PHILOSOPH – IT

I’ve heard a podcast few month ago that made me think. A lot.

The theme was about an Israeli company that, to make a long story short, created an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for genes. In other words, you can drag-and-drop genes to the DNA thus replacing genes, adding some more and so forth. At the end of the process, you press a kind of ‘Submit’ button and within few weeks you’ll get the newly designed DNA in a tube.

During that podcast, the hosts made a seemingly casual remark as ‘the DNA is a code. That’s it. A-T-C and G.’

If that’s the case, why not set the entire paradigm, methodologies, best-practice and experience of the development world onto the DNA code.

We can have a backup-restore procedure, versions and eventually, different products relating in non-homo-sapience creatures.

There are many variations to this idea of what it a lie and what is true. Phrase such as ‘fake it until you make it’ or perfectionism for example. It is one of the foundation of marketing and if someone (a company in their marketing, a politician, or a psychologist) lie for long enough then sometimes that lie becomes a true.

Like a boy that his parents are telling him that his painting are brilliant, making the boy believe that, and wishing to get more compliments, investing more time until finally he becomes a true painter.

In my professional life as well as the private, I’ve seen this transaction of lie-to-truth and vice versa over and over.

Overtime the boundaries of truth and lies are not clear and all we can do is to be aware and not to judge too quickly.

Few points to be able and look back at in few months\years:

1. In the short term – 3 years or so – would biological medicine replace the chemical medicines?
2. Looking further into the future – 10 years – did CRISPER changed the world? Is there a need for companies like Teva Pharmaceutical Industries LTD?
3. Is there FDA? If so – What’s its role?

These are just some of the new technologies in the area which would have a profound impact on the pharmaceutical industry.

The 3rd point is also very interesting for several reasons: How can you regulate a medicine suited to an individual?; Since the FDA serves mainly the large corporate (no other small company can go through the costs and time it takes for a medicine to get an FDA approval)  who takes care of the consumer?; Patents – what’s the idea behind paying millions of dollars for a patent which technology replaces every few years.

During a work i’m doing, i encountered some very interesting studies about decision making.

The articles and studies were about the individual decision making, a group decision making and some organisational decision making.

Two very interesting insights

The two sections are:

1. Almost everything is decision making – what we do, what we choose not to do, when we do it, for how long and so on. understanding our internal process and biases can assist us in making better as human being by selecting the right option or alternative. there’s no perfect single answer, but as long as we better understand the difference between the options, what drives us, what we want and the implications on ourselves, the nuclear family, extended family, friends, work, society, human race and the planet – we will probably choose a better choice.

2. If at least part of our decision making is based on information we gather – how is our decision making is influenced by Google, Facebook and such?

I was recently requested to write a short paper on ‘What will be the required jobs in the future’.

First thing which popped into mind was Ken Robinson in his TED talk ‘How schools kill creativity‘. He starts with the note that there’s no way we can guess what will be the required skills in the future.

Well, if Ken Robinson can’t do it, who am I to even try? But I’ve decided to give it a go.

I assume that the reasons for not being able to predict the future work skills requirements are mainly due to the following two:

1. Disruptive innovation. A disruptive innovation is an innovation which helps to create a new market and in the process significantly change or even eliminate existing markets.
2. The ‘human’ part of the ‘Human Resources’. I’ve read about Thad Starner a bit. Thud was one of the first persons who started to wear computer (1991).

By nature, the first bullet, the disruptive innovation, cannot be predicted and therefore it will be impossible to know what will change and what the required skill sets of the future are. The only assumption one can make is that it will likely not include any routine work starting from driving (1.5% of the workforce in US) all the way to healthcare (assuming nanotechnology will replace the majority of the MDs skills).
That basically leaves us with occupations which require inventions, philosophy, art, communication and such.

Adding the second bullet will reduce the skills, or at least alter them in such a way which makes the work even harder.

It will be interesting paper, whatever the result will be.

Entanglement is a term used in quantum theory to describe the way that different particles of energy or matter can become correlated to predictably interact with each other regardless of how far apart they are.

In other words, two particles which are separated miles away interact with each other at zero time. If one particle is influenced, the second one, though miles away, will be influenced at the same time.

Einstein called it spooky, and for a good reason.

The question arises, if we can entangle particles such atoms, can we theoretically change a molecule in our body, without even touching it?

For more philosophical podcast, I would recommend the Invisibila podcast about entanglement

A while ago I’ve heard about some neat ideas for startups.

The first one is the combination of virtual reality and augmented reality. Imagine that you can write a virtual note, leave it on the desk and only the persons you’ve shared it with can come and take it.

Another one is a platform for integrating IoT devices and transforming routine operations to services. Imagine that your smartphone checks that there’s enough hot water for a shower 30 minutes before your alarm clock, and when you close the light in the bathroom the coffee machine will start. The company also monitors patterns of devices and can alert on trends or a sudden change in the behavior. For example, if the refrigerator electricity is going up over a 5% a month in the last 3 month, the platform compare the behavior to similar devices and might recommend calling a technician and replacing the isolating rubber.

A while ago I was requested to name the three key elements the CIO, or CIO Office should focus on.
After some thoughts, i answered that, to my humble opinion, the key elements are (sorted by priority):
1. GRC – without Governance the rest becomes not relevant.
2. Agile – I have little belief and faith in projects which takes more than few month end to end.
3. Gamification. You can call it UX, but the ability to make people want to use and enter data is of the highest importance.

GRC stands for Governance, Risk and Compliance. There are some frameworks for that like COBIT  (and thanks to Oren Hadar from Know-IT who made the acquaintance to the GRC world) . Basically, Governance will verify that your IT is aligned with the business. Risk will not only verify that you identify the risks, be a part of the risk universe of the company but most importantly, it will enable to tern risk into opportunity. A great blog by Norman Marks is definitely worth subscribing to.

Since so much was written on Agile, i’ve got little to add and as for Gamification, i was introduced to the concept by Dudi Peles, but there are many movies at YouTube on the subject.

I assume that all the topics GRC, Agile and Gamification will each have a separate post sometime in the near future.

That’s all for now.

Sometimes it looks like the FDA (and EMA – European Medicines Agency its equivalent in Europe) in goal is to support and keep the power of large companies.

Going through the hell of getting an FDA approval is a nightmare costs millions of dollars and which only well financed companies can go through.

On the other hand, the information and technology advances requires shorter intervals.

The implications are usually that young and innovative technology is being blocked by FDA and have to use the above large companies.

Since information becomes more available, and travelling is affordable, i assume that over time, either the FDA will have to dramatically change, or will stop being relevant.

The Peer To Peer (P2P) economy is becoming more and more significant in today’s’ world.

P2P economy, for this post, will be the trade or other financial interaction between two ‘end users’ i.e. people or very small companies (and not B2B/B2C/B2B2C).

We can see the movement at every aspect of our life:

• Financial: Bitcoin, crowd-sourcing, and loans just to name a few.
• Hotels: Airbnb
• Eatwith and the like replace at least some of the restaurants
• Manufacturing is using more and more 3D printing

And there are many others

The implications makes iTunes (and the like) which revolutionized the entire music industry) looks like only a small step in the rapid evaluating new economy which who knows where will it take us as people, communities and  even counties.

ITunes significantly shortened the value chain from the artists to the consumers.

It has also legalized the option to get some of the songs. If a person would have wanted to legally have a song, he was required to purchase the entire album.

When iTunes gave an easy and affordable option to buy a song a lot of people, who would be happy to pay the artists, used that option.

The implications of iTunes was not just overwhelming, it gave birth to some new ‘out of the box’ thinking about regulations, conglomerates and individual freedom.

However – there’s no one side story. It has also caused people to hear only one song, leaving behind complex work which can be understood only by listening to an entire album.

The implications and options increased over time as more and more disruptive markets innovative ideas took place.

There are already startups for academic literal handling (where an article is equivalent to a song, a publisher to the music company and an album to a magazine).

There’re a lot of issues with the P2P economy, which will require a lot of attention, starting with regulation, copy rights and others.

What I’d like to think about is where will it is leading us?

Here some additional points for thinking:

Almost anyone can have an Estonian e-residence. Will countries or cities become service providers?

3 dimensions printing is here to stay, letting people download a blueprint of the good they liked.

What will be the pillars of economics (materials, time and talent as a close friend suggested?)