The Great Tech Election – not

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

Romney (Photo credit: Talk Radio News Service)

Here in the United States we are preparing for Presidential and Congressional elections in which the core issues being fought over by the parties are focused on technology and the future. Research, space, implications for security and social values; innovation to drive our research and development; the steep climb up the exponential curve that will take us far in the next 2 and 4 years; the next rounds of the digital revolution.

Except that we aren’t. Whatever the merits of our parties and their respective leaders, there’s not a soul who would describe the 2012 campaign in those terms. I wonder why.

Look at these expert panels that explain something of the answer:

Looking Ahead: Investing in America’s Competitiveness » Tech Policy Summit.

#Rioplus20 “marks a beginning for the world”?

Aside

The UN Secretary-General has spoken in these ringing terms of the Rio event taking place this week – in which key world leaders such as President Obama decided not to take part.

My view is that we need to start over. The process is essentially running backwards. Whatever one’s take on the three core issues in the debate – whether the world is warming (looks like a Yes), whether humans caused it (lots of evidence, yet some smart people don’t buy it), and whether we can do much about it (hence Rio – and, note, the absence of key leaders, government and corporate) – we face growing issues of global risk (from financial collapse to nanobots) and the world needs to organize itself around sane and consensus risk assessment and mitigation processes. This issue is in fact one among many.

Here’s what I wrote after the Planet under Pressure prep con in April (expanding on the remarks I was invited to deliver). https://futureofbiz.org/2012/04/13/global-risk-planetary-pressure-and-rolling-down-to-rio20-2/

UN Secretary-General says Rio+20 marks a beginning for the world | United Nations Radio.

Tech and Corporate Culture: #social #DC #Gov2.0

Posted on June 14, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

Two great posts today – an interview with the “federal CTO” and a book review in Atlantic – come to a neat focus: the core problem of corporate culture, in government and business. I’ve written about it before, and I shall again. We have not quite exhausted the issue. For now, a brief comment, and a suggestion that you read these two pieces in parallel, one with each eye, and see what you see.

The book is about how our elites are failing us. Part of its argument resembles mine yesterday on the problems of the “expert” and an expertise too narrow to bring with it judgment or innovative capacities. Part is more focused, and like the reviewer Conor Friedersdorf I am more taken with his summary of the analysis than with the solutions proposed by the writer. But the book looks well worth a read, and I plan to add it to my list.

The interview draws my attention to one of the deep problems of Washington – that its assemblage of thousands of smart, hard-working people seems increasingly inadequate to the task of leading the world’s most advanced civilization through fast and cumulative change. My point is entirely bipartisan. I was interested that the panel I moderated at the Tech Policy Summit last week in Napa agreed that whoever wins the upcoming election will not make much difference to the tech/innovation agenda. There’s no question that the current administration has taken many steps in the “right” direction, including the CTO/CIO appointments. Yet (read the interview) these smart people have little strategic impact. They are some way down the totem pole. The brief campaign suggestion (did I imagine this?) of a CTO in the cabinet did not go far. (Fyi, I have argued for “under-secretaries for the future” in every department and agency; a new White House Council along the lines of NEC, NSC, DPC; and the inclusion in cabinet of the science adviser as well as these two C guys. Still waiting for a call asking me to fill in the details so the executive orders can be drawn up just right.)

Point is, and this needs to be shouted from the roofs and stuck on every bumper, DC’s core problem is a corporate culture problem. It is, as it were, the ultimate old-economy corporation, with guaranteed revenues, tenure for most of its operatives, and the most elegant blinkers that elegant minds can design.

This is where the power of “social” to transform institutional culture is potentially vast, since it opens the doors to fresh and powerful forces that will if unimpeded force the (re)alignment of the organization with its customer/citizen base. We tend to call this “social” when it comes to biz, and “Gov2.0/3.0” when it comes to democracy and its systems of governance. Point is: This is the strategic rather than the tactical significance of social media. It’s a huge challenge to take this in, especially as so many of the leaders in government and biz are, ahem, decidedly old-economy in their thinking. And talk is not enough. I keep referring to the bizarre fact that hardly any of our top 250 corporate CIOs use key social media (Google Mark Fidelman’s HBR piece or search this blog for my discussion of it). Here’s another (sorry, enthusiasts for the present administration). In a revealing speech in 2010, the President shared the fact that he does “not know how to work” the iPod, iPad, XBox, or PlayStation – the whole speech is worth reading for the decidedly negative context in which these technologies are viewed. Point here is simply this: Like the aforementioned CIOs, the President hires good people and tells them, at a certain level, to get on with it. Until corporate culture fundamentally shifts, that is going to make only a tactical difference. Strategic shift is awaited and will depend on two things: The appointment of leaders at the highest levels who are intuitively in sync with radical innovative approaches and can lead from the top; and the co-ordinate opening of the organizational boundaries to unstoppable pressures from the customer/citizen base.

There is much more to be said, not least in that the mitigation of the ill-effects that can also flow from these technologies (from uber-surveillance to killer drones to job destruction to fundamental dehumanization) will only ever be addressed in the context of an embrace of the pace and scope of change that is implied in the Moore’s law-driven digital revolution.

The Obama speech:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hcoyG-Ck3-VwZB7fqpUFXbffoObg

Atlantic book review:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/why-our-elites-are-failing-us-and-how-to-fix-it/258492/

CNN Interview with the US CTO:

Obama’s chief tech officer: Let’s unleash ingenuity of the public – CNN.com.

Federal #Science and Ideology: #DC and the #Valley

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

In a largely historical op-ed in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, Michael Lubell of CUNY and the American Physical Society lambastes the current parties for their inability to agree on the priority of science funding – in marked contrast to earlier efforts over the past generation when, despite differences of emphasis, bipartisan collaboration led to big increases in the public funding of science and technology.

My take? Three quick points.

1. This brings us back to the question of the question. How is it framed? Little by little, broader concerns with budget, disaffection with “big government,” and stories of weird research projects (always findable, and some plainly are weird), have chipped away at the semi-consensus. I think there’s more to it, and am not sure if the big increases in public science finding would continue anyway for several other reasons. But the issue is framed differently now.

2. I sat round a table recently with the CTO of one of our major tech companies and asked him why, when his organization has strategy people working for the chairman, and R and D people working for him – all with timelines of 7-10 years in their heads – they have federal relations people in DC told that around 18 months should be their time horizon. That is, why have not our major tech companies done the heavy lifting in driving forward the politics of the long term? Also a big issue. My sense is that their deciding to do so, and agreeing long-term goals on which for all their diverse interests they can work together, will prove central to the possibility of a prosperous and secure American tomorrow.

3. Back of the conflicting ideological agendas in Washington lies a remarkable degree of unanimity in, as it were, the “corporate culture.” I have written elsewhere about the divide between the District and the Valley (search this blog or see my Kindle e-book Innovation President). It is vast. Our creative, entrepreneurial culture is almost entirely divorced from our political culture. This is true across the parties, and despite fine people and good initiatives. The cultures are deeply misaligned, and few people at either end care. That’s the core issue here. Budget levels, and an inability to collaborate on agreeing them, are presenting problems. Their cause lies elsewhere.

It’s not my view that more money is “the answer,” though federal S and T spend is very important. There are many other questions that need to be addressed if we are going to ramp up American S and T leadership, and resulting innovation, for the next generation. In the past I have proposed the abolition of academic tenure (through an appropriations rider), restructuring of funding agencies (we could start off with a new one taking 10% of existing non-DoD spend and based in the Valley), cabinet positions for the Science Adviser, the CIO, the CTO; and more besides. I’ve also proposed moving Camp David to the Valley (my friends out there are horrified by the traffic implications) – as the first step in the migration of the federal government to the west coast that I believe to be probably inevitable and certainly desirable in the first Pacific century.

Our C-PET motto is Asking Tomorrow’s Questions. It’s all about the questions. Washington is a city full of smart people with answers. Get the questions right and things will change.

Lubell: Science Funding and the Ideological Divide : Roll Call Opinion.

Rolling down to Rio

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

Rolling down to Rio:
The Twin Challenges of Global Process: Sustaining Credibility and Engaging Dissent

Nigel M. de S. Cameron
Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies, Washington, DC

I spent this past week at Planet under Pressure (PuP), a global conference on sustainability and climate convened in London under the eminent auspices of the Royal Society and the network of science academies around the planet– as a preparation for Rio+20, which is just around the corner. It’s plain the organizing committee were no fans of Rudyard Kipling or we would have been greeted on daily arrival by renditions of his splendid song Rolling down to Rio, in place of the housemusic (ahem, housemuzak) that I assume was picked by the ExCel Center (which, somewhat amusingly for a such a carbon-conscious event, is owned by Abu Dhabi). Here it is, sung by that wonderful American baritone, Leonard Warren: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk99b7sNFzQ.

It was a privilege to be invited to participate, and admire the skills of my esteemed professional friend Lidia Brito (science policy director at UNESCO and former science/education minister of Mozambique) as conference co-chair; and Nisha Pillai, network anchor turned gracious but when necessary lethal emcee. 3,000 people, mainly scientists, filled the hall. After an opening evening and four long days it finally all came to a conclusion, and I am mulling. So take these thoughts as ideas in progress on a process of high significance for the good of the planet (which includes us) – and an object lesson in how to do, and perhaps not to do, what needs to be done. And that is true whether or not your own view lies in the climate/sustainability mainstream. The video and closing statement are here: http://www.planetunderpressure2012.net/

I had been invited to speak in the session on innovative solutions, and focused my remarks on the need to innovative the shape of the debate itself – partly by bringing other parties to the table. I summarized my comments – and much else – for those who follow me on Twitter (@nigelcameron).

On reflection there is much on my mind, including, in no special order:
• What’s the value of endless exhortations? We should, we must, everyone needs to. My suspicion is they are counter-productive. There were hundreds. Life in an exhortatory community is depressing and a little tedious. And it was left to Oliver Morton of the Economist to ask pointedly that speakers not say “we” without defining who. EC science adviser Anne Glover’s push-back on this point was not helpful.
• What’s the value of advisers and committees? We are awash with them. And while I don’t object if the UN Secretary-General wants a science adviser and an advisory committee to boot (one leading idea being ventilated), it is hard to see what difference this will make in the scheme of things; as if an exponential, hockey-stick increase in the number of advisers and committees will solve the problem (whatever, precisely, the problem is).
• Has the emergence of the scientific community as, may I say, a lobbying community, been useful for science or for society? I suspect not at all. I’m all for scientists taking ethical views and engaging society; but their operating, or seeming to, in a manner that makes them look like a labor union or enviro pressure group has been less of a good idea. And (note to the more enthusiastic) shrill is always a negative factor in the effort at persuasion.
• The old joke that insanity may be defined as doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result kept haunting me.

Participants in the Conversation

1. I opened my remarks with the suggestion that the debate is running backwards. If the capacity of the global science/NGO community to shape policy on the broad climate/sustainability agenda is weaker than it was pre-Copenhagen, what does this mean? Inter alia: That people need to get better at listening and learning –and focus on reshaping the discussion. The alternative reality of international conferences is not doing the trick.
2. I argued for much greater inclusion, around the table, of the business community. PuP had a smattering of business speakers – one of whom was the subject of a demo (sigh). Unless the discussion of sustainability and the global environmental good is owned by industry and, more specifically, by those who shape the global capital markets, it may make activists of the NGO or science professor variety feel good, but it will not leverage planetary decision-making. Where was Goldman Sachs? Innovation leaders such as IBM, GE, Google, Apple? Top VCs – like Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn) and Peter Thiel (Facebook et al., and also one of the most stimulating global thinkers about the future and technology)? Leaders in the energy field? In complex ways the take of all these parties shapes global policy choices.
3. It’s complicated, but the “new corporate social responsibility” (CSR) is increasingly building alignment between business activity and global sustainability. Famously, Harvard’s Michael Porter – long the guru of value in the world of business – has come out in favor of a radical notion of “shared value” as the key. It’s a third-generation notion of corporations thinking about the wider impacts of their activities, after old-time philanthropy and the more recent thinking about CSR. (Discussed here in my column for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: http://bclc.uschamber.com/blog/2012-01-11/so-what-about-board)
4. Then we come to government. At PuP, among various luminaries, we had two members of the British government speaking – they arrived, delivered their speeches, and left, making it very plain that PuP was not the main thing on their minds in the UK this week. I was thinking that it would have been interesting, for example, had David Willets stayed the full 4 days and served as respondent to key speakers. Until the G8/BRICS/OECD governments can own this process, it is not owned. IGO, NGOs, and science networks are needed and can accomplish a lot. But they do not hold the whip hand.

Subjects of the Conversation

I have neither the intention nor the competence to get into the pros and cons of the very complex climate debate. But to an interested observer, some matters seem to me to be clear after my engagement in PuP.

1. For one thing, there are various distinct logical strands in the conversation that tend to be lumped together. You do not need to be convinced that humans caused warming to see it occurring and note a need to act to contain its impacts both through mitigation and (in whatever manner) through efforts to affect the future process. By the same token, you can accept the entirety of the conventional analysis and not think it is politically possible to do much about it (a view more widely held I suspect than is often admitted). You can doubt pretty much the entire analysis and yet believe that a prudent world should act just in case it should be true. There are other variants. It would be helpful to disentangle their logic. That (ahem) is how one builds alliances and a case for action.
2. For another, advocates of the conventional view have to my mind been much too ready to throw everything into the hopper. Yes, I know, it’s all ultimately connected. But if you are looking to engage global opinion in action to mitigate the impact of warming and, separately, limit its pace, why bring the population issue to the fore? It’s a surefire way of losing a billion potential supporters here (err, the Roman Catholic Church) and a billion there. The same is true of the issue of rising differentials between the rich and the poor. It isn’t that these questions don’t matter. But, again, they are guaranteed ways to push away people who don’t buy these agenda items. By the same token, there are many particular sustainability issues (fish stock depletion?) that stand on their own two feet and do not depend on other areas of analysis for their credibility. The tendency to aggregate the issues into one, like that to aggregate views into two, is not helpful.
3. For a third, advocates of the conventional view need to be careful not to damage their case further in the manner in which they seek to make it. Feverishness in advocacy invariably undercuts credibility. Suggestions, for example (heard at PuP) that skeptics need to be given “treatment,” or that we need a move to qualified majority voting in global environmental regulation, are as rhetorically counter-productive as they are impractical; and the widely held idea that the only reason some people question the conventional view is that Big Oil is funding them is simply untrue – as well as unhelpful. In a global knowledge economy, truth wins out through respectful dialogue. (And, needless to say, “denier” language – which I did not hear this week – is as disrespectful to the victims of the Holocaust as it is to partners in the current discussion.)

These are notes, not points in argument of a thesis, so I do not offer a conclusion. But they are notes offered toward the repristination of the process. Your responses will be appreciated, as we roll down to Rio, and beyond.

Two good blog summaries of the week:

http://www.eaem.co.uk/news/global-eco-summits-compared-matrix-amid-call-urgent-action

http://www.scidev.net/en/agriculture-and-environment/planet-under-pressure-2012-2/news/science-policy-relations-stuck-in-outdated-era-.html#.T3ceQghloc0.twitter

Facebook meets European Privacy

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook

Image via Wikipedia

Austrian Law Student Faces Down Facebook – NYTimes.com.

There are so many issues raised at the interface of Europe, the United States, the Facebook IPO, privacy in general, the future of the internet, the cloud, the internet of things . . . goodness, on and on it goes; the complex and fast-evolving nerve-system of 21st century knowledge engines as they interconnect people and institutions and ideas and the rest of the personal and social order. It’s not easy to speak about any without speaking of all. Perhaps we should invent the hyperlink so we can do both.

But as this story shows, some facts are plain. Europe’s forward position on privacy is leading the global policy discussion willy-nilly – that is, the lack of an integrated global conversation that can shape policy has left the field open to the most conservative major player, which happens to be based in Brussels. At the same time, as the story demonstrates, Facebook’s decision to plonk down its European HQ in Ireland (I assume for tax reasons) leaves the Irish Data Protection office with something close to veto power. The Austrian law student, whom Facebook’s European policy head is quoted as saying very nice things about, is pressing his case and reckons that even the Irish response is far from adequate.

Lessons? Well, we sure need a more adequate global discussion. We need privacy issues to be viewed by the major corporate players as keys to profitably business models and not as a nuisance. We need the idea that they seem to assume – that mi casa es su casa; once we hand over the data it’s theirs for ever – to be replaced with a far more (cliche alert) granular approach. It’s coming, but much too slowly. And I still don’t understand (help me please, Facebook and Google) why we don’t have a fee-for-service alternative in which no data gets kept or tracked at all. Since (per the Facebook filing) each user is worth remarkably little in in dollar terms, this would seem a no- brainer.

Meanwhile we note that Facebook now enables us to see all the data they have on us (in Europe they are required to put it on a hard disk in the mail), which is something.

And an Austrian law student is using Facebook’s Irish corporate registration to leverage the conversation. But hey, century 21 is all about asymmetry, no?