Category: data availability

Participate to worldwide competitions to leverage the collective cognitive capability!

Have you heard of kaggle.com?

It is a site to run workdwide competitions on data mining – how to use data to predict trends and other useful results.

For example, it has run competitions about predicting whether people will attend hospital next year based on their current medical history; how the condition of HIV infected people will evolve based on a limited set of current physiological data. Ford has posted a challenge to help devise an algorithm to decide if the driver is alert…

By leveraging the collective cognitive capabilities of humankind, clever solutions are found quickly that would have taken years and millions of dollars to develop. Winners get recognition by being invited to present their result – or can get 3,000,000$ by solving the problem of hospital admission prediction and thus anticipate the degradation of the condition of the patients.

Ready to participate to the Fourth Revolution? – put your brains at work for the best in one of these number-crunching competitions.

Right now you can participate in the Wikipedia prediction challenge – develop an algorithm to predict how many edits an editor will make in the next few months based on his contribution history – and beat years of Wikipedia internal data-crunching! Ready?

 

Share

How to publish worldwide, from anywhere

Here is a summary of my experience of self-publishing from a country which has an emerging economy (Malaysia). Even from there, today anybody can stand up and publish to the world his or her ideas. All it takes is time and a really not a lot of money.

Obviously there is no shortcut to the creative work of producing the book, manifesto or whatever you want to spread. You still need to get the rights to the material you want to use (pictures…) and possibly get an editor for an independent review of the text.

Then, for anything between 0 and 50$/year you can have your website and blog up and running, publishing to the world, interacting with the world.

For around 70$ you can have an agreement with LightningSource, the Print-on-Demand leader, send the electronic files of the book over and in less than one month, be present on all the electronic bookshops around. You can touch easily the developed countries, and anybody worldwide willing to pay for having the books sent.

In Malaysia I found it better to go the traditional way of distributing my book, by printing a number and letting distributors put them in bookshops. That requires a bit more capital upfront – say 2,000$ for printing 500 books. Still that’s quite affordable, but less easy to come with.

In summary – it is not so difficult to publish your ideas. How come there are still some traditional publishing companies around?

 

Share

The e-brain drain of the Fourth Revolution

I just found out that the world is not flat. The leveling of the world with the Fourth Revolution is a myth.

I’m living in an emerging country, Malaysia. With the Fourth Revolution, I feel a citizen of the world. I can connect to blogs and ideas from anywhere in the world. I can correspond with people from everywhere.

e-brain drain
e-brain drain visualized

And then I decided to write a book, and self-publish it so that it can be available worldwide, using those terrific modern tools like Amazon, e-book versions etc. It looks so simple to do that!

Well- that’s probably the case – if you live in a developed country!

Worldwide distribution on e-stores is where the problems started. I discovered that you can’t download Kindle e-books in Malaysia and Singapore. That the Malaysian authority delivering the ISBNs (unique worldwide book numbers) apparently was never asked for ISBN’s for e-books (they are still wondering what to do with that request). That you can’t upload a book as a Kindle if you don’t have a bank account in the US, UK or euro zone (which fortunately, I have). etc etc

Let’s look beyond this simple example. If I’m living in a developing or emerging country today, and want to share my ideas, I can open a blog or a Facebook page. That’s fantastic. Now, if I want to publish and distribute a book or something more tangible, I need to use developed countries’ companies – and there are significant hurdles to overcome.

Effectively, the developed countries still drain the brains the world, now on internet.

Entrepreneurs of the emerging countries, raise to unleash the potential of your countries! Join the Fourth Revolution infrastructure!

What do you think? Did you encounter such issues?

Share

Quakebook – the Fourth Revolution in action

Just read on Seth Godin’s Domino project blog: Organizing the tribe, teaching, aiding...

I summarize the post and add some content from Amazon.com here:

A new ebook by and for Japanese earthquake survivors.

I’m not sure if you’ve come across Quakebook: it’s a collection of short stories by people who were in the earthquake in Japan on March 11.

quakebook - stories from the Japanese earthquake
quakebook

In just over a week, a group of unpaid professional and citizen journalists who met on Twitter created a book to raise money for Japanese Red Cross earthquake and tsunami relief efforts.

In addition to essays, artwork and photographs submitted by people around the world, including people who endured the disaster and journalists who covered it, 2:46: Aftershocks: Stories from the Japan Earthquake contains a piece by Yoko Ono, and work created specifically for the book by authors William Gibson, Barry Eisler and Jake Adelstein.“The primary goal,” says the book’s editor, a British resident of Japan, “is to record the moment, and in doing so raise money for the Japanese Red Cross Society to help the thousands of homeless, hungry and cold survivors of the earthquake and tsunami. The biggest frustration for many of us was being unable to help these victims. I don’t have any medical skills, and I’m not a helicopter pilot, but I can edit. A few tweets pulled together nearly everything – all the participants, all the expertise – and in just over a week we had created a book including stories from an 80-year-old grandfather in Sendai, a couple in Canada waiting to hear if their relatives were okay, and a Japanese family who left their home, telling their young son they might never be able to return.”

People can buy the book at Amazon UK http://amzn.to/qbuk and Amazon US http://amzn.to/quakebkus

They can also follow @quakebook on Twitter, re-tweet the #quakebook hashtag, like the Quakebook page on Facebook http://on.fb.me/htJxCw, or simply express their support at the Quakebook site http://bit.ly/qukbook

WOW! The power of the Fourth Revolution in action where people need most of it! In one month a book is out and people are connected like never before!

 

Share

Making sense of data: the limits of datadregding

Today as yesterday, making sense of available data to create information and knowledge is as important as before.

The difference is that the available data is way larger and much more accessible to anybody. Statistical analysis tools on Internet-based communication are available for free, like Google Analytics. And a lot of people try to use then to increase their own or their marketing impact.

And there come questions like ‘what’s the best time for me to tweet’? It’s possible to run that analysis, as this blog post by Chris Penn, “when is the best time to tweet”, shows. Now what is the meaning of this analysis? Is it statistically significant? Do we effectively control all the other parameters that influence the result? What are the assumptions – here, the assumption is clearly that people are supposed to live in real time, you want to tweet at a moment they are connected. Is that real? For myself I look at tweeter once a day for all the day’s tweets…

This excellent post by Tom Webster about ‘Social Media data dregding” shows very clearly how these challenges affect the interpretation of the data.

As a conclusion. Running statistical analysis on heaps of data, in the Fourth Revolution, is easier than ever. It makes all the more dangerous the conclusions we get. The good old principles of statistical control and design of experiments are still valid. And more needed than ever. That should be part of the basic literacy in the Collaborative Age.

Share

The future of manufacturing and POD (print-on-demand)

Do you know POD (print-on-demand)? Well that’s quite easy: you choose the book you want and a machine produces it for you in a few minutes, cover, binding and all.

print-on-demand machine
print-on-demand machine

That’s not a dream: that’s today. As a self-publisher, Amazon and a number of others propose to put my book on display in their electronic stores. Should anyone buy it, a copy gets printed and sent.

No more stocks of hundreds of books that might not be sold. No more risk to produce stocks of no value. Just-in-time print-on-demand.

What’s visionary though is electronic bookstores just consisting of a print-on-demand (POD) machine. Because people still like to touch books and get a quick glimpse inside. But soon that will take off.

Think of it. Today more than 60% of the price of a book is distribution – manual handling, logistics, taking back unsold books etc. POD just does bypass this problem. It will remove distributors as intermediaries and create value by making more books physically available everywhere that a huge bookstore could ever contain.

POD will replace bulk manufacturing. Because it will also apply to everything else, not just books.

Share

The power of collaborative information: a live demo, right now!

Do you follow the evolution of the situation in Fukushima nuclear power plant? I do, and it happens I know a bit about nuclear power plants and nuclear safety. So basically, as in any field where you happen to know a bit more than average, I am frustrated by the approximations of conventional media.

So, I was looking for the best source of information for me – not just high level plain-vanilla information but accurate and detailed information to allow me to understand what was happening.

I found it.

It’s not CNN or any of the television news networks.

It’s not the International Herald Tribune or any of the newspaper web sites.

It’s Wikipedia. The Fukushima 1 article is up-to-date as quickly as the professional media and much, much more precise and detailed.

Fukushima NPP accident picture (from Wikipedia)
Fukushima NPP accident picture (from Wikipedia)

The power of the Fourth Revolution in action: the collaborative enterprise of amateurs beats the professional news.

When do you start looking at Wikipedia and other collaborative news sites for a better information coverage?

Share

A live example of how the Fourth Revolution brings opportunities to developing countries

I want to share with you a true story of how the Fourth Revolution can bring incredible opportunities, regardless of whether you are living in a developing country.

A few month ago I was thinking about the concept of the Fourth Revolution, and considering maybe to write a book, when I stumbled on this image in the middle of a slideshow of diverse stunning images (thanks Jean-Marc!!)

a picture by Alim Boeana
a picture by Alim Boeana

WOW – I thought, that’s a great illustration of the Fourth Revolution concept! How can you get more visual?

So I went to try to get a copy of the picture in high definition so that I could use it for printing, and possibly the Fourth Revolution book’s cover.

So I googled a little bit, found soon the name of the photographer, Alim Boeana, and uncovered within a few minutes that he is a young and talented photographer from Indonesia, working in Bali and Yogjakarta.

After trying unsuccessfully a few email addresses I could find on the internet I finally managed to establish the contact thanks to Facebook (you can send messages to people you don’t know). We quickly came to an arrangement for the license for the picture, I transferred the money using Paypal, and I received the full high quality pictures by email. They now adorn the website, the blog and soon the cover of the book.

So, what’s the lesson from the story? Having posted some pictures on internet, Alim put a seed to the world. He could be seen. His stunning pictures were reproduced and spread from person to person. I could contact him although he is in a developing country, and that made absolutely no difference. And, in a typical win-win situation, Alim could get an unforeseen compensation for his pain and talent, and I could get a great picture for my project.

Just 5 years ago this would not have been possible without excessive pain, and probably we could never have been able to contact each other.

Who now still says the Fourth Revolution has not ignited? And that the entire world is not participating?

Share

Part 3 of the Fourth Revolution Manifesto is on line !

The collective cognitive capability of humankind is once again deeply transformed by a new, ground breaking communication technology. Find out HOW cheap, long distance interactive communication transforms our collective cognitive capabilities!

Fourth Revolution Manifesto part III cover

You can access the third part of the Fourth Revolution Manifesto – HOW the collective cognitive capability of humankind is once again transformed! by clicking on the link. You can also read and share the document on Scribd – it has a great reader and can also be used as a backup if the above link does not work: the Fourth Revolution Manifesto – part III on Scribd .

Don’t hesitate to comment and bring in suggestions in the comments to this blog post!

Share

Broadcasting power defined the institution of the Industrial Age

So many institutions of the Industrial Age were defined by their broadcasting power.

They were defined by their specialized journal, their TV channel, their radio station.

Broadcasting was expensive and complicated. It took institutions to do that.

Institutions decided what could be broadcast and what could not be. Institutions decided what was mainstream and what was not. Institutions decided what was good and what was not.

Today, unprecedented long distance interconnectivity bypasses the monopoly of institutions to broadcast information.

Anybody can, for no cost, broadcast to the world.

When will institutions realize that superior broadcasting power is not any more the justification of their existence?

Share