October 2011, Vol. 12. No. 10
In this issue:
- Tone of News Predicts Broad Social Behaviors
- Building Stronger Skyscrapers, Faster
- THE FUTURIST Presents an Evening with Aubrey de Grey
- Progress in Improving Global Literacy Is Steady, but Slow
- Votizen Wins Disruptathon Social Media Competition
- What’s Hot @WFS.ORG
Tone of News Predicts Broad Social Behaviors
Properly analyzed, the tone of news articles can predict large areas of the future, according to Kalev Leetaru, a researcher at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
First, you need a lot of news items; Leetaru’s sample sets ran into the millions. Then you need the right parameters; Leetarau began with 1,500 dimensions of human emotions. Finally, you need a supercomputer capable of petascale processing (more than one quadrillion operations per second).
Using a large, shared-memory supercomputer called Nautilus and a 30-year archive of global news, Leetaru was able to pinpoint the location of Osama Bin Laden within a 200-kilometer radius of Abbottabad, Pakistan, where the terrorist leader was eventually found. His model also retroactively predicted the social uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya.
"News is increasingly being produced and consumed online, supplanting print and broadcast to represent nearly half of the news monitored across the world today by Western intelligence agencies.… Computational analysis can yield novel insights to the functioning of society, including predicting future economic events," Leetaru writes in his paper Culturomics 2.0: Forecasting Large-Scale Human Behavior Using Global Media Tone in Time and Space published in the September 5 edition of the journal First Monday.
Source: “Culturomics 2.0: Forecasting Large-Scale Human Behavior Using Global Media Tone in Time and Space”
Special thanks to Alireza Hejazi for this tip!
Building Stronger Skyscrapers, Faster
Building a skyscraper around a core wall, or vertical spine, could speed up the construction process as well as enhance the structural resistance to earthquakes and high winds.
Purdue University civil engineering professors Mark Bowman and Michael Kreger are spearheading a project to develop this speedier construction technique.
Traditional core walls are made from reinforced concrete and are produced one floor at a time. The new technique sandwiches concrete between steel plates; the hollow structure is strong enough to allow the surrounding construction to proceed on several floors at once.
On a 40- to 50-story building, the core wall system could save three to four months of construction time — and, hence, offer significant dollar savings, according to Bowman.
“The idea has been used in England, but not for high-rise buildings and not in seismic locations,“ says Bowman. “We are talking about extending it to high rises and in zones where you get significant lateral forces from earthquakes or high winds. So it’s got to be suitable for Chicago or cities on the West Coast.”
Source: Purdue University.
THE FUTURIST Presents: The Immortal Life? An Evening with Aubrey de Grey
On October 12, Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist based in Cambridge, UK, will discuss prospects for extending the human life span indefinitely at the Community College of Baltimore, an event sponsored by THE FUTURIST magazine. http://www.wfs.org/content/wfs-fall-events.
De Grey is the chief science officer of SENS Foundation, a California-based charity dedicated to combating the aging process. He is also editor-in-chief of Rejuvenation Research, a peer-reviewed journal focused on intervention in aging. He received his BA and PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1985 and 2000, respectively. He’s also author of the bestselling book Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime.
Dr. de Grey will explain: (1) why therapies that can add 30 healthy years to the remaining life span of the typical 60-year-old may well arrive within the next few decades, and (2) why those who benefit from such therapies will very probably continue to benefit from progressively improved therapies indefinitely and will thus avoid debilitation or death from age-related causes at any age.
This event will take place on October 12 at 7 p.m. at the J-137 Lecture Hall, Essex Campus, Community College of Baltimore, 7201 Rossville Boulevard, Baltimore, MD 21237-3899. Register here.
Progress in Improving Global Literacy Is Steady… but Slow
Today, 793 million adults around the world — about 64% of whom are women — lack basic reading and writing skills, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics.
Using the most recent data available (2009), the Institute reports that more than half of the world’s illiterate population resides in South and West Asia, while sub-Saharan Africa represents 21.4% of the human population who cannot read.
“However, rates can vary widely across countries in a region. In Mali, for example, merely 26% of the population is literate in contrast to Equatorial Guinea where 93% of the population can read and write,” according to the Institute.
The researchers state that literacy rates have risen 2.3% in the past 10 years, and 10.6% in the past 20 years.
Sources: UNESCO, Download the PDF
Votizen Wins Disruptathon Social Media Competition
Pete Ericson’s most recent Disruptathon Social Media Innovation Forum wrapped up in Washington, D.C., on September 27, bringing together technology watchers, venture capitalists, and start-up founders from around the Mid-Atlantic. Disruptathon bills itself as an open innovation contest, “a wholly interactive, highly competitive showcase for the most disruptive future thinkers across all industries.”
Various start-ups get two minutes to pitch their ideas to a crowd of peers. The D.C. event’s winner in every category was Votizen a social network that “allows its members, Votizens, to claim their voter profile, learn about issues and elections, and take collective action with other committed voters through social media. Backed by the original investors in Facebook and Twitter, Votizen is an independent company and is not affiliated with any political party, candidate or special interest group.”
Other participating start-ups of note to futurists included:
- Full Circle: a Bethesda, Maryland, start-up that “allows you to identify and communicate with other members nearby and search or filter members by profile details, keywords, interests or likes.”
- And Trendspottr, a Web service that identifies real-time trends and trending information from Twitter and Facebook for any search query.
Disruptathon will partner again with THE FUTURIST magazine for Futurists:BetaLaunch, to be held in Toronto as part of WorldFuture 2012.
Source: Disruptathon
What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Member’s Only)
A selection of articles, special reports, and other future-focused material on our Web site that you might have missed. Members may sign in to read and comment. Not a member? Join now at http://www.wfs.org/renew
Turbulence-Proofing Your Scenarios
Investing in an effective scenario-planning exercise and using the experience wisely can have a big payoff for organizations. Read more
The Uncertain Future of the English Language
Parlez vous “Globish”? If English is your only language, you’re probably doing okay now. But you might not be prepared for the future, suggest the authors of Globish and The Last Lingua Franca Read more