Inspire

Jeff Jarvis on the Success Factors of the Google Culture

Saul Griffith at Long Now Foundation on Alternative Energy Sources and Climate Change Recalculated

has multiple degrees in materials science and mechanical engineering and completed his PhD in Programmable Assembly and Self Replicating machines at MIT.  He is the co-founder of numerous companies including: Low Cost Eyeglasses, Squid Labs, Potenco, Instructables.com, HowToons and Makani Power. Saul has been awarded numerous awards for invention including the National Inventors Hall of Fame, Collegiate Inventor's award, and the Lemelson-MIT Student prize. A large focus of Saul's research efforts are in minimum and constrained energy surfaces for novel manufacturing techniques and other applications. Saul holds multiple patents and patents pending in textiles, optics, nanotechnology, and energy production. Saul is a technical advisor to Make magazine and Popular Mechanics.

In his talk below at the Long Now Foundation on climate change, ecological footprints, sustainability, global warming and alternative energy sources you can see an impressive overview of the current situation. How can you measure your own ecological footprint? How can you reduce it? What are the key trends in energy consumption and production? How much energy do we need right now and in 20 years? And how can we scale up? His talk is bombarded with a lot of interesting and illuminating numbers and statistics.

Juan Enriquez on the Financial Crisis, Synthetic Biology, Robotics, Cyborgs and the Homo Evolutis

Juan Enriquez has a solid track record concerning delivering and sharing funny, smart, cutting edge and very interesting presentations on different subjects like the evolution of borders and nation states, biotech, economic structures, evolution at large, synthetic biology and cultural evolution. Juan Enriquez thinks and writes primaril about the profound changes that genomics and other life sciences will cause in business, technology, politics and society.

Previous presentations by Mr. Enriquez can be found here: PopTech2009 on Financial Crisis, Long Now Foundation 2007 on Biotechnology and Mapping Knowledge, TED 2007 on Bio-Energy, TED 2003 on The Coming Huge Biotechnology Revolution and PopTech2006 on Countries, Flags and Dynamic Borders. All these talks are highly recommended. Mr. Enriquez is clearly one of my favorite thinkers, futurists and authors around.

The talk below is from the TED 2009 Event last month. I watched the whole TED show personally for the first time. It was truly mind-blowing and very very inspirational. By far, the best event I have ever experienced in my life. All the buzz surrounding the TED event is true. The structure of the program is outstanding touching your mind, heart and soul in different ways.

The talk below by Mr. Enriquez deals with the current global financial and economic crisis as well as the coming revolutions due to synthetic biology, stam cells as well as advanced robotics. Combining these biotech trends on the bacterial, cellular and tissue level with the robotics trend will eventually lead to advanced cyborgs and the Homo Evolutis. The latter group might co-exist with normal human beings but outperform them in different tasks. And this might be sooner than we think, the speed of innovation in this fields is simply impressive.

Enjoy the rollercoaster!

Blackberry Storm versus Google G1: Video Review

Below a short entertaining video shot at the Mobile Monday Amsterdam event with reviews of the new Blackberry Storm and Google Android HTC G1 phone by me and Vincent Everts. I guess both devices have their value depending on your exact requirements for a smart phone. Personally, I adore the G1.

Juan Enriquez on the Financial Crisis

Juan Enriquez (2008) Pop!Tech Pop!Cast from PopTech on Vimeo.

Outstanding and razor sharp analysis by Juan Enriquez - one of my favorite thinkers and speakers - on the current financial crisis. Recommended. Together with Nassem Taleb on Edge with his post on the Fourth Quadrant and Kleiner Perkins on SlideShare with their 30 slides on the financial crisis in my view a quite complete and rigorous analysis.   

Lawrence Lessig, Vint Cerf and Jonathan Zittrain on Authors@Google on the Future of the Internet

A great historic, knowledgeable, funny and original overview of digital media in general and how they thrive. Now and in the future. Open/generative or closed systems ? In case you are interested in the evolution of the internet, this video is for you. But also in case you want to protect your privacy or if you are a developer for Facebook. Based on the book Future of the Internet by Jonathan Zittrain. Highly recommended!

The Political Mind by George Lakoff

WOW, just saw this 1 hour presentation and Q&A with George Lakoff on Authors@Google, one of my favorite channels in YouTube. He just released a new book The Political Mind. Very powerful and clear presentation on neurology, psychology, mirror neurons/empathy and its impact in politics. What is most striking to me is the clarity, especially the second part of this talk covering topics like nurturing kids and Obama. Highly recommended !

What Is Healthy Food ? A Perspective from TED

Stats on Digital Media - A Global View from Morgan Stanley by Mary Meeker

Great overview, recommended viewing. Watch the part on China and mobile. I was recently in China for one week with 40 Dutch entrepreneurs and innovators in digital media. It was my highlight of this year so far. Impressive stats on the Chinese mobile market like 550 million mobile phone users, 56 million mobile internet users (while 3G services are just one month active in this huge market) and China Mobile is 4 times the market value of Vodafone and thus the largest mobile operator (MNO) in the whole world. Clearly, in a few years most mobile innovation will come from China due to their incredible ambition, growth (potential), economies of scale and availability of hundreds of thousands of highly educated and eager mobile/IT graduates across the whole mobile ecosystem. Yearly, that is ;-) Think about the implications of these numbers for a few minutes...

| View | Upload your own

Craig Venter on Synthetic Biology (LongNow Foundation Presentation)

One of the most exciting new scientific topics around: Synthetic Biology. If this field keeps on growing we are in my view experiencing a more revolutionary trajectory the coming decades relative to the internet (online and mobile combined). Highly recommended viewing, especially the Q&A. Including some possible solutions for our environmental and resource challenges.