Ideas of the Future - Business Brains And Bytes
June 27th, 2007Was Reading the Australian Financial Review Boss Magazine at lunch, with feature on “50 business ideas to navigate the future” picked out a few related to my usual topics of interest, tech dev, psychology and business.
- The little guy - Mass scale doesn’t always mean market clout. “Long tail” effect helps explain shift from mass production to niche.
- Evangelist - Coolest new job is to be an evangelist. Love it.
- Web2.0 and 3.0 - Web3.0 will take it one step further - integrating your online personality (avatar) more closely with the real you.
- Neurons - Bring on the Darwinian Renaissance. These days the interest is all in the evolution of the mind, with the trend to use Evolutionary Psychology as a framework for unlocking the reasons we behave the way we do.
- Transparency - We like our companies to have a bit of a human side to them, just as we do out leaders.
- Digital Eye- Massachussets Institute of tech folk have reverse engineered human eyes and the part of the brain that recognises objects (ventral visual pathway). Applications for a pair of electronic eyes are limitless. The electronic eyes get in right 82% in the lab and human eyes 80%…
- Brain Control, No more mouse (or RSI)- Translates human brain waves into computerspeak- called electroencephalography (EEG). Player wears sensitised scalp cap..
- Happiness - People continue searching for ways to have a fit and toned mind as well as glutes and abs. Think Martin Seligman, Guru of the Positive Psychology movement (A young branch of Psychology)
June 28th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
It is great to see a business magazine actually look at science and technology in a thoughtful way. Sadly, ruined for me with the comment that ‘our Neanderthal brains have a lot to answer for, evolutionary psychology specialists say.’ Well, no decent evolutionary psychologist would say that as Neanderthals were on a different evolutionary pathway from modern humans and there was no interbreeding between Neanderthals and humans (or at least, if there was, there do not seem to be any living descendants). So, we do not, nor ever had, Neanderthal brains! Science reporting is difficult but a very elementary mistake like this makes me question the accuracy of the rest of the articles where I do not have specialist knowledge.