7 August 2013 – I spend the summer in Greece and almost every year I attend a digital tech/digital media unconference held in Mykonos that has really morphed into a “Big Think” if you have ever participated in one of those. It has been running for a few years now … not every year … and was started quite by accident by a group of digital media sensei who happen to be in or near Mykonos almost every summer.
The term “unconference” has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference (such as high fees, sponsored presentations, and top-down organization). It is participant driven. Anyone who wants to initiate a discussion on a topic can claim a time and a space. Our event is pretty open discussion rather than having a single speaker at the front of the room giving a talk. Everybody chips in for costs, and there are multiple venues.
It also follows the advice given to me long ago by Dominique Senequier (she now heads Axa Private Equity in France) who told me the trick to happiness and personal success is to be committed to all aspects of your life and disengage from the daily noise and make time for them.
Otherwise we are like fish who do not know they swim in water, and are seldom aware of the atmosphere of the times through which we move.
The Mykonos event draws an eclectic crowd, here for the summer or for part of it. It draws attorneys, CEOs, managers, developers, executives, tech/tool providers, investors, etc. from a very wide range of companies and institutions, most of them connected to TMT industries, but lately a large percentage of scientists and all-around bright thinkers (we eschew the moniker “thought leader”).
No one participates in every event, nor stays for all the days which varies depending on mood. Or how late we stayed at the Skandinavian Bar. As examples this year we had folks buzz in and out from Amazon, Disney, Deutsch Telekom, E&Y, Google, Hulu, Hypebeast, IBM, LinkedIn, McClatchy, Microsoft, NY Times, Orange, Telefonica, United Airlines, Universal Music, Viacom, and Warner Music. Plus we had folks from MIT Media Labs and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, plus some students from the summer program at CERN. And some EU Commission staffers and a U.S. Congressional staff attorney.
Oh, and a guy from USCYBERCOM. We think. Well, whoever made his ID credentials did an excellent job. Very impressive. Especially the “Yes, we scan!” watermark.
A lot of the conversations do revolve around digital tools and technologies, especially the advances made to engage with customers. As I wrote about early this year when I covered the Mobile World Congress, C-level executives are really stepping up their own involvement in shaping and driving digital strategies. And yes, everybody talked about big data and advanced analytics (see more below) but we talked about the very obvious change wherein there is now very intense C-level involvement on what impact digital technologies can (and do) have on their businesses, and what other technologies can be employed to advance the business model or be used to cut costs (hold your horses, e-discovery readers, I’ll get to that). And a lot of chat about Jeff Bezos purchase of the Washington Post. Vanity or visionary?
But for the most part these are unique learning/networking events and conversations stay off-the-record so I never post names or extensive details. Nobody is here wearing their employer hat, representing their company. If you have ever been to an edge.org dinner or Master Class you know what I mean. It is very much like “Big Think” sessions.
One of the start-off sessions was on PRISM, but focused on the cloud computing market and the analysis published by ITIF that spying by the NSA could cost the US cloud computing industry between $22bn and $35bn over the next three years. Upshot? “Sustained violations of civil liberties at home and abroad? [Yawn]. The manifestation of Orwell’s nightmares? [Snooze]. The potential loss of scads and scads of money? “SHIT!! we should really do something about this!”
There was also a great discussion on cloud economics and pricing and one maven from Microsoft ran us through the pricing models for Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). If you have been following the current SEC investigation of IBM re: recognition of cloud computing revenues you know how contentious this issue is right now.
But the most engaging conversation I think was on how the “mobile” revolution is in fact gigantic, immobile data centers, containing the millions of servers that, collectively, comprise the “cloud.” The cloud moves into ever more nooks and crannies of our lives and brings about the genesis of an “internet of things”-from bio-sensing clothing to vast arrays of environmental monitors-with profound shifts in how we live and work. But what will be the effects on labor as software eats all routine cognitive tasks? For my e-discovery readers who are receiving this I did a short presentation on how hourly rates for temporary document review attorneys has been crushed, moving from an average $40 an hour in 2002 to an average $27 an hour in DC and NYC, the largest review markets, and from £33 an hour to £21 an hour in London. We heard lots of examples of what is happening across numerous markets and countries, lots of engaging, brilliant conversation. Fodder for numerous posts.
I cannot highlight all that was discussed but here are some notes on some of the chats/sessions:
1. Snowden
It was hard to avoid talking about the revelations of large-scale Internet surveillance by the US and UK governments. Ok, fine. The NSA is turning the internet into a total surveillance system. But the telcos present wanted to talked about a very under-discussed part of this: the statutory requirement for telecommunications companies to make their networks “wiretap-ready”.
This facilitates the interception of communications as traditionally understood – such as e-mail messages – but also the surveillance of any non-encrypted data travelling across communications networks, including that processed and stored by cloud services. And it reduces the number of parties that must be made aware of on-going surveillance, with well-placed interception devices having access to data flowing by that route to any cloud or other online service. It enables much more sweeping surveillance than is possible using judicial or administrative warrants (or the infamous “Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty” requests we’ve been reading about) targeted at individuals or individual services.
And by reducing the marginal cost of surveillance, it encourages greater use of it. One of my clients is a major European telco and as part of our defense position … we are being called to Brussels this fall to “chat” as part of the Commission’s review of PRISM, X-Keyscore and the whole bloody mess … I am creating a “lawful intercept capability law” chart as part of our presentation which details these laws throughout Europe and elsewhere. I have permission to distribute it after the presentation so if you want a copy email me.
2. Snowden Redux: becoming “unGoogleable”
This had to be the most fun chat the whole 4 days. Economic status has always been signaled by conspicuous consumption and grandstanding leisure. That’s why you moored your yacht off Rhodes and invited Tony Blair or Peter Mandelson or George Osborne … or Bill Clinton … over to stay.
Status on social media has also demonstrated similarly conspicuous consumption but the online version: conspicuous presence. And I’m not talking status-seeking cybernauts like Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga or … oh, you pick somebody. Zuckerberg did not invent it. He merely facilitated it. And launched an egalitarian revolution whereby high status could be demonstrated by those without money: social capital. On Twitter, we talk about it all the time. Klout anyone?
But what did we talk about at Mykonos? “Anonymity chic”. I do not know who came up with that phrase first but it was used by a colleague from Hype magazine who said “internet anonymity has become the height of chic”. But, alas, you’re fooling yourself and others. As the Guardian said last week “it is always possible for any authority to track you down. There’s no such thing as absolute anonymity”. And how about the philosophical paradox: if to be chic is to be anonymous, how will anyone know that you’re chic?
3. It’s chocolate cake time!
As most of my readers know, over the last 2+ years I have gone back to my first love, science. More specifically neuroscience and informatics through programs at MIT and Cambridge although that path has also taken me to CERN and the Large Hadron Collider (courtesy of the folks at 451 Research who introduced me to Brian Cox) plus scores of other scientific events that have included fascinating bits like the development of viable lab-grown ears, teeth, livers and blood vessels. And the experiments whereby scientists have used brain implants to teach rats to “see” infrared light, which they usually find invisible. The implications of the latter are tremendous: if the brain is so flexible it can learn to process novel sensory signals, people could one day feel touch through prosthetic limbs, see heat via infrared light or even develop a sixth sense for magnetic north.
This year I had the opportunity to invite an e-discovery vendor client. My e-discovery document review unit does work for them on Continental Europe and in the Asia Pacific. I presented a very short version of my soon-to-be-published-if-my-advisor-finishes-reading-the-damn-thing thesis “Contract attorneys, technology assisted review and chocolate cake: the neuroscience of a document review room (or, “Why Maura Grossman Got It Right)”. I know, I know: I need a much more pithy title. And for those of my readers who do not know of Maura she is in the “Pantheon of E-Discovery/Information Management Polymaths” along with folks like Jason Baron, Ralph Losey and Johannes Sholtes (want more? email me and I’ll send you our various video interviews with each).
We had the opportunity to explain/discuss e-discovery and the technology used. Not surprisingly many knew what we were talking about. Immediate reaction? “You lawyers are just discovering this technology NOW?!” Ok, point taken, as a group lawyers are a tech-challenged, progressive-challenged bunch. As we were told (repeatedly) “your predictive coding is no more than a set of technologies or combination of technologies long in use. And yours, quite frankly, are pretty primitive”. Ouch.
But it raised a point I have written about before. As a matter of course, I am a firm believer in attending webinars and conferences totally outside my comfort zone, and totally outside of the legal industry to see what is “out there” beyond the legal bubble. I still attend many intelligence community events, and pure text analytics events (my favorites being the Text Analytics Summits). Years ago these events talked about the ability to “read” documents electronically, determine what the content of the documents was, and to determine if it fit a pattern, was “relevant”. To my e-discovery readers receiving this post it will all sound familiar. And I am talking about technology presentations of at least 8 years ago.
But one telling point (repeated by several at this particular session, and which I have heard numerous times from others at corporate counsel summits) was that many companies have very sophisticated data discovery, predictive analytics programs built into their mainstream business intelligence platforms and analytic architecture. They use it very often in internal audits and internal investigations for what we’ll generically call “ediscovery functions”. As one participant noted “look, you guys are looking for the great unwashed, the guys that flock your ED bazaars. I am not going out to buy an ‘ediscovery’ package. I suspect most of us here have analytics platforms that run across our 3 boogie men: integration, information delivery and analysis. We have very sophisticated metadata management tools, and very sophisticated dashboards”. But a few volunteered these systems often work in concert with specific e-discovery apps given that legal requirements do not always comport with normal BI requirements. (Yes, I took names. Email me.)
4. CERN joins the fight against cancer
One of the students from the CERN Student Summer Program … the gist: gather hundreds of brainy 20-somethings from around the globe and plonk them in Switzerland for a few weeks and see what they can come up with … told me about new software based on CERN’s particle simulation toolkit that is being used to assess radiation doses in the fight against cancer. The toolkit is called Geant4 and was developed to model and visualize the passage of particles through matter. Now the University of Cambridge is adapting the toolkit in a new program called GHOST (Geant Human Oncology Simulation Tool) that simulates radiation deposition in a patient’s body over an entire course of radiotherapy treatment. The aim of the GHOST project is to improve the modeling of late toxicity.
Why? Because as the life expectancy of cancer survivors increases thanks to radiotherapy, so, unfortunately, does the risk of suffering a second cancer linked to the treatment of the first. Although rare, these second cancers occur many years after the initial treatment. Complicated stuff but I’ll have a post on it this fall.
NOTE: CERN is going to open its doors to the public again. It’s been a few years. It really is a not-to-be-missed opportunity for those that like this stuff. Dozens of experimental setups, and all free of charge. You can even go underground … although not for the feint of heart … to see the detectors operating at the Large Hadron Collider where the Higgs boson was discovered. Our Zurich office is arranging tickets. If you’ll be in Switzerland the last week of September give a shout and I will try and latch onto extra tickets.
5. Mobile phones
I will admit. I have been an Apple fanboy. I have 2 iPhone5 mobiles, one for Paris where I spend most of my time, and one for Greece, plus iPads and a Mac Air. The 2- phone system was the best way to avoid/reduce expensive carrier roaming fees.
But this past year at the Mobile World Congress dual-SIM handsets were all the rage and my friends at Samsung introduced me to the dual-SIM hand set Samsung Galaxy Grand. And I like it, especially the 5 inch screen. It has been sold to people who want a private number and a work number, who are pretty much in the same local. But for me it is even better because I can (cheaply) keep in touch with local friends in Greece and still be reachable by clients/friends back home in Paris. The old alternative … swamping out SIM cards … meant if the swapped out card was lying on your desk the call went straight to voice mail and you got no alert that they rang. Similarly, text messages would be lost in space while your SIM card is out of commission. Now, with a dual-SIM phone, no calls missed, no SMS missed, and you can chat with local friends without incurring roaming fees. It’s convenient, it saves money, and you don’t have to carry around two handsets. I do not think they’ll catch on in the States but they are selling like hotcakes in Europe.
6. Ray Kurzweil, artificial intelligence, and funky stuff
There was a chap from one of the Kurzweil Foundation workshops and a colleague from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology so one of our conversations drifted into AI, and the NASA/Google tie up: NASA and Google are co-purchasing a quantum computer, from a little-known Canadian company called D-Wave. I’ve met Daniel Lidar who has had the most experience using D-Wave computers but I’ll save that for a longer post.
However, first a brief intro. Ray Kurzweil is one of the world’s leading experts on artificial intelligence, and with his new position at Google … he has a great deal of freedom to direct the company’s $6.7 billion research and development budget … he can apply a lot of assets towards AI, towards calculations and problem-solving that only a machine as sophisticated as a quantum computer could handle. Kurzweil is the author of seven books, including his seminal work The Singularity Is Near but I think his most recent book How to Create a Mind is his best and if you have not read him start with that one.
“The singularity” is the term for the theoretical emergence of technological superintelligence, when computer intelligence and human intelligence reach equilibrium and become inseparable. Moreover, many believe computer superintelligence would quickly and handily surpass human intelligence. The scientists and theorists who believe the singularity is coming, Kurzweil being prominent among them, project the event happening within a general range of 2030 to 2070.
One of the most common objections we hear when talking about artificial intelligence is that it is ill-defined, so you can’t really say much about it. And despite all my neuroscience studies I am still astounded by the human brain and its capabilities, in some respects far superior to those of all other known objects in the cosmos. In fact, unless we find ET, it is the only kind of object capable of understanding that the cosmos is even there.
But when it comes to creating intelligence my favorite definition comes from by Ben Goertzel (he’s an advisor to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute which I wrote about last year) who said “when a robot can enroll in a human university and take classes in the same way as humans, and get its degree, then I’ll say we’ve created an artificial general intelligence. Full stop”.
There is a lot to be read about the singularity, about quantum computing, and about quantum mechanics for that matter, but for the purposes of our chat the big takeaway is this: Google has given an important job with a great deal of responsibility to a man who believes 100% that, within less than a century, machines will have intelligence equal to or greater than that of the most intelligent human being. Google has made it quite clear: among the many realistic and imaginative ideas the company has for its new technology, Google wants to improve search, especially for images, but also hopes to make leaps and bounds in improving machine learning and artificial intelligence. With probably more data than even held by the NSA … certainly more useable data … I certainly believe what Sergey Brin said at this year’s Google developer conference in May: “we will exceed, we will be the best, at making large datasets in any field easy to explore, visualize and be communicated”. Umm, Sergey, listen. There is this thing called e-discovery. I was wondering ….
7. Big Data
There’s a growing belief in virtually every field that mining more data and doing more to process and analyze it can help organizations improve. As technology improves, the power of big data analytics will only grow. And granted: you do need to understand the technology, the implementation of Big Data platforms and their usage for analytics, Big Data architectures, Big Data design, patterns implementation, etc., etc. much of which I learned via the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Pivotal which is a new business entity within the EMC federation (most of which used to be Greenplum) and formed from assets owned by EMC and VMware and is the Big Data unit.
But despite the presence of several data scientists and the acknowledged constant … ever constant …. drum beat by vendors of “Analytics! Analytics! Analytics!” there was a consensus that the emphasis on data quality and analytical philosophies was misplaced. Data can be tremendously useful, but it will never fully replace human thought.
A marketing chat from Telefonica had a great example … looking at the fields of marketing and advertising … where he said we have this tremendous potential to use data for analyzing absolutely everything but it leads to a focus on the minutiae. The bigger picture is lost. “I tell my people ok you have recognized the segment. Tell me about it. What are the propositions that this segment are attracted to? What is the size of the segment? What is the real addressable market of this segment? Data can help marketers determine certain elements of their campaigns but abstract thought and subjectivity are also important, in fact most important.”
My experience with Big Data has been more in health care when I met some of the IBM Watson team at FutureMed a few years ago and I saw the incredible things IBM had done, we’re about to do. Today, health professionals have boundless potential to do more with data. If they have detailed records on people’s medical histories, they can use that information to analyze every patient, plus other individuals like them. By studying the past, they can make educated guesses about the future, potentially preventing life-threatening ailments like cancer or heart disease.
But doctors can’t solve these problems with spreadsheets alone. They also need to maintain close personal relationships with their patients, as they might discover vital information from back-and-forth dialogue, not data analysis. The IBM Watson team thinks both avenues are viable and that Big data might hold the key to smarter healthcare, but interaction and close examination must also play a role, in fact the key role.
This new era of computing will require more innovation and invention. We’re seeing more devices connected to the Internet. There’s a lot of machine-to-machine interaction that’s made possible because we’re beginning to exploit the Web as a programmable, open platform. It’ll be an aid to doctors, and it will enable them to cut down on error rates.
But this technology will in no way replace doctors.
Look at the human genome project. A mere $3bn and 13 years work means that we are the only species we know that has sequenced its own genome. But where does it get us? Well, apart from winning the “cleverest species on the planet” award, not very far. You see, it isn’t usually your genome that gets sick; it is your proteome (the sum of all the proteins in the body). So work is progressing to baseline the human proteome. Computationally, this is a much, much more complex undertaking. It is more than a probabilistic process. It requires thought, creativity.
Data collection and analysis will never be the be-all, end-all solution to anyone’s problems – in marketing, healthcare or any other field – but it can certainly help. And it is why an organization must place a premium on data quality. By gathering more information and taking the proper precautions to verify its accuracy, all firms can learn and accomplish more. It might be the key to making your next big sale, treating your next patient or accomplishing any one of countless other professional tasks. But it is not going to replace creative thought.
8. The M&A e-discovery train
As we know, the increase in M&A activity has been a boon to e-discovery vendors who are tasked with assisting the law firm/corporations responding to the governmental requests for additional information and documentary material relevant to the proposed acquisition.
But in Europe the increase of “in country” e-discovery work … obviously due in part to the sudden focus on data protection … is also due to this sudden surge of “inversion” M&As so that a company can be based in a low-tax jurisdictions. When international mergers and acquisitions occur, the headquarters are not in the US. They are in Europe. As one of the chaps from JP Morgan told us, waaaaay back in in 1960 the US was home to 17 of the world’s 20 largest companies. Now? Only six are headquartered there.
These are tax moves … notwithstanding the required “it’s synergies” statement in press releases … the granddaddy of which being the case of Ingersoll-Rand’s move to Bermuda. For them, it meant paying less than $28,000 in taxes to Bermuda instead of its $40m tax tab to the IRS. Obviously things were tightened up regulators since that case … if there is a high proportion of its operations in the U.S., or a high proportion of U.S. shareholder ownership, etc., it’s a “no go” … to reduce such moves.
But if you have been following the use of tax inversions in M&A deals such as Omnicom’s proposed merger with Publicis of France, or Perrigo’s acquisition of Elan of Ireland … all legitimate tax moves … these inversions are showing how companies are getting comfortable with how to effectively navigate through, in and around the current statutory and regulatory framework, and plonk down where it makes better business. I love the press releases that seem to uniformly state “this more closely aligns our corporate function with our operations” as the underlying reason.
And as Goldman Sachs stated at its London workshop on these inversions and their effect on e-discovery you have compliance and discovery requests now directed and focused on Europe more, not the U.S., because that’s where HQ is based. Which I suspect is a reason … besides data protection … for the spike of “in country” data collection/processing/review across Europe. I have never seen e-discovery projects running at the same time in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Portugal and Slovakian as they are at present. Incredible.
9. Seminar note
The guys from Hypebeast reminded me. For those of us who spend most of our time in intellectual property law in Europe and the UK, LexisNexis has a good 1-day event coming up in London that combines the two major “impactors” … the Hargreaves Report and the Jackson reforms … which are having a major impact on the intellectual property law landscape. For details click here.
10. Snowden Redux 2: in Europe, a scramble for real data protection and cloud computing alternatives
The revelations by Edward Snowden have underscored the shortcomings of Europe’s data protection laws in the age of the cloud. As data flows across national borders at lightning speed, often existing simultaneously on servers in multiple countries, protecting and regulating transfers of data has become much more complex. As you are aware Germany’s data protection authorities initiated the call for the suspension of the Safe Harbor agreement, which allows cloud providers that have self-certified their compliance with the requirements to make data transfers from the EU.
But whether EU politicians are really in the process of reforming the bloc’s data protection rules we do not know. I suspect there is more smoke and fire in the public space than there is in the private corridors of power.
But some analysts fear planned changes could create further problems for international cloud companies and everybody seemed to know or was using alternate email and cloud providers. It’s a common story: if I am a German provider, and the NSA comes to me to ask for data, then I can say: “why would I do that, I’m not allowed to and have no interest in doing so”. But … if I’m a U.S. provider in Germany then I have the problem that under FISA I’m bound to comply.
CloudSigma, a Switzerland-based cloud operator, said it had deliberately structured its global cloud locations so they are operated by separate local entities, meaning there could be no legal basis for the US to make a data request. The holding company is Swiss and has no remit to extraterritorial jurisdiction. It will be interesting to see if this flys.
11. Digital detox
As Guy Almes once told me “there are three kinds of death in this world. There’s heart death, there’s brain death, and there’s being off the network”. This year has been an experiment as I try to work … and chill … for 2 months at home in Greece. The test will be this weekend when I begin my “digital detox”.
Amusing note: on the island where we live I met my first ever “digital detox specialist” (apparently a new profession) who has a thriving trade with facilities in Mykonos and Santorini. I might open a branch in Naxos. But for my U.S. readers give this a look (click here).
We spend our whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how we’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.
So you need to disengage, escape the noise, focus on themes and trends. As the scholar Thomas Cahill is fond of noting we tend to learn history and our world in pieces. This is partly because we have only pieces of the past (shards, ostraca, palimpsests, crumbling codices with missing pages) and even the present (news clips, Twitter/Facebook/“name-that-snip” barrages).
So how do we encompass the whole reality even of the times in which we live? True, we may never know more than part, as “through a glass darkly”; and all knowledge comes to us in pieces. But if we take a break – force ourselves to take that break from the deafening cacophony of daily noise – we can take the pieces and set them next to one another, examine, contrast and compare, till one attains an overview.
I have become very fond of the writings of Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman whose seminal book Culture in a Liquid Modern World is now available in English. I have read translations of his numerous essays but this book is the best place to start.
His work on modern consumerism and the tectonic changes in technology and social life contrasts the “solid” modernity that preceded it with the “liquid” modernity we are now in. According to Bauman, the passage from “solid” to “liquid” modernity has created a new and unprecedented setting for individual life pursuits, confronting individuals with a series of challenges never before encountered. Social forms and institutions no longer have enough time to solidify and cannot serve as frames of reference for human actions and long-term life plans, so individuals have to find other ways to organize their lives.
And the screeching pace of technology has forced individuals to splice together an unending series of short-term projects and episodes that don’t add up to the kind of sequence to which concepts like “career” and “progress” and “life” and “relationship” could be meaningfully applied.
Yes, a wonder. Mobile technologies, supplemented by social connectivity, integrated with real-time data, enhanced by location-aware services and all supported by infinitely scalable yet highly personalized digital platforms have determined our future. These meta-offerings, delivering growth-spurring anytime, anywhere connectivity to all people and things, are now what keeps us going.
But sometimes you just need to unplug. So laptop gone, smartphones and tablets gone, and just me, my wife, a stack of books and the sea.
Enjoy your summer.