Category: English

Research as a way to advance society

October 5, 2010 / / 0 Comments

This morning I had a really interesting conversation with a friend of mine on the bus to work.
Then I read this post from Luca De Biase about the Japanes law of Science and Technology which was in good agreement with my position.

Sometimes Science and Research is seen as a tool to achieve a better handling of technology. That’s a really narrow way to look at it and it’s not the main point.

I think Research regarding both humanistic and scientific topics, is a way to improve society. The better we understand the world and ourself, the better we can live on this planet and have a better society.

Japan has passed in 1995 a law called: “Science and Technology basic law“, this is the first article

Article 1
The objective of this law is to achieve a higher standard of science and technology (hereinafter referred to as “S&T”), to contribute to the development of the economy and society in Japan and to the improvement of the welfare of the nation, as well as to contribute to the progress of S&T in the world and the sustainable development of human society, through prescribing the basic policy requirements for the promotion of S&T (excluding those relevant only to the humanities in this law) and comprehensively and systematically promoting policies for the progress of S&T.

The real deal is to improve society and to create a sustainable way to do it. It is not about the money, is about the vision of the society and about building a better one for the future.

This is way, I signed the petition on science is vital, and I’m going to the rally on Saturday.

People should not be mistaken, this is not scientists calling for more money because they are fearing to loose the job, they can always do another job.

This is scientists calling the whole society to understand that research is a way to build a better society and to build a better future. The rally is happening in UK, but this is a worldwide issue.

Empowering people

September 29, 2010 / / 0 Comments

On ted there is this very good talk about empowering people, connecting them and try to boost innovation to make the world better.

[ted id=955]

It is a very inspiring talk, which actually points you in the right way. Times are gonna be complicated and we need to sparkle innovations to improve the world and make it better. Is not a job that can be undertaken just by a bunch of guys but actually we need a distributed approach where everyone can find his/her niche and share back to the world, on a two ways system.

I have to say that when you look out of the window, sometimes you think that the crowd is too stupid and that there will be no possibility to improve.

However I believe this is not true, and this is just a sampling problem. You need a bigger sample, and then there will be the right answer for any questions, or at least a possibility to share a path together towards better conditions.

Empowering people, all of them and make them choose. A new blend of democracy?

Diaspora in the wild

September 16, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Today Diaspora is releasing its code. In short diaspora is a social network which takes the privacy of the users really seriously, given the possibility to control the information, the hosting and the way is delivered.

On top of that, contents created with Diapsora remains with the user and it’s not property of Diaspora.

The software is in still alpha mode, however I really like the idea and the vision of the developers.

As already noted several time, digital personal identity is something which should be taken more seriously and people should be more aware what that means, how to use it  and what they can do with that.

This is a moving target field, where things change rather quickly, so the dust is not yet set to understand what are the big innovations taking place.

I hope diaspora will make it big, and I hope it would be one of the gateway to make the net-citizen aware that their digital personal identity is important and should be protected.

Massive investment on clean tech from Google

August 21, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Google has made a deal to buy energy at fixed price from a massive wind farm for 20 years.

This is one of the several action which the company is taking to make its own plan, called RE<C, happening. The goal of this plan is to make Renewable Energy cheaper than Coal. According to them, to reach this, they are moving in three different area:

effective policy, innovative technology and smart capital

They are backing up innovative technology, financing really interesting and promising startup which area trying to exploit non conventional energy, like this one for Enhanced Geotermical Power.

They also invested a gazillions (roughly) of money in the Makani start-up, which is developing system to gather energy from tropospheric wind. The company seems to be developing a prototype able to produce 10 KW from high altitude wind.

Tropospheric wind is the same energy source which kitegen KGR is trying to exploit, which, however, is in a more advanced state, given the fact there are building two industrial installations right now in Nothern West of Italy, able to deliver 3 MW (which is 3000 KW). And that is only the beginning and bigger project of massive scale are already planned.

Maybe google should give a second look and throw some money also on the kitegen project?

The opt-in policy of Facebook

August 19, 2010 / / 0 Comments

So Facebook is introduced Places (a service for Geolocalization like foursquare) which you can use to tell where you are and your friends can use to tag you in a particular place, like with the pictures.

I have mixed feelings about this idea of geolocalization. Of course can be a cool way to share really cool place which you have dug out, but constantly revealing where are you in the world can be used badly by other people.

What however this post is all about is the classic applied-to-everybody-on-release-day policy which Facebook adopt each time they introduce a new feature. A normal user, who is not aware of this new feature, will find herself using it (or people using it, like tagging her in place) while she didn’t decide in the first place.

I signed me off. For your info you’ve got to:

  • click policy settings
  • search for places and choose “make visible only to myself
  • search for “let your friend tag you in places” and choose disabled.

An opt-in policy, where the user accept to use the new feature from Facebook would be not only a polite way to deal with the user, but also a professional approach to introducing new feature.

People protesting against Google-Verizon legal framework proposal

August 15, 2010 / / 0 Comments

From the BBC News

Around 100 people have rallied outside Google’s California offices to protest against controversial proposals to alter how data is treated over the web.

Pay to play. This the kind of format which is been prioritize on the wireless network. The creation of high-priority web channel on wireless network to transmit the data can really disrupt the internet as we know. Internet must remain Open with no differentiation on speed within two contents should be delivered.

If this is not the case, the innovation will be harmed badly and both consumers and producers will suffer from the smaller possibilities, because big players can instantiate a sort of monopoly.

Google is still defending its own position. Which is very sad and make them evil…

Google is becoming evil?

August 11, 2010 / / 0 Comments

It seems that this proposal from Google-Verizon addresses the net-neutrality (basically, evey content has the same priority on the others, without any kind of classification). I had mixed feelings when I read that blog post, however I’m not an expert so I refrain to judge it good or bad.

The idea to differentiate the network in two sub system with different priority (wireless and landline) it seems odd to me. We are accessing to the same internet and the same content, the only difference is how we connnect to it.

A really well done and thought-through analysis has been done by the EFF guys, which are quite expert of this things. I highly suggest to stop by and read it to have a more clear view about it.

Via Luca De Biase