MY BLOG HAS FINALLY MOVED TO PAMLIN.NET

It took a lot longer than expected... It is always other projects that are more important than my own web page... but it is getting there and now it is time for the blog to move....
Click here for the latest blog/front page on the new page. Not all parts are in place, but all major parts should be ready before the end of 2011 (I hope).


click here for the home of the new blog

Public procurement and transformative solutions: Workshop in Stockholm

The workshop about the potential role for public procurement to support transformative solutions was very inspiring and constructive with concrete ideas for ways forward.

Download PDF for agenda here and read below for the background.

Background
A number of trends are converging, e.g. rapid economic growth in many emerging economies, geopolitical shifts, demographic changes, ecosystem decline, unsustainable use of many natural resources – including oil - and increasing CO2 emissions. In order to move society in the direction of a sustainable low-carbon development path, there is a need for more than incremental improvements in existing production and consumption systems – not least in the case of investments, which are meant to last for many decades, if not centuries (such as buildings, energy-intensive manufacturing facilities and transport/communication infrastructure). Thus transformative solutions, that will allow services to be provided in fundamentally new ways, are urgently needed now. The following examples illustrate the nature of the changes that will be required:

• To improve fuel efficiency when commuting represents an incremental improvement – to help change working habits, e.g. through teleworking, represents a transformative shift.
• To make newspaper production more resource-efficient represents an incremental improvement – to massively expand e-paper subscriptions is a transformative solution.
• To improve efficiency in fossil-based power production represents an incremental step – to develop buildings that are “net producers” of renewable energy is a transformative solution.
• To enhance efficiency in the use of e-journals in hospitals represents an incremental improvement – to offer e-health solutions that promote more healthy lifestyles and provide remote connection to medical services is a transformative solution.
• To improve recycling of materials represents an incremental step – to develop systems for closed loops of materials in the techno-sphere is a transformative solution.

The changes needed are significant. A number of different measures are required to ensure an accelerated uptake of transformative solutions.

International agreements and EU policy declarations have already identified Public Procurement as an important tool to help promote resource efficiency and low-carbon solutions. In so doing, the hope is that Public Procurement will both improve competitiveness and help meet the EU 2020 targets.

A number of initiatives are underway within the EU Commission and some of the Member States to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of Public Procurement. There is, however, no established framework for the specific promotion of transformative solutions in the context of resource efficiency and low-carbon technology. Such a framework is urgently needed as several studies indicate that Public Procurement rules and practices of today often are seen as barriers to innovative solutions, instead of being at least neutral and hopefully also supportive.

The Committee of Inquiry on Public Procurement is mandated by the Swedish Government to undertake a thorough review of the Public Procurement rules and practices. The review shall be completed before the end of June, 2012. The review is undertaken in the context of a parallel review of EU legislation. Green Public Procurement is one of several key areas in the review.

The Committee is eager to explore new and innovative ways to use Public Procurement in the promotion of sustainable solutions, not least within the area of infrastructure development. To assist the Committee in these endeavours, Mr Dennis Pamlin has been asked to prepare a report on the role of Public Procurement in the promotion of transformative solutions for a low-carbon economy. The workshop on October 3rd is organised as an integral part of Mr Pamlin’s assignment.

The Lights in the Tunnel by Martin Ford

I read Martin’s book a few months ago and did not really know what to say about it. In one way it is the kind of airplane literature that I keep complaining about as it has one idea and is just discussing that from different angles though the book… But this idea is really fundamental and he write’s in such a relaxed, but passionate, way that it is like having a really inspiring conversation on a long-haul flight (or from a climate/innovation perspective preferable a high-speed train trip).

I should start by saying that there are a number of things I disagree with, and I find it a little sad that he address current economist in the way he does as I think it does not add to the book and will not convince any of the old school economists. But maybe it was worth a try… But it is not important (as old school economists are not very important more than the fact that they delay action in important areas).

The theme of the book is automation. Not simple automation, but transformative and it asks the question what happens when better intelligence and better machines are merged. What jobs are needed and what jobs are not?

In a time where policy makers, media, business and NGOs all agree that anything should be done to create almost any jobs Martin takes a step back and ask, where are we heading with the current development?

The conclusion is simple, and not surprising when you look around at the real world development: It is very likely that there will be a lot less available jobs than we usually assume.  Especially when intelligence (different forms as AI) is improving at an accelerated phase challenge many of the white color jobs that no one is discussing as disappearing (doctors, lawyers, investors, etc). People that today spend a lot of time with things that are not very creative (an area that will be hard to substitute).

Obviously not all of the work will disappear but if 50% can be taken over that is 50% lost jobs (and in most cases also demand for other skills). In the same way as one person can use a machine to make as many knifes that 100ds of people could do before the industrial revolution it is time to think about the “knowledge sector”…

If we moved from less labor intensive work to more thought intensive work, what is the next step… I would hope creative and ethic lives… So two shifts are needed, first that we don’t focus on simple “thinking” as machines will do the simple things for us, and second that we need to look beyond “jobs” and ask what kind of lives we want people to be able to have in society

I’m particularly interested to see how the increased need to create jobs “at home” in EU and the US will accelerate the transformative trend with jobs lost in existing sectors. Both EU and the US now agree that they should have a manufacturing base as an important part of the economy, but neither seems to understand that the option they have to be competitive is to accelerate the trends Martin describes.

There are more interesting discussion in this book I hope anyone talking about “job creation” and “green tax reforms” will read this, as well as anyone with a general interest in the future.

I proudly bough the e-book on Amazon as I think this kind of approach should be supported and that the big distribution channels must allow the multiple distribution approach by Martin. Why, because he is making the book available for free, or at the cost you are willing to pay, on his page.

So to sum up. It is a book looking in a direction where few dare to look and doing so without being sensationalistic. So if you are interesting in how the society could evolve before the laggards start realizing that their models are out dated I think you should pick up, pay for if you can afford it, and most important read “The lights in the end of the tunnel”.   

                                       

New webpage: Low-carbon leaders -Beyond carbon, is live and show the way for collaborative work

The page for Low-carbon leaders: Beyond carbon that focus on 21st Century Clusters with transformative solutions is now live. I just wanted to say that I’m really happy with the graphic solution, the "curtain", that allows users to look at the main part of the predecessor (the cases with small entrepreneurs and their transformative solutions).

Low-carbon leaders: Beyond carbon is a totally new project, but instead of just leaving the old work and move on, the "curtain" helps to provide a background and context to the new work. This is particular interesting as there where multiple stakeholders involved developing the cases. For the future I could envision that different groups that collaborate to use similar solutions like the one used on the page when they build on earlier joint work.

It might never happen, but if this graphic solution helps collaborative efforts in any way I’m very happy.

With regards to the actual project things are moving forward at a good phase and I look forward to an intensive fall with transformative clusters.

The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris

Anger undermines a very important message about enlightenment
I can really recommend this book, The Moral Landscape – How Science can Determine Human Values by Sam Harris, but you might want to skip the first three chapter or so (I was close to stop reading myself).

These first chapters are not well written as they both misunderstand a lot of philosophy (like “Humes law” that you can’t derive an ought from an it) and have a tone that is mainly oscillating between bitterness and anger.

It is really sad that Sam have not spent more time reading philosophy, not the postmodern, but the classics. I’m not sure why he ignores a field where thinkers have reflected over the challenges he’s done for thousands of years. Staring from zero is fine, but it gives the book a bit of a teenage character.

Why he does not read philosophy is explained in a footnote that sounds like something you hear not even from a teenager but 12 year old (can do it myself...) ;)

“I did no arrive at my position on the relationship between human values and the rest of human knowledge by reading the work of moral philosophers; I came to it by considering the logical implications of our making continued progress in the science of mind. Second, I am convinced that every appearance of terms like “metaethics,” “deontology,” “noncognitivism,” “antirealism,” “emotivism, ” etc., directly increase the amount of boredom in the universe.”

The fact that the book has a teenage character is also something very positive. It is an energy and frustration that is refreshing in a time when most people don’t seem to think about how thin the culture of enlightenment and science is. Still it is about science so some more reflection would not hurt. Maybe he thinks that the tone is what is needed in the US/global media climate?

Still it would have been nice if he did not simplify things quite as much, e.g. to compare “water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen” with “cruelty is wrong” and say “To really believe either proposition is also to believe that you have accepted it for legitimate reasons”. It is easy to understand his frustration, but this kind of oversimplification does not help.

A chemical formula with well defined concepts (that even these could be challenged is we could go down a level and make the definition of hydrogen and oxygen more complicated and also when it is actually water and when it is something else) compared with a link between concepts like "well-being" and "cruelty" is not very helpful.

Further he writes that “concern for well-being is the only intelligible basis for morality and values”. This is another example of the kind of statement that does not mean anything. I think it partly depend on a belief that things can be simplified and isolated. Further down on the same page (if pages make sense in the age of e-readers when you can chose the size of the text) he writes “would it be better to spend our next billion dollars eradicating racism or malaria?... Such questions may seem impossible to get a of this moment, but they may not stay this way forever”. That you can’t isolate one from the other, and that the way to calculate things in this way will also influence “well-being” is nothing Sam seems to think about. If he did, he might have a slightly different approach.

These weak points are frustrating as I think it will result in people ignoring his important message about people trying to bridge things that can not be bridged.

I think his discussion about Francis Collins, the former head of the human genome project, was refreshing to read. I need to read Collins book as I can’t believe that he is as irrational as Sam portrays him.

Maybe most interesting is probably when he discusses how friends that agree that science should guide society not religion, but that are afraid that criticism of religion will make people chose religion and not science. So it is better to tell lies to the public in order to ensure a future for science. The fact that people call him a fundamentalist and that he is dangerous is scary to me. I don’t think Sam is a very pleasant person and there are positions in society where I think he would do a bad job, but from what I have read I can trust him to listen to an argument and not dismiss anything I say without having using facts that are true to the best of his knowledge.

Spending much of my time in international where religion doesn’t play a very important role I see an even more disturbing feature that I hope he can discuss in his next book. The fact that there is a growing lack of respect for science among many professionals.

Right now for example I’m involved in a process with a group of consultants that are as bad as the most fundamentalists when it comes to respect for science. They seem to do that because they have adopted a short-term and narrow time perspective where things are very simplified and intellectual honesty is not important. In this case they have a client, they think they know what the client wants and they present a result based on these assumptions.

The scary is that these people don’t care about the consequences of their action, nor have any respect/knowledge about science. It is a weird economic approach without knowledge about economics.

These kinds of people show a few slides where some acceptable theories/approaches on and then jump to value based and sloppy conclusions. These conclusions are then meant to guide actions among multibillion companies that affect what products and services that are available as well as the values in society as they sit on very large PR budgets.

How these people can be encouraged to think about the ethical implications of their actions and understand the long-term consequences of undermining science is a challenges I hope Sam will address. When it comes to killing the planet and ignoring the poor these people are the once I think are the biggest problem. To be honest, compared with these "sloppy" people I think a lot of religious people have a lot to contribute to. This is especially true when it comes to actual action. Lab scientists like Sam are great, but when we look around the world there are people, such as another Sam (Sam Childers) that actually go out and try to make the world a better place instead of sitting on panels and writing articles…

Still, with all the weak parts in the book it is well worth a read. I can also recommend his web-page where you can be inspired by his (angry) quest for enlightenment. http://www.samharris.org/

PS
The book had two other areas that I think are worth mentioning, one because I think it is fundamentally wrong, the other because I think it is one of the most important questions.

The first is under the very interesting heading of "which self should we satisfy?", but instead of an understanding of how complex humans are and the different preference conflict that emerge all the time, Sam presents a simplistic form of the already flawed idea of Utilitarianism. Not only does Sam want to add the experiences, he wants to categorize the reflected experiences as flawed. He gives the example of a trip to Rome and say that if a person during this trip at every point did not feel good a "remembering self" claims to have had a wonderful time the "remembering self"is simply wrong. The attempt to divide a person in this way is first of all a very strange thing to do, but two things should be included in any approach like this:

1. No one has "simplistic feelings". When I'm in Rome I might have an aching back that make me suffer at the same time as I enjoy a very interesting conversation with a friend, while I realize that I'm in a restaurant that serve meet that paying for the bill will help them continue to promote this business, at the same time I got a great idea for a future project, I also realize that the conversation is part of a pattern where I look for distraction rather than deeper understanding, etc, etc...

2. We constantly change, the transcendence of the ego, as Sartre called it, is what defines us as humans. We might not agree with everything Sartre wrote about the ego, but the fact that we constantly can change is something that anyone that say they believe in enlightenment should consider (and if not explain how they approach humans). So when we look back we might see things different compared with how I experienced them at the time. Much of what people do when they try to improve things include things that might not be pleasant when it is done, but reflecting on it brings pleasant memories. Education and physical training are probably the two most obvious examples.

The Dark Side of Creativity by David H. Cropley, Arthur J. Cropley, James C. Kaufman and Mark A. Runco

This is almost a must read for anyone engaged in the sustainable innovation discussion. The material is a bit uneven and a few of the contributions should have been left out (low academic level and nothing really relevant to contribute), but overall it covers many interesting aspects of creativity.

The discussions about the consequences of creativity should have included more about large scale problems outside the military (Climate Change, endocrine disruptors, economic policy’s resulting in poverty are just a few that would have been interesting to discuss). But the one major area that I would like to have seen included is current marketing/PR and the consequences on creativity in society. The fact that many are wasting their creativity selling things that are bad (for ourselves, other people, other living beings and the planet) is

Still the book is filled with short chapters that cover interesting fields, such as:

1. What happens when successful creativity that delivers something good becomes a cage that makes it difficult to continue to be creative?
2. How can the educational system talk so much about creativity and do so much to kill it?
3. How close is creativity to madness?

There are also very interesting gems about the development of the nuclear industry (and the end of it) where the unwillingness to take sound decisions is explained from a perspective where companies become overconfident at the same time as they are under market pressure resulting in a situation where “new technologies were being developed without objective assessments”. James Jasper, who wrote the chapter that included the nuclear power discussion made me interested in his idea about “players or prizes?”

Liane Gabora and Nancy Holmes short chapter “Dangeling from a Tassel on Fabric of Socially Constructed Reality” is as poetic as it sounds. It makes me happy to see such a chapter included as this kind of texts are not often found outside the more “arty” fields.

I would have seen a longer version of Arthur Cropley’s chapter “Creativity in the Classroom” where he developed more concrete ideas, and did this in relation to a situation where students will be connected and have access to ideas/input that no generation before have.

In the chapter “The Dark Side of Creativity and How to Combat it” Robert Sternberg discuss what I think is the most important aspect, wisdom. It does not really say anything new, but the things we already know are sometimes the most important.

I’m not sure why, but I think the chapter “Neurosis: The dark side of emotional creativity” by James Averill and Elma Nunley is my favourite. The way they use Dostoevsky, William James and Otto Rank to discuss creativity reminded me of Marsel Burman’s “All that is solid melts into air” and in all its lack of focus also brought back “Ideology” from Otto Rank that I have not been thinking about in a very long time.

It is a joy to read books where the authors actually have spend time to think about the issue they write about. I hope that I can stay away from the “airplane literature” that is written by journalists as entertainment and with more focus on short nuggets that people can quote over the dinner table than any actual knowledge. I wonder if the “airport literature” are spread due to the fact that other journalists (with similar lack of deep knowledge) like them as these books are the kind of books they potentially could write (good in style but without much depth in knowledge). Are they the books equivalent of Fox-News/The daily show, entertaining at best and oversimplifying mainly? Hopefully the future will have more of these books where people with knowledge explore issues in depth.

The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World by David Deutsch

This is a really interesting book to read, more as a phenomenon than the content. I can’t find a better way to describe the book than the feeling of listen to a drunken rant by a really brilliant person, and I mean that in a good way. It is like listening to a really upset person during a dinner who spins out of control. A lot does not really make sense, even more is just driven by anger and makes him lose focus. Particularly frustrating is that the anger makes him invent straw men of important issues like the precautionary principle (a very difficult and important issue) and then engage in emotional battles with them. But don’t let this scare you off.

You will have to suffer through the first two chapters and listen to an upset voice that is so frustrated with the religious fanatics in he US that he lost the ability to see nuances. At the same time it is easy to feel sympathy for David as he tries to fight the religious fanatics that arguably been the source of the most suffering though human history. At the same time I was hoping though the book that he should take a step back and say: “see how I now turned into the thing that I criticized, letting anger and frustration drive you will not create the open society we need. The fact that I don’t agree with someone is not a reason to simplify things.”.

After the two initial chapters discussing different kinds of ways of philosophy and ways to approach science (without much nuance as I said, but still important) he all of a sudden starts discussing Star trek. He almost lost me there as it felt bizarre to read someone, who was criticizing a lot of people in very important areas, all of a sudden take transporters in Star trek very serious. The funny thing is that it leads to the best description of quantum computing I have ever read. Only this part make the book worth reading.

It highlights that people who are not really capable of coherent thinking in many important areas can help move the knowledge in society forward. How can we allow these people to work, while at the same time keep an open and wise society where questions about education, environmental degradation, energy systems, democracy, etc can be discussed in an educated way?

After the chapter about quantum computing, where he demonstrate that he knows something really well and can describe it in a way that indicates many lectures and discussions in the filed, he falls back to the ranting again. This time however it is easier to read as it becomes that this is not a book that should be read as a contribution to any larger issues in society. This is a book that should be read to understand how really good scientists feel when their innovation and right to do what they want.

David is a smart guy, but not as smart as he thinks he is. He is like a more angry and less brilliant version of Richard Feynman, a person who also thought he was more clever than he was, but fun and while he could be arrogant he never came across as this angry to me. Beside the very good quantum computer description I think the book is best read as a call for a more humble approach for scientists. Scientists should take on the challenges in society, but I think it would help if those thought about the need for a dialogue and clearly state what their focus is.

Taking a step back I’m happy that David was published as so many of the books today are written by journalists/entertainers that don’t know the subject they write about (beyond google searches) and treat their audience as if they can’t read a sentence with more than ten words.

As he is so personal it would be interesting to know next time what he is doing to help reduce global poverty, develop solutions that 9-10 billion people can use, reduce natural resource consumption, increase dialogue between different cultures, address the threat of pandemics, demographic changes, etc. Is he a vegetarian, what car does he drive, what energy does he use? What are the choices he thinks are important?

Full letter from Greg Maxwell + some thoughts about access to knowledge and media

The 21st century connectivity and the opportunities we have, e.g. to create a global digital Alexandria with free access to all the important knowledge in the world, require us to discuss some very difficult questions. Unfortunately most of these discussions, that will define freedom/equity/knowledge in the 21st century, are happening without many policy makers or mainstream media seem to understand what’s going on…

Now the actions by Aaron Swartz (you can read more about the case at Demand Progress) and Greg Maxwell have triggered an interesting discussion that hopefully can spread outside the small group that discuss this issue on a regular basis.

I have discussed these issues before so I’ll just post the letter from “Greg” below and before that a few headings from different media. These are either interesting articles and/or interesting headlines.

Beside the more fundamental questions, I think some researchers should do is look into the language used by media and policy makers in cases such as Aaron Swartz/Greg Maxwell and their actions in relation to JSTOR. Do they simply call it a CRIME and say that old rules apply. Do they put words, like STOLE, between quotation marks to indicate that things are a bit complicated? Or do they just state things, like THOUSANDS OF SCIENTIFIC PAPERS UPLOADED TO THE PIRATE PAY, that are more neutral (but actually factual incorrect as it is a torrent file that is uploaded, something that is key when discussing P2P/file sharing). Do they provide links to people can find the documents (is this encouraging crime or basic service to the reader)? Do we refer to the people as criminals, activists or ethical students?

Interestingly a number of media do not seem to have a problem to download material and support the general idea that information should be free. The idea that an economic entity or a person can “own” information/knowledge will hopefully give way to a society where people/companies are compensated when they contribute to knowledge, but the basic principle is that knowledge is for everyone.


Some examples of headings:

> “More knowledge 'stolen' for the good of science” msnbc.com - Nidhi Subbaraman
> “Huge Trove of Academic Docs Posted Online in Response to Activist Arrest” Wired News (blog) - Ryan Singel
> “Swartz supporter dumps 18592 JSTOR docs on the Pirate Bay” Ars Technica - Timothy B. Lee
> “Thousands of scientific papers uploaded to The Pirate Bay” GigaOm - Janko Roettgers
>

Below is the full letter from Greg Maxwell

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This archive contains 18,592 scientific publications totaling
33GiB, all from Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
and which should be available to everyone at no cost, but most
have previously only been made available at high prices through
paywall gatekeepers like JSTOR.

Limited access to the documents here is typically sold for $19
USD per article, though some of the older ones are available as
cheaply as $8. Purchasing access to this collection one article
at a time would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Also included is the basic factual metadata allowing you to
locate works by title, author, or publication date, and a
checksum file to allow you to check for corruption.

ef8c02959e947d7f4e4699f399ade838431692d972661f145b782c2fa3ebcc6a sha256sum.txt

I've had these files for a long time, but I've been afraid that if I
published them I would be subject to unjust legal harassment by those who
profit from controlling access to these works.

I now feel that I've been making the wrong decision.

On July 19th 2011, Aaron Swartz was criminally charged by the US Attorney
General's office for, effectively, downloading too many academic papers
from JSTOR.

Academic publishing is an odd systemΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥the authors are not paid for their
writing, nor are the peer reviewers (they're just more unpaid academics),
and in some fields even the journal editors are unpaid. Sometimes the
authors must even pay the publishers.

And yet scientific publications are some of the most outrageously
expensive pieces of literature you can buy. In the past, the high access
fees supported the costly mechanical reproduction of niche paper journals,
but online distribution has mostly made this function obsolete.

As far as I can tell, the money paid for access today serves little
significant purpose except to perpetuate dead business models. The
"publish or perish" pressure in academia gives the authors an impossibly
weak negotiating position, and the existing system has enormous inertia.

Those with the most power to change the system--the long-tenured luminary
scholars whose works give legitimacy and prestige to the journals, rather
than the other way around--are the least impacted by its failures. They
are supported by institutions who invisibly provide access to all of the
resources they need. And as the journals depend on them, they may ask
for alterations to the standard contract without risking their career on
the loss of a publication offer. Many don't even realize the extent to
which academic work is inaccessible to the general public, nor do they
realize what sort of work is being done outside universities that would
benefit by it.

Large publishers are now able to purchase the political clout needed
to abuse the narrow commercial scope of copyright protection, extending
it to completely inapplicable areas: slavish reproductions of historic
documents and art, for example, and exploiting the labors of unpaid
scientists. They're even able to make the taxpayers pay for their
attacks on free society by pursuing criminal prosecution (copyright has
classically been a civil matter) and by burdening public institutions
with outrageous subscription fees.

Copyright is a legal fiction representing a narrow compromise: we give
up some of our natural right to exchange information in exchange for
creating an economic incentive to author, so that we may all enjoy more
works. When publishers abuse the system to prop up their existence,
when they misrepresent the extent of copyright coverage, when they use
threats of frivolous litigation to suppress the dissemination of publicly
owned works, they are stealing from everyone else.

Several years ago I came into possession, through rather boring and
lawful means, of a large collection of JSTOR documents.

These particular documents are the historic back archives of the
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal SocietyΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥a prestigious scientific
journal with a history extending back to the 1600s.

The portion of the collection included in this archive, ones published
prior to 1923 and therefore obviously in the public domain, total some
18,592 papers and 33 gigabytes of data.

The documents are part of the shared heritage of all mankind,
and are rightfully in the public domain, but they are not available
freely. Instead the articles are available at $19 each--for one month's
viewing, by one person, on one computer. It's a steal. From you.

When I received these documents I had grand plans of uploading them to
Wikipedia's sister site for reference works, WikisourceΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥ where they
could be tightly interlinked with Wikipedia, providing interesting
historical context to the encyclopedia articles. For example, Uranus
was discovered in 1781 by William Herschel; why not take a look at
the paper where he originally disclosed his discovery? (Or one of the
several follow on publications about its satellites, or the dozens of
other papers he authored?)

But I soon found the reality of the situation to be less than appealing:
publishing the documents freely was likely to bring frivolous litigation
from the publishers.

As in many other cases, I could expect them to claim that their slavish
reproductionΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥scanning the documentsΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥ created a new copyright
interest. Or that distributing the documents complete with the trivial
watermarks they added constituted unlawful copying of that mark. They
might even pursue strawman criminal charges claiming that whoever obtained
the files must have violated some kind of anti-hacking laws.

In my discreet inquiry, I was unable to find anyone willing to cover
the potentially unbounded legal costs I risked, even though the only
unlawful action here is the fraudulent misuse of copyright by JSTOR and
the Royal Society to withhold access from the public to that which is
legally and morally everyone's property.

In the meantime, and to great fanfare as part of their 350th anniversary,
the RSOL opened up "free" access to their historic archivesΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥but "free"
only meant "with many odious terms", and access was limited to about
100 articles.

All too often journals, galleries, and museums are becoming not
disseminators of knowledgeΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥as their lofty mission statements
suggestΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥but censors of knowledge, because censoring is the one thing
they do better than the Internet does. Stewardship and curation are
valuable functions, but their value is negative when there is only one
steward and one curator, whose judgment reigns supreme as the final word
on what everyone else sees and knows. If their recommendations have value
they can be heeded without the coercive abuse of copyright to silence
competition.

The liberal dissemination of knowledge is essential to scientific
inquiry. More than in any other area, the application of restrictive
copyright is inappropriate for academic works: there is no sticky question
of how to pay authors or reviewers, as the publishers are already not
paying them. And unlike 'mere' works of entertainment, liberal access
to scientific work impacts the well-being of all mankind. Our continued
survival may even depend on it.

If I can remove even one dollar of ill-gained income from a poisonous
industry which acts to suppress scientific and historic understanding,
then whatever personal cost I suffer will be justifiedΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥it will be one
less dollar spent in the war against knowledge. One less dollar spent
lobbying for laws that make downloading too many scientific papers
a crime.

I had considered releasing this collection anonymously, but others pointed
out that the obviously overzealous prosecutors of Aaron Swartz would
probably accuse him of it and add it to their growing list of ridiculous
charges. This didn't sit well with my conscience, and I generally believe
that anything worth doing is worth attaching your name to.

I'm interested in hearing about any enjoyable discoveries or even useful
applications which come of this archive.

- ----
Greg Maxwell - July 20th 2011
gmaxwell@gmail.com Bitcoin: 14csFEJHk3SYbkBmajyJ3ktpsd2TmwDEBb

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Visit www.transformative-applications.net and get a glimpse of a better future

Embargo: 2011-06-18

Today Transformative-Applications.net present the top-ten list for the second quarter 2011. Each quarter ten transformative applications that address some of the most pressing challenges in our society, and five initiatives that support the development and uptake of such applications are presented.

In the second assessment the following applications are included (in alphabetical order):

• Biblion
• EveryTrail
• Health Enhancement Assist Service
• iKiva
• Leafsnap
• Plugshare
• Realtimecongress
• RedPhone
• Runkeeper (Health Graph update)
• Seasonal Harvest Lite

Areas such as health (where we through leading mobile applications can see a move from central institutions addressing symptoms once people are already sick to a decentralized system with focus on a healthy life) are developing fast. EveryTrail, Health Enhancement Assist Service and Runkeepers update with an “health graph” are all interesting examples.

Direct and open connections are also getting a lot of attention among entrepreneurial developers with iKiva, RedPhone and Sesonal Harvest Light covering different aspects, from free communication to the ability to connect to those that produce things we use.

- The response has been fantastic and we want to make sure that the page highlight a diverse set of applications and supportive initiatives that address, or have the potential to address, today's and tomorrow's most important challenges, said Dennis Pamlin, who is coordinating the initiative. It is very interesting to see that it is mainly independent entrepreneurs that are moving the transformative agenda forward.

The five supporting initiatives Q2 2011 are:

• Access
• Apps for Development
• Investigative Dashboard (ID)
• Prix Pictet
• Zilok

- Very few of the major stakeholders today are doing anything transformative. They seem to see mobile application and the increased connectivity more as a threat than an opportunity. If they do anything at all they just transfer existing data and ways of operating into apps. We will now send out a questionnaire to leading stakeholders and ask how they support transformative applications.

For more information and the list of transformative applications please visit: www.transformative-applications.net

Eco-innovation in Europe: Not very innovative, or are the "experts" looking in the wrong direction?

Right now I’m looking for data in the project "transformative low-carbon leadership" for GeSI. A friend sent a report about Eco-innovation, “The Eco-Innovation Challenge; Pathways to a resource efficient Europe”, and was surprised about the lack of innovation in it. It is not the first time and the report is not particular bad (actually a bit better than a lot of other report that talk about innovation), but this time I decided to look a bit closer.

I think there are three main reasons for these kinds of studies being so bad when it come to what I call innovation (substantial change or difference versus more incremental changes):

• First, they look at changes (and often incremental changes) in existing systems, not new ways of providing services. This result in a situation where they are seldom looking at anything really innovative.
• Second, they have a problem perspective where the final emissions/pollution/waste is the focus. Many seem to be experts in waste/pollution and are probably threatened by actual solutions, as these will make their knowledge redundant.
• Third, they are funded by/targeting current polluters, not tomorrow’s solution providers. Or else it is just tragic that they keep ignoring tomorrow’s solution providers.

A simple Google search shows that there are reasons to be optimistic. New areas are not far after other areas when searched for together with “eco-innovation”, maybe this is because people outside Europe are more open to tomorrow’s solutions, or maybe there are better experts in Eco-innovation than the people who put the study above together (see above for the result/focus of that report).

Solar are already on the level of the older/traditional areas, and ICT will probably move into mainstream soon. Nanotech and Robots are two areas I think will grow very fast over the next five years and biotech is already a priority. It is amazing that a study that claim to talk about innovation manage to ignore solar, ICT, biotech, nanotech and robots...

One of the challenges is to ensure that academia move the focus from incremental eco-innovation to transformative eco-innovation. On the web people like to link transformative with eco-innovation, but that is not what is happening when we look at scholarly articles (see below).





















This is one of the images in the EU study that (as most studies in the field) almost totally ignored innovative solutions used a problem approach. Beside the fact that solution sectors are not included the graph show little more than the fact that the use of the term "eco-innovation" is becoming increasingly popular.

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

This is the first Sci-fi I have read that take on the decline on the US though the “entertainment”/connectivity development we see now. It is also a good example on how people see China as the "threat" that are beyond the control of anything the US can do, as US is not really bringing anything of value anymore. The part where US wants to impress the visiting person (the head of China's Central Bank and "probably the most powerful person on the planet") by showing that the US can still innovate is brilliant.

In many ways this is for me the Bukowski version of Daemon (the brilliant book by Daniel Suarez that everyone interesting in technology should read). The need to stay connected and the focus on instant gratification is not very sophisticated but therefore also very effective. Letting all (almost) key characters be outside the main events in society is and efficient way to create the feeling of lost control that seem to drive many today into situations where they work without much reflection or thought about any broader consequences of their actions. His main character is such a sad person that it is hard not to see him as the perfect caricature of a US "intellectual" today.

Sometimes it feels a little to much focus on sex/nudity, but then you relies that this is where we are heading if media/PR/TV continue on the path we are on today and have been since mass marketing begun. I hope people doing advertising, developing apps and are innovative in the use of new media read this and think a little about where things are heading… Maybe even take the time to read Simmel, The Philosophy of Money.

Education for sustainability in the 21st century

What is smart and sustainable education in the 21st century? This is one of the key challenges today. Instead of asking how ICT can be used in schools, the salary level of teachers and similar marginal questions we should ask what education is in the 21st century. The two key questions are:
1. What do we need to learn?
2. How can we learn? (using new technology and solutions)

The first question is very interesting as we are moving into a society where changes are happening so fast and where science is no longer even close to intuitive (quantum mechanics, nanotechnology, data processing, genetic manipulation, etc) that it will be challenging to guide the development with current democratic institutions (or non democratic institutions in some cases). It is also important as access to data and connectivity make interpretation of data rather than memorizing data more important in many cases. A geopolitical shift make cultural understanding of countries like China and India more important in the western curriculum.

The second question is equally interesting and related. When we can get access to information and explanations by the world’s best teachers though mobile devices what is the role of the “industrial school” (presented in an entertaining way here by Ken Robinson) and how can we focus on education/learning rather than an institution with limited relevance in the 21st century. Distant education has a great potential to lead the discussion, but so far they have often used traditional education as the benchmark instead of developing new innovative approaches to education. Will this change?

A first step could be to develop a ranking/rating system of current education. What are the best approaches/contributions to sustainable development and how can it be measured.

Realize that I’ve over the three last weeks discussed the issue of education and innovation three times in three different processes. At EDEN (Annual Conference – Learning and Sustainability: The New Ecosystem of Innovation and Knowledge) and at a pan EU university project and today I could not avoid it during a (video) discussion about ICT and sustainability during an event in Almedalen.

Immortality by Kevin Bohacz

Immortality is not a bad book, for two evenings of reading it is more than OK. But as many other scifi's I think it ends where it should begin. The merging of man/machine, or upgrade to "human 2.0" is happening now and we need authors to explore the ethical and aesthetic aspects of what is happening.

1. We have close to 2 billion people with overweight,
2. close to a billion people chronically hungry,
3. at the same time as we are killing the planet,
4. we can see the end of the western dominance and
5. the (re-)emergence of other values beside the linear/growth paradigm that has dominated the leading institutions thinking about development.

For each there is a challenge for "transhumanism"
1. Will it only accelerate the need for "more" and individualism (the book and many others highlight the connectivity as a potential force for transformative change)?
2. Is the development helping those in most need of help? The book does not even mention the poor on the planet... and hardly anyone outside the US...
3. How will it help up live more sustainable lives? Here the book highlights current challenges (and actually make them a key part of the plot), but does not talk about actual solutions.
4. China, India and other re-emerging economies will set the agenda in a way that never has been the case though history. It is time for the western civilization to leave room for other cultures, if not we will have "war" in a few decades where the reality and current institutions drift too far apart. Nothing in the book discussed these issues.
5. There is so much focus on the technical development that the ethical aspects are often forgotten. Right when the book end the people of the world face some interesting choices and ethical dilemmas.

Part of me also feel a little uncomfortable with an average book that use the same title as Kundera's masterpiece.

Congratulation Peng Lei: Master of Public Policy

Peng Lei, aka "Bruce" to many of us, has now graduated from Harvard.

Bruce was the first person I recruited in China. He was the leading person in China for the trade and investment work and soon become an influential thinker regarding global policy and business development.

When we, almost 10 years ago, started work with CSR as core business in China, China as an exporter of sustainable goods, transformative innovation as a key part for the 5 year plan, Sino-Indian collaboration, etc, these areas where almost unexplored.

I’m still reminded on a regular basis of the potential to deliver results with small investments in an area before everyone started to work on it. I have seen few people develop the analytical and operational skills so fast as Bruce did. I will never forget the dinner we had in Hong Kong after we arranged the first side-event ever with MOFCOM about sustainable trade during the WTO meeting in 2005.

Look forward to future adventure PL!

The road to green growth, China Daily 3 June 2011

Below is an article about an area I've been spending a lot of time on the last five years...

Here is a link to China Daily.

China, EU need to overcome five communication challenges to build a low-carbon future

China and the European Union (EU) are in many ways the perfect global team to develop low-carbon solutions.

The EU is the only grouping of developed countries where serious discussion about a low/zero carbon society by 2050 is being held. Furthermore, the EU is in urgent need to refurbish much of the infrastructure that was built after World War II and needs new low-carbon solutions to do so.

Among the emerging economies, China is arguably the most important, not only because of its size and economic development, but also because of a long-term vision and innovation-based approach to low-carbon development. The 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) is ambitious and China has two very important roles to play in the global economy.

First, it will be seen as a provider of high quality low-cost low-carbon solutions to the rest of the world. Second, China will be seen as the place where a new urbanization is born, an urbanization that is resource efficient and low-carbon. Such urbanization would not only help China move up the value chain but also drive global low-carbon innovation.

Below are five key communication challenges for low-carbon companies that should be addressed to unleash a joint low-carbon leadership of China and the EU built on their respective strengths.

1. Image of aggressive dragon One of the most difficult communication problems is that many people in the EU have been influenced by the image of China as an "aggressive dragon". This image is a big obstacle as many entrepreneurs and important stakeholders hesitate to contact Chinese companies. So even before there is a communication challenge, the image of the aggressive dragon has resulted in many missed opportunities.
Chinese and EU companies must be more visible together to show the gains that result from collaboration. Media and policymakers in the EU have a significant responsibility as the language and images they use influence the image of Chinese companies in the EU.
 
2. Unbalanced knowledge
The average Chinese businessperson in the EU is knowledgeable about Europe's history, politics, food and literature. But the average European knows almost nothing about China. This is slowly improving, but only recently did most universities in the EU start to include China in the curriculum in a more comprehensive way.
In the case of larger companies from the EU, they often state that they have been in China for decades, or make similar statements, to highlight their Chinese experience. These companies tell the truth, but they forget to tell that it is equally true that 99 percent of the staff in these companies often don't know who even top leaders are, or can name more than four Chinese cities.

Chinese companies must start by treating Western people initially as if they have no knowledge of China. Today, many Western people are just nodding without understanding what the conversion is about, and sometimes that can result in a situation where people from the EU feel that Chinese businesspeople are difficult to understand. Similar things happen the other way around where EU companies must remember that while Chinese companies know many things about the EU, they are often unaware of ethical rules and what is required to become a trusted partner in the EU.

3. Two-hand business card Simple cultural differences - such as food, greetings, gift exchanges and the way to sit during negotiations - are hiding the more significant differences. Today, too many companies spend a lot of resources to learn basic culture behavior, just to ensure short-time business success. Understanding simple cultural differences can help communicate, but much deeper cultural understanding is needed, than that you hand over a business card with two hands in China.
The poor cultural understanding results in simplistic approaches also by Chinese companies. Some Chinese solar companies, for example, hear that they should communicate on environment and think that they only need to communicate that they pollute on the same level or less than Europeans to be environmentally credible. Again, this communication is too simplistic and more is needed.

Companies are expected to also present their positive contribution in the EU. Chinese companies must know and communicate how much CO2 they have helped reduce in the EU in collaboration with EU companies and how many new jobs they have helped create by providing parts of smart low-carbon solutions. They must learn to communicate much more than the technical data, they must explain their positive role in the EU.

4. The guanxi challenge Chinese companies in the EU often don't understand the need for a broader network of supporters. Guanxi, or connection, is as common in the EU as it is in China. It looks a little different. It is less discussed and business people don't refer to their contacts in the same way as Chinese businesspeople do in China. Still, networks are at least as important in the EU as in China.

As low-carbon development is a highly political issue, it is very important for Chinese companies to understand how they can provide policy support to low-carbon solutions. In the EU, Chinese companies should ensure that they are in regular contact with those who work with low-carbon development and that they keep them updated to progress in different kind of collaborations. Here it is also important that Chinese companies understand the important role of non-governmental organizations and engage with them.

5. The vision and passion Chinese low-carbon companies, especially solar companies, play an important symbolic role in the relationship between China and the EU. But Chinese low-carbon companies are often seen as only focusing on making money and selling the cheapest solar panels at any cost. Few in the EU are aware of the fact that some of the Chinese solar companies are led by passionate visionaries for global low-carbon development.

The exhibition in headquarters of companies such as Trina Solar, Suntech and the displays in Baoding, a solar power city in North China's Hebei province, should be brought to the EU so that people understand that the vision of a sustainable future is something that they share with Chinese companies. The CEOs should also ensure to participate in policy dialogues in the EU.
These five challenges will take time to overcome, but we need to start now and within one year leading low-carbon companies from China should have done the following in collaboration with stakeholders in EU:

1. Calculate and report how much CO2 they have helped reduce in the EU in collaboration with EU companies.
2. Calculate and report how many new sustainable jobs they have helped create in the EU in collaboration with EU companies.
3. Present how they support innovation in collaboration with EU companies.
4. Present policy positions where they give suggestions for what kind of collaboration in the EU would help to deliver new, smart low-carbon solutions.
5. Help support and accelerate the low-carbon domestic market in China and invite EU (and other) companies to help in this work.

Low-carbon companies from the EU should do the same in China, and where possible the same teams that do work in EU should also work in China to highlight the synergies.

These initial steps will allow the China-EU collaboration to move to the next level and avoid increased tension and trade conflicts that we will not be able to totally avoid. We will see more exciting collaboration with concrete results that will help deliver the solutions we need and support a collaborative culture.

It is urgent to act now. And we hope better communication is demonstrated at COP17 (the 17th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) in South Africa later this year.

The author is the director of UN Global Compact's Low-Carbon Leader Project and founder of the initiative, China's Global Media Image, which will launch a website later this summer.

21st Century Clusters for transformative solutions/ LCL: Beyond carbon

This week the phase two of the low-carbon leaders project was presented at the UNGC annual meeting in Copenhagen. It was a great session and from an idea less than a year ago to a fully operational project with significant support for a transformative agenda it is a project with the potential to help set the agenda at Rio+20.

The leaflet describing the project can be found here.

Launch of RiREL in Taiwan

The 0.9 version of RiREL was launched in Taiwan 15th of May.

The parts I worked on are in the PPT that can be found here.

Suzanne Pahlman did the presentation.

Postdoc position for Low Carbon City Development Index (LCCDI)

Thanks to Steen Rasmussen, Professor and Center Director at University of Southern Denmark, someone will be given the historic opportunity to do a postdoc in the area of a low-carbon city development index (LCCDI). This work will focus on the full impact, positive and negative, including the impact beyond the borders of the city through import/export of embedded energy, as well as export of low-carbon solutions that help other parts of the world reduce their emissions.

See below for more information:

Project: Low Carbon City Index (LCCDI) [1]

Cities are realizing the urgency to confront the climate challenge. New ideas and innovations are being developed and implemented by cities everywhere. However, many roadblocks slow down the exchange of promising ideas and innovations among cities.

The Low Carbon City Dynamic Index grew out of an urgency to define a universal science-based measure for the CO₂ balance in cities[2]. An operational and science-based index is highly desirable as a means of tracking the true CO₂ emissions in a given region as well as a base for comparison and benchmarking between different cities. It is envisioned that the LCCDI could define a much-needed international standard.

As cities will increasingly house a greater fraction of the global population cities must also be part of the solution to the CO₂ emission problem. Therefore the LCCDI is divided into five parts where three parts are focused on CO₂ reduction solutions:

The index focus on solutions and will have five parts:

1. Urban profile (land use and actual carbon profile)

2. Urban trajectory (actual carbon history)

3. Investments for the future (high- or low-carbon investments)

4. Actual export of solutions (high- or low-carbon contribution/technology to the world)

5. Policy support/engagement (high- or low-carbon policy promotion)

Note that the CO₂ accounting includes imports and exports. E.g. CO₂ emissions from the production of goods produced elsewhere, but consumed in the city, are accounted for within the city.

The development of the index will follow a three-step plan.

Step 1: Compiling the index on a small group of 3-5 cities including: Sønderborg Denmark, London GB, Baoding China, utilizing (incomplete) database and established stakeholder network/contacts.

Step 2: Preparing a scientific paper on the index, linking up with additional key stakeholders, incl. progressive cities and related scientific and NGO index working groups, as well as graphical presentation material for stakeholder engagement.

Step 3: Institutionalization of the index (e.g. World Bank, Nordic Countries, WWF).

Budget:

Initiative for Science, Society and Policy could cover ~50% of a 1-year postdoc (or 100% for ~half a year postdoc) with a starting date ASAP. The academic task of the postdoc is to complete the practical implementation of the LCCI as outlined above through steps 1 and 2.

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[1] Point of contact: Steen Rasmussen, Professor & Center Director, Fundamental Living Technology, SDU, http://www.sdu.dk/flint & Science Board, Initiative for Science, Society and Policy (ISSP), http://www.science-society-policy.org. The project will also be part of the NORTH STAR network, headed by Professor Mike Goodsite, see http://www.nord-star.info. Mike is also Science Board member at ISSP.

[2] LCCI originates in the ‘Copenhagen Declaration’, which was formulated in mid-2008 by stakeholders committed to helping cities improve their carbon performance. For a complete list of participants, see: John Bang (World Wildlife Foundation, Denmark) and Peter Rathje (ProjectZero, Denmark) “Low Carbon City Index, Concept Note”, Draft June 4, 2009, which has an implementation plan. The LCCI concept was further elaborated by Diana Mangalagiu (Reims Business School, France) and Britta Boyd (University of Southern Denmark), “Development of a Low Carbon City Index: the Issue of Accounting for Import/Export Emissions”, 2009 International Energy Workshop, Venice, Italy June 17th - 19th, 2009. The current form of the Index is mainly taken from Dennis Pamlin et al., (http://www.pamlin.net and http://lowcarbondeelopmentindex.net) where further inclusion of CO₂ policies and solutions are introduced into the LCCI and is now called Low Carbon City Dynamics Index (LCCDI).