About IGF

From Web 2.0, to Synthetic Biology 2.0, to Nano 2.0, to GeoEngineering 2.0

The convergence of innovations is just beginning. This will be a big theme in future blogs. Synthetic biology--the engineering of biological life forms, is fusing with the future interactive mobile RSS web to the engineering of matter with nano and then on to managing climate change with geoEngineering. What's next? Nutrigenomics–food and genomic fusion. Yes.

This is either an extreme example of humanity's hubris or an attempt to use Big Science to fix what needs fixing. More on this later.

The Top Ten Health Care Trends for the 21st Century

1. Most hospitals, clinics, trauma centers, physicians, and patients will be connected to one large network enabling access to critical medical information.
2. Consumer health information, accessible over a variety of Net channels, will become the most in-demand content worldwide.
3. The medical industry will face an ethical and social dilemma over the disclosure of patient information.
4. Health-care professionals, available via remote Internet connections, will provide services to millions of people who were previously under-served.
5. Medicalbots, nonhuman intelligence agents, will dispense medical care to patients and doctors worldwide to save money and share expertise.
6. Advanced nano-biology and genetic technology will eliminate many diseases, accelerate healing, and increase longevity.
7. Bio-engineered food will help promote health and longevity.
8. A new generation of smart drugs, implants, and medical devices will enhance our health and performance.
9. Virtual-reality medical simulations will become the dominant mode of medical training.
10. Cyber-health care that is customized for us-designed to monitor, diagnose, educate, and intervene regardless of location or time-will be common.

Cheap Immortality?

Thanks to John Battelle, the Search Guru who inspired me recently, which was difficult considering the 60's outfits we both were wearing at the time. He reminded me at a local SF bash that blogs make us "immortal". Seems like the right price–cheap immortality, not in value but in the real-time thrill. I gotta get out more.

The Top Ten Nanotech Trends for the 21st Century

1. Nanotech enterprises will provide the ultimate convergence of computers, networks, and biotech, and create products never before even imagined.
2. Nano-devices-invisible, intelligent, and powerful-will be used in every industry redefining the limits of what's possible.
3. Nanotech food compilers will create on-demand, low-cost, quality meals by assembling atoms into food.
4. Smaller than the head of a pin, surgical nanobots will operate from within the human body.
5. Nano-biology will prolong life, prevent illness, and increase people's health.
6. Nano-enhanced humans will have physical, intellectual, and sensing powers superior to other humans.
7. Nanotech will provide a cheap and available source of energy.
8. Nano-factories will build on-demand products in an inexpensive, flexible, and rapid process.
9. Nanotech will revolutionize the global economy, providing Power Tools that will produce high-tech products with low-cost and low-tech resources.
10. Nanotech will create new choices that will alter human evolution, raise dramatic ethical issues, and challenge social norms.

From Clean Tech to Carbon Trading

For my money, I would bet that carbon trading will become a more viable way to limit pollution and polluters by using the good old fashion profit motive to manage climate change. That is why the Clean Tech market is so interesting. There is money to be made in climate change. From water management, to disaster and flood management, to pollution controls and next-gen clean energy products. I fully expect someone to corner the global carbon credit markets soon. Already, this market in the EU and Latin America is in the billions traded each year, under the radar.

The Top Ten Entertainment Trends for the 21st Century

1. New digital technologies will reshape the economics, production, distribution, and marketing of the entertainment industry.
2. Traditional media enterprises must learn to adapt new Internet and computer technologies to maintain competitiveness.
3. The convergence of the Net with TVs, telephones, kiosks, autos, and wireless devices will create many new media channels.
4. On-demand interactive entertainment content that is personalized for our preferences will be a standard feature.
5. Advanced virtual reality bundled with digital agents and holographic entertainment worlds will transform our experience of entertainment.
6. Movie theaters will receive digital broadcasts and satellite downloads of movies, video conferencing, and other interactive programming.
7. Faster, smarter, and more powerful multimedia communications devices will enhance our capacity for producing and distributing entertainment.
8. Digital TV will provide new programs where we will experience real-time participation with the media content, personalities, and shows.
9. Edutainment, the merger of entertainment and education, will offer a new genre of programming that will be greatly in demand.
10. Nontraditional entertainment producers, empowered by Power Tools, will change the industry, offering new products, channels, and innovations.

Carbon Credits: The Future Hedge Fund's Synthetic Financial Product?

Hedge funds invent synthetic products using various asset classes, car loans, currencies, bonds, real estate, to manage risk and returns. I think this creative stock jockey hacker is ready to rumble when they get their hands on the carbon credit markets, yet in their infancy today.

I forecast that carbon credits will become like currency or commodity futures, monetary assets that will be bundled and traded. Carbon--the right to pollute, will be used by "creative" investment bankers to add value to trades over electronic exchanges from NASDAQ, to Bloomberg, to other pure ECN's. Where there is a buck or yen to be made in the clean tech industrial marketplace, where the Global Fortune 1000 are not yet fully green--there will be billions made. You heard it hear first, maybe.

Get your carbon credits here! Free WiMax with your first purchase.