More about Google for the Brain

It has been almost four years since contemplating (see Google for the Brain) a neural prosthetic that would permit you to see Google results on your retina. So, it was with no surprise to learn that DARPA had recently announced the cortical modem concept. They envision a heads-up display or augmented reality projection appearing in your natural vision with no helmet or smart glasses produced from a device about the size of two coins and cost about $10. The full story can be found at http://www.cnet.com/news/scientists-propose-cortical-modem-implant-to-give-you-terminator-vision/

Leges sine moribus vanae

Prof. Simon Kuznets

“Education is the Most Powerful Weapon Which You Can Use to Change the World.” – Nelson Mandela

Whilst watching an interesting TED presentation, the speaker referenced the influential economist Simon Kuznets (who at one time during his long and distinguished career was a Penn faculty member.)  His research focused on using statistics to analyze empirical data which is foundational to econometrics, a branch of the dismal science made infamous at Wharton.

What makes his research particularly relevant to today's economic challenges is that his general theories of economic growth explained the phenomenon of income inequality.  Kuznets discovered the Inverted U-shaped relation between income inequality and economic growth. In poor countries, economic growth due to a shift from an agricultural to an industrial economy increases the income disparity between rich and poor.  In the long run, mass education decreases income inequality by providing greater opportunities and fostering more political empowerment.

While most nations in Africa (notwithstanding their endemic corruption) offer strikingly obvious examples of income inequality due to the tectonic shift from agriculture to industrial economies. Less clearly identifiable is the impact that innovation has had on increasing income inequality in more developed economies.  Simply put companies like Microsoft, Apple, Intel and Hewlett Packard have transformed the US economy and turned the page on a new chapter of economic growth which is largely the result of a well-developed educational delivery system and an environment that generally facilitates entrepreneurship. Consequently, astute observers have concluded that the conversation about income inequality should be more appropriately focused on educational inequality which is attributed to disparities that often fall along racial lines. For example, family background has been identified as the most influential factor in student achievement. Unfortunately, 15% of white children are raised in single-parent homes, as compared to 54% of African American children.  On the campaign trail,  Barack Obama talked about how there are more college age blacks in jail (or on probation) than in college. Professor Ivory Toldson at Howard University who has studied the issue concludes that the real problem is that because just getting into any college is considered a success there are not enough black students in competitive universities while over represented in community colleges. Of course, this is just another systemic example of where as a country we are settling for mediocrity in the name of democracy. 

 

However, as long as there is income inequality the simplistic and pernicious argument is that inequality is rooted in pervasive discrimination - no matter the wealth of evidence that students who are better prepared and are the product of stable family backgrounds perform better in school, thus assuring more chances of economic and other success in adulthood. Simple solutions like income redistribution do not solve a problem as complex as income inequality, or more correctly educational inequality.

Africa – Crucible for maritime domain awareness: What are the investment priorities?

Maritime domain awareness is critically positioned at the nexus of the technological and cultural implications of networking; the renewed impetus for data sharing across government and non-governmental organizations; and the general goodwill for building maritime partnerships. Notwithstanding the general recognition and support for improved maritime domain awareness there are significant challenges with regard to the development of common information sharing environments for the maritime domain. Both at national level and at the regional level, authorities responsible for defense, border control, customs, marine pollution, fisheries control, maritime safety and security, vessel traffic management, accident and disaster response, search and rescue as well as law enforcement are collecting information for their own purposes.  While the technological means exist to share this information, information sharing standards, agreements, and policies need to be in place in order to overcome the cultural, organizational and legal hurdles before these well recognized silos of information can be used successfully to “connect the dots.” 

Click here for the complete article.

Comment and Discussion

Africa’s Leaking Wound

(See M. Murphy, pp. 37–41, March 2013 Proceedings )
Dr. Edgar Bates (former Director, Maritime Domain Awareness, Naval Forces Europe/Naval Forces Africa) —Dr. Murphy is on target when focusing on the endemic corruption in Africa. Arguably, the Niger Delta’s illicit activity is caused because oil revenues are being siphoned off by government officials, and therefore the citizens do not see any tangible benefits from oil extraction, and they want a piece of the action. Equally pernicious, corrupt public officials in Africa are tolerated by their supporters as long as some of the spoils are shared with them, so reforms are not always welcome.
A significant mismatch is having the Navy component (NAVAF) perform law-enforcement training instead of allowing the Coast Guard to take the lead on providing fisheries enforcement and drug-interdiction training to African forces. With perceived deep pockets, the Navy is being tasked with noncombat activities that should be the responsibility of other government entities. In the words of former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy, “We are not going to have a successful system if one part of the government is on steroids and the rest is on life support.”

As globalization forces the world’s economies to become more closely integrated and dependent, the Naval Studies Board concluded a few years ago that it is critical that nations coordinate and collectively integrate their maritime security activities by developing maritime partnerships. Notwithstanding the challenge of AFRICOM to first more effectively plan, prioritize, align, and implement U.S. government activities in a collaborative interagency environment, a more concerted effort is essential to coordinate activities with African countries and our European partners who have long-established equities and operational relationships. Having this sort of regional “scheduling conference” would reduce duplication of effort, create synergy, and conserve scarce resources. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has been critical that while some capacity-building activities appear to support AFRICOM’s mission, others do not because “AFRICOM is generally not measuring long-term effects of activities.”
The Maritime Domain Awareness Capability Maturity Model (MDA CMM) is a tool for assessing a country’s ability to monitor, patrol, and maintain its maritime environment; it was created at NAVAF for the exact purpose of providing key decision makers the metrics that measure return on investment and gauge a country’s relative improvements in maritime safety and security. According to the MDA CMM, the first of five levels is characterized by countries whose MDA systems are inadequately sustained, whereas at the optimum level countries take a leadership role in regional information sharing. The CMM is responsive to the GAO’s concerns and should be adopted by AFRICOM to help shape an effective investment strategy  See Proceedings Magazine - April 2013 Vol. 139/4/1,322

Perspective on Time Horizons

     A little more than ten years ago I was fortunate to spend a morning listening to Dr. Elliot Jaques discuss in an open forum many of the concepts that he had conceived during his illustrious career.  His notion of time horizons seems to ring truer today than at any other time.  For Jacques time horizons were the most useful and objective measure of the level and complexity of work.  While the janitor sweeping the shop floor might be thinking about what was for dinner, the assembly line worker might be more concerned with this week’s pay, a director of marketing more worried about marketing campaigns for next year, the chief executive SHOULD be looking to the future - even beyond his own time at the helm.  Jaques observed that organizations implicitly recognize this fact in everything from titles to salary: line workers are paid hourly, managers annually, and senior executives compensated with longer-term incentives such as stock options.

      Jaques identified seven different time horizons and argued that requisite organizations to be successful should assure the suitability of the employee’s time horizon to the task.  Indeed his research within the context of organizational development indicated that it was this disconnect that made for unhappy employees and failed businesses.  Jaques noted that in effective organizations workers with  differing time horizons worked  at a level where they felt comfortable. If a worker's job was beyond their innate time horizon, they would fail. Less and they would be insufficiently challenged. Level 1 encompasses jobs such as sales associates or line workers handling routine tasks with a time horizon of up to three months. Levels 2 to 4 encompass various managerial positions with time horizons between one to five years. Level 5 crosses over to five to 10 years and is the domain of chief executives. Beyond Level 5, one enters the realm of statesmen and legendary business leaders comfortable with 20 or 50 year time horizons.

     In a world where there is no shortage of short sightedness from egregious examples of greed and short term profits that led to the financial meltdown in 2008 to political leaders who make and change policy based on the latest polls, Dr. Jaques perspective that great leaders are those that tend to be visionaries is worth revisiting. Arguably problems like governement deficits are intractable because we have an electorate that is at Level 2 and elects maybe Level 3 politicians when we really need Level 5 solutions. 

More on responsibility in the context of gun control

To follow up on the notion that the electorate is uninformed, it is incredible that the gun control zealots are unable to understand the problem, and when you can't define the problem your solution will not make any difference. As reported in the "Crime and Enforcement Activity in New York City" for the first six months of 2010: 95.1 percent of all murder victims and 95.9 percent of all shooting victims in New York City are black or Hispanic and 90.2 percent of those arrested for murder and 96.7 percent of those arrested for shooting someone are black and Hispanic. According to Ann Coulter, the murder rate among white Americans is as low as the murder rate in Belgium. "So perhaps it's not a gun problem," she has concluded. "Perhaps it's a demographic problem."

The gun control argument is that gun laws intended to put guns into the hands of "good guys" are the laws that also multiply guns in the hands of "bad guys". Note that these guns are hand guns and are not the topic of the current assault weapon rhetoric. Gun buy backs in inner cities have had mixed results and may be a short term solution, but in the long term the problem of the black ghetto underclass has to shift from the politically correct argument that white racism is the cause and black inequality is the result. As an example, Bill Cosby is one voice that has tried to transform black helplessness, frustration and righteous indignation into a sense of shared responsibility and action. As the dropout rate approaches 70% and the teenage single parenthood is about 80% in the lower economic neighborhoods, Coz has emphasized to the students the importance of their education: “Study. That’s all. It’s not tough. You’re not picking cotton. You’re not picking up the trash. You’re not washing windows. You sit down. You read. You develop your brain.” His message is that black poverty will only end when and if black people themselves take responsibility for changing their lives.

Ironically when the country has moved to where the president can and should be an inspiration for those in the black ghetto underclass, he and the gun control zealots are unable to place responsibility where it belongs

Responsibility

Wrote this before the concept of blogs was imagined! More true today...

America is faced with a shortage of personal responsibility at every level of society. In America, pre-World War II, the churches, the schools and the families inculcated the standards of acceptable behavior. New generations learned the established and agreed upon customs of cooperative and civilized behavior very much as they learned a mother tongue. Starting with the psychedelic 1970's, we have been encouraged to do our own thing and all the traditional concepts of right and wrong have been replaced by a psychological approach to values: instead of being taught that there are absolutes by which they must abide, children are taught, "You'll feel better, if you do the right thing." Thus, having replaced moral concepts of good and evil with therapeutic categories of desire and feeling, we have lost the ability to instill a sense of character in young people and will likely continue to produce new generations of cultural orphans. Character is about one's adherence to moral principles and the standards of conduct that distinguish right from wrong.

Moral principles are not relative to the revisionist history of the moment. A clear lack of personal responsibility is when the President of the United States can admit that he lied to the American people, but urges the American people to be angry with Congress for making an issue of his lying - and they agree. The philosophical basis of this new lack of personal responsibility is rooted in determinism, the argument that people have no control over anything they choose to do, since everything anyone ever does is the result of a chain of causes. In order to fill the void of moral accountability, Americans generally rely on the courts to support the moral underpinnings of our culture which among other consequences results in piles of regulations and commensurate numbers of lawyers. As an example, most pundits agree that runaway medical costs could be seriously checked by tort reform. During the 1980’s Americans did collectively start accepting greater personal responsibility for their actions. This new attitude impacted social programs, as people questioned the assumption that unequal distribution of wealth is always society's fault. More recently, both intellectual and financial success have been demonized and we are moving away from the traditional American value that people are responsible for their own lives.

Dr. Viktor Frankl was a Jewish physician incarcerated in one of Hitler's concentration camps. From that experience, he developed a new school of psychiatry; based on the premise that mental wellness is not achieved by helping the individual understand what caused his psychological problems, but by taking action to resolve the problem. When Dr. Frankl lectured in the United States, he would conclude with a plea for Americans to erect a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast to balance the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast because, he declared, freedom requires a balance between those two ideals, liberty and responsibility.