The MGS Blog

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Visa-less offshore development?

Paypal founder backs Blueseed "visa-free entrepreneurship and tech incubator" (link)

Nation states require visas, employer sponsorship, and other impositions such as taxation and juridical regimes. All of these are obstacles to free movement of people, trade, and industry.

On the topic of national identity and nation states Einstein stated
"I am by heritage a Jew, by citizenship a Swiss , and by makeup a human being, and only a human being, without any special attachment to any state or national entity whatsoever" (link)

Comment on Peter Thiel's (Paypal co-founder) commitment to supporting Blueseed's floating "Googleplex of the Sea". Who gains? Who loses?

Monday, December 19, 2011

Global Pulse, who benefits?

Who benefits from data Philanthropy? Individuals, organisations and corporations have long dreamed of the free availability of social data. We now imagine that Orwellian vision to be so much closer by accessing messages in social networks, text messages, blogs, micro-blogs and other emerging social exchanges. Worthy causes break down our reluctance to give up or give over something we may have never appreciated fully. But who benefits?

“something is happening that is evident in the digital smoke signals... This is computational behavioral economics,” he said. “We’re part of a whole new science here.”
Robert Kirkpatrick, director of Global Pulse (quoted in Lohr, 2011)

References and further reading
Global Pulse: Harnessing innovation to protect the vulnerable. Website (link)
Steve Lohr, pSR1 The New York Times. December 18, 2011. (link, may require registration and/or fee)

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

You can outsource the work; you can't outsource the risk

RT @mrkwpalmer: "You can outsource the work; you can't outsource the risk" @BBGLINK #BBTech Raj Samani, McAfee #security