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Thursday, August 4, 2011

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Esther Dyson On Health Care: ?Don't Fight The System, Erode It ...

Posted on August 2nd, 2011 admin

Technology polymath Esther Dyson has always been interested in healthcare and especially how data and personal devices can make us healthier. She is an active investor in a few healthcare startups and sits on the board of personal genomics company 23andMe. In the video interview above, she explains how startups can help change healthcare for the better: ?Don?t fight the system, erode it.?

Dyson thinks of healthcare in much broader terms than many people do. There is the current healthcare system with hospitals, doctors, and insurance?that is the intractable part that is hard to change. But then there are all sorts of activities around the periphery that are more in our control, what she calls user-generated healthcare.? Increasingly, technology is making it easier for us to collect personal health and fitness data to help us combat our own vices such as drugs, alcohol, bad food and sitting around. It is user-generated because we create and collect our own health data through personal fitness devices like Fitbit or aself-measurement services like GreenGoose, and can view our personal health dashboards online.

What she sees is an opportunity at the nexus of data, health, and motivation. ?Information doesn?t change people?s behavior. You need to be able to somehow motivate.? Sometimes seeing your progress can be a big motivator, but sometimes it takes social pressure.

In the clip below, Dyson gets into the promise of personal genomics. She explains to me how 23andMe works. You can get your personal genome sequenced now for only $99, plus $9 a month. It cost $1,000 just a few years ago.

These clips are part of a longer interview. Be sure to watch Dyson talk about Google+, why the new top-level domains are a bad idea, and space entrepreneurship.

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Esther Dyson On Health Care: ?Don?t Fight The System, Erode It?

Rio's transformation needs new phase

A plan to train all 55,000 military and civil police officers by 2015, in time for the Olympics, is a step in the right direction, writes guest blogger Julia Michaels.

Cariocas are increasingly proud of their city. Their mental map of it is changing.

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A great deal has been accomplished since Rio began its turnaround in 2007. After five disastrous decades, it?s as if we?ve managed to clear away piles of rubble in the last four years, and set up a generally acceptable and peaceable modus vivendi.

But the time has come to dig deeper, to bring in the bulldozers, and pour solid foundations for institutions that can withstand the vagaries of Brazilian politics. Success on this front would lead Rio to make an important contribution to the development of Brazil?s democracy, which dates only to 1985.

What has been accomplished

Crimes targeted by the new public safety policy continue to drop. The number of police pacification units continues to grow, with the current eighteen expected to jump to 28 by October, when ten units will set up in the Alem?o and Penha favela complexes.

And, according to state Social Assistance and Human Rights Secretary Rodrigo Neves, Rocinha favela ? together with Vidigal, a glaring reminder to the city?s South Zone that most of Rio?s 600-plus favelas still lie outside the state?s full domain ? will soon be occupied and pacified.

The cable car system in the Alem?o complex has begun operating, with apparent success at offering alternative transportation to the area?s 500,000 residents. Already, discount tours are being offered.

The challenges ahead

But State Public Safety Secretary Jos? Mariano Beltrame recognized challenges in May, when he complained that social programs in pacified favelas were moving too slowly.

With the help of the UN Habitat program, the social UPP has now accelerated its pace to a new favela a week and is set to operate in all pacified communities by October. Millions of the city budget are going into trash collection, housing, police wages, lighting, drainage, mobility, sewage, and water piping, public areas, sports and leisure equipment, and water storage.

And O Globo newspaper brought excellent news yesterday on one of Rio?s most unsightly blemishes: police training and corruption. Plans are to change the classroom focus from war to peace, and open the door to outside instructors. Currently, for example, the BOPE elite squad site looks and sounds like an introduction to some kind of gang-cum-heavy metal band, light-years from the values of community policing. By 2015, all 55,000 military and civil police officers are supposed to have retrained.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/k_6NjYgJdj8/Rio-s-transformation-needs-new-phase

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Getting to know you: Comex, the boy behind iOS' JailbreakMe

See that kid above? That's Nicholas Allegra. He's the hackdom Harry Potter to Apple's Ye-Who-Shall-Not-Jailbreak -Our-Wares, and Forbes managed to sniff him out for a little bold-faced exposé. The 19-year old hero of the iOS community, better known as Comex, got his self-taught start with Visual Basic when he was still in single digits. After graduating through a venerable online forum education, the precocious coding lad set his smarts to homebrew Wii development, and the rest is JailbreakMe history. The self-described Apple fanboy admits his background is atyipcal of the cybersecurity industry, but with a former National Security Agency analyst praising his work as years ahead of his time, we don't think he should worry. For all the trouble his code has caused Cupertino, Allegra's not trying to be the embedded thorn in Jobs' side. Rather, the iPhone hacker claims "it's just about the challenge" and plans to keep on keeping ol' Steve on his billion dollar toes.

Getting to know you: Comex, the boy behind iOS' JailbreakMe originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 20:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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