critical steps in “life-saving processes” when a set of crisis checklists was available.
According to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine, there was a 75% reduction in “failure to adhere to critical steps” when checklists were used. In these instances, 6% (24 of 371) of the critical steps were missed, compared to 23% (89 of 379) when teams were working from memory. Each session was recorded, and physician researchers observed and scored adherence to the established, evidence-based response guidelines." Read more
In an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality-funded study, a team of researchers observed 17 surgical teams participating in 106 staged crises. The researchers found there was stricter adherence to critical steps in “life-saving processes” when a set of crisis checklists was available.
According to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine, there was a 75% reduction in “failure to adhere to critical steps” when checklists were used. In these instances, 6% (24 of 371) of the critical steps were missed, compared to 23% (89 of 379) when teams were working from memory. Each session was recorded, and physician researchers observed and scored adherence to the established, evidence-based response guidelines." Read more
Obscurity: A Better Way to Think About Your Data Than 'Privacy'
Obscurity is the idea that when information is hard to obtain or understand, it is, to some degree, safe. Safety, here, doesn't mean inaccessible. Competent and determined data hunters armed with the right tools can always find a way to get it. Less committed folks, however, experience great effort as a deterrent." Read more
Even if It Enrages Your Boss, Social Net Speech Is Protected
Employers often seek to discourage comments that paint them in a negative light. Don’t discuss company matters publicly, a typical social media policy will say, and don’t disparage managers, co-workers or the company itself. Violations can be a firing offense.
But in a series of recent rulings and advisories, labor regulators have declared many such blanket restrictions illegal. The National Labor Relations Board says workers have a right to discuss work conditions freely and without fear of retribution, whether the discussion takes place at the office or on Facebook." Read more
Becoming Your Own Doctor In The Brave New World Of Personalized Medicine
From the article: "So for most people, serving as our own doctor is well-nigh
impossible. Being a doctor isn’t a part-time position or a hobby. A small
number of smart, highly motivated people take the extreme effort necessary to
become a doctor, but this isn’t the path the vast majority of the rest of
us have taken, can take, or even want to take. And even if we are wannabe Dr.
Welbys and Dr. Houses, we don’t have the necessary skills and fortitude and
time to get a genuine medical education." Read more
Foresight Future Identities: Final Project Report
The aim of the project was to come to a broad and independent scientific view of changing identities in the UK through a synthesis of existing evidence from a range of academic disciplines, including computer science, criminology, the social sciences and the humanities.
The Report identifies key challenges for effective policy making and implementation in a rapidly changing, globalised, technology-rich, and densely networked UK. It focuses on implications for: crime prevention and criminal justice; health, the environment and wellbeing; skills, employment and education; preventing radicalisation and extremism; social mobility; and social integration." Read more
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Big Data Meets Big Brother in the Passenger Screening Line
Sternstein, Aliya. "Big Data Meets Big Brother in the Passenger Screening Line." Nextgov, January 16, 2013.
From the article: "The Transportation Security Administration is considering screening
passengers based on behavioral profiles generated by commercial data brokers,
according to new contracting notices.
The agency potentially could use such computations to let consenting passengers with positive assessments bypass certain airport security inspections, officials said.
For a moment, set aside fears about TSA peering into your gun-buying habits or pharmacy purchases. Are commercial data aggregations even accurate? No one knows. Not the Federal Trade Commission or the Justice Department. Not the data brokers. And not the people being profiled -- they often aren’t allowed to see their own records." Read more
The agency potentially could use such computations to let consenting passengers with positive assessments bypass certain airport security inspections, officials said.
For a moment, set aside fears about TSA peering into your gun-buying habits or pharmacy purchases. Are commercial data aggregations even accurate? No one knows. Not the Federal Trade Commission or the Justice Department. Not the data brokers. And not the people being profiled -- they often aren’t allowed to see their own records." Read more
Mapping Cloud Interoperability in the Globalized Economy: Theory and Observation from Practice
From the report: "This
is one of three in-depth exploratory studies, which aim to gain a deeper
understanding of the role that interoperability plays as an enabler of
innovation and creativity in international trade. Each study explores the
various institutions, policies and approaches that shape the interoperability
landscape and investigates the effects of these factors and drivers on trade in
the globalized economy.
In this series, we examine:
(i) to what extent and how interoperability has contributed to the promotion of international trade;
(ii) what respective roles international organizations have played in concert with other stakeholders with regard to interoperability and international trade;
(iii) what policies and approaches to supporting interoperability have been used, and with what results; and
(iv) what can be learned from these experiences with regard to emerging interoperability issues in the context of international trade.
The three studies address this set of questions from different angles, acknowledging the multi-faceted character of the concept of interoperability (Gasser & Palfrey, Basic Books 2012). Two of them “Fostering innovation and trade in the global information society: The different facets and roles of interoperability”, and “Mapping Cloud Interoperability in the Globalized Economy: Theory and Observations from Practice” – focus specifically on cloud computing, an emerging technical paradigm through which to analyze the policy relevance of interoperability in a globalized economy. This example also facilitates exploration of some of the key issues and practical challenges that arise as various stakeholders engage with cloud services, infrastructure, and data across the world, as well as the implications for trade, policy, and different actors, especially, governments. The third study, “Interoperability in Information and Information Systems in the Furtherance of Trade” is focused on the role, current debates, and associated benefits and challenges in establishing a system of interoperability for information and information systems in the service of trade in a global economy over time." Read more
In this series, we examine:
(i) to what extent and how interoperability has contributed to the promotion of international trade;
(ii) what respective roles international organizations have played in concert with other stakeholders with regard to interoperability and international trade;
(iii) what policies and approaches to supporting interoperability have been used, and with what results; and
(iv) what can be learned from these experiences with regard to emerging interoperability issues in the context of international trade.
The three studies address this set of questions from different angles, acknowledging the multi-faceted character of the concept of interoperability (Gasser & Palfrey, Basic Books 2012). Two of them “Fostering innovation and trade in the global information society: The different facets and roles of interoperability”, and “Mapping Cloud Interoperability in the Globalized Economy: Theory and Observations from Practice” – focus specifically on cloud computing, an emerging technical paradigm through which to analyze the policy relevance of interoperability in a globalized economy. This example also facilitates exploration of some of the key issues and practical challenges that arise as various stakeholders engage with cloud services, infrastructure, and data across the world, as well as the implications for trade, policy, and different actors, especially, governments. The third study, “Interoperability in Information and Information Systems in the Furtherance of Trade” is focused on the role, current debates, and associated benefits and challenges in establishing a system of interoperability for information and information systems in the service of trade in a global economy over time." Read more
EHR Adoption Could Exceed 80 Percent by End of 2013, New Study Finds
UN Plans Internet Governance Amid Outcry to Defund ITU
From the article: "A petition to de-fund the U.N.'s telecom arm emerges just as the ITU readies
to hammer out internet governance plans at the World Telecommunication Information andCommunication Technology Policy Forum meetings
in February and May 2013.
The website De-fund the ITU
surfaced on the January NANOG (North American NetworkOperators' Group) email list.
…Five days ago ITU's Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré released the fourth and final ITU/WTPF-13 report outlining groundwork for internet governance (and internet regulatory topics) at upcoming meetings on February 6-8 and May 14-16." Read more
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
The Real World of Cost-Benefit Analysis: Thirty-Six Questions (and Almost as Many Answers)
From the report: "Some
of the most interesting discussions of cost-benefit analysis focus on difficult
problems, including catastrophic scenarios, “fat tails,” extreme uncertainty,
intergenerational equity, and discounting over long time horizons. As it
operates in the actual world of government practice, however, cost-benefit
analysis usually does not need to explore the hardest questions, and when it
does so, it tends to enlist standardized methods and tools. It is useful to
approach cost-benefit analysis from the bottom up, that is, by anchoring the
discussion in specific scenarios involving trade-offs and valuations.
Thirty-six stylized scenarios are presented here, alongside an exploration of
how they might be handled in practice. Open issues are also discussed." Read more
It’s 10 P.M. Do You Know What Your Avatar Is Doing?
In this and two follow-up experiments, Bailenson found what Rudy Rucker, the novelist who wrote Software, would have predicted: voters were significantly more likely to support the candidate who had been made to look like them. What’s more, not a single voter detected that it was, in part, his or her own face staring back." Read more
The Dunbar Number, From the Guru of Social Networks
From the article: "A little more than 10 years ago, the evolutionary
psychologist Robin Dunbar began a study of the Christmas-card-sending habits of
the English. This was in the days before online social networks made friends
and “likes” as countable as miles on an odometer, and Dunbar wanted a proxy for
meaningful social connection. He was curious to see not only how many people a
person knew, but also how many people he or she cared about. The best way to
find those connections, he decided, was to follow holiday cards. After all,
sending them is an investment: You either have to know the address or get it;
you have to buy the card or have it made from exactly the right collage of
adorable family photos; you have to write something, buy a stamp, and put the
envelope in the mail. These are not huge costs, but most people won’t incur
them for just anybody." Read more
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Technology-Enabled Medication Tracking: A Tough Nut To Crack
Even with health IT advances and the march toward computerized provider order entry, health care facilities still struggle with the process of medication reconciliation, which is woven throughout the care continuum." Read more
Mining Electronic Records for Revealing Health Data
But the report neglected one powerful incentive for the switch to electronic records: the resulting databases of clinical information are gold mines for medical research. The monitoring and analysis of electronic medical records, some scientists say, have the potential to make every patient a participant in a vast, ongoing clinical trial, pinpointing treatments and side effects that would be hard to discern from anecdotal case reports or expensive clinical trials." Read more
Will 2013 Be the Year of Privacy on Steroids?
Here is just a glimpse into what's to come." Read more
Health Online 2013
From the report: "81% of U.S. adults use the internet and 59% say they have
looked online for health information in the past year. 35% of U.S. adults say
they have gone online specifically to try to figure out what medical condition
they or someone else might have.
Online resources join the stream of information flowing in from people's interactions with clinicians, family, and fellow patients. When respondents were asked about the last time they had a serious health issue and to whom they turned for help, either online or offline:
- 70% of U.S. adults got information, care, or support from a doctor or other health care professional.
- 60% got information or support from friends and family.
- 24% got information or support from others who have the same health condition." Read more
Can Twitter Predict the Future? Pentagon Says Maybe
From the article: "The Defense Department wants new computer tools to analyze mounds of
unstructured text, blogs and tweets as part of a coordinated push to help
military analysts predict the future and make decisions faster.
The search is part of the Office of Naval Research's "Data to Decisions"
program, a series of three-to-10-year initiatives
that will address the volume of information that threatens to overwhelm
planners in the digital age, contract databases indicate. The goal is to build
an open source system that can unite various tools that collect, manage and
draw relationships between data sets." Read more
Emotional Arousal Key to Information Sharing, Study Says
From the article: "Fueled by the ever-growing power of the Internet and countless websites
being started up every day, today's world revolves around information sharing
and receiving. And a study conducted
by Jonah Berger of the University of Pennsylvania, shows that both high
physical and emotional arousal lead to the sharing of more information, giving
more insight as to why people share what they do.
A two-part study, "Arousal Increases Social Transmission of Information" was conducted with more
than 100 participants by The Wharton School at the university, to look at the
role emotional and physical arousal plays in information sharing, specifically
news, both personal and public." Read more
See also
See also
Kickstarter Launched 18,000 Projects in 2012; 17 Raised More than $1 Million
From the article: "Kickstarter reports
that its 2.2 million members pledged more than $319 million in 2012, up
221 percent from the year before. But more striking, perhaps, is the scale of
some of Kickstarter’s latest success stories. While no project had raised
$1 million at this time last year, 17 projects
passed that mark in 2012." Read more
'Crowdfunding' Sites Pay Medical Bills, Raise Hopes
From the
article: "More people are turning to crowdfunding sites to ask friends,
and friends of friends, for help with medical bills, accident costs and much
more. But, surprise: Strangers give, too." Read
more
Why Electronic Health Records Failed
The savings were significant but not unreasonable: It would represent less than a 1 percent cut to health-care spending, much smaller than the 1.5 percent efficiency increase the retail sector saw when it went digital.
Seven years later, those savings have not materialized." Read more
U.S. Intelligence Community Forecasts Digital-Driven Future
From the article: "The digital technology revolution is transforming every
single business and industry around the world. But, beyond that, it is having a
transformational impact on economies and societies around the world, as
we transition from
the industrial society of
the past couple of centuries to a new kind of information-based society.
What will our world look like over the next couple of decades?" Read more
The Internet of Things Has Arrived — And So Have Massive Security Issues
From the article: "While not devoid of hype and hyperbole, the Internet of
Things (IoT) does represent a revolution happening right now.
Companies of all kinds – not just technology and telecommunications firms – are
linking “things” as diverse as smartphones, cars and household
appliances to industrial-strength sensors, each other and the internet. The
technical result may be mundane features such as intercommunication and
autonomous machine-to-machine (M2M) data transfer, but the potential benefits
to lifestyles and businesses are huge." Read more
Thursday, January 10, 2013
The Theory of Crowd Capital
From the report: "We
are seeing more and more organizations undertaking activities to engage
dispersed populations through Information Systems (IS). Using the
knowledge-based view of the organization, this work conceptualizes a theory of Crowd
Capital to explain this phenomenon. Crowd Capital is a
heterogeneous knowledge resource generated by an organization, through its use
of Crowd
Capability, which is defined by the structure, content, and process by which an
organization engages with the dispersed knowledge of individuals –the Crowd.
Our work draws upon a diverse literature and builds upon numerous examples of
practitioner implementations to support our theorizing. We present a model of Crowd
Capital generation in organizations and discuss the implications of Crowd
Capital on organizational boundary and on IS research." Read more
Facebook and Google May be Forced to Ask Permission to Use Personal Data
From the article: "Internet companies such as Facebook and Google may have to get further
permission to use information if European Union lawmakers give users more control over
their personal data.
EU lawmakers want to limit companies' ability to use and sell data – such as
internet browsing habits – to advertising companies, especially when people are
unaware their data is being used in such a way." Read more