Keynote
Daniel G. Amen, MD
Medical Director and CEO, Amen Clinics, Inc.; Author, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life; Monthly columnist for Men's Health Magazine

Bio: Daniel G. Amen, M.D. is a child and adult psychiatrist, brain imaging specialist, and the medical director of Amen Clinics, Inc. He oversees four clinics, respectively located in Newport Beach and Fairfield, California; Tacoma, Washington; and Reston, Virginia. Dr. Amen is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, as well as a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Amen is a nationally recognized expert in the fields of the brain and behavior and brain imaging. He has pioneered the use of brain imaging in clinical psychiatric practice, and his clinics have the world’s largest database of functional brain scans for neuropsychiatry. Dr. Amen did his general psychiatric training at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and his child and adolescent psychiatry training at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. He has won writing and research awards from the American Psychiatric Association, the U.S. Army, and the Baltimore-D.C. Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Dr. Amen has been published around the world. He is the author of numerous professional and popular articles, 19 books, and a number of audio and video programs. Dr. Amen, together with The United Paramount Network and Leeza Gibbons, produced a show, “The Truth about Drinking”, on alcohol education for teenagers. The program went on to win an Emmy Award for the Best Educational Television Show. In 1999, Random House published Dr. Amen’s book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, which held a spot on the New York Times Bestsellers List and was translated into twelve languages. Dr. Amen is also the author of Healing ADD and Healing the Hardware of the Soul. Additionally, he co-authored Healing Anxiety and Depression and Preventing Alzheimer’s. In October 2005, Harmony Books will publish Dr. Amen’s upcoming book, Making a Good Brain Great.

You can read Dr. Amen’s column, “Head Check”, every month in Men’s Health Magazine.

Read Aheads:
Brain Place
Fascinating articles on brain healing and enhancement, and hundreds of online SPECT images for free browsing by the Amen Clinic. Great resources for improving mental resiliency and performance.
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). In the section, "What experts in the field are saying", Amen writes, "I was taught to believe that if you live a clean life and work hard you will [automatically] be successful. I believed that there was something the matter with the character of those people who were drug addicts, murderers, child abusers, and even those who took their own lives. After being involved with about 1,500 brain SPECT studies my mind has completely changed. I now believe that it is essential to evaluate the brain when behavior is out of the bounds of normal..."
A Skeptical View of SPECT Scans and Dr. Daniel Amen. (Harriet Hall, MD) "I believe that it is improper to charge thousands of dollars for a test that has not been validated and may not be safe. I don't think any of his research has provided clear evidence that patients who have had SPECT scans have superior clinical outcomes to adequately treated patients who have not been scanned. That's really the bottom line—especially with an invasive, expensive test involving significant radiation. At the very least, he should be describing the test as experimental." Pioneering change is often difficult, and when tests are expensive and invasive, controversy abounds. Listen to Dr. Amen and draw your own conclusions about how SPECT and other powerful medical imaging technologies should be used in coming years.

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader
Janna Anderson
Assistant Professor, Elon University's School of Communications; Director, "Imagining the Internet" Predictions Database; Author of the upcoming, Imagining the Internet: Personalities, Predictions, Perspectives

Bio: Janna Quitney Anderson is an assistant professor and director of internet projects at Elon University's School of Communications. Her expertise is concentrated in the fields of internet history; the future of the internet; and print/online journalism. She has directed several major studies for the Pew Internet & American Life Project, building the Internet Predictions Database (www.elon.edu/predictions <http://www.elon.edu/predictions>; ) and its various research components and completing an ethnographic study of the use of the internet by small-town families (www.elon.edu/pew/oneweek ).

She is the author of the book "Imagining the Internet: Personalities, Predictions, Perspective," (2005, Rowman & Littlefield). She joined the faculty at Elon in 1999, following a 20-year career as an editor and reporter for daily newspapers in Minnesota and North Dakota. She has written articles for the New York Times News Service, USA Today, Newspaper Research Journal, Operant Subjectivity and Advertising Age. She is a co-author of the 2005 Pew Internet report "The Future of the Internet," and is currently working on a follow-up survey to that report.

Read Aheads:
24,000 Minutes on the Internet
"A look at how people in one North Carolina town used the Internet during a single week in 2001. A rundown of the Internet’s impact on the families of this community offers an intimate look at the way being online is changing America. Among the highlights: Several families have set up Internet-based businesses out of their homes; one woman decided to have a hysterectomy and made other lifestyle changes because of the information she found online; the local cooperative extension agent receives pictures of strange bugs as e-mail attachments and advises residents how to combat them."
Pew Internet and American Life Project draws national attention
Project highlights predictions for future internet use from 1990 and 1995, will release new survey in 2005
Survey foresees Internet's expansion
"In poll, experts expect high-tech terror attack. Zoom ahead to 2014, and here's what you might expect: computer devices embedded in your clothes, refrigerator, car and phone that transmit details about your life to vast databases available to government and corporate snoops. Technological advances will be stunning, yet we could experience a devastating cyber-attack and may not feel comfortable enough to vote online."

Back to Abstract Page

Emcee
Sonia Arrison
Director of Technology Studies, Pacific Research Institute (PRI)

Bio: Sonia Arrison is director of Technology Studies at the California-based Pacific Research Institute (PRI) where she researches and writes on the intersection of new technologies and public policy. Specific areas of interest include privacy policy, e-government, intellectual property, nanotechnology, evolutionary theory, and telecommunications.

She is a regular columnist for Tech Central Station and Tech News World. Her work has appeared in many publications including CBS MarketWatch, CNN, Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, The National Post, Washington Times, and Consumer Research Magazine. A frequent media guest and National Press Club First Amendment Scholar, Ms. Arrison has appeared on National Public Radio’s Forum, Tech TV, CBC's The National, and CNN's Headline News. She was also recently the host of a radio show called "digital dialogue" on the Voice America network.

Arrison is author of several major PRI studies including Canning Spam: An Economic Solution to Unwanted Email, Being Served: Broadband Competition in the Small and Medium Sized Business Market, and Consumer Privacy: A Free Choice Approach. She is co-author of Punishing Innovation: A Report on California Legislators’ Anti-Tech Voting, Internet Taxes: What California Legislators Should Know, and editor of Telecrisis: How Regulation Stifles High Speed Internet Access.
Often asked for advice on technology issues, Arrison has given testimony and served as an expert witness for various government committees such as the Congressional Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce and the California Commission on Internet Political Practices.

Prior to joining PRI, Arrison focused on Canadian-U.S. regulatory and political issues at the Donner Canadian Foundation. She also worked at the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, B.C., where she specialized in regulatory policy and privatization. She received her BA from the University of Calgary and an MA from the University of British Columbia.

Read Aheads:
Sonia Arrison's Blog
Sonia Says...
Links to Arrison's clips and select op-ed pieces:
Canning Spam: An Economic Solution to Unwanted Email
Being Served: Broadband Competition in the Small and Medium Sized Business Market
Consumer Privacy: A Free Choice Approach.
Technology Studies: Media Coverage and Outreach

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader
Ruzena Bajcsy
Director, CITRIS (Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society); Former Assistant Director, National Science Foundation, CISE; Former Director, GRASP, U Penn

Bio: Dr. Ruzena Bajcsy ("buy cheese") was appointed Director of CITRIS at the University of California, Berkeley on November 1, 2001. Prior to coming to Berkeley, she was Assistant Director of the Computer Information Science and Engineering Directorate (CISE) between December 1, 1998 and September 1, 2001. As head of National Science Foundation's CISE directorate, Dr. Bajcsy managed a $500 million annual budget. She came to the NSF from the University of Pennsylvania where she was a professor of computer science and engineering. Dr. Bajcsy is a pioneering researcher in machine perception, robotics and artificial intelligence. She is a professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at Berkeley. She was also Director of the University of Pennsylvania's General Robotics and Active Sensory Perception Laboratory, which she founded in 1978.

Dr. Bajcsy has done seminal research in the areas of human-centered computer control, cognitive science, robotics, computerized radiological/medical image processing and artificial vision. She is highly regarded, not only for her significant research contributions, but also for her leadership in the creation of a world-class robotics laboratory, recognized world wide as a premiere research center. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, as well as the Institute of Medicine. She is especially known for her wide-ranging, broad outlook in the field and her cross-disciplinary talent and leadership in successfully bridging such diverse areas as robotics and artificial intelligence, engineering and cognitive science. Dr. Bajcsy received her master's and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Slovak Technical University in 1957 and 1967, respectively. She received a Ph.D. in computer science in 1972 from Stanford University, and since that time has been teaching and doing research at Penn's Department of Computer and Information Science. She began as an assistant professor and within 13 years became chair of the department. Prior to her work at the University of Pennsylvania, she taught during the 1950s and 1960s as an instructor and assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and Department of Computer Science at Slovak Technical University in Bratislava. She has served as advisor to more than 50 Ph.D. recipients. In 2001 she received an honorary doctorate from University of Ljubljana in Slovenia In 2001 she became a recipient of the ACM A. Newell award.

Read Aheads:
When and where will AI meet Robotics? Issues in representation
"In the early days of AI, Robotics was an integral part of our research effort. In the early 70's all major AI laboratories had research programs in robotics. However, by the late 70's Robotics took its own course separate from the core activities of AI. We believe that the differentiation between these two fields comes from..."
Scalable Parallel Computing for Real-Time Telepresence in Medical Imaging
"This demonstration summarizes preliminary progress in implementing a telepresence engine for medical imaging on a scalable cluster of heterogeneous computers using the message-passing paradigm of parallel computing."
Testimony of Dr. Ruzena Bajcsy, Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, National Science Foundation, Before the House Basic Research Subcommittee hearing on Beyond Silicon Computing, September 12, 2000
New directions in computer science and engineering, new paradigms beyond silicon computing.
Testimony to House Basic Research Science Committee, July 31st, 2001, Ruzena Bajcsy
"Recent dramatic advances in computing, communications, and in collecting, digitizing, and processing information are having a major impact today not only in the world of science, but on the everyday experiences of the average U. S. citizen. These advances are undeniable indicators that the horizons of Information Technology (IT) are much broader, and its impacts on society far larger, than were anticipated even a few short years ago."

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader
Peter Barrett
CTO and GM of Engineering, Microsoft TV

Bio: Peter Barrett serves as chief technology officer and general manager of engineering for the Microsoft® TV Division at Microsoft Corporation. Barrett leads Microsoft TV’s strategic product development and planning and ensures the division’s ongoing innovation in the area of digital TV technologies. His technical vision and leadership were instrumental to Microsoft TV successful launch of its IPTV platform and Foundation Edition software, products that have been embraced by leading cable and telecommunication companies like Bell Canada, Comcast and SBC.

Recognized as a leading expert in Internet Protocol Television and advanced digital TV software, Barrett is a frequent speaker at industry conferences.

Read Aheads:
Enabling the Perfect Viewing Experience
I want my IP TV! Interview of Peter Barrett by Bob Wallace, Editor-in-Chief, and Sean Buckley, Contributing Editor

Back to Abstract Page

Foresight Tutorial
Peter Bishop
Chair and Professor, MS in Studies of the Future program, U of Houston

Bio: Dr. Peter Bishop is an Associate Professor of Human Sciences and Chair of the graduate program in Studies of the Future at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Dr. Bishop specializes in techniques for long-term forecasting and planning. He delivers keynote addresses and conducts seminars on the future for business, government and not-for-profit organizations. He also facilitates groups in developing scenarios, visions and strategic plans for the future. Dr. Bishop's clients include IBM, Caltex Petroleum, Toyota Motor Sales, Shell Pipeline Corporation, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Texas Department of Commerce, the City of Las Cruces NM, and the Canadian Radio and Television Commission. Dr. Bishop is also the Executive Director of the Institute for Futures Research where he conducts research with futures students and alumni. Finally, he is President of his own firm, Strategic Foresight and Development, which offers education and training in futures thinking and techniques to the corporate market.

Dr. Bishop came to UH-Clear Lake in 1976 to teach research methods and statistics. While active in faculty affairs, he founded an organization of faculty leaders to participate in state government. Dr. Bishop first taught in 1973 at Georgia Southern College where he specialized in social problems and political sociology. He received his doctoral degree in sociology from Michigan State University in 1974. Dr. Bishop received a bachelor's degree in philosophy from St. Louis University where he also studied mathematics and physics. He grew up in St. Louis, Missouri where he was a member of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) for seven years. Dr. Bishop is married with two children and four grandchildren.

Read Aheads:
Impact of Terrorism on Future Mortality Assumptions
"Objectives: Demonstrate the uncertainties and contingencies in a rapidly changing situation. Practice contingency thinking in the face of uncertainty. Explore alternative scenarios to the war on terrorism. Show impact on future mortality and strategic implications for insurance businesses."
Precinct 2 industries continue growth path
"While most speakers raised more questions than answers, Peter Bishop, the executive director for Future Research at the University of Houston-Clear Lake and keynote speaker, offered an explanation for the changing state of the workplace. Bishop used the exponential evolution of transportation in the United States as an example of the pace that industries and the workplace have developed over time."

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader
T. Colin Campbell
Professor Emeritus, Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University; Author, The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted...

Bio: For more than 40 years, T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. has been at the forefront of nutrition research. His legacy, the China Study, is the most comprehensive study of health and nutrition ever conducted. Dr. Campbell is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University and Project Director of the China-Oxford-Cornell Diet and Health Project. The study was the culmination of a 20-year partnership of Cornell University, Oxford University and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine.

Dr. Campbell received his master’s degree and Ph.D. from Cornell, and served as a Research Associate at MIT. He spent 10 years on the faculty of Virginia Tech’s Department of Biochemistry and Nutrition before returning to the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell in 1975 where he presently holds his Endowed Chair (now Emeritus).

His principal scientific interests, which began with his graduate training in the late 1950s, has been on the effects of nutritional status on long term health, particularly on the cause of cancer. He has conducted original research both in laboratory experiments and in large-scale human studies; has received more than 70 grant-years of peer-reviewed research funding, mostly from the National Institute of Health, and has served on several grant review panels of multiple funding agencies, lectured extensively, and has authored more than 300 research papers.

He is the recipient of several awards, both in research and citizenship, and has conducted original research investigation both in experimental animal and human studies, and has actively participated in the development of national and international nutrition policy.

Read Aheads:
Famous Vegetarians
"In the next 10 to 15 years, one of the things you’re bound to hear is that animal protein... is one of the most toxic nutrients of all that can be considered. Risk for disease goes up dramatically when even a little animal protein is added to the diet."
Why China Holds the Key to Your Health
"I have been a researcher, lecturer, and policy advisor in the field of diet and cancer for nearly 40 years. Since 1963, primarily from an academic position, I have seen the many faces of establishment science and have been both rewarded and distressed by what I have witnessed. I have seen a vast increase in consumer nutrition information and, regrettably, an almost equal increase in consumer confusion. One week we hear that eating meat increases our risk of colon cancer, the next week the exact opposite. One news report states that dietary fat is not related to breast cancer, another says it is. It seems to me that public confusion has grown far beyond acceptable limits. "
Statement from Dr. Campbell on McDonald's Litigation
"In February of 2004, I appeared as a guest lecturer on a cruise ship nutrition program conducted by Hans Diehl’s CHIP (Coronary Health Improvement Program). While there, a program attendee related some rather unflattering rumors, recriminations and misrepresentations she had heard about me regarding my participation in objecting to the McDonald’s lawsuit settlement. After learning more about the source of these false accusations, I decided to issue this public statement to detail my involvement in the matter and clear up any questions."
Some Snippets Of Information From The China Project
"This is the most comprehensive project on diet and disease ever undertaken. Two major surveys were undertaken, 1983 and 1989-90. These surveys were undertaken in China because cancers and various other diseases exhibit exceptional geographic localization. Thus, it made sense to examine these local regions to determine the responsible dietary and lifestyle factors."

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader
Jamais Cascio
Senior Contributing Editor, WorldChanging; Writer and foresight consultant

Bio: Jamais Cascio is co-founder and Senior Contributing Editor at WorldChanging.com, a global weblog focusing on models, tools and ideas for building the "bright green" future. He has worked for the last decade as a scenario planner and futurist, consulting for groups as diverse as major computer firms, non-profit organizations, government agencies, game and toy companies, and television producers. He has written numerous articles on technology and society for both print and online publications, and is the author of two science fiction books.

Jamais has a double-BA in History and Anthropology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and a Master of Arts in Political Science from U.C. Berkeley.

Read Aheads:
Peak Oil and the Curse of Cassandra
"I'm getting a shiver of deja vu these days when I read the peak oil-related websites. Some are boggling over the fact that "global warming" got more attention than "peak oil" in the discussions over the recently-passed Energy Bill in the US, while others are simply furious that the American public (and these websites seem predominantly American in focus) isn't taking peak oil sufficiently seriously. They're particularly bothered that mainstream discussion of the idea, when it happens, often pushes the peak date out by ten to twenty years (or more), making it seem like a distant crisis at worst."
Farewell, PUHCA
"When George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 today, what may be the most important part of the bill received scant attention. Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post mentioned it; in fact, it's noted by very few of the Google News sources talking about the Energy Policy Act. Yet it's this section of the Act, far more than subsidies for oil exploration or a few bones tossed to renewables, will likely have by far the greatest impact on the daily lives of Americans for years to come. Today, PUHCA was repealed."
Integrated Solar Building
"PhysOrg points us to a press release from SunPower, a subsidiary of Cypress Semiconductor, which just completed construction of a "building integrated photovoltaic" system using its high-efficiency A-300 solar cells. The A-300s are useful for architecture for a number of reasons: they look neutral/dark grey in color, as opposed to the shiny blue of most solar panels; the connection systems are designed not to be externally visible; and (most importantly) they produce nearly a third as much more power per square meter than most other cells (21.5 percent efficiency instead of 12 to 15 percent), and remain very sensitive under low light conditions. The system will produce up to 1.8 kilowatts."

Back to Abstract Page

Foresight Tutorial
Tom Conger
Consulting Futurist and Founder, Social Technologies

Bio: Tom is a consulting futurist and founder of Social Technologies, LLC, a research and consulting firm in Washington, DC that builds the capacity of organizations to understand and influence the future through foresight, strategy, and innovation. He is a graduate of the master’s program in Studies of the Future at the University of Houston and was a founding board member of the Association of Professional Futurists.

He is a generalist by choice. His ongoing studies include business, science, technology, culture, politics, demographics, the economy, and the environment. Tom’s breadth of knowledge is reflected in the clients he serves, which includes Ford, GM, Shell, BP, Kraft, Kellogg, Cadbury Schweppes, Nokia, Tekes (Finnish Technology Agency), NeighborWorks America, the Society of Actuaries, the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

His skills include environmental scanning, trend interpretation, scenario development, technology assessment and strategic planning. He routinely speaks and writes about the future. Tom is known particularly for his skillful facilitation work and process design, including immersive learning experiences. Much of his recent work has focused on developing new approaches for synthesizing, applying, and communicating futures knowledge and on embedding systemic, proactive thinking into everyday business processes.

Examples of Tom’s work are provided below:

• studying the future of manufacturing technology
• multi-year environmental scanning programs for corporations and associations
• evaluating international forecasts in science, technology and engineering across 40 scientific fields and analyzing the implications of those forecasts for business
• studying social, economic, demographic and other broad trends in twelve Asian countries to assist a global manufacturer better produce in and for the Asian marketplace
• identifying for a European organization on an ongoing basis scientific developments in the United States with potential to create new products, services or industries

Before starting his own firm in 1999, Mr. Conger was the managing director at the Institute for Alternative Futures (IAF) and an associate at Coates & Jarratt, two of the most prestigious futures firms in the United States. At IAF, he designed and facilitated workshops and conferences to help organizations better anticipate change and to envision and create their preferred futures. At Coates & Jarratt, he did extensive studies on the future of work, world futures, science and technology, social change and emerging business opportunities.

Before becoming a futurist, Tom was a survey research manager at the M/A/R/C Group, one of the country’s largest custom-market research companies. He had also been with the Public Policy Resources Laboratory at Texas A&M where he developed substantive expertise in survey research and data collection, particularly for program evaluation of state and national programs and policies.

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader
Esther Dyson
Editor, Release 1.0 and Editor at Large, CNET Networks

Bio: Esther Dyson is editor at large at CNET Networks, where she is responsible for its monthly newsletter, Release 1.0, and its PC Forum, the high-tech market's leading annual executive conference. As editor at large, she also contributes insight and content to CNET Networks' other properties. She sold her business, EDventure Holdings, to CNET Networks in early 2004. Previously, she had co-owned EDventure and written/edited Release 1.0 since 1983.

At Release 1.0 and in her private investment activities, Dyson focuses on emerging technologies, emerging companies and emerging markets. Among the topics she has covered for Release 1.0 recently are social software and social networks, registries of people and things, the Internet, the transformation of e-mail to "Meta-mail," identity management, and the use of "consumer" Internet services such as Yahoo! eBay and Google by small businesses.

By 1994, she had already explored the impact of the Net on intellectual property (among other things, why many software products are now turning into online services). In 1997, she wrote a book on the impact of the Net on individuals' lives, Release 2.0: A design for living in the digital age. It includes a number of chapters about today's hot topics such as security, privacy, anonymity and intellectual property.

Dyson is also an active player in discussions and policy-making concerning the Internet and society. From 1998 to 2000, she was founding chairman of ICANN (the organization responsible for overseeing the Domain Name System). A variety of government officials worldwide turn to her for advice on Internet policy issues.

In addition, she donates time and money as a trustee to emerging organizations (Bridges.org, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Eurasia Foundation). For several years in the '90s she was chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

After graduating from Harvard in economics, Dyson began her serious career in 1974 as a fact-checker for Forbes and quickly rose to reporter. In 1977 she joined New Court Securities as "the research department," following Federal Express and other start-ups. After a stint at Oppenheimer covering software companies, she moved to Rosen Research and in 1983 bought the company from her employer Ben Rosen, renaming it EDventure Holdings. The daughter of an English physicist and a Swiss mathematician, Dyson started traveling in Eastern Europe in 1989 and eventually helped to fill the small but vital vacuum at the intersection of Eastern Europe, high-tech and venture capital, even as she remains active in the US and Western Europe.

Read Aheads:
Esther's photos
Esther Dyson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Uncensored, unprivate thoughts on Gmail - free advice
First off, yes, the privacy concerns are real: If you have anything really secret, you probably shouldn't write about it in Gmail...

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader
Mark Finnern
Collaboration Manager, SAP Developer Network; Blogger, O'Reilly Network; Board Member, ASF; Founder and Host, Bay Area Future Salon; Co-Producer, Accelerating Change Conferences

Bio: Mark Finnern manages the Collaboration Area of the fastest growing SAP Community: The SAP Developer Network. Mark is also the founder and host of the Future Salon, co-producer of the Accelerating Change 2004 conference, and blogger for the O'Reilly Network.

Read Aheads:
Mark Finnern's photos
Interview with Mark Finnern, Founder of the Bay Area Future Salon
"Through these Future Salons you get introduced to fascinating science and future scenarios that may have a big influence on your life in the near future. You get a glimpse of what may come and can react accordingly, and may even profit from the new insights into the future. Quantum leaps are happening at the intersection of different disciplines out of which whole new industries are created: Take phones and cameras, they branched into mobile phones and digital cameras and you would call it "transverged" into mobile camera phones. Now add the Internet and social software into the mix and you have a foundation that enables online picture sharing sites like Flickr."
Do My Little Part
Mark Finnern's weblog.

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader
David Fogel
CEO, Natural Selection, Inc.; Author, Blondie 24: Playing at the Edge of AI; Founding Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computing

Bio: David B. Fogel, is chief executive officer of Natural Selection, Inc. in La Jolla, CA. He received the Ph.D. degree in 1992 from the University of California at San Diego. Dr. Fogel is a Fellow of the IEEE and served as the founding editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation from 1996 to 2002. He is currently editor-in-chief of BioSystems. He has over 200 publications in journals, conferences, and book
chapters, and is the author or co-author of several books, including Blondie24: Playing at the Edge of AI (Morgan Kaufman, 2002), How to Solve It: Modern Heuristics (Springer, 2nd edition, 2005), and Evolutionary Computation: Toward a New Philosophy of Machine Intelligence (IEEE Press, 3rd edition, 2005, forthcoming). Dr. Fogel co-founded Digenetics, Inc., a sister-company to Natural Selection, Inc., dedicated to promoting
evolutionary computing for entertainment software, which has developed two games for checkers and chess that rely on evolutionary neural network technology.

Among many volunteer efforts, Dr. Fogel served as the founding chairman of the technical committee on evolutionary computation (1996), and as vice president of publications for the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) from 2003-2004, and serves currently as the vice president for membership activities and as series editor for the IEEE Press series in Computational Intelligence. He is also the chapter chairman for the IEEE CIS
in San Diego. Dr. Fogel received the Sigma Xi Southwest Region Young Investigator Award (2002), the Sigma Xi San Diego Section Distinguished Scientist Award (2003), the SPIE Computational Intelligence Pioneer Award (2003), and the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Technical Field Award (2004). He was technical program chairman for the 1995 and 1998 IEEE International Conferences on Evolutionary Computation, co-technical program chairman for the 2005 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, co-general chairman of the 2004 and 2005 IEEE Conferences on Computational Intelligence in Homeland Security and Personal Safety, general chairman of the 2002 IEEE World
Congress on Computational Intelligence, held in May, 2002, in Honolulu, Hawaii, and will be the general chairman of the first IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence, also to be held in Honolulu, April 1-5, 2007.

Read Aheads:
Genetic Programming Prediction of Stock Prices
"Based on predictions of stock-prices using genetic programming (or GP), a possibly profitable trading strategy is proposed. A metric quantifying the probability that a specific time series is GP-predictable is presented first. It is used to show that stock prices are predictable. GP then evolves regression models that produce reasonable one-day-ahead forecasts only. This limited ability led to the development of a single day-trading strategy (SDTS) in which trading decisions are based on GP-forecasts of daily highest and lowest stock prices. SDTS executed for fifty consecutive trading days of six stocks yielded relatively high returns on investment."
People to watch: David Fogel
"Natural Selection was founded in 1993 by David Fogel and his parents, Lawrence and Eva Fogel. Their family business specializes in evolutionary computation, algorithms that simulate the Darwinian process of random variation and selection, to solve challenging problems. Last month, the Air Force Research Laboratory awarded the company a $748,848 SBIR contract to apply its technology for use in mission planning for robotic aircraft, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs."
David Fogel receives 2004 IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award
"David Fogel, CEO of Natural Selection, Inc.®, has been recognized with the 2004 IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award, one of the technical field awards of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)."

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader
Dileep George
Founder & Principal Architect, Numenta

Bio: Before joining Numenta, Dileep George was a Graduate Research Fellow at Redwood Neuroscience Institute (now Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at UC Berkeley), and a graduate student in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. His research interests include neuronal coding, information processing, and the modeling of cortical functions. Prior to his graduate studies, he served as a Principal Engineer in several communications-related startup companies. George has worked closely with Jeff Hawkins (Co-Founder of Palm Computing, Founder, Redwood Neurosciences Institute, and Author, On Intelligence, 2005) in extending and expressing Hawkins' neuroscience theories in mathematical terms. He has created a proof-of-concept program to illustrate these concepts.

George holds a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay and a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader and Foresight Tutorial
George Gilder
Editor in Chief, Gilder Technology Report; Author, The Silicon Eye; Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute

Bio: Born in 1939 in New York City, Mr. Gilder attended Exeter Academy and Harvard University. At Harvard, he studied under Henry Kissinger and helped found Advance, a journal of political thought, which he edited and helped to re-establish in Washington, DC after his graduation in 1962. During this period he co-authored (with Bruce Chapman) a political history, The Party That Lost Its Head. He later returned to Harvard as a fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Politics and editor of the Ripon Forum. In the 1960s Mr. Gilder also served as a speech writer for several prominent official and candidates, including Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney, and Richard Nixon.

In the 1970s, as an independent researcher and writer, Mr. Gilder began an excursion into the causes of poverty, which resulted in his books Men and Marriage (original version 1972) and Visible Man (1978); and hence, of wealth, which led to his best-selling Wealth and Poverty (1981). Mr. Gilder pioneered the formulation of supply-side economics when he served as Chairman of the Lehrman Institute's Economic Roundtable, as Program Director for the Manhattan Institute, and as a frequent contributor to A.B. Laffer's economic reports and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. In the 1980s he also consulted leaders of America's high technology businesses. According to a recent study of speeches, Mr. Gilder was President Reagan's most frequently quoted living author. In 1986, President Reagan gave George Gilder the White House Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence. In 1996 he was made a Fellow of the International Engineering Consortium.

The investigation into wealth creation led Mr. Gilder into deeper examination of the lives of present-day entrepreneurs, culminating in many articles and a book, The Spirit of Enterprise (1986). The book was revised and republished in 1992. That many of the most interesting current entrepreneurs were to be found in high technology fields also led Mr. Gilder, over several years, to examine this subject in depth. In his best-selling work, Microcosm (1989), he explored the quantum roots of the new electronic technologies. A subsequent book, Life After Television, published first as a Whittle Communications monograph and then published by W.W. Norton (1992), and updated and republished in 1994, is a prophecy of the future of computers and telecommunications. This was followed by, Telecosm: The World After Bandwidth Abundance, 2000, a book on the disruptive economics of broadband networks, and his most recent work, The Silicon Eye, 2005, on Foveon Inc. and the emerging paradigm of neuromorphic engineering.

Mr. Gilder is a founder of and contributor to Forbes ASAP, and a contributing editor of Forbes magazine. He is a frequent writer for The Economist, the Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications. Over the past several years, he has dismissed many of the most touted new technologies--from HDTV and interactive television to 3DO game machines and CD-I multimedia, from TDMA wireless and Nextel cellular compression to pervasive ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) networks. Embraced instead: The Netscape browser, all-optical networks, smart radios, Qualcomm digital wireless, Stratacom frame relay, mediaprocessors, and Sun's Java programming language.

Read Aheads:
Forbes ASAP Articles By George Gilder, Based On Chapters In His Forthcoming Book - Telecosm
"Into The Fibersphere. The New Rule of Wireless. Issaquah Miracle. Metcalfe's Law and Legacy. Digital Dark Horse - Newspapers. Life After Television, Updated. Auctioning The Airways. Washington's Bogeymen. Ethersphere. The Bandwidth Tidal Wave. Gilder Meets His Critics. Mike Milken & The Two Trillion Dollar Opportunity. From Wires To Waves. The Coming Software Shift. George Gilder & His Critics. Angst And Awe On The Internet. Goliath At Bay. Feasting On The Giant Peach. Fiber Keeps Its Promise. Inventing The Internet Again."
Wired Magazine George Gilder Arichive
"Does he really think scarcity is a minor obstacle on the road to techno-Utopia? (And would he please stop talking about race and gender? The Gilder Paradigm. Is Government Obsolete? Is the free market all we need to build a robust and democratic political economy for the 21st century? Two authors take aim at George Gilder. George Gilder: When Bandwidth Is Free The Dark Fiber Interview with George Gilder. Happy Birthday Wired It's been a weird five years. 3.12: Street Cred George Gilder, technopundit and Forbes ASAP writer, envisions a future in which bandwidth is free."
Big Thinkers - George Gilder - Articles on KurzweilAI.net written by George Gilder
"Are We Spiritual Machines? Introduction: Are We Spiritual Machines? The Age of Intelligent Machines: A Technology of Liberation. Stop everything...IT'S TECHNO-HORROR! The Twenty Laws of the Telecosm."
A Telecom Tutorial for George Gilder
"One of the nice things about economics is you don't need a degree to discuss the subject; nor do you need any credentials for people to listen. Indeed, if you write well and speak clearly, people will listen simply for lack of anything better to do. This will reinforce your own belief that you know what you're saying. And if you're a particularly smooth talker and attract a really large following, you'll end up with the ultimate prize -- guru status. George Gilder is a guru of the first order."
The Evolution of George Gilder
"The author and tech-sector guru has a new cause to create controversy with: intelligent design." Editor's note: "Intelligent design" houses a wide variety of meta-Darwinian models of universal change. Some variants have nothing to do with the concept of a creator, but, like the anthropic principle, make the simulation-testable hypothesis that the "genes" of our universe are tuned for the evolutionary development of life, intelligence, and accelerating change. In other words, not just cosmology but also macroscale chemical and biological change may occur via both evolutionary and developmental processes.
The Revolution is Coming, Eventually (Katie Hafner, New York Times; Registration Required). Insight into the ups and downs of George Gilder's publishing empire. Gilder has had both great insights and misfortunes. There lessons here on the difficulty of prediction. Gilder has accurately predicted a number of irreversible technology trends, yet many of his subscribers lost fortunes by overestimating the speed of their emergence, discounting the social and legal environment, and not anticipating the bubble.

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader
Marcos Guillen
Founder and CEO, Artificial Development, developers of CCortex Neural Computing Platform

Bio: Previously, Marcos Guillen was co-founder and CEO of Ran Networks and Red Internauta, two leading Spanish Internet Service Providers. As Founder and CEO of Artificial Development, Guillen and his team are building CCortex, a complete 20-billion neuron simulation of the human cortex and peripheral systems, on a 500-node supercomputer - the largest neural network created to date.

Read Aheads:
Artificial Development To Build Biggest Spiking Neural Network
"Palo Alto - Sep 16, 2003. Artificial Development, Inc. today announced that it has completed assembly of the first functional portion of a prototype of Ccortex, a 20-billion neuron emulation of the human cortex, which it will use to build a next-generation artificial intelligence system. Artificial Development will initiate testing of Ccortex in October. The cluster being assembled at AD.com Data Center is a high-performance, parallel supercomputer, composed of 500 nodes and one thousand processors, 1.5 terabytes of RAM, and 80 terabytes of storage."

Back to Abstract Page

Special Host of "Q&A with Ray"
Moira Gunn
President and CEO, The Tech Nation Group; Host, Tech Nation and BioTech Nation

Bio: Dr. Moira Gunn is a Renaissance woman with advanced degrees in both engineering and science. She is also soundly based in the liberal arts, borne out by her membership in Phi Beta Kappa.

You might already know Dr. Gunn from her syndicated radio program Tech Nation, which airs over such venues as National Public Radio's Satellite Radio NPR Now and NPR Talk, and internationally to over 90 countries via Armed Forces Radio International. Tech Nation is the sole national weekly radio program on the impact of technology, and its new BioTech Nation segment enjoys the same position vis-à-vis biotech issues in this same airspace. Her weekly commentaries touch all aspects of our lives in these unpredictable times.

More than simply radio, the family of Tech Nation programs seeks to educate the public on the issues of science and technology, to demonstrate that all important aspects of our lives are affected, and that we must understand much, much more to make reasonable decisions … as individuals, as communities, as nations and as a global society.

Dr. Gunn is not so much interested in the opinions of the day - she is more interested in how people come to form these opinions, especially when a comprehension of the underlying technology and science is essential. She asks her listeners to ask themselves: "Do I know what is knowable? … before I take a position, make a plan, take an action."

Her guests come from every walk of life: politicians and businesspeople, scientists and futurists, novelists and educators, members of the media and more. In her words: "Everyone is essential. Everyone is a piece of the puzzle."

In over 2,000 in-depth interviews, numerous seminars and associations, Dr. Gunn has engaged with recognizable people from every venue: From business leaders like Intel's Andy Grove to emergent tech guru's like Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin, from the old guard of science like Linus Pauling and Crick and Watson to our new generation of scientists like Dr. Pam Marrone, the etymologist who created the first certified organic agribusiness pesticide and received the EPA's Presidential Green Chemistry Award for her efforts. Or Dr. Joao Magueijo, the brash young theoretical physicist from Imperial College, who controversially suggested that the speed of light was relative.

But the tech story only begins with business and science. From Senator John McCain to Ralph Nader, from the Motley Fools to Dilbert creator Scott Adams, from Alvin Toffler to Paul Krugman to every one of the over 2,000 guests who have appeared on Tech Nation, the world is a complex and interconnected place, and we have much to learn from each other.

Read Aheads:
TechNation - Moira Gunn on ITConversations
Listen to these downloadable Interviews with: Leslie Berlin, Silicon Valley Archivist; Robert Shelton, Managing Director for Innovation, Navigant Consulting; David Sretavan, UC San Francisco; Mark Cotta Vaz, Author; Daniel Charles, Former NPR Tech Reporter; Dr. Hilary Koprowski, Professor of Immunology; Jerry Weissman, Media and Presentation Coach; Dennis Bakke, Author: Joy of Work; Dr. Darwin Prockop, Director, Tulane's Gene Therapy Center; Lisa See, Journalist and Culturalist; Alan Zelicoff and Michael Bellomo, Fighting Outbreaks and Bioterrorism; John Valliant, freelance writer and serial adventurer; Susan Casey, Development Editor, Time, Inc.; John Lupton, CEO, MedCare Systems; John Thackara, Director, Doors of Perception; David Plotz, deputy editor, Slate; Joseph Fuselier, co-founder, Synscia; Joe Trippi, Former Campaign Manager for Howard Dean; Dr. Gurinder Shahi, Chair and CEO, BioEnterprise Asia; William Vollmann, philosopher and author; Evgenie Severin, Moscow Medical Academy; Harry Dent, Author of "The Next Great Bubble Boom"; Tom Standage, Science and Technology Editor, The Economist; Sir Christopher Evans, Microbiologist and Venture Capitalist; Alva Noe, Professor of Philosphy, UC, Berkeley; Joel Garreau, Washington Post; David Coy, Professor of Medicine, Tulane Health Sciences Center; Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly Media; John Hagel, author, consultant; Allen Husband, research director, Novogen; Leslie Berlin, Silicon Valley Archivist; Robert Shelton, Managing Director for Innovation, Navigant Consulting; David Sretavan, UC San Francisco; Mark Cotta Vaz, Author; Daniel Charles, Former NPR Tech Reporter; Dr. Hilary Koprowski, Professor of Immunology; Jerry Weissman, Media and Presentation Coach; Dennis Bakke, Author: Joy of Work; Dr. Darwin Prockop, Director, Tulane's Gene Therapy Center; Lisa See, Journalist and Culturalist; Alan Zelicoff and Michael Bellomo, Fighting Outbreaks and Bioterrorism; John Valliant, freelance writer and serial adventurer; Susan Casey, Development Editor, Time, Inc.; John Lupton, CEO, MedCare Systems; John Thackara, Director, Doors of Perception; David Plotz, deputy editor, Slate; Joseph Fuselier, co-founder, Synscia; Joe Trippi, Former Campaign Manager for Howard Dean; Dr. Gurinder Shahi, Chair and CEO, BioEnterprise Asia; William Vollmann, philosopher and author; Evgenie Severin, Moscow Medical Academy; Harry Dent, Author of "The Next Great Bubble Boom"; Tom Standage, Science and Technology Editor, The Economist; Sir Christopher Evans, Microbiologist and Venture Capitalist; Alva Noe, Professor of Philosphy, UC, Berkeley; Joel Garreau, Washington Post; David Coy, Professor of Medicine, Tulane Health Sciences Center; Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly Media; John Hagel, author, consultant; Allen Husband, research director, Novogen; Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, Wired Magazine; Alexis Gerard and Bob Goldstein, Co-Authors, "Going Visual; Wayne Harris, Dean of Pharmacy, Xavier University; David Ewing Duncan, bioech journalist and author; Sean Carroll, professor of molecular biology and genetics; Susan Krieger, Sociologist, Feminist Studies, Stanford; Betsy Dresser, Audubon Center for Research on Endangered Species; Dill Faulkes, software entrepreneur; All About J. Robert Oppenheimer, A Panel Discussion; Charles O'Connor, Director, Advanced Materials Research Institute; DW Buffa, attorney and author; Fran Hawthorne, healthcare and business hournalist; John Markoff, New York Times Business and Tech Writer; Karl De Abrew and Sam Chandler, Nitro PDF; Elizabeth Holmes, President and CEO, Therano; Geoffrey Nunberg, Professor of Linguistics, Stanford University; Jeffrey Rayport, Creator of Viral Marketing; Peggy Lemaux, UC Berkeley; Stephen Yafa, Journalist; Dean Karnazes, Ultramarathoner; Jerry Sanders, San Francisco Science; Keith Devlin, NPR's Math Guy; Rebecca Goldstein, The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel; Elizabeth George, Mystery Writer; James Stewart, Corprate Disney; Oded Shenkar, The Chinese Century; Suzi Leather, Government Control of Stem Cell Research; Deborah Rudacille, The Riddle of Gender; Bill Hayes, Five Quarts : A Personal and Natural History of Blood; Carolyn Givens, In Vitro Fertilization Meets Stem Cell Research; Dr. Henry Jenkins, Video Games and Education; John Beck, When Gamers Enter the Workforce; Dr. Belinda Clarke, Scientists' Obligation to Communicate; David Bodanis, Popular Science Writer & Author; Sir Roger Penrose, Emeritus Professor of Mathmatics, Oxford University; Tim Cook; Simon Singh, BBC Director, "The Proof"; Brian Greene, astrophysicist and author; Dr. Peter Whybrow, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior; Michael Shermer, Columnist, Scientific American; Dr. Patrick Lincoln, Director, Computer Science Laboratoru, SRI International; John Barry, author; Dr. Nancy Mize, pharmacogenomics expert; Dr. Mark Epstein, psychiatrist and author; Robert Herbold, former COO, Microsoft; Malcolm Gladwell; Andy Hertzfeld, Programmer of the Mac Toolbox; Patricia Osseweijer, managing director, the Kluyver Center; Barbara Kellerman, Research Director, Center for Public Leadership; Mary O'Hara-Devereaux, Forecaster and CEO, Global Foresight; Sunil Maulik, Chairman and CEO, GeneEd, Inc.; Evan Ratliff, entrepreneur & author; Barbara Heinzen, geographer and social scientist; Dr. Wim Jongen, Wageningen University, The Netherlands; Frans Johansson, Entrepreneur & Author, "The Medici Effect"; Eckart Wintzen, Environmental Entrepreneur; Alison Murdock, Professor of Reproductive Medicine; Leander Kahney, columnist, Wired News; Tiffany Shlain, Filmmaker & Chair of The Webby Awards; Douglas Mulhall, journalist & author; Dame Judith Polak, Professor, Imperial College, London; Jim Rygiel - effects supervisor, LotR; William Gibson, author, Neuromancer, where he coined the word "cyberspace."

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader
Bruno Haid
Head of Strategy, System One, merging social software, semantic web, and AI

Bio: Bruno Haid has over 10 years experience in technology related project and interim management. Before founding System One he helped spielplatz.cc, now part of the global Tribal DDB network, to become one of the most credible mobile marketing agencies in Europe. At System One he is responsible for the development and coordination of the overall strategic alignment and outlook.

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader
Marti Hearst
Professor, School of Information Management and Systems, UC Berkeley; Science Advisory Board for Search, Yahoo!

Bio: Marti Hearst is an associate professor in SIMS, the School of Information Management and Systems at UC Berkeley, with an affiliate appointment in the Computer Science Division.

She has done extensive research on search user interfaces. Her primary research interests are user interfaces, visualization for information retrieval, empirical computational linguistics, and text data mining. She received BA, MS, and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley, and she was a Member of the Research Staff at Xerox PARC from 1994 to 1997.

Prof. Hearst is on the editorial boards of ACM Transactions on Information Systems and ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction and was formerly on the boards of Computational Linguistics and IEEE Intelligent Systems, and was the program co-chair of HLT-NAACL '03 and SIGIR '99. She has received an NSF CAREER award, an IBM Faculty Award, an Okawa Foundation Fellowship, and two student-initiated Excellence in Teaching awards.

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader
(Live via Video)
Robert Hecht-Nielsen
Computational Neurobiologist, Institute for Neural Computation; Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UC-San Diego

Bio: Robert Hecht-Nielsen has been adjunct professor at UCSD since 1986. He teaches the popular ECE 270 three-quarter graduate course Neurocomputing, which focuses on the basic constructs of his theory of thalamocortex and their applications. He is a member of the UCSD Institute for Neural Computation and is a founder of the UCSD Graduate Program in Computational Neurobiology.

Professor Hecht-Nielsen is an expert on brain theory, associative memory neural networks and Perceptron theory. His theory of thalamocortex is currently being promulgated and integrated into research worldwide. An IEEE Fellow, he has received the IEEE Neural Networks Pioneer Award and the ECE Graduate Teaching Award. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Arizona State University in 1974.

Read Aheads:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"Robert Hecht-Nielsen is an adjunct professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He co-founded HNC Software, and became a vice president of R&D at Fair Isaac Corporation when it acquired the company."
Pioneer In Artificial-Intelligence Software Devises New Theory Of Cognition
"A leading expert in artificial intelligence and neural networks argues that cognition in humans and many animals occurs in a very different, non-algorithmic and less complex way than has been widely assumed until now. The Hecht-Nielsen theory posits that all aspects of cognition – seeing, hearing, understanding, planning and so on – are carried out using a single type of knowledge (antecedent support) and a single information processing operation called ‘confabulation’ which is carried out between the brain’s cerebral cortex and thalamus. The scientist’s theory hypothesizes that confabulation is the only information processing operation used in cognition. The theory also explains the cognitive mechanism by which behaviors (thoughts and movements) are launched, moment by moment, throughout the day. "Adults possess billions of individual items of knowledge, and the rate of acquisition must exceed one item per second, which is totally inconsistent with current views of human nature. How many times has your child come home from school and, when asked what he or she learned today, said ‘nothing.’ But that’s not true. They have probably accumulated hundreds of thousands of items of knowledge, and when we sleep, we consolidate that knowledge. No wonder we need eight hours of sleep!""
A Theory of Thalamocortex
"This chapter presents the first comprehensive high-level theory of the information processing function of mammalian cortex and thalamus; herein viewed as a unary structure. The theory consists of four major elements: two novel associative memory neuronal network structures (feature attractor networks and antecedent support networks), a universal information processing operation (consensus building), and an overall real-time brain control system (the brain command loop). One important derived type of thalamocortical neural network is also presented, the hierarchical abstractor (which, as with all other networks of thalamocortex, is "constructed" out of antecedent support and feature attractor networks). Some smaller constructs are also introduced. Arguments are presented as to why this theory must be basically correct."

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader
Joichi Ito
Blogger; CEO and Founder, Neoteny Co., Ltd.; VP International and Mobility, Technorati; Chairman, Six Apart Japan

Bio: Joichi Ito is General Manager of International Operations for Technorati (www.technorati.com) which indexes and monitors blogs and the Chairman of Six Apart Japan (http://www.sixapart.jp) the weblog software company. He is on the board of Creative Commons (http://www.creativecommons.org), a non-profit organization which proposes a middle way to rights management, rather than the extremes of the pure public domain or the reservation of all rights. He is a board member of Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Open Source Initiative (OSI). He has created numerous Internet companies including PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan.

In 1997 Time Magazine ranked him as a member of the CyberElite. In 2000 he was ranked among the "50 Stars of Asia" by Business Week and commended by the Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications for supporting the advancement of IT. In 2001 the World Economic Forum chose him as one of the 100 "Global Leaders of Tomorrow" for 2002. He has served and continues to serve on numerous Japanese central as well as local government committees and boards, advising the government on IT, privacy and computer security related issues. He is currently researching "The Sharing Economy" as a Doctor of Business Administration candidate at the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy at Hitotsubashi University in Japan. He maintains a weblog (http://joi.ito.com/) where he regularly shares his thoughts with the online community.

Read Aheads:
Joichi Ito Quotes
Joi Ito
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Emergent Democracy by Joichi Ito
"Developers and proponents of the Internet have hoped to evolve the network as a platform for intelligent solutions which can help correct the imbalances and inequalities of the world. Today, however, the Internet is a noisy environment with a great deal of power consolidation instead of the level, balanced democratic Internet many envisioned."

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader
Neil Jacobstein
President and CEO, Teknowledge Corporation, Chairman of AAAI’s 17th Innovative Applications of AI Conference, July 2005

The Evolution of AI Applications

Bio: Neil Jacobstein is President and CEO of Teknowledge Corporation, a 24-year-old Nasdaq small cap software company that focuses on knowledge-based computer systems and services for commercial and government applications. Neil has been a technical consultant on software research and development projects for: DARPA, the U.S. Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marines, NASA, NIH, EPA, NSF, DOE, NRO, NIST, GM, Ford, P&G, Boeing, Applied Materials, and many others. He has developed and delivered tutorials and seminars on knowledge based systems and applications of artificial intelligence techniques. Neil chaired the American Association for Artificial Intelligence’s 17th Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence conference in 2005.

Neil served on the Technology Advisory Board for the U.S. Army’s Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation Command, and on the Technology Board of Advisors for the Nanotechnology Opportunity Report published by CMP Cientifica. He is a co-inventor of U.S. Patent # 6,029,175. Neil has been Chairman of the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing (IMM) since 1992. IMM is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) molecular nanotechnology research group focused on the long-term feasibility, embedded safeguards, and applications of molecular manufacturing. Neil was a principal co-author of the Foresight Guidelines for the ethical development of molecular nanotechnology.

Neil received his BS in Environmental Sciences, Summa cum Laude from the University of Wisconsin, and an MS in Human Ecology from the University of Texas, in conjunction with NASA's Environmental Physiology Simulation Program. Neil was a Graduate Research Intern in the Learning Research Group at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, and a consultant in PARC's Software Concepts Group. Neil is a member of the IEEE, the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. In 1999, Neil was selected as an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow.

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader
Shun-jie Ji, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Graduate Institute of Futures Studies, Tamkang University; Managing Editor, Journal of Futures Studies; CEO, Institute for National Development, Taiwan

Bio: Shun-jie Ji is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate Institute of Futures Studies at Tamkang University. He received his Doctoral degree at Michigan State University in Political Science-Urban Studies joint programs. He is now CEO of the Institute for National Development (IND), which was founded by Vice President Ms. Hsiu-lien Annette Lu of Taiwan in 1998. He is the Managing Editor of the Journal of Futures Studies and the Editor of Taiwan International Studies Quarterly. He is one of the founding board members and the Deputy Secretary General of the Taiwan International Studies Association (TISA).

In domestic affairs, his research interests include ethnic relations, environmental politics, civic nationalism, and the future images building of Taiwan. Internationally, he has been working on issues in human rights, human security, NGOs, and the triangle of Taiwan-U.S.-China relations.

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader
Steve Jurvetson
Managing Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Bio: Steve Jurvetson is a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He was the founding VC investor in Hotmail (MSFT), Interwoven (IWOV), and Kana (KANA). He also led the firm's investments in Tradex and Cyras (acquired by Ariba and Ciena for $8B), and most recently, in pioneering companies in nanotechnology and molecular electronics. Previously, Mr. Jurvetson was an R&D Engineer at Hewlett-Packard, where seven of his communications chip designs were fabricated. His prior technical experience also includes programming, materials science research (TEM atomic imaging of GaAs), and computer design at HP's PC Division, the Center for Materials Research, and Mostek. He has also worked in product marketing at Apple and NeXT Software. As a Consultant with Bain & Company, Mr. Jurvetson developed executive marketing, sales, engineering and business strategies for a wide range of companies in the software, networking and semiconductor industries.

At Stanford University, he finished his BSEE in 2.5 years and graduated #1 in his class, as the Henry Ford Scholar. Mr. Jurvetson also holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford. He received his MBA from the Stanford Business School, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.

Mr. Jurvetson also serves on the Merrill Lynch and STVP Advisory Boards and is Co-Chair of the NanoBusiness Alliance. He was recently honored as "The Valley's Sharpest VC" on the cover of Business 2.0 and chosen by the SF Chronicle and SF Examiner as one of "the ten people expected to have the greatest impact on the Bay Area in the early part of the 21st Century." He was profiled in the New York Times Magazine and featured on the cover of Worth and Fortune Magazines. Steve was chosen by Forbes as one of "Tech's Best Venture Investors", by the VC Journal as one of the "Ten Most Influential VCs", and by Fortune as part of their "Brain Trust of Top Ten Minds."

Read Aheads:
The J Curve
Steve Jurvetson's Blog
Accelerating Change and Societal Shock
"Despite a natural human tendency to presume linearity, accelerating change from positive feedback is a common pattern in technology and evolution. We are now crossing a threshold where the pace of disruptive shifts is no longer inter-generational and begins to have a meaningful impact over the span of careers and eventually product cycles. The history of technology is one of disruption and exponential growth, epitomized in Moore’s law, and generalized to many basic technological capabilities that are compounding independently from the economy."
2003 Advocate of the Year: Steve Jurvetson
"Foresight Senior Associate Steve Jurvetson, a leading nanotech venture capitalist and frequent speaker at Foresight events, has been named Small Times Magazine 2003 Advocate of the Year. "...he is nevertheless one of a small group of VCs happy to associate with the sector's most far-thinking members. He is hardly averse to being quoted speaking of nanobots floating in human bloodstreams and other scenarios considered way too long-term for VC involvement." Steve's suggestion for the NNI Grand Challenge? "Whether conceptualized as a universal assembler, a nanoforge, or a matter compiler, I think the `moon-shot’ goal for 2025 should be the realization of the digital control of matter, and all of the ancillary industries, capabilities, and learning that would engender." We at Foresight Nanotechnology Institute like Steve even more than Small Times does."
Jurvetson's Photos

Back to Abstract Page

Change Leader
Ronald Kaplan
Manager of Research in Natural Language Theory and Technology, PARC; Principle of the Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University

Bio: Ronald Kaplan is a Research Fellow at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and leader of the linguistic research group at Xerox. He is also a Consulting Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University. As a co-creator of the theory of Lexical Functional Grammar, he was responsible for many of its formal and conceptual characteristics and has investigated its mathematical and computational properties. He received a Ph.D. in 1975 from Harvard University.

Read Aheads:
A Note-Taking Appliance for Intelligence Analysts
"This paper describes how sophisticated natural language processing technologies, user-interest specifications, and human-interface design have been integrated
to produce a lightweight, fail-soft appliance aimed at reducing the cognitive load of
note-taking."
Two-way Bridge Between Language and Logic Aquaint
"This project is part of ARDA's Advanced Question and Answering for Intelligence (Aquaint) program which seeks innovative, creative, high-risk, high-payoff research to achieve significant advancements in technologies and methods for advanced question answering against large heterogeneous collections of structured and unstructured information."
Grammar Writer's Workbench for Lexical Functional Grammar
"The Xerox LFG Grammar Writer's Workbench is a complete parsing implementation of the LFG syntactic formalism, including various features introduced since the original Kaplan and Bresnan (1982) paper (functional uncertainty, functional precedence, generalization for coordination, multiple projections, etc.)"

Back to Abstract Page

Investment Tutorial
Mike Korns
Intelligent Agent Investing Pioneer; Chairman, Korns Associates

Bio: Michael F. Korns currently serves as President of Korns Associates www.korns.com. He started his career, in 1969, working at IBM in Advanced Engineering. He has been Vice President Information Sciences at Tymshare Transactions Corporation, and Vice President Chief Scientist of Xerox Imaging Corporation. For over 36 years, Michael Korns has been an expert in converting academic research into commercial applications.
 
Since 1993, Mr. Korns has run Korns Associates, a privately held applied research company. Korns Associates develops sophisticated agent technology, development tools, and applications, and has pioneered the use of "intelligent agents" for securities investing,  using a business model wherein its research is self-funding. In 1999 Korns Associates created InvestByAgent.com to support, incubate, and sell commercial applications of the Korns Associates technology.
 
Korns Associates business model is applied research powered by proprietary investing profits. As an applied research group, Korns Associates searches the academic community looking for new Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies which might be applied to securities investing. Promising new technologies are implemented in Deep Green as investing agents which will compete for stock market profits in the virtual "survival of the fittest" environment. At each stage of its development, Deep Green is used to rank securities as investment selections in the Korns Associates proprietary investing account. Profits from this proprietary investing activity are used to fund futher Deep Green application development.
 
Mr. Korns is currently involved in research in areas such as symbolic regression, genetic and evolutionary programming, Internet search, and the semantic web. Mr Korns can be reached at mkorns{at}korns.com.

Read Aheads:
Korns Associates: Frequently Asked Questions
Information on Korns evolutionary approach to investing.
Las Vegas Future Salon
"A reading and discussion group to explore accelerating change in technology, science, society and business. The Las Vegas Future Salon meets on the second Friday of every month at the Borders Bookstore on 2190 Rainbow in Las Vegas for book discussion and/or speaker presentation. Some of the topics that we read about and discuss include Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Theory, Bioengineering, Longevity Research, Nanotechnology, Cybernetics, Neuroscience."

Back to Abstract Page

Keynote
Ray Kurzweil
CEO, Kurzweil Technologies; Author, The Age of Spiritual Machines; Award-Winning Inventor

Bio: Ray Kurzweil has been described as “ the restless genius” by the Wall Street Journal, and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes. Inc. magazine ranked him #8 among entrepreneurs in the United States, calling him the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison,” and PBS included Ray as one of 16 “revolutionaries who made America,” along with other inventors of the past two centuries.

As one of the leading inventors of our time, Ray has wor