https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgb0OALoL08#t=4418 I was honoured to be a participant in a public discussion about Science and the English Language, held at the English Speaking Union in London on 13the November 2014. My co-panelists are astrophysicist Roberto Trotta and geneticist Aarathi Prasad. The discussion follows a lecture by Trotta around his book...
Year: 2014
Gerald Edelman and AI
Gerald Edelman passed away on May 17, 2014 in La Jolla, California. In 1972 he won the Nobel Prize (together with Rodney Porter) for solving the antibody structure, and explaining how the immune system functions. His research into antibodies led him to realize the enormous explanatory potential of selective-recognition systems....
Hybrid thinking: an idea from Ray Kurzweil
[ted id=2015] In his March 20, 2014 TED talk Ray Kurzweil suggested that in a couple of decades from now we will be able to increase our neocortex's power many-fold at an instant by accessing the processing power of the cloud. He suggested that this will be possible thanks to...
Famelab International for the best “stand-up scientist”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs32UWuLzys&w=560&h=315] This is the final of Famelab International 2014, held at the Cheltenham Science Festival on June 5, 2014. I was one of the three judges, together with Jim Al-Khalili and Alice Roberts. I have been involved with Famelab International since its conception in 2007, have trained contestants, co-organized...
Digital transformation: what is it, and how to do it
[slideshare id=35332745&doc=transformdisrupt-140531072814-phpapp02] What is "digital transformation", and how to execute it for success? This deck explains how the success of internet startups to disrupt markets, together with four major technological drivers (big data & analytics, social & mobile, crowdsourcing & crowdfunding, and smart devices) are ushering a new era of...
Predicting the future
"Prediction is difficult, specially about the future", said the father of quantum physics Niels Bohr, his words often quoted - wrongly - as a tautology. Bohr did not mean to state the obvious but made reference to the non-deterministic nature of quantum phenomena. Although the microscopic world of quanta is bound...
Ms Jawara’ s shop: a tale of African capitalism
Ms Jawara is in her late 30s and a single mother of two teenage kids. She s also the proud owner of a small street shop on Sinari Daranijo Street on Victoria Island, Lagos. The shop is a tin shack made from a piece of a container. It sells refreshments...
Reinventing the business in the age of digital
[slideshare id=32883506&doc=reinventing-the-business-140329075026-phpapp01] This deck explains how a business integration approach can be applied in the era of digital transformation. Twenty years ago I used to apply the same approach in business re-engineering, with clients in several industries who wanted to automate their processes. At that time the challenge was to increase...
Consciousness explained
Daniel Dennett is a philosopher with a mission to infuse some empirical sense to the problem of consciousness. I met him personally in Tucson Arizona in April 2006, when I interviewed him for the popular science magazine Focus, that I used to edit then. A burly and affable man who...
Crowdsourcing and AI: the original vision of my startup
[slideshare id=31887300&doc=workchanges-140304060624-phpapp02] I put together this presentation last year, to explain the original concept and vision for Cypsel, my startup. I tried to solve the problem of putting together ad hoc teams to solve problems. The original idea was diluted in the process of developing a product and ended up...