The fourth breakout session on day two of the Future in Review 2016 conference was titled “Documentaries That Change the World: Meet the Directors,” where moderator Sharon Anderson Morris introduced the audience to series of high impact directors and films. The discussion dovetailed around the films and the motivations of the filmmakers.
Chris Hegedus, director of animal rights documentary “Unlocking the Cage” started with discussing her 2001 movie Startup.com. She described entrepreneurs “going into the wild west” of ideas and coming our rich. It follows the boom and bust cycle of the startup bubble around the turn of the century.
It was followed by a trailer of “Unlocking the Cage,” the story of lawyer Stephen Wise’s attempts to grant animals greater rights through a sustained litigation strategy.
“Unlocking the Cage was an exceptionally special film for me,” Hegedus said.
She said that she hoped that the audience of the film also treated animals with respect and kindness. Further, she emphasized the importance of spreading the message further and mentioned the her team’s attempts to get into 250 law schools around the country.
The second film showcased was “The Ivory Game,” produced by Paul Allen’s Vulcan Productions. Director Ted Richane explained how the film was part of Allen’s three-pronged vision of philanthropy, including collecting data, pushing legislation, and storytelling. He also said that the film approached the ivory trade from a different angle that doesn’t involve the supply of animals in Africa.
“There’s a lot of films out there about elephants,” he said. “This…looks at the ivory market and the trade.”
He also said that the consequences of the ivory trade go beyond dead elephants.
“We need to make sure people understand that it’s not just a numbers issue,” he said. “When an elephant is lost from the herd, it has an emotional impact to the other elephants in the herd.”
“Unlocking the Cage” is a Netflix Original, and releases on November 4th.
The third film showcased was “Sniffing Out Cancer,” a documentary about the research showing that dogs are excellent pre-screening agents for up to 11 cancers. Director Adriana LaCorte spoke of her background in reality television, and wanting to do something meatier, especially after multiple close personal deaths.
“These dogs are showing 98 -99 percent accuracy,” said LaCorte. “Maybe these dogs are the best cancer detection device.”
As the film is low-budget, LaCorte asked for help finishing the film. She also said she wants more doctors to see the numbers and see all the research has been done, and felt confident that people will get behind this very early stage, non-invasive, pain-free method of pre-screening.
Geralyn Dreyfous, Co-Founder, Impact Partners Film Fund, Founder, Utah Film Center, and SNS Ambassador for Documentary Films spoke about the unique challenges that come with making high impact films, and her motivations.
“Films are the lingua franca of our era,” she said.
Mentioning the three to five year length of production and costs of beyond a million dollars, she
debunked the myth that having access to technology is enough. Connecting filmmaking with philanthropy, she spoke about the various methods of financing, like grants and private equity.
“People are starting to understand that in philanthropy, ideas are disruptive,” she said.
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Global climate change is typically discussed with a doom-and-gloom sentiment. Carbon dioxide concentration is higher than it ever has been.
“Limiting the carbon dioxide levels to near current levels would be a major miracle, and would require a herculean effort,” said Larry Smarr, Director at Calit2.
Mark Anderson, founder and CEO of the Future in Review conference emphasized the need for action. Anderson is leading a consortium to develop real solutions for global climate change.
“There has to be a multi-phased response, followed by a final solution that will be implemented within 20-30 years,” said Mark Anderson, founder and CEO of the Future in Review conference. “Once we find the interim solution, then we need to figure out how to make it, and after that, how to market it. With such a new product, we’ll have to create an entirely new market.”
Carbon is a building material with applications throughout our natural environment. The challenge is how to reduce carbon dioxide into a material we can use. Graphene, a reduced form of carbon with a high degree of structural integrity, is a likely material.
“It’s scalable, economical, and recyclable,” said Jon Myers, founder of Graphene Technologies & NovaMetallix.
Ray Gibbs, CEO at Haydale Plc, expounded on current applications of graphene, including uses in vehicles as well as products manufactured by large companies such as Huntsman Chemical.
“There is no simple answer,” added Soroush Nazarpour, President and CEO at NanoXplore.
Applications of graphene and other low carbon emission products must be analyzed on an case-by-case basis across industries. Nazarpour also stated that the economics are such that there is plenty of money to be made for businesses considering applications of graphene in their products.
The panel agreed that despite solutions being identified, there will not be an impact unless we can get buy-in from the world economy, and specifically China.
“The bulk of carbon emissions are generated in China,” said Smarr. “If we are to be successful, we need to look beyond the Wasatch front. We need to look throughout the world.”
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Panelists at a Thursday morning session of the FiRe conference discussed how to change the traditional business model using data flows.
“Current business models are fundamentally broken,” Johan Hagel III, Director and Co-chair at Deloitte Center for the Edge said.
He said the return on assets for public companies in U.S. has declined by 75 percent the last several years, a long-sustained erosion with no sign of turning around. However, new models based on flow and data are enabled and available.
“Flows have always been the great enabler of commerce,” said Paul Sallomi, vice-chairman at Global TMT Industry Leader. While the new flows made by technology create vast opportunities, it takes time to develop the tools to take full advantage of them.
“The tech that has become available is making the invisible visible, at scale and at real time,” Hagel said.
While he said the inclination is to use the new tech to make current models faster and cheaper, there’s much more than can be done.
“What we’re talking about here is to push the envelope further into something more transformative,” Sallomi said.
One idea Hagel suggested is the “trusted advisor” business model, where you connect the customer to everyone. Traditionally, this has been available only to the wealthy because you have to know the customer very well to do this. With the data flows, it can go to the mass market, enabling business to say, “I know you better than anyone else and you can trust me to connect you to the resources that will serve you.”
Another model Sallomi suggested is to change the way customers pay for service. The old way is that the customer buys the service and the service is given. The customer may end up paying for unused services. With data flows, he said, customers can pay for usage. Then with monitoring, the service can be enhanced as it’s given.
Hagel added that they could move from paying for usage to paying for value. This would give the customer more value and give the business more incentive to create value. He said that companies could also use data to move beyond prescription to preventive. He used the example of brakes becoming anti-lock and now activated with a sensor.
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The fourth breakout session of day 2 at the Future in Review 2016 conference was focused on world-changing films. Moderator Sharon Anderson Morris started the session by describing the beginnings of the FiReFilmas initiative inspired by the film “Slaughtering the Dolphins,” which Morris watched at Sundance in 2009, and the subsequent activism. She spoke of her desire to make compelling, scientifically based films, and the need to spread their word.
The session was attended by Chris Hegedus, director of “Unlocking the Cage,” Pina De Rosa, executive director of “Sniffing Out Cancer,” Adriana LaCorte, director of “Sniffing Out Cancer,” Ted Richane, director of “The Ivory Game,” and Geralyn Dreyfous, co-founder of Impact Partners Film Fund, Founder, Utah Film Center, and SNS Ambassador for Documentary Films among others.
A lot of a discussion took place during introductions, where connections were made between people with common interests. In particular, the screening of the “Sniffing Out Cancer” trailer was met with personal narratives of illness. A clips from “The Ivory Game” and the trailer for “Startup.com” were also shown.
Richane spoke about the characters in his movie and how the film was filmed in Africa and Hong Kong. The clip depicted an attempt to find the right person to infiltrate the Ivory trade without detection, and how the system of trading in Hong Kong is deeply corrupt to the point that even the Chinese government finds it hard to track. One of the Chinese infiltrators is protected in the US and Europe. The film is a Netflix Original, and premiere on November 4th.
“What this film hopefully will do is introduce the fact that this is an international crime issue,” Richane said. “This film hopefully successful tells the story of the market.”
De Rosa spoke of her fascination with using dogs as a very early stage, non-invasive, pain-free method of pre-screening up to eleven cancers. LaCorte mentioned the need for funding the film, as it has been currently filmed on a limited budget.
The trailer showed instances of people’s cancers being detected, and how dogs have been scientifically proven to be a lot more sensitive than invasive medical technology.
Also depicted the central problem of canine detection not being considered “legitimate” in the eyes of the medical community, and how more exposure to the idea is needed.
The predominant current educational model is not resonating with kids, parents, or teachers, and suggestions on improving and disrupting it are everywhere.
David Engle and Marc Prensky are active members of SNS’ Project Inkwell, which focuses on increasing experiential education through the medium of technology in K-12 classrooms worldwide. They both brought many years of experience to the discussion. Engle was part of the Maritime Discovery Schools Initiative focused on a place-based education, incorporating the unique resources of the community throughout the school year. Prensky recently released a book titled Education to Better Their World: Unleashing the Power of 21st Century Kids about developing young people’s capacity to accomplish things that will make their world a better place.
The two led an informative discussion during the Future in Review 2016 conference on the downfalls of the content delivery teaching model versus a model focused on empowering kids to pursue their passions via accomplishment based education programs, as well as the importance of involving the local communities. Engle stressed the need to develop an environment conducive to raising “young people that can be citizens – an agent[sic] for change in the community.”
In many cases, their model begins with teacher training and the emphasis of accomplished based projects to provide a well-rounded model. Engle supported a fifth grade project to clean up a community stream to better preserve and protect the salmon population. This project incorporated the efforts of all of the class members and also enabled the teacher to help the kids understand how biology, chemistry, mathematics, horticulture, etc. can be applied outside of the classroom. This was an opportunity to “bring them real world problems, help them discover a solution and [open their eyes] to the impact they can make,” said Engle.
Prenksy has led panel discussions with kids from around the world.
“Their number one concern was that [they] felt disrespected and not trusted,” he said. “They want to be part of their world – do we take away their agency or do we encourage it?”
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Only a few hours after being issued a challenge by Strategic News Service’s CEO to build the first flow computing system and measure the earth’s energy flows, the CTO team got to work.
The first step was to understand the problem. Brad Holtz, CEO of Cyon Research and chief nexus officer of Coventry Computer, proposed a series of questions the team would need to answer to build the system. What is flowing? How is it flowing? What influences the flow? How can we see what coupling is taking place? How do we understand the difference between stable and unstable flows and flows that are changing? These were among the questions asked.
Mark Mahan, consultant to Majiq Inc., said the first problem is putting together the general-purpose architecture of the system, and that most of their successes would be in that area. The second problem is domain specific, meaning the energy flows of the Earth, which they are not experts in.
Once they had the problem, the conversation turned to what they actually needed to create.
“We can assume a pattern computer exists. What do we need to build around that to enable flows at multiple levels?” asked Holtz.
Ben Brown, department head at Molecular Ecosystems Biology, said they could make some assumptions. First, there are couplings and we don’t know the coupling. Second, we have patterns but we don’t know if they’re important.
Holtz emphasized that the first challenge is to create a flow computer system. “We need to not constrain it by the use or the sensor itself.”
The project continues on Thursday.
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The second session of day 2 with a focus on intellectual property(IP) theft was hosted by Jeff Hudson, CEO of Venafi. Its focus wasn’t on revealing the problem, but on considering how to solve it.
The panel consisted of Dan McGahn, President and CEO, American Superconductor, Evan Anderson, INVNT/IP Director of Research, Richard H.L. Marshall, CEO, X-SES Consultants LLC, and Morian Eberhard, Chief Information Security Officer, Zions Bancorp.
The session began with a clip from 60 Minutes, which went through the findings of an INVNT/IP report on China’s government sponsored theft of American IP. The clip also introduced the story of McGahn’s company, which suffered serious damage due to IP theft despite their best efforts.
Anderson spoke on China’s end game with the consistent flow of stolen IP to eventually take over major parts of the global economy. He suggested that relentless development was being used as an anaesthetic by the Chinese government to quell public discontent.
“If you don’t have economic growth and you have an oppressive regime, the people will rise up,” he said.
Drawing on his experience in working as a Department of Defence attorney, Marshall chimed in to give historical context on the distinction between individuals stealing IP(like the US in the early years of its existence), and nation state sponsored theft like China’s methods. Evoking the metaphor of a frog not realizing that it’s in boiling water and dying, he made specific reference to the theft of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 blueprints.
“My professional frustration is that we did not do enough to keep it from happening,” he said.
He was the most strident in the panel in apportioning blame to different actors, from the US government, to universities, and the companies facing threats. McGahn narrated the story of his company’s IP being stolen despite taking many measures to protect it. He said that after the Chinese hired about 800 engineers, tried to copy the technology and failed, they bribed a European employee of his company upto $2 million to transfer unencrypted files containing IP secrets. The employee was fired and jailed. “We literally became the poster child of IP abuse,” said McGahn.
He further stated that many companies are unaware whether they are being violated, and the extent to which they are being violated, and expressed special frustration with government inaction in protecting American companies.
“We’re at war,” he said. “We’re losing badly.”
Anderson stated that while some Americans think that large American companies can defend themselves, they’re relatively weak compared to countries. He further stated that the solution lay in public-private partnerships. Marshall disagreed with Anderson with McGahn, and said that any efforts to build public-private partnerships had been in vain. He laid greater emphasis on companies protecting their own IP, saying that national security agencies had a separate and specialized function, while reaffirming that some government intervention was necessary.
McGahn wanted the government to stand up directly to China.
“We did everything and beyond what anybody should do.”
At the end, the panel agreed upon a multi-pronged effort, including consequences for nation states stealing secrets, and government intervention for a fighting chance against the problem.
The second half of this years FiReStarter cohort was introduced and briefly interviewed by Ed Butler in an afternoon session, ahead of this evening’s FiReStarter reception.
Metabolon President and CEO, John Ryals, spoke about his company’s ability to study metabolomics through their technology, which can detect hundreds of biomarkers from a single biological sample. They have collaborated in over 5,000 research studies, resulting in over 550 peer reviewed publications. Today, Metabolon announced a new test of about 65 inherited metabolic disorders, which could shorten a diagnosis that usually takes months into a few weeks. Ryals also sees applications for many other diseases, including diabetes. “We think this will really change the people look at their health,” said Ryals, “It’s a major step to prevention.”
Soroush Nazarpour, President and CEO of NanoXplore spoke about his company’s expanding use of graphene. Graphene is a new and advanced material useable for a variety of applications.
“We are now active in two markets, plastics and lithium ion batteries,” said Nazarpour
Graphene is incorporated into plastics for transportation, electronic packaging, and structural material applications and in the cathodes and anodes in lithium ion batteries. Nazarpour sees a bright future for the company.
“We’ve been around for about four years and we increase revenue by five-fold every year,” he said.
Talbot Jaeger, founder and Chief Technologist of NovaWurks wants to democratize the space industry. NovaWurks has created a mass produced product that can be used to build spacecraft on the order of the cost of a car rather than in the billion dollar range. The product is intended as a lego-like building block that can scale as projects are successful.
“We’re trying to enable the next generation of dreamers,” Jaeger said.
ORIG3N, a regenerative medicine biotechnology company, was introduced by CEO Robin Y. Smith. ORIG3N is the able to reprogram blood cells into pluripotent stem cells and trigger them to grow into different types of cells, such as heart cells, for example, which they can grow on a plate and study to learn about the heart of the blood donor. ORIG3N has collected a large bank of donor samples, which can be used as normal controls, and is larger than all other similar banks combined, says Smith. The company is currently selling personalized genetic tests directly to consumers based on lifestyle, such as fitness assessments.
Caitlin Cameron, Chair and CEO of OtoNexus Medical Technologies, Inc. spoke about her company’s product, an ultrasound based medical device for the accurate diagnosis of middle ear infections. Ultrasound is used to detect the viscosity of the fluid in the middle ear to diagnosis the infection, which occurs in 93% percent of children and may recur up to a dozen times. Cameron said that middle ear infections are the “number one reason for antibiotics in kids, for surgery in kids, but studies have repeatedly shown doctors get it wrong 50% of the time” and that her product can change that.
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Mark Anderson, founder and CEO of Strategic News Service, issued a challenge to build a computer that can measure the earth’s energy flow at the Future in Review conference during a Wednesday afternoon session. This challenge went out to a team selected by Anderson for their high intelligence and known capabilities.
The team consists of Ilkay Altintas, Chief Data Science Officer, San Diego Supercomputer Center, UC San Diego, Steve Coy, President, TimeLike Systems, Brad Holtz, CEO, Cyon Research, and Chief Nexus Officer, Coventry Computer, Jeff Hudson, CEO, Venafi, Talbot Jaeger, CEO, NovaWurks, Nathanael Miller, Aerospace Engineer, NASA Langley Research Center, Franklin Williams, Principal, Live Earth Imaging Inc., and David Zuniga, Commercial Innovation Manager, Center for the Advancement of Science in Space.
In addition to Anderson, there are two other judges on the project: Larry Smarr, Director, Calit2 (a UC San Diego / UC Irvine partnership) and SNS Ambassador for Pure Science, and Ty Carlson, CTO, Coventry Computer.
In addition to building a system to measure the energy flow of the earth, the participants have been charged with building a computer system that can measure all flows. According to Anderson, the system needs to be robust, reliable, scalable, fast, and inexpensive. The information should be real-time, accurate, and truthful.
The participants, faced with this huge challenge, questioned how inexpensive was defined. Smarr reassured them by saying that if for instance the team needed a 100-million-dollar component, the judges would determine if there’s a cheaper alternative or if it can be acquired.
Smarr challenged them to have a breadboard that would indicate if the system is possible and buildable within an year.
“The ocean is deep and the sky is high,” said Carlson.
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Through time, the human understanding of the universe has grown increasingly sophisticated. The intervention of the gods is no longer a scientific causal explanation of the world and what is happening in it, the enlightenment changes that. Further, no longer do we believe in the clockwork universe, whereby all things can be predicted with certainty if we understand mechanism by which they work. In this late afternoon session, Mark Anderson, Murray Cantor and Brad Holtz explored our current understanding of the universe through the lens of a number of examples from disparate fields.
We currently understand the universe to be an unpredictable system in which true predictions are not possible, but some level of statistical probability may be understood. In this model, tiny variations in conditions can dramatically affect outcomes.
Cantor offered Conway’s Game of Life is an example of this phenomenon. By very slightly altering the initial conditions of the model, a dramatic difference in outcome can be observed.
Holtz offered another example of fractals. Fractals are observed as mathematical models produce patterns, which recur at progressively smaller scales. Upon “zooming in” on these fractals by a factor of 10^40, tiny variations in conditions can produce very dramatic results.
These same principles are demonstrated in genetics. Cantor said that although most living things have very similar DNA patterns, tiny variations in those proteins can produce wildly different organisms.
“Anything that changes in time, these are the fundamental laws that apply,” Cantor said.
Anderson said that the key to understanding the nature of these systems is understanding the flow and interaction between variables to help determine patterns. He showed Lorentz’s Butterfly as an example, emphasizing that if we only look at the change on one axis of the model, there appears to be little to no discernible pattern.
However, simultaneously examining the change across all three axes of motion leads to a pattern emerging, giving us a chance of predicting where the particle being observed might be at any point in time. Holtz explain this method further.
“Just because there isn’t certainty, doesn’t mean there isn’t structure,” he said.
These simple models, although relatively simple, give rise to enormous complexity. The panel concluded that only once we begin to understand the flow and interactivity in the system can we begin to predict system behavior.
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