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November 21, 2008

Your Genome for $399

Not quite your entire genome, but for $399 the startup company 23andMe will analyze your genome and provide you with personal information including predictions of your risk of developing certain diseases.  All they need in addition to your $399 is a sample of your saliva, reports Technology Review.

Posted by Robert at 5:45 PM | Comments (0)
category: Technology Industry

November 19, 2008

Outsourcing Manufacturing Isn't Just for Large Companies Anymore

Are you an individual designer or inventor who wants to earn a living from selling your products but who doesn't have the time, inclination, or money to sell your products yourself, and who wants to be your own boss? No worries. Wired magazine reports that a company named Ponoko will let you upload your designs to them in digital form. They will then market your products for you. When a customer purchases your latest chair, Ponoko will use its laser cutters to cut your chair from a block of wood and/or plastic, based on your digital design, and then ship the resulting product to the customer's door. Ponoko sends you a cut of the sale price. The result is that you can focus on being creative and leave the messy details of marketing, manufacturing, and distribution to someone else. Ponoko is just one example the article provides of companies that are spurring the "rise of the instapreneur."

Posted by Robert at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)
category: Design & Engineering | Technology Industry

October 7, 2008

Breaking the Software Development Speed Limit with Agile Programming

Science Daily reports that so-called "agile software development" can be used to slash software development time, based on the results of 68 pilot case studies of the approach.  A key feature of agile programming is the rapid development and testing of prototypes, in contrast to the traditional "waterfall model" in which the entire program is developed and implemented before being tested.

Posted by Robert at 8:18 PM | Comments (0)
category: Design & Engineering | Technology Industry

September 8, 2008

Localized Modularization

Arnold Brown mentions a relatively new business process emerging in China called "localized modularization" in his article, "The New Biology Paradigm" (The Futurist, September-October 2008). According to Brown, manufacturers who use localized modularization do not dictate to their suppliers every detail of the parts they want manufactured. Instead, the manufacturer "specifies only key features, such as size and weight, letting the supplier's designers figure out the rest, thus enabling quicker changes and adaptation." He notes that Longxin and Zongshen now use localized modularization to make half of the world's motorcycles.

Modularization facilitates de-coupling of functional modules. Once that de-coupling is achieved, the modules on either side of the equation can be automated without affecting the other. Therefore, localized modularization looks like it is poised to facilitate automation of the modules that are localized.

Posted by Robert at 7:12 PM | Comments (0)
category: Technology Industry

August 21, 2008

Open Source Isn't Only for Software

"Open source" isn't necessarily followed by "software" anymore. Now there's open source hardware, which usually refers to "the release of schematics, design, sizes and other information about the hardware." The philosophy of open source has already been applied to designs for hardware including CPUs, graphics cards, MP3 players, and even entire computers.

Posted by Robert at 6:00 AM | Comments (0)
category: Technology Industry

August 18, 2008

Does "Openness" Lead to More Innovation?

Kevin Boudreau has written an interesting paper on the question of whether making a platform "open" leads to more innovation than leaving it closed. His nuanced conclusions are worthy of attention in light of more frequent claims that purely open or closed models are the best way to promote innovation.

Posted by Robert at 6:00 AM | Comments (0)
category: Technology Industry

February 3, 2006

The Spark of Co-Creation

In his new book Spark, John Winsor and 16 others discuss "co-creation," in which companies work collaboratively with their customers to create and improve their products and services. In other words, it is a collaboratively-written book about collaboration.

I see a parallel here between collaboration of businesses and their customers in "co-creation," and the "collaboration" of software and its users in interactive evolutionary computation.

Posted by Robert at 2:01 PM | Comments (0)
category: Human Creativity | Technology Industry

September 6, 2005

People are still good for something

Although the focus of this blog may appear to be on technology that automates invention, technology is only half the story. People are the other half. It's an obvious point that is often overlooked in our technophilic culture (I say this as someone writing in the U.S.).

For example, if you're fearing that computer automation will soon make humans obsolete, read this article from ADTmag.com, which reports on a study finding that "[t]he best in class software development projects are 3.37 times faster to market and 7.48 times cheaper than the worst." Management and technology approaches, not technology itself, constituted three out of the four factors that contributed to these results.

In other words, the best software development projects run as smoothly--and hence quickly and inexpensively--as they do primarily because of how people manage and execute those projects. Even in a field that has been driven so much by computer automation, there is substantial room for human expertise to make a significant real-world difference.

Posted by Robert at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)
category: Technology Industry

August 10, 2005

Digitizing know-how

IPcentral ponders the difficult question of who should own the technical know-how that is inside the heads of workers at high-tech companies. The posting was motivated by a recent court ruling that temporarily bars a former Microsoft employee from performing search-related work for his new employer, Google, because doing so would violate his non-compete agreement with Microsoft.

Trade secret law and non-compete agreements have long been used to control the movement of know-how and other information stored in the heads of human scientists, engineers, and programmers. But what happens when we "bottle" such know-how, or its equivalent, in the form of software that can design machines and write software? You might think that a company that develops an improved genetic algorithm that assists it in designing new machines should maintain that algorithm as a closely-guarded trade secret. After all, isn't the algorithm the functional equivalent of an engineer's know-how within the framework of the company's business model?

But I don't think the answer is entirely obvious. Perhaps the company should seek a patent on the algorithm, thereby obtaining a period of time in which it can block competitors from using the same algorithm even if they develop it themselves independently. Or maybe they should use some combination of intellectual property protection and licensing mechanisms to secure the maximum value to the company.

The point is that transferring know-how from a human mind to software raises some tricky legal and business considerations that will need to be addressed as the automation of invention continues.

Posted by Robert at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)
category: Artificial Invention | Design & Engineering | Intellectual Property Law | Technology Industry

July 28, 2005

Genetic algorithms optimize complex pipe design

Australian firm Optimatics reports that it has used genetic algorithms to help more than 80 major clients in Australia, the U.S., Canada, and Britain optimize the design of pipes for providing water through cities, towns, and new urban developments. Optimatics claims that its optimization techniques can produce solutions up to 20 percent less expensively than traditional engineering.

Posted by Robert at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)
category: Genetic Algorithms | Technology Industry

Evolutionary computation improves automobile design

NuTech Solutions has issued a press release describing how its ClearVu Engineering technology has been used to solve multidisciplinary optimization problems in car safety applications. Thomas Baeck gave an impressive presentation at GECCO this year describing NuTech's work with a German auto manufacturer to increase the speed and decrease the cost of design without comprising crash safety.

Posted by Robert at 9:28 AM | Comments (0)
category: Genetic Algorithms | Technology Industry

July 18, 2005

Imagination Engines Launches New Web Site

I just noticed that Imagination Engines, founded by Steven Thaler, has launched a new web site. The company describes itself as follows:

Imagination Engines is a small company working with what many have recognized as potentially the biggest idea in history, a technology that can invent everything else. Accordingly, largely due to issues of credibility, the company's road to success has been rocky. There have been many skeptics and critics, but there have been more believers and supporters. Now the company thrives upon a significant contract stream and tangible products that speak louder for the technology than words possibly could.

I believe I first heard about the company when I read an article (such as this one) describing how the company had used its patented Creativity Machine to invent the Oral-B CrossAction toothbrush. Although genetic algorithms seem to be getting most of the attention these days, Imagination Engines' Creativity Machine relies on neural networks.

Posted by Robert at 4:52 PM | Comments (0)
category: Artificial Invention | Technology Industry

July 15, 2005

Does open source development produce innovations?

Anything Under the Sun Made by Man has an interesting posting questioning whether open source software development produces innovations. The author, a patent agent, relates that a software developer client of his "was of the feeling that nothing innovative has come from Open Source Software, nor will it ever. He cited several examples, including Linux, where a viable and useful piece of commercial software had been rewritten by OSS developers and released for free."

It is true that most of the effort in open source development to date has been directed to reproducing the functionality of existing software, such as operating systems, compilers, web servers, and graphical user interfaces. But although such projects may not produce innovations per se, they have other benefits. The original motivation for developing GNU/Linux was not to produce a new operating system, but to produce one that could be used and modified by its users without engaging in copyright infringement. Proponents of open source also claim that open source development produces software with fewer bugs and security holes than software produced using closed development models.

Also worth noting is that most open source projects produce platforms, protocols, and interfaces, rather than applications. These kinds of end products are valuable because they facilitate standardization and the development of specific applications and data formats consistent with the adopted standards. From a commercial perspective, it can be beneficial for such standards to be "open" -- not owned by any private entity -- because they increase the pie for everyone who is in the business of providing products and services consistent with the standards.

There is a connection between all of this and automated inventing. Should John Holland have attempted to patent the basic features of the genetic algorithm? In one sense, genetic algorithms are a platform for inventing and for problem-solving more generally. The arguments above would therefore imply that keeping genetic algorithms generally "open," as Holland did, was the right strategy for maximizing innovation. On the other hand, many patents have issued on specific applications of genetic algorithms. Such applications may have been kept as trade secrets, thereby depriving the public of knowledge about them, if patent protection had not been available.

This is all to say that developing legal rules to encourage optimal innovation is tricky business.

Posted by Robert at 8:20 AM | Comments (0)
category: Intellectual Property Law | Technology Industry