News

TTI/Vanguard 2021 Proposed Conference Topics

We are eager to hear what you and your colleagues think of them. Thanks!

To continue our series of virtual field trips (Long Now Foundation, this past May; Stanley Black & Decker, in August), TTI/Vanguard is excited to announce a virtual visit to the New Jersey Institute of Technology on Tuesday, October 27, to be hosted by friend of TTI/V David Bader (previously of Georgia Tech). At NJIT, he is the founding director of the Institute for Data Science, which serves as an umbrella for this public research university’s centers on big data, medical informatics, cybersecurity, data analytics, and artificial intelligence. The tour of will naturally focus on data and computer science, featuring work conducted on massive-scale analytics, social aspects of data science (disinformation and cyberpsychology), advances in homomorphic encryption, and human-in-the-loop optimization, while also stepping afield to explore traumatic brain injuries and biosensors to detect weaponization of the novel coronavirus. Learn more about this event and register here.

There is a saying amidst epidemiologists, “If you’ve seen one pandemic, you’ve seen … one pandemic”. Unless you are our upcoming September speaker, Adam Kucharski who has made a career of discovering disparate patterns amidst all things contagious—from disease to information to even our own behavior. Adam will speak at our September digital meeting and our members will receive his best-selling book, “The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread—and Why They Stop.”
www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/25/the-rules-of-contagion-by-adam-kucharski-review-outbreaks-of-all-kindsTo continue our series of virtual field trips (Long Now Foundation, this past May; Stanley Black & Decker, in August), TTI/Vanguard is excited to announce a virtual visit to the New Jersey Institute of Technology on Tuesday, October 27, to be hosted by friend of TTI/V David Bader (previously of Georgia Tech). At NJIT, he is the founding director of the Institute for Data Science, which serves as an umbrella for this public research university’s centers on big data, medical informatics, cybersecurity, data analytics, and artificial intelligence. The tour of will naturally focus on data and computer science, featuring work conducted on massive-scale analytics, social aspects of data science (disinformation and cyberpsychology), advances in homomorphic encryption, and human-in-the-loop optimization, while also stepping afield to explore traumatic brain injuries and biosensors to detect weaponization of the novel coronavirus. Learn more about this event and register here.

There is a saying amidst epidemiologists, “If you’ve seen one pandemic, you’ve seen … one pandemic”. Unless you are our upcoming September speaker, Adam Kucharski who has made a career of discovering disparate patterns amidst all things contagious—from disease to information to even our own behavior. Adam will speak at our September digital meeting and our members will receive his best-selling book, “The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread—and Why They Stop.”
www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/25/the-rules-of-contagion-by-adam-kucharski-review-outbreaks-of-all-kinds

Like many others, we did not expect covid-19 to impact our plans for December 2020. Yet here we are. Our December [next] conference scheduled to be held physically in Scottsdale, Arizona, will be held virtually. We will resume physical meetings as soon as it is safe to do so. We are currently in the process of signing hotel contracts for four physical meetings in 2021.

In the meantime, we are excited about an upcoming virtual field trip to Stanley Black & Decker on Wednesday, August 19, 1:00–3:30 pm, EDT. CTO and friend of TTI/V Mark Maybury will be our host as we learn that the global toolmaker is active in business incubation (with its Techstars advanced manufacturing accelerator), venture funding (with Stanley Ventures), internal innovation (with Stanley X and factory automation), and cybersecurity (both internally and for its commercial products). During this virtual outing, we will learn about each of these programs and be introduced to a selection of sector-spanning startups, variously making plant-based machine oils, nanocrystalline alloys, a fall protection system, and customized 3-D-printed face masks and enhancements.

Registration for the virtual field trip - along with our virtual September conference - is open on the TTI/Vanguard website.

“I am not a crook!” Oops—sorry, wrong speech. MIT released an eerily believable deepfake video of President Nixon delivering a speech that, thank goodness, never occurred. The 7-minute video depicts a grieving Nixon addressing the nation with news that the moon landing had failed and announcing the tragic deaths of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. (Chris Piehota, virtual conference, Jun 2020; Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia, Washington, D.C., Sep 2015)
www.cnet.com/news/mit-releases-deepfake-video-of-nixon-announcing-nasa-apollo-11-disaster/

If misinformation concerns you as much as it concerns us, do not miss upcoming September speaker Adam Kucharski, author of the best-selling book The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread—and Why They Stop. He will discuss the mathematical similarities between the spread of viruses, misinformation and more. (Paul Cohen, San Francisco, Dec 2014)

We originally called the September conference Game-Changers and planned to focus exclusively on CRISPR, energy and other, well, game-changers. But we’ve changed the name to “The Game Has Changed,” because it has. We all need to think very urgently about the present. We’ll still address nascent technology, but we’ll examine it through the prism of 2020. The dates are September 1, 15, 22, 29; all at 1 pm EST/5 pm GMT, with a virtual field trip to Stanley Black & Decker, hosted by friend-of-TTI/V Mark Maybury, on August 19. Stay tuned for a preliminary agenda next week.

Let’s start with the good news. Google Loon, which we first heard about from Mike Cassidy (San Francisco, Dec 2016), is now bringing connectivity to Kenya. Now let’s see those floating spheres do the same to remote-learning students in developed countries who lack connectivity.
www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/world/africa/google-loon-balloon-kenya.html

And good news for non-U.S. students attending American institutions of higher ed: The Harvard–MIT lawsuit led ICE to rescind the Administration’s order, such that students will be able to enter or remain in the United States, even if their school uses only online instruction.
www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/07/14/891125619/ice-agrees-to-rescind-policy-barring-foreign-students-from-online-study-in-the-u

In 1931, “A Hundred Authors Against Einstein” was published to refute Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. When asked about the book, Einstein retorted by saying “Why 100 authors? If I were wrong, then one would have been enough.”

“CEO” might soon have a second meaning as an increasing range of firms consult with and bring on epidemiologists to guide their reopenings.
www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/06/companies-epidemiologists-coronavirus

On his Twitter page, Mark Maybury (Washington, D.C., Oct 2014; MITRE field trip, McLean, Sep 2015) shows off the face mask he 3-D printed using the personally fitted, open-source design from MyMask Movement. (Jon Schull, San Francisco, Dec 2014; Bre Pettis, Salt Lake City, Dec 2009)

Follow the money and see where it goes … Sequoia Capital is sending $1.35B in venture funds to India and Southeast Asia. This move seems contrarian amidst a contraction of international money flows, but the mammoth investor has long been one of the region's largest funders.
www.techcrunch.com/2020/07/06/sequoia-announces-1-35-billion-venture-and-growth-funds-for-india-and-southeast-asia/

In the midst of covid-19, we can’t quite get together in-person to toast Steven on his retirement. We’ve collected some of our thoughts here, only as a temporary placeholder until we can have a proper send-off.

Note from Lisa Yao: I am in the difficult position of announcing both the death of beloved former Advisory Board member Michael Hawley and the retirement of beloved current Director of TTI/V Steven Cherry. Neither event was unexpected, but our community is lesser for both losses. Mike’s life has been well-celebrated in many online tributes and in his New York Times obituary. Steven penned a poignant goodbye yesterday. And the team had a few things to add. Standing on the shoulders of these two giants, we look toward the future of TTI/V. We are a futuristic organization after all. But we also keep a nod to the past, to all who have served and shaped TTI/Vanguard over the years. 
 
The early digital cell phones were open to eavesdropping and attacks. The early Wi-Fi routers were open to attack. You would think we’d learn something, but millions of smart home devices are open to attack. (Jason Hong, Washington, D.C., Sep 2017)
www.tomsguide.com/news/billions-of-smart-home-devices-open-to-attack-what-to-do
 
The image of a delivery drone waiting for a bus seems crazy, but researchers at Stanford note that it could save a lot of energy. (Peter Calthorpe, Berkeley, Mar 2019)
venturebeat.com/2020/06/03/stanford-lab-envisions-delivery-drones-that-save-energy-by-taking-the-bus//

In this episode, Vishal Sikka considers the future of IT, programming, and tech work more generally, during the next 12–18 months, while the coronavirus is still with us, as well as what changes will stay with us long after it’s gone.

Remember when Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce left Fairchild Semiconductor and put together a dream team at a little startup they called “Intel”? It’s hard not to think about that when reading about ex-Cisco CEO John Chambers and a group of former Cisco engineers at a startup, Pensando Systems, that hopes to challenge Amazon’s cloud/virtualization business. (Doug Burger, San Francisco, Dec 2017; Adam Selipsky, San Francisco, Feb 2010; Vishal Sikka and David Reed, San Diego, Feb 2009)
www.cnbc.com/2019/10/16/cisco-mpls-engineers-pensando-systems-backed-by-hpe-aimed-at-aws.html

For our Kroger field trip (Monroe, Ohio, April 2019), CTO (and beloved TTIV member) Brett Bonner told us, “We find cameras to be the best sensors.” Store cameras there even monitor the shelves for out-of-stock items. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have now similarly found that cameras do a better job of monitoring gym exercises than wearable sensors. And an app version of their system lets you monitor your own exercise with your phone.
www.hcii.cmu.edu/news/2019/gymcam-tracks-exercises-wearable-monitors-cant