Despite the widely hailed plummeting price and time to get a whole-human-genome sequence, it still takes a battery of software applications and a dream team of specialists to analyze, interpret, and apply DNA data in a medically useful way. A new piece of hardware described in The New York Times this weekend is positioned to substitute for at least a few players on the team. More
Security & Privacy Techonomy Events
Are Recent Network Attacks as Serious as Washington Says?
Some members of Congress and the White House want to mandate certain “cybersecurity practices” because they believe private sector companies are not doing enough to protect systems. Push-back from business stalled the legislation before the recent election. Now, a series of high-profile attacks is being used to bolster the argument that the U.S. government needs more authority over private sector systems as well as access to data that might indicate incursions. More
Government Manufacturing Security & Privacy
A Gun Made from a 3D Printer? Techno-Challenges Grow More Complex
At Techonomy we believe that just about literally everything is being transformed by technology, especially Internet technology, and we also are quite psyched about 3D printing. It's another example of the empowerment of individuals—in the potent tradition of the PC, Web browser, Facebook, etc. But now guns are beginning to be made with 3D printers. There is likely nothing that can be done to stop that. It underscores another fundamental Techonomy point—that all of us, as citizens, leaders, and human beings—need to be thinking harder about what technology is doing to the world in which we live. Disruption is right. More
Obama Campaign Uses Big Data to Target Voters Block by Block
As reported by Richard McGregor in the Financial Times, one voter whose name, age, and address were published in the "Obama for America" app, which helps canvassers target doors to knock on, was decidedly nonplussed about having his personal information downloadable by anyone with a smartphone. "Everything is an invasion of privacy these days," he said. "If I got excited about it, I would have had a coronary by now." Others are less sanguine about the ways the Obama campaign is using technology, and data culled from social media, to micro-target voters. But both campaigns have tools that tell them a lot more about voters than their ages and addresses, and they're using them to "slice and dice" the voting population in a way Barack Obama could have never envisioned when he gave his seminal 2004 convention speech. More
Security & Privacy Techonomy Events
Bret Hartman of RSA on Cyber Defense
In this video from Techonomy 2011 in Tucson, Ariz., Bret Hartman, CTO of RSA, talks about lessons his company learned when they faced a major cyber attack in early 2011. Hartman addresses the technological, legal, and political barriers to protecting our security, and discusses the severity of intellectual property theft as a global problem. More
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