Today, 68% of U.S. adults have a smartphone, up from 35% in 2011, and tablet computer ownership has edged up to 45% among adults, according to newly released survey data from the Pew Research Center. Smartphone ownership is nearing the saturation point with some groups: 86% of those ages 18-29 have a smartphone, as do 83% of those ages 30-49 and 87% of those living in households earning $75,000 and up annually.
Source: Startup Management
HT: Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence
Bitcoin fanatics are enthralled by the libertarian ideal of a pure, digital currency beyond the reach of any central bank. The real innovation is not the digital coins themselves, but the trust machine that mints them—and which promises much more besides.
Whatever you think of the cryptocurrency, the “blockchain” is a trust machine that may yet take its place alongside double-entry book-keeping and the limited-liability company as a way of oiling the wheels of commerce.
A vision of fully autonomous, self-driving cars allowing human owners to nap or read in the car seems to come from the future. But David Mindell, a historian and electrical engineer at MIT, says that the idea of such fully autonomous vehicles roaming the streets represents a more rigid vision left over from the last century. Mindell casts some doubt over the current course along which Google and other huge tech companies are racing to build self-driving cars that don’t require any human supervision.
In his new book, released this month, titled, “Our Robots, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy” (Viking/Penguin), Mindell envisions a future in which humans are kept in the loop for (mostly) self-driving cars and other robotic technologies, rather than taking them completely out of the equation…
Spectrum: What do you think of the current focus of Google and other tech companies pursuing self-driving cars?
Mindell: Overall, robotics is still focused on full autonomy as the ultimate goal. Researchers should be working on a “perfect five” with trusted, transparent, flexible collaboration between people and autonomous systems. (The “perfect five” refers to the middle of a scale for automation that ranges from very low at level 1, to fully autonomous at 10; the concept is based on the work of Tom Sheridan, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.)
Such systems should have the ability to turn on autonomy when it can be helpful. Autonomy can reduce human workload and fatigue, but humans should still be present in the system. That’s an empirical argument based on everything we’ve seen in the last 40 years of autonomous systems. People are always thinking that full autonomy is just around the corner. But there are 30 to 40 examples in the book, and in every one, autonomy gets tempered by human judgment and experience.
Spectrum: You’ve said that the best way forward involves a mix of humans, remotely-controlled systems and autonomous robots. Do you think the future you’re hoping for is the one we’re likely to see?
Mindell: I’m hoping the likely future is the one I’m arguing for. There is a quote in the book from the chief of BMW saying “People buy our cars because people like driving them; we’d be crazy to cut them out of the loop.” I think the world is ready for a more nuanced approach to robotics.
Chris Poulin, IBM, on Tech Crunch:
In 2010, researchers from the University of Washington and University of California, San Diego published a seminal paper proving that once an attacker has physical access to a vehicle, they can compromise every component, from the entertainment system to the electronic control units (ECUs) that operate the engine, brakes and even the steering wheel in modern cars that self-park and sport lane-departure correction.
This research showed that an attacker could use connection points between vehicle systems as an entry point to inject arbitrary commands on the controller area network (CAN) bus to perform activities such as disabling all the engine’s cylinders, locking up one brake pad and disabling all brakes — even when the car was traveling at 40 miles per hour. The researchers even created a CAN bus analysis and packet injection tool, dubbed CarShark.
But the automakers weren’t phased by the research; their view was that an attacker would have to be jacked into your car in order to execute an attack.
In response, these same researchers undertook another study in 2011 to further prove their point, this time centered on how to remotely gain access to the vehicle. The paper enumerated the attack surfaces, including channels that provide remote access: Bluetooth, in-vehicle Wi-Fi, telematics, remote keyless entry and RFID immobilizers, dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) used to communicate between vehicles and the road infrastructure, global positioning (GPS), satellite radio and even tire pressure monitor sensors.
The researchers took the play from the punt to the end zone by remotely compromising a vehicle, then using the techniques they created in their first paper to gain complete control of the car. They even claimed they could compromise the telematics unit by simply playing an audio file over the mobile carrier’s network.
Using another vector, the researchers wrote a mobile phone Trojan that gave them remote access to a driver’s or passenger’s mobile phone, and when paired with a vehicle’s telematics unit, exploited a vulnerability in the Bluetooth firmware. They effectively used the mobile phone as a springboard to pwn the vehicle.
The researchers also compromised a typical diagnostics computer used by many service shops so that when it was connected to the diagnostics port on a vehicle, the computer would infect the vehicle with malware allowing the attackers to control it. In a zombie apocalypse scenario, the researchers even wrote software that could turn cars into a rolling “bot” army that reports back to a command and control (C&C) channel through which a criminal could issue commands.
It would seem that these researchers had proven conclusively that connected vehicle security required retooling, and that the consequences could have a major impact on customer confidence and safety. However, without details on the specific vehicles involved in the research, nor publicly disclosed proof of concept instructions, the automotive industry made little public noise about the research.
In fairness, the auto industry may have rallied war rooms and devised plans to amp up security in their automotive products; however, the automotive industry is tight-knit and guards new designs and technology closely. Further, modern automobiles are complex marvels of engineering, and the process of retooling the mechanics and software has to be undertaken slowly, carefully and over a period of many years. Bear in mind that from inception, a new automobile typically takes 5-7 years before it hits the mass market.
And yet, to the general public — and especially to researchers — the silence implied apathy on the part of the automakers. Some in the industry may not fully recognize the broader implications of these results. For example, I spoke to the design manager on the topic of the tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) vulnerability and he responded with: “So what? All you could do is light up an amber LED on the dashboard.”
Which would be true if all TPMS receivers only had a wire loop that went to the LED in question; however, it’s likely that most of the automakers connect the TPMS receiver to other parts of the in-vehicle network, if for no other reason than to send that data as telemetry back to the predictive maintenance analytics running in the cloud. But let’s not get hung up on the TPMS system: The vehicle threat surface is as broad as the African savanna is to a big game poacher.
Enter Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, whose 2013 Today Show vehicle hack elicited a collective gasp from the public. Automakers pointed out that such a hack would be unfeasible in real life, as the dashboard is dismantled and there’s a guy sitting in your back seat with a laptop. As is the way with such stories, other shiny objects and celebrity reality television soon overwrote that chunk of the public’s short-term memory, and drivers slid behind the wheel with nary a thought of cars gone wild.
In 2015, Miller and Valasek were back. The widely publicized video of these researchers remotely hacking into a vehicle on the road and ultimately sending it into a ditch struck a chord with the general public that research to date had yet to reach.
To put this in perspective, Recorded Future, which collects intelligence from more than 600,000 sources, including social media and underground forums, queried their data warehouse for mentions of connected vehicle security. As displayed [above], there was a fair amount of chatter when the CarShark exploit was announced, then it exploded around the two Valasek and Miller exploits. The red “bubbles” show the amount of references by date and the milestones are called out. Additionally, references to announced or publicly speculated future events are plotted at the bottom of the chart.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07MZVjjuLKw?rel=0]
CTIA-The Wireless Association explains the opportunities the IoT will provide and what is needed in order to meet user demands (hint: spectrum!).
You will find more statistics at Statista
Video: http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=espn:13415984
Look Magazine, February 1966
In our modern age of Tinder, OkCupid and Match.com, we’re used to the idea that algorithms can help us find love. But while the algorithms may have improved as the market for online dating has expanded, the inputs — the questions these computer matchmakers ask dating hopefuls — haven’t changed much since the 1960s, when Compatibility Research Inc. launched the first computerized dating service.
See also the Harvard Crimson article from November 3, 1965, about Compatibility Research’s Operation Match, which includes this ditty:
Well, I filled out my form and I sent it along,
Never hoping I’d get anything like this.
But now when I see her,
Whenever I see her,
I want to give her one great big I.B.M. kiss.
She’s my I.B.M. baby, the ideal lady,
She’s my I.B.M. baby.
From the first time I met her I couldn’t forget her,
She’s my I.B.M. baby.
Well we’ve dated sometime,
Things are going just fine, and I’d like to settle down with her.
Just like birds of a feather
We put 2 and 2 together, and we came one with an I.B.M. affair.
She’s my I.B.M. baby, I don’t mean maybe,
She’s my I.B.M. baby.
Today, one in 10 adults now spends, on average, an hour a day on a dating web site or app, according to Nielsen. Online dating in the U.S. was a $2.2 billion industry last year.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lszB8muRqQA?rel=0]
Fresh out of topping Gartner’s most hyped technologies list for the second year in a row, the Internet of Things (IoT) has kept its buzz going over the last couple of weeks with a series of announcements and new market analysis reports. First, here’s a sample of recent announcements:
We also learned more this month about the state-of-the-market for IoT and its potential impact from a number of new reports:
IDC (also here) shared the results of its survey of 2,350 IT and business decision makers in (mostly) large and medium-size enterprises worldwide:
Gartner reiterated its forecast of more than 30 billion installed IoT units and estimated it will result in a 20% increase in potential revenue generated from software for manufacturers running ‘intelligent devices’. The Internet of Things (IoT), in Gartner’s view, turns every manufacturer into a software provider, a transformation which will have profound impact on application strategy, architecture, development and integration.
Gartner recommends that manufacturers differentiate with software, increase the intelligence in their devices by adding software, and ensure they have the licensing and entitlements tools to manage the software.
Accenture estimates that based on current policy and investment trends, the IoT could add about $500 billion to China’s cumulative GDP by 2030. This would result in China’s GDP being 0.3 percent higher in that year compared with current projections. However, by taking additional measures to improve its capacity to absorb IoT technologies and increase IoT investment, China could boost its annual GDP by 1.3 percent by 2030, cumulatively adding $1.8 trillion to the economy by that time.
Last but not least, Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter and PTC CEO Jim Heppelmann published in the Harvard Business Review “How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Companies.” They describe the impact of the IoT on the organizational structure of manufacturing companies and conclude that “Smart, connected products reshape not only competition, as we detailed in our previous article, but the very nature of the manufacturing firm, its work, and how it is organized. They are creating the first true discontinuity in the organization of manufacturing firms in modern business history.” They also see broader benefits of the IoT, including changing consumption patterns: “Smart, connected products will free us to purchase only the goods and services we need, to share products that we do not use much, and to get more out of the products that we already have. Instead of tossing out old products for the next generation, we will hold on to products that are continually improved, upgraded, and modernized.”
Originally published on Forbes.com
We used CB Insights’ valuation data to look at how the rise of Uber’s valuation correlates with the market capitalization of Medallion Financial Corp (NASDAQ: TAXI). Medallion Financial is a publicly-traded company that originates, acquires, and services loans used to purchase taxi medallions in several large US urban markets that Uber is also active in, including New York. We charted the stock price of TAXI versus the valuations for many of Uber’s rounds since 2010.
We found that TAXI has also been hammered by an “Uber Effect,” with its price down even more than the decline seen by New York City medallions. TAXI’s stock price is down nearly 49% since Uber raised its breakout $258M Series C at a $3.5B valuation. (The NASDAQ is up ~26% in the same time period.)
Uber’s valuation is up over 13x.
Mark J. Perry at the American Enterprise Institute:
In 1942, economist Joseph Schumpeter described “creative destruction” as a “process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.” There probably hasn’t been a better example of Schumpeterian creative destruction in the last decade or more than the recent ascendance of app-based ride-sharing services like Uber (and Lyft, Sidecar, Gett, Via, etc.) challenging traditional, legacy taxi cartels in cities like New York, San Francisco, Chicago and more than 160 other US cities. Market-based evidence of the gale of creative destruction in the transportation industry is displayed in the two charts above. The top chart above shows how the increasing popularity of ride-sharing apps like Uber has caused the price of New York City individual taxi medallions to collapse by at least 37%, from a peak of more than $1 million in August 2013 to only about $650,000 in recent months (based on advertised asking prices here, not actual sales).
Further evidence of the “Uber effect” is displayed in the bottom chart above, showing the collapse in the stock price of Medallion Financial Corporation, from $16.45 in November 2013 to below $7 per share in the last few days. Medallion Financial Corporation (NASDAQ: TAXI) is a NYC-based specialty finance company that originates, acquires, and services loans that finance taxicab medallions. Just as the sky-high taxi medallion prices have been significantly eroded due to competition from the upstart ride-sharing services, so has the value of Medallion Financial Corporation’s stock price been significantly dropping. After tracking the SP&500 Index closely for many decades, the share price of Medallion Financial has fallen by a whopping 58% from its November 2013 peak, during a time when the S&P 500 has increased by 7.1%.
As the traditional, legacy taxi industry continues to collapse under the Schumpeterian forces of market disruption, the taxi cartels like the one in NYC are asking for taxpayer bailouts, or at least taxpayer-supported guarantees for taxi medallion loans. Consumers are the obvious winners from the creative destruction in the transportation industry – we now have more choice, better and faster service, friendlier drivers, cleaner cars, and maybe most importantly — lower prices. Traditional taxi drivers and medallion owners, after being protected from competition by government regulations for many generations, are the obvious losers from the “Uber effect.” Medallion prices will continue to fall as the taxi cartels continue to crumble and collapse.
NPR Planet Money: Listen to Episode 643, July 31, 2015, on Gene Freidman, the “Taxi King” and how his empire is starting to crumble. Also, “Why Does A Taxi Medallion Cost $1 Million?” from 2011.
