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Nov 12, 2013

The Future of Scientific Management, Today!

Posted by in categories: business, counterterrorism, defense, economics, education, engineering, ethics, existential risks, finance, futurism, science, singularity, sustainability, transparency

The Future of Scientific Management, Today! (Excerpt)

Transformative and Integrative Risk Management
Andres Agostini was asked this question:

Mr. David Shaw’s question, “…Andres, from your work on the future which management skills need to be developed? Classically the management role is about planning, organizing, leading and controlling. With the changes coming in the future what’s your view on how this management mix needs to change and adapt?…” Question was posited on an Internet Forum, formulated by Mr. David Shaw (Peterborough, United Kingdom) on October 09, 2013.

Continue reading “The Future of Scientific Management, Today!” »

Nov 5, 2013

Futurewise Success Tenets

Posted by in categories: business, complex systems, economics, education, engineering, existential risks, futurism

Futurewise Success Tenets

“Futurewise Success Tenets” here is an excerpt from, “The Future of Scientific Management, Today”. To read the entire piece, just click the link at the end of article. As follows:

(1) Picture mentally, radiantly. (2) Draw outside the canvas. (3) Color outside the vectors. (4) Sketch sinuously. (5) Far-sight beyond the mind’s intangible exoskeleton. (6) Abduct indiscernible falsifiable convictions. (7) Reverse-engineering a gene and a bacterium or, better yet, the lucrative genome. (8) Guillotine the over-weighted status quo. (9) Learn how to add up ─ in your own brainy mind ─ colors, dimensions, aromas, encryptions, enigmas, phenomena, geometrical and amorphous in-motion shapes, methods, techniques, codes, written lines, symbols, contexts, locus, venues, semantic terms, magnitudes, longitudes, processes, tweets, “…knowledge-laden…” hunches and omniscient bliss, so forth. (10) Project your wisdom’s wealth onto communities of timeless-connected wikis. (11) Cryogenize the infamous illiterate by own choice and reincarnate ASAP (multiverse teleporting out of a warped / wormed passage) Da Vinci, Bacon, Newton, Goethe, Bonaparte, Edison, Franklyn, Churchill, Einstein, and Feynman. (12) Organize relationships into voluntary associations that are mutually beneficial and accountable for contributing productively to the surrounding community. (13) Practice the central rule of good strategy, which is to know and remain true to your core business and invest for leadership and R&D+Innovation. (14) Kaisen, SixSigma, Lean, LeanSigma, “…Reliability Engineer…” (the latter as solely conceived and developed by Procter & Gamble and Los Alamos National Laboratories) it all unthinkably and thoroughly by recombinant, a là Einstein Gedanke-motorized judgment (that is to say: Einsteinian Gedanke [“…thought experiments…”]. (15) Provide a road-map / blueprint for drastically compressing (‘crashing’) the time’s ‘reticules’ it will take you to get on the top of your tenure, nonetheless of your organizational level. (16) With the required knowledge and relationships embedded in organizations, create support for, and carry out transformational initiatives. (17) Offer a tested pathway for addressing the linked challenges of personal transition and organizational transformation that confront leaders in the first few months in a new tenure. (18) Foster momentum by creating virtuous cycles that build credibility and by avoiding getting caught in vicious cycles that harm credibility. (19) Institute coalitions that translate into swifter organizational adjustments to the inevitable streams of change in personnel and environment. (20) Mobilize and align the overriding energy of many others in your organization, knowing that the “…wisdom of crowds…” is upfront and outright rubbish. (21) Step outside the boundaries of the framework’s system when seeking a problem’s solution. (22) Within zillion tiny bets, raise the ante and capture the documented learning through frenzy execution. (23) “…Moonshine…” and “…Skunks-work…” and “…Re-Imagineering…” all, holding in your mind the motion-picture image that, regardless of the relevance of “…inputs…” and “…outputs,…”, entails that the highest relevance is within the sophistication within the THROUGHPUT.….. (69) Figure out exactly which neurons to make synapses with. (70) Wire up synapses the soonest…”

Read the full material at http://lnkd.in/bYP2nDC

Regards,

Mr. Andres Agostini
www.linkedin.com/in/AndresAgostini

Nov 4, 2013

Our Parent Star: New Solar Science, an Uptick in Activity, and a Clearer Emerging Picture

Posted by in categories: existential risks, science

Zach Urbina, solar science, SDO

After nearly six months of relative quiet, our parent star, the sun, awoke. Recent predictions from leading solar scientists ranged from “cycle 24 will be our weakest yet” to “cycle 24 is quiet now, because it will be double peaked.” It appears that the latter is emerging as the clearer truth.

Over the course of a week, between October 24th and 31st, more than 28 substantial flares fired off from the sun. Several of the more recent flares sent massive clouds of ionized particulate matter, called coronal mass ejections, toward Earth.

Four of the recent flares were X-class solar flares, the strongest on the scale, erupting from the photosphere of the sun, causing minor radio blackouts, and sending coronal mass ejections in many different directions, including toward Earth.

Continue reading “Our Parent Star: New Solar Science, an Uptick in Activity, and a Clearer Emerging Picture” »

Nov 3, 2013

Beyond-Insurance Risk Management

Posted by in category: futurism

Before being interested in applied futurism, I was college trained in “…General Insurance Management…” (U.S.) I also took university classes on engineering and technology (Canada, Venezuela). Working with the second largest oil group in the world (PDVSA, with 54,000 active employees. PDVSA is Citgo’s parent company), that group wanted me to only institute beyond-insurance risk management. You see, when they were to incur in a loss (potential disruption), it did not suffice to them to have the indemnity payment from the insurance and reinsurance pool.

Please read the entire document at http://lnkd.in/bYP2nDC

Regards,

Mr. Andres Agostini

www.linkedin.com/in/AndresAgostini

Nov 3, 2013

Transformative and Integrative Risk Management

Posted by in category: futurism

“…Transformative and Integrative Risk Management (TAIRM) is also implemented in order to prevent technological surprises to the savvy organization seeking this advice and service by TAIRM, but also to create disruptively technological surprise (managerial ‘Sputnik Moments’) for the enterprise’s competitors…” This notion is better understood when the axiom “… strategy is a function of a grander beyond-insurance risk management program and not the other way around…” is fully accepted and practiced.

Please read the entire document at http://lnkd.in/bYP2nDC

Regards,

Mr. Andres Agostini

www.linkedin.com/in/AndresAgostini

Oct 24, 2013

Havens over Hell — Ecosystems of the Venusian Tropopause

Posted by in categories: climatology, engineering, futurism, habitats, space

In our on-going ambitions to colonise space — and our search for exo-planets in goldilocks zones, it is often overlooked that the most Earth-like area known to us is in our own Solar System, and very nearby — the upper reaches of the Venusian troposphere.

Whilst the surface of Venus invokes classical images of Hell — a dark sea of fire and brimstone, where temperatures raise to an incredible 450°C — hot enough to melt lead, tin and zinc, and pressurised to such an extent (92 bar) that in these conditions the atmosphere ghosts in and out of an ocean of supercritical carbon dioxide — sulphur dioxide tints the air, and sulphuric acid rains down on volcanic plains. One just needs to look to the skies…

At about 50 km to 60 km above the surface, the upper reaches of the Venusian troposphere, the environment is quite different. At these high altitudes the temperature is in our comfort zone of 0°C to 50°C, and the air pressure similar as habitable regions of Earth.
Havens over Hell - Ecosystems of the Venetian Tropopause

An atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide (96.5%) and abundant solar radiation, the conditions are ideal for photosynthesis. One could imagine solar energy powered crafts could easily sustain ecosystems where the ideal conditions for photosynthesis ensure an abundant source of food and oxygen for inhabitants. The solar energy here is abundant and in all directions — the high reflectivity of clouds below causes the amount of light reflected upward to be nearly the same as that coming in from above, with an upward solar intensity of 90% — so aircraft would not need to concern about electricity or energy consumption. Indeed, that energy would not even be needed to keep the craft airborne — as the oxygen store would also double up as a natural lifting agent for such aircrafts, as in the Venusian atmosphere of carbon dioxide, oxygen is a lifting gas — in the same way helium is a lifting gas on Earth. With temperature, pressure, gravity, and a constant source of food and oxygen via plant growth all accounted for, not to mention close proximity to Earth, waste & water recycling would be the main challenge for the permanence of such Venusian aircraft — where the initial establishment of a balanced ecosystem is key. The engineering challenge would be far less than that of establishing a colony or base on Mars. Just don’t look down!

Oct 22, 2013

100YSS A Success

Posted by in categories: education, events, fun, human trajectories, physics, scientific freedom, space

I am very pleased to say that the 2013 100YSS conference held in Houston, TX, was a success. I met a lot of like minded people — people who want to make interstellar travel a reality — though we differ in our opinions of when.

I was especially pleased to be able to visit with Mae Jemison, Jill Tarter and Pamela Contag. These three are amazing, shepherding us along. Shepherding us? Yes, are a loose collection of visionaries going every which way.

Mae Jemison
Jill Tarter
Pamela Contag

Oct 13, 2013

“With Which You Can Be Trusted”

Posted by in category: philosophy

Oct 10, 2013

There is this wonderful German-language Report on the Higgs Boson and the LHC

Posted by in categories: existential risks, physics

http://www.ardmediathek.de/wdr-fernsehen/quarks-und-co/quark…d=17482362

I learned from it about the unfathomable degree of social coherence among the many thousand scientists and engineers whose synergy makes this largest constructive effort of humankind since the pyramids possible. And it also revealed the wonderful spirit of Peter Higgs who is a loving mind in the old sense of a devout scientist.

Ranga Yogeshwar here made it clear to me for the first time WHY this brave community could not respond to a novelty that would have destroyed their cohesion. The effort was too big to be disturbed even for a few days of “second thoughts.” For that it was too late from the beginning.

So CERN’s public refusal to update its “safety report” for more than 5 years is part and parcel of the beauty of the new pyramid (the word means “immortality”). Imagine the pyramids’ construction having been disturbed by a news that interfered with its political and divine purpose: This would have meant the end of the whole effort and the civilization behind it.

Continue reading “There is this wonderful German-language Report on the Higgs Boson and the LHC” »

Oct 9, 2013

Quantum Metamaterial and the Feasibility of Invisiblity Cloaks

Posted by in categories: engineering, futurism, humor, military, transparency

Meta-materials — materials that have been engineered to have properties that absolutely do not exist in nature — such as negative refraction — are unraveling interesting possibilities in future engineering. The discovery of negative refraction has led to the creation of invisibility cloaks, for example, which seamlessly bend light and other electromagnetic radiation around an object, though such are normally restricted to cumbersome laboratory experiments with split-ring resonators and/or restricted to an insufficient slice of spectrum.

A recent article in ExtremeTech drew attention to the world’s first quantum meta-material, created recently by a team of German material scientists at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. It is believed such quantum meta-material can overcome the main problem with traditional meta-materials based on split-ring resonators, which can only be tuned to a small range of frequencies and not conducive to operate across a useful slice of spectrum. While fanciful applications such as quantum birefringence and super-radiant phase transitions are cited it is perhaps invisibility cloaks that until very recently seemed a forte of science fiction.

From Fiction - The Invisible Man

Breakthroughs at the National Tsing-Hua University in Taiwan have also made great strides in building quantum invisibility cloaks, and as the arXiv blog on TechnologyReview recently commented ‘invisibility cloaks are all the rage these days’. With such breakthroughs, these technologies may soon find mass take-up in future consumer products & security, and also have abundant military uses — where it may find the financial stimulus to advance the technology to its true capabilities. Indeed researchers in China have been looking into how to mass-produce invisibility cloaks from materials such as Teflon. We’ll all be invisible soon.

Continue reading “Quantum Metamaterial and the Feasibility of Invisiblity Cloaks” »