The “Maglia nera” whoever has power

These are basically data following a Post Christmas-party discussion. From the World bank database, GDP growth in the last 20 years in Italy, Germany, France, US, Euro Area. As can be seen, Italy has almost always been the worst performer, the “Maglia nera“.

My argument is simply that it is not a matter of left and right policies, or of left and right political figures. I am choosing a 20-year time span for a reason: In the last 20 years we had for about 10 years a “centre-left” administration, and for 10 years a “centre-right” administration. Can you see the difference in the data? I can’t, since both in good and in bad times we have lost growth opportunities.

For full disclosure, I have voted for the “centre-left” coalition in the last 20 years. Frankly, it was a no-brainer. Anyway, data show that centre-left and centre-right have no clue on how to restore growth in the Country, or in a region, or in a city. And in the few cases in which they have a small clue, they have no courage (this addition is my opinion, not embedded in the data, so it might be wrong).

Share this:

I have Crichton Amnesia

I just found the name of a sickness I have. I knew I was not the only one, but I now have a confirmation, and I am relieved. Michael Crichton, in a great 2002 speech at the International Leadership Forum, called it “Gell-Mann Amnesia”. It was actually his invention, and name of a Nobel prize only served to confer imore authority to the malaise. To me is therefore Crichton Amnesia.

So, I suffer from Crichton Amnesia. These are the symptoms, in four steps.

  1. I read a newspaper article, or listen to some news on the radio or tv on a topic I know in detail (for example, something related to physics, EE, research, academia).
  2. I realize than the author/speaker has no understanding of what he/she is describing and of what really happened. He/she does not put any effort, and swaps cause and effect.
  3. I decide that journalists are totally unreliable, and that one should never believe what they say.
  4. A few seconds later, I forget my resolution, and I start reading or listening very carefully the next piece, on a topic I have no direct knowledge of, such as Middle East, the financial crisis, China, the prison system, and millions of other things. Indeed, it is amnesia.

I tried to cure myself in 2012, following as little news as possible. Going to the original sources, when the news was really important and time allowed.

But my complete recovery is still far away, and the cure will take a lot of time and effort.

Share this:

Building a business on smart homes: Alertme

 

I closely follow Alertme from 2006, since it was founded in Cambridge, UK. I really liked their idea of cloud-based home security and automation with Zigbee sensors before “cloud” was a term en vogue. It resonated with something we were (and still are) trying to do.

Then, they inexplicably (at least for me) switched the primary focus to smart energy, i.e. on ways to use the cloud-based sensor network to monitor and optimize energy use at home. I never understood the move. I made my calculations considering a family living in an apartment, and knowing our family energy consumption. I could not see how one could invest a 500-1000 euros and several hours in the hope to reduce their energy bill of a 50-100 euros per year. I thought the “home security” case was much more compelling. At the time, energy was a favored theme among VC, and I assumed this was a way for them to complete their series B round of 15M GBP. 

Now, it seems to me they are refocusing again on cloud-based smart homes, with a minor accent on security. The nice video above details their vision. As distribution is concerned, they switched from direct website selling to partnering with British Gas and Lowe’s. Much larger volumes, smaller margins.

I am really eager to see whether they will still be able to mark their difference with respect to the pack of other home automation companies (no more the Apple of home automation).

 

 

Share this:

Easy weekend: John Cleese on Creativity

Brilliant lecture on creativity by John Cleese of Monty Python fame (this is from 1991).

Even better, I also found the transcript. I know, John Cleese is as good as it gets, and it is also incredibly funny, but the lecture is too slow for me. I prefer to read. It used to be this way also when I was a student at the University: I skipped lectures as soon as I found a good and dense textbook.

Just for association of ideas, it comes to my mind a short gag of “The West Wing in mind”. I could not remember it exactly, so I just searched for the word “menu” in this site with the complete TWW scripts. Here it is: episode 11, series 7 (the video is below, at time 0:52):

The waitress walks up and hands them some menus.

C.J.
Hi. Thank you.

WAITRESS
Mmm-hm. Would you like to hear the specials?

DANNY
Please.

WAITRESS
Well, tonight we're featuring New Zealand lamb...

C.J.
Is this from a list?

WAITRESS
I'm sorry?

C.J.
The specials, are they written down somewhere?

WAITRESS
Um, yeah, they're right here.
C.J.
Just give us that. We'll read. We're readers.

WAITRESS
Whatever you want.

C.J.
It's just easier that way, then you don't have to, you know, perform

Web search is powerful and superfast. No excuse for not having enough information on the past, no matter if for fun or for serious business.

 

Share this:

Statistics from companies in Crunchbase

Interesting numbers on outcomes of startups in Crunchbase: my feeling is that most companies are entered in Crunchbase <after> they receive at least seed funding (and maybe are removed in they are folded too soon).

It would be nice to see the correlation between Techcrunch posts and funding ….

 

Share this:

Originality in Research can work against Science

I’ve encountered some situations in recent weeks that made me think about a short essay in Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham: “Design and Research“. In particular, this paragraph:

The difference between design and research seems to be a question of new versus good. Design doesn’t have to be new, but it has to be good. Research doesn’t have to be good, but it has to be new. I think these two paths converge at the top: the best design surpasses its predecessors by using new ideas, and the best research solves problems that are not only new, but actually worth solving. So ultimately we’re aiming for the same destination, just approaching it from different directions.

 

Using old ideas in new ways that actually work better, is actually considered less interesting in research than  proposing original ideas that have have such apparent drawbacks that make them totally useless (if you do not count writing a paper as “use”).

This issue is of course very serious in engineering and all the so-called “applied sciences”. In those fields, when you propose something new, you typically have an incumbent technology or technique to use as a benchmark.

But it is serious in an even subtler way in the so-called “basic sciences” [1]. Indeed, since several years, as a way to increase the chance of getting funded in basic science projects, researchers are repackaging them as “applied science” projects, or simply stress the fact that results can have a large impact on applications. Examples of the latter are “mesoscopic transport”, “quantum computing”, or “molecular electronics”, just to name few fields I’ve been working on or close to. What I observe repeatedly is the proposal of new ideas, new devices, revolutionary technology without a due diligence, a detailed understanding on the incumbent solutions and of the important metrics for that field of application.

There is also another issue in which originality in research works against science. For science to work, experiments should be tested and reproduced several times. However, all credits goes to the first. If you are just the second, your work gets published in a less exclusive journal. Therefore if often happens that competitive research groups in a rush to complete an experiment just stop – if another group finish first and publishes results – and start working on something else. This is bad for science, because experimental results are less verified than they should be. This happens also for complex theoretical derivations and numerical simulations, because you typically cannot even publish as a second, unless you find an error in the first work.

One should not be surprised, by this behavior, anyway. Scientists are simply professionals, and of course they respond to professional incentives.

This is also true for me. I appreciate the multifaceted advantages of originality, and have choses to focus on new device or circuit concepts and on new methodologies. However, I have in time published several papers on the tune of “why this proposed technology cannot work”. I will continue, since I believe it is important. Still, it makes you appear as a grumpy old man.

[1] At my venerable age, I have not really understood the difference between basic science, applied science, and engineering, for that matter. That is why I use to specify “so-called”. but this will be the topic of another post.

Related posts:

Share this:

Easy weekend: Results from the Heinlein Score game

Great success for the Heinlein Score post! 4000+ unique visitors to the site in 24 hours (about 40x my average), and 1739 questionnaires returned. Most of them from the US, due to my submission on Hacker News.

Anyway, these are the statistics:

  • Average score: 14.4 (I really have sub-average skills)
  • Modal score: 15
  • Standard deviation: 3.2

Regarding individual answers, you can find below the complete chart. As you can see: it is very hard to butcher a hog, but it is easy to cook a tasty meal!

p.s. These Google office tools rule!
p.p.s I will continue to gather statistics …

Share this:

Easy weekend: the Heinlein score

Below is a famous quote from the novel “Time enough for love”, by legendary science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.

I love it, and I find it resonates with Ralph Waldo Emerson‘s concept of full person [1].

So, what is your Heinlein score? You can just fill in this form below. My score is 12/21. Not really good, I need to learn new skills.

I will publish statistics on the site next Sunday. If you have ideas for items that should be in the list, just suggest them in the comments below (you can login with any social network account).

[1] By the way, here is a wonderful essay on RWE by Harold Bloom

Share this:

The economic status of higher education

An extremely interesting blog post by Marc Cuban on the economic status of higher education in the US. I really enjoy Marc Cuban’s posts, since he always goes straight to the issue. I think he has a couple of good points, that resonate with some of my thoughts:

  1. We have always considered a good thing to have a higher percentage of graduates, as in the US, UK, France, Germany. In 2010 the percentage of graduates in Italy was 13%, compared with 30% in the US and 24.2 in EC12). Not all degrees can lead to a well-paid job. I covered in part this issue here (post in Italian). Now we probably should reflect on the fact that some countries might have overshot. And it does not depend on whether the University system is public, mostly public, or mostly private. It is a call to reconsider the relevance of technical and vocational high schools.
  2. Higher education as an economic activity has not followed the deflationary path or the productivity improvements that other economic activities have experienced, pushed by globalization and ICT technologies [1][2]. In the US they have actually gone the opposite direction in recent years, with a large increase in academic fees fueled by student debt. I think at this point the “classical” model of the research University is at risk, unless an updated scalable model can be found. I covered some of the points here (in Italian), but plan to talk about it some more in one of the next posts. For those interested, there’s a great recent opinion piece on this issue by David Brooks on the NYTimes.

[1] This is also true for the national health systems both in Europe and in the US.

[2] Oh yes: higher education is an economic activity. I do not mean it is “only” an economic activity.

Share this:

The site is back

My site has been shut down by the webhosting company for security reasons. After a few days, and a complete reinstall of the site, everything is back. If you notice something is not working or is missing, please tell me through the contact form. I’ll do my best to fix it.

Share this: