HarvardGraphics3. TheINQUIRER publishes daily news, reviews on the latest gadgets and devices, and INQdepth articles for tech buffs and hobbyists. Strategy and entrepreneurship are often viewed as polar opposites. Strategy is seen as the pursuit of a clearly defined pathone systematically identified in. According to a study published last week in the EPJ Data Science journal, researchers at Harvard University and the University of Vermont questioned whether markers. FILExt. com is the file extension source. Here youll find a collection of file extensions many linked to the programs that created the files. This is the FILExt home. Harvard Graphics was a graphics and presentation program for personal computers. It was a pioneering program of the personal computer revolution the first version. PowerPoint 3. 0 was created at Microsofts Graphics Business Unit in Silicon Valley over the five years 19871992, where I was the head. Content/Images/VC/SmallImg/pny-quadro-m2000-pci4a12b2966a3250630186/pny-quadro-m2000-pci4a12b2966a3250630186.jpg' alt='Harvard Graphics 3.0' title='Harvard Graphics 3.0' />What is Transhumanism The human desire to acquire posthuman attributes is as ancient as the human species itself. BICCs arent dead far from it. The need is greater than ever. But a BICC needs to continually evolve to meet the changing needs of the business. Humans have always sought to expand the boundaries of their existence, be it ecologically, geographically, or mentally. There is a tendency in at least some individuals always to try to find a way around every limitation and obstacle. Ceremonial burial and preserved fragments of religious writings show that prehistoric humans were deeply disturbed by the death of their loved ones and sought to reduce the cognitive dissonance by postulating an afterlife. Yet, despite the idea of an afterlife, people still endeavored to extend life. In the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh approx. B. C., a king embarks on a quest to find an herb that can make him immortal. Its worth noting that it was assumed both that mortality was not inescapable in principle, and that there existed at least mythological means of overcoming it. That people really strove to live longer and richer lives can also be seen in the development of systems of magic and alchemy lacking scientific means of producing an elixir of life, one resorted to magical means. This strategy was adopted, for example, by the various schools of esoteric Taoism in China, which sought physical immortality and control over or harmony with the forces of nature. The Greeks were ambivalent about humans transgressing our natural confines. On the one hand, they were fascinated by the idea. We see it in the myth of Prometheus, who stole the fire from Zeus and gave it to the humans, thereby permanently improving the human condition. And in the myth of Daedalus, the gods are repeatedly challenged, quite successfully, by a clever engineer and artist, who uses non magical means to extend human capabilities. On the other hand, there is also the concept of hubris that some ambitions are off limit and would backfire if pursued. In the end, Daedalus enterprise ends in disaster not, however, because it was punished by the gods but owing entirely to natural causes. Greek philosophers made the first, stumbling attempts to create systems of thought that were based not purely on faith but on logical reasoning. Socrates and the sophists extended the application of critical thinking from metaphysics and cosmology to include the study of ethics and questions about human society and human psychology. Out of this inquiry arose cultural humanism, a very important current throughout the history of Western science, political theory, ethics, and law. In the Renaissance, human thinking was awoken from medieval otherworldliness and the scholastic modes of reasoning that had predominated for a millennium, and the human being and the natural world again became legitimate objects of study. Renaissance humanism encouraged people to rely on their own observations and their own judgment rather than to defer in every matter to religious authorities. Renaissance humanism also created the ideal of the well rounded personality, one that is highly developed scientifically, morally, culturally, and spiritually. A milestone is Giovanni Pico della Mirandolas Oration on the Dignity of Man 1. And crucially, modern science began to take form then, through the works of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. The Age of Enlightenment can be said to have started with the publication of Francis Bacons Novum Organum, the new tool 1. Bacon advocates the project of effecting all things possible, by which he meant the achievement of mastery over nature in order to improve the condition of human beings. The heritage from the Renaissance combines with the influences of Isaac Newton, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Marquis de Condorcet, and others to form the basis for rational humanism, which emphasizes science and critical reasoning rather than revelation and religious authority as ways of learning about the natural world and the destiny and nature of man and of providing a grounding for morality. Transhumanism traces its roots to this rational humanism. In the 1. 8th and 1. Benjamin Franklin and Voltaire speculated about extending human life span through medical science. Especially after Darwins theory of evolution, atheism or agnosticism came to be seen as increasingly attractive alternatives. However, the optimism of the late 1. When this view collided with reality, some people reacted by turning to irrationalism, concluding that since reason was not sufficient, it was worthless. This resulted in the anti technological, anti intellectual sentiments whose sequelae we can still witness today in some postmodernist writers, in the New Age movement, and among the neo Luddite wing of the anti globalization agitators. A significant stimulus in the formation of transhumanism was the essay Daedalus Science and the Future 1. British biochemist J. B. S. Haldane, in which he discusses how scientific and technological findings may come to affect society and improve the human condition. This essay set off a chain reaction of future oriented discussions, including The World, the Flesh and the Devil by J. D. Bernal 1. 92. Olaf Stapledon and the essay Icarus the Future of Science 1. Bertrand Russell, who took a more pessimistic view, arguing that without more kindliness in the world, technological power will mainly serve to increase mens ability to inflict harm on one another. Science fiction authors such as H. G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon also got many people thinking about the future evolution of the human race. One frequently cited work is Aldous Huxleys Brave New World 1. Huxleys novel warns of the dehumanizing potential of technology being used to arrest growth and to diminish the scope of human nature rather than enhance it. The Second World War changed the direction of some of those currents that result in todays transhumanism. The eugenics movement, which had previously found advocates not only among racists on the extreme right but also among socialists and progressivist social democrats, was thoroughly discredited. The goal of creating a new and better world through a centrally imposed vision became taboo and pass and the horrors of the Stalinist Soviet Union again underscored the dangers of such an approach. Mindful of these historical lessons, transhumanists are often deeply suspicious of collectively orchestrated change, arguing instead for the right of individuals to redesign themselves and their own descendants. In the postwar era, optimistic futurists tended to direct their attention more toward technological progress, such as space travel, medicine, and computers. Science began to catch up with speculation. Transhumanist ideas during this period were discussed and analyzed chiefly in the literary genre of science fiction. Authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Stanislaw Lem, and later Bruce Sterling, Greg Egan, and Vernor Vinge have explored various aspects of transhumanism in their writings and contributed to its proliferation. Robert Ettinger played an important role in giving transhumanism its modern form. The publication of his book The Prospect of Immortality in 1. Ettinger argued that since medical technology seems to be constantly progressing, and since chemical activity comes to a complete halt at low temperatures, it should be possible to freeze a person today and preserve the body until such a time when technology is advanced enough to repair the freezing damage and reverse the original cause of deanimation. The Business Intelligence Competency Center BICC 3. Businesses share something important with lions. When a lion captures and consumes its prey, only about 1. The rest evaporates away, mostly as heat loss, according to research done in the 1. Raymond Lindeman. Today, businesses do only about as well as the big cats. When you consider the energy required to manage, power, and move products and services, less than 2. Aggregate efficiency is a key factor in determining productivity. After making steady gains during much of the 2. Japan, home of the worlds most energy efficient economy, has been skating along at or near 2. The U. S. economy, meanwhile, topped out at about 1. Why does this matter Jeremy Rifkin says he knows why. Rifkin is an economic and social theorist, author, consultant, and lecturer at the Wharton Schools Executive Education program who believes that economies experience major increases in growth and productivity only when big shifts occur in three integrated infrastructure segments around the same time communications, energy, and transportation. But its only a matter of time before information technology blows all three wide open, says Rifkin. He envisions a new economic infrastructure based on digital integration of communications, energy, and transportation, riding atop an Internet of Things Io. T platform that incorporates Big Data, analytics, and artificial intelligence. This platform will disrupt the world economy and bring dramatic levels of efficiency and productivity to businesses that take advantage of it,he says. Some economists consider Rifkins ideas controversial. And his vision of a new economic platform may be problematicat least globally. It will require massive investments and unusually high levels of government, community, and private sector cooperation, all of which seem to be at depressingly low levels these days. However, Rifkin has some influential adherents to his philosophy. He has advised three presidents of the European CommissionRomano Prodi, Jos Manuel Barroso, and the current president, Jean Claude Junckeras well as the European Parliament and numerous European Union EU heads of state, including Angela Merkel, on the ushering in of what he calls a smart, green Third Industrial Revolution. Rifkin is also advising the leadership of the Peoples Republic of China on the build out and scale up of the Internet Plus Third Industrial Revolution infrastructure to usher in a sustainable low carbon economy. The internet has already shaken up one of the three major economic sectors communications. Today it takes little more than a cell phone, an internet connection, and social media to publish a book or music video for freewhat Rifkin calls zero marginal cost. The result has been a hollowing out of once mighty media empires in just over 1. Much of what remains of their business models and revenues has been converted from physical remember CDs and video stores to digital. But we havent hit the trifecta yet. Transportation and energy have changed little since the middle of the last century, says Rifkin. Thats when superhighways reached their saturation point across the developed world and the internal combustion engine came close to the limits of its potential on the roads, in the air, and at sea. We have all these killer new technology products, but theyre being plugged into the same old infrastructure, and its not creating enough new business opportunities, he says. All that may be about to undergo a big shake up, however. The digitalization of information on the Io. T at near zero marginal cost generates Big Data that can be mined with analytics to create algorithms and apps enabling ubiquitous networking. This digital transformation is beginning to have a big impact on the energy and transportation sectors. If that trend continues, we could see a metamorphosis in the economy and society not unlike previous industrial revolutions in history. And given the pace of technology change today, the shift could happen much faster than ever before. The speed of change is dictated by the increase in digitalization of these three main sectors expensive physical assets and processes are partially replaced by low cost virtual ones. The cost efficiencies brought on by digitalization drive disruption in existing business models toward zero marginal cost, as weve already seen in entertainment and publishing. According to research company Gartner, when an industry gets to the point where digital drives at least 2. A clear pattern has emerged, says Peter Sondergaard, executive vice president and head of research and advisory for Gartner. Once digital revenues for a sector hit 2. Gartners annual 2. IT SymposiumITxpo, according to The Wall Street Journal. No matter what industry you are in, 2. Communications is already there, and energy and transportation are heading down that path. If they hit the magic 2. After all, who doesnt rely on energy and transportation to power their value chains The eye of the technology disruption hurricane has moved beyond communications and is heading toward the rest of the economy. Thats why businesses need to factor potentially massive business model disruptions into their plans for digital transformation today if they want to remain competitive with organizations in early adopter countries like China and Germany. China, for example, is already halfway through an US8. The Economist magazine. And it is competing with the United States for leadership in self driving vehicles, which will shift the transportation process and revenue streams heavily to digital, according to an article in Wired magazine. Once Chinas and Germanys renewables and driverless infrastructures are in place, the only additional costs are management and maintenance. That could bring businesses in these countries dramatic cost savings over those that still rely on fossil fuels and nuclear energy to power their supply chains and logistics. Once you pay the fixed costs of renewables, the marginal costs are near zero, says Rifkin. The sun and wind havent sent us invoices yet. In other words, zero marginal cost has become a zero sum game. To understand why that is, consider the major industrial revolutions in history, writes Rifkin in his books, The Zero Marginal Cost Society and The Third Industrial Revolution. The first major shift occurred in the 1. Meanwhile, the telegraph gave the world near instant communication over a globally connected network. The second big change occurred at the beginning of the 2. Telephones, radios, and televisions had a similar impact on communications. Breaking Down the Walls Between Sectors. Now, according to Rifkin, were poised for the third big shift. Effective Rake Angle Cutting Tools. The eye of the technology disruption hurricane has moved beyond communications and is heading towardor as publishing and entertainment executives might warn, coming forthe rest of the economy. Mr Jefferson Video Download. With its assemblage of global internet and cellular network connectivity and ever smaller and more powerful sensors, the Io. T, along with Big Data analytics and artificial intelligence, is breaking down the economic walls that have protected the energy and transportation sectors for the past 5. Daimler is now among the first movers in transitioning into a digitalized mobility internet. The company has equipped nearly 4. Big Data centers. The sensors are picking up real time Big Data on weather conditions, traffic flows, and warehouse availability.