Ayesha, Parag Khanna on TED book 'Hybrid Reality'Reported by SFGate on Wednesday, 11 July 2012 (on July 11, 2012)
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Ayesha, Parag Khanna on TED book 'Hybrid Reality'
Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization is part of a new series of e-books from TED, the nonprofit technology think tank. In it, authors Ayesha and Parag Khanna look at the latest trends in technology - in particular, how they can be managed, adapted and utilized for society's benefit. Parag Khanna, who hosted the annual TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, last month, is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation and is the author of two best-sellers, "The Second World" and "How to Run the World." Ayesha Khanna is a faculty adviser at Singularity University at NASA Research Park at Moffett Field and directs the Future Cities program at the London School of Economics. The pair travel almost constantly, but together, they run their online project, the Hybrid Reality Institute (hybridreality.me), a research and advisory group devoted to questions of human-technological co-evolution. [...] we write about biomechantronics, synthetic neurobiology and other hybrid fields that are arising as scientific fields merge. [...] what we are witnessing today is not just linear acceleration, but a complex accelerated co-evolution of technologies - and humans with technology. Small states can't afford to make mistakes, so Singapore thinks long-term about its geography, the needs of the markets around it and the capability of its citizens, and makes strategies accordingly. Loosely, the term can be translated as adaptability, and, in this case, a country's ability to harness all these new technologies for social impact. Some universities are coping by actually producing the open online content that is portrayed as a threat. Are transparency and open data projects, which make public information available online and accessible to everyone, a risk for governments? The rise of peer-to-peer virtual currencies and skills exchanges - whether it's Bitcoin or TaskRabbit or Mechanical Turk - aren't shadow economies by any means. Virtual currencies allow individuals to determine the value of their goods and services, and trade in them especially in times when dollars are tight. Nano-materials will have a tremendous impact on spreading access to clean water in developing countries, and reducing the weight and fuel consumption of vehicles.
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