Introducing Yuki Kawauchi

It has become unquestioned today that superior and consistent performance in sports is the result of the application of scientific methods of training, nutrition and use of cutting-edge equipment. Thus in most of the sporting activities today, the level of professionalism required for consistent performance is necessarily costly and that explains the partnership between performers and corporations or sponsors who pay for the training and equipment. bearing this in mind, i am particularly fascinated by this story in Slate Magazine about a Japanese marathoner whose methods and techniques for performance provide a resounding exception to this rule. 

Yuki Kawauchi is a leading marathon runner in japan who is different because he runs a personal training regime, enters races more regularly than is considered ideal, has no corporate sponsor while also maintaining a 40-hour per week job with the government. As the article states, his training regimen consists of daily running and entering for long distance races with very regular frequency. the surprise is that despite his peculiar approach to a very difficult discipline, he not only thrives but records better performance than his colleagues who are sponsored and trained by the national athletics institution.

The lack of professional coaching is evident in his running style that inevitably leads to wrong posture and poor stride but his performance in none the worse. As stated, a maverick of this kind inevitably attracts hostility from sports bosses who would like to see a performer under their direct control. 

As a person who runs a annual marathon race in the tropics with virtually no prior training, I agree that it is possible to exert oneself and perform reasonably well without adherence to the conventional professional advise. What I find truly impressive about Yuki Kawauchi is the consistency in performance and the ability to enter a large number of races. Perhaps his good performance is proof of the 10,000 hour rule described by Malcolm Gladwell in this book. In spite of this, my belief is that his athlete is overtraining and while he has kept risk of injury low, is likely to take longer to recover. the ultimate price hough is that Yuki is shortening his career substantially by the overwork of his body and would probably peak soon and decline much faster thereafter. It is still possible that he may prove the exception and have a truly long career because so far, nothing about this athlete is conventional. His career and times are worthy of keeping for close study. 

3-D Printing is Not Alchemy

Any person who can read this blog post is aware of the fact that 3-D printing has been demonstrated to be able to make usable copies of prosthetic limbs, useful materials and even a firearm. And yet most of the press coverage about the potential of 3-D printing is obviously overstated. reading many commentaries, one would get the impression that this technology renders every physical object subject to production through 3-D printing and therefore that it will have a profound effect on manufacturing and virtually all industrial processes.

Carl Bass, writing in Wired here, adopts a more circumspect approach to the claims and goes through a detailed explanation of 3-D printing. Among the most important points he makes is that the explosion in the use of the technology is still constrained by the fact that this technology seems to be in an experimental stages. But the most profound statement is that 3-D is unlikely to reach mass use and thereby wipe our industrial manufacturing because of the economics of the technology. In particular, the author argues that in scaling up models, 3-D there is a significant cost barrier because the cost appreciates with scale. Calling this the Third Power of 3-D printing, it is empirically established that the time, costs and material required scales up to the third power. Thus a proper business model dos not exist yet and so it is constrained by volume. 

This means the technology is unlikely to displace conventional manufacturing and will be used at small scale by individuals. In essence, 3-D printing will improve over time but is not the equivalent of alchemy for manufacturing. 

Apple Shares Still A Good Deal

The punditry is full of alarmist messages that Apple has lost its mojo due to the perception that the companies corporation's growth has reached its zenith. I am prepared to state that while I have only reviewed the summary of the statements made by Apple, it is clear that most of the pundits are either ignorant or deliberately distorting the picture.

To start with, an amazing run of nearly a decade of quarter after quarter of increasing profit levels is statistically rare and would be expected to come to an end sometime during the corporation's lifetime. because of that superior accomplishment, it is annoying that this end in growth rate of profits is being read as marking an end to the corporation's dominance based on a fall in share prices.

Added to the above, one would think that Apple released a product that performed poorly when the release of the iPhone in late 2012 went really well and is still the gadget to beat in the smart phone category. It is true that the targets set by financial analysts were not met neither set nor endorsed by the management of Apple. Financial analysts are perfectly entitled to setting sales, market share and revenue targets as they judge fit but are not allowed to reverse themselves when those targets are not met by suggesting that the firm is doing poorly.

So while the share price has fallen, I am certain that those who are selling away are not making a good decision based on the results of a quarter in which revenues were high but profits dropped. To my mind, this is perfect illustration of the poor link between equity values and the performance of a corporation.  As Cassie Slane states here, the share price is lower than it was a decade ago. This is perhaps the moment to buy into Apple. 

How are Locks and Software Alike?

In the early days after I started writing up pieces on this blog, I regularly mentioned my admiration for Bruce Schneier the writer of this blog, that security analysts with really unique view of security. He distills principles for security advice from both economics and technology and delivers very useful insights on what the causes and fixes for poor security both in the real and virtual worlds are. To my mind, two factors that he stresses again and again are that secrecy is not equal to more security and that there's a lot of security theatre which does not pass a cost-effectiveness test but it helps agencies and software makers to look busy and concerned. 

As required, inspiration for this blog post has occurred from my reading of the supremely interesting series of pieces on lock picking by Tom Vanderbilt on Slate Magazine. In the latest piece, the author discusses why it is virtually impossible to make a absolutely safe lock. Curiously, the conclusion is very similar to Bruce Schneier's two principles which asks for understanding that software and general security requires trade offs and also that notwithstanding the claims by lock makers, secrecy does not make a lock any safer from individuals intent on breaking it. 

Essentially, the series of articles by Tom Vanderbilt merely confirm the assertion by Bruce Schneier that principles of good security are important and that society would be better served if the principles were applied more generally. For general consumers of products such as anti-virus software and home owners, security requires trade offs and is an arms race of sorts. There is no absolute instrument to ensure that all households and all people are safe in all activities. Society would be much better if this fact was understood more broadly. 

Using UAVs Against Animal Poachers

http://www.freeelephantpictures.com/wallpaper/eliph02-2Elephants-MomNBaby.jpg.html

Large mammals such as elephants and rhinos face the risk of extinction because of demand for their horns. This demand has persisted in spite of international  treaties banning the trade in these and other animal trophies. In a number of blog posts such as this I have made the claim that policy based on the need to conserve species such as the elephant have failed to work because the ivory from elephants and rhino are so valuable that a small number of poachers and networks of crime are able to harvest them and illegally appropriate large financial gains. In parts of east Africa, the poachers have continued to utilize high powered weapons to kills elephants in order to meet the large demand for ivory in south eastern Asia generally and in China in particular.  

The claim of this blogger is that while treaties are useful for an coordinated approach to a problem that transcends borders, it is unlikely to be useful because of the strong financial incentives. To my mind, the solution must involve both a market approach and a technological approach. An article in the Scientific American discussed a high end technological approach that includes use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for surveillance of vast parks in order to alert rangers to the existence of poachers. This innovative use of technology is a welcome addition to the quest to detect and deter poachers. It is too early to tell how effective this new approach will be but it cannot be the silver bullet to ending poaching. It is still possible that the assignment of property rights on the endangered animals would ensure that a more comprehensive set of approaches are invented to reduce the high premium that poachers extract from illegal trade. 

Smart Phone Future

In an earlier blog post here, I argued that Microsoft Corporation had chosen to expand its business into devices. Apple's success with devices gadgets which include the iPod, iPad and iPhone (the 3 IPs) on which it has based its strategy for dominating the technology industry. It is now known that Microsoft is planning to take the competition into the smart phone and tablet businesses.

With the forceful entry of Microsoft into the smart phones markets, I have been wondering how much growth is reasonably expected. The main barrier to entry into the smart phones businesses is the costs because these gadgets command a premium price. Mobile Business Briefing reports that Smart Phones reached the 1 billion milestone in the third quarter of 2012. According to the report, the milestone is reached after a period of 16 years. In addition, it proves that smart phone owners are still a minority and with increasing  competition, prices will fall sufficiently to generate new demand.    

Systems Design and Remote Probability

More than a decade ago, most technology users were faced with what was called the 2K problem which referred to the early programming of computers and related equipment which did not anticipate the change into the the new millennium. A lot of media frenzy and doomsday scenarios were developed about the mass crashing of computer systems together with the possibility that a level of problems may occur. To my mind, this state of affairs reflects a degree on inertia because in designing systems, we discount the future and are not always capable of covering all scenarios.

Reading this article reminded me of the 2K problem for the reason that the national health insurance service in Kenya has computer and software systems that were programmed with assumptions that are now causing an inconvenience. As stated in this story from the Daily Nation in Kenya, a man whose identification documents suggests that he is 128 years old could not be registered by the National Hospital Insurance Fund for the reason that its system software can only go as far back as 1890. Thus several attempts have been made to ensure his registration, without success.  

To my mind, this incident is interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is that given that the life expectancy of most Kenyan males is about 60 years, the system was designed with the view that the probability of an individual being 128 years old in Kenya was far too low to consider. Secondly, the failure to resolve this issue shows the degree to which people and institutions are captive to systems and are unable to adjust easily. In this case, it would still be okay for an authorized person to simply use the earliest data possible in ensuring the registration of this individual. Instead, I see the fixation with getting the right date and trying a variety of tricks to ensure that registration.     

Doctors Calls for Testing in Medicine

It takes several years of training and practice for any individual to begin to dispense medicine and care for patients. With this in mind, many patients who receive advise from a physician or a surgeon are bound to believe that that professional makes decisions and chooses the most effective methods for treatment that are available to the doctor. H. Gilbert Welch is far more modest by stating that the practice of medicine today is so complex that sometimes medical professionals choose options but are not certain that they are the most cost effective or even the most useful for patients.

Writing this article in the NYT, H. Gilbert Welch goes through a number of treatment options that doctors have dispensed in good faith but whose overall efficacy was not tested as rigorously as required. he now recommends that the ability to step back and conduct evaluation of one treatment option against another in order to determine relative effectiveness is necessary. One method of going through this is to integrate randomized evaluations as a critical part of decision-making by the profession. This call for more research is interesting because it is not intended to find out new methods and drugs but rather to focus on what works in the repertoire of treatments offered today.

This doctor highlights an important but hardly emphasized factor in innovation and knowledge today. Human welfare could be improved substantially by exploring the utility of existing treatments and knowledge but this is often surrendered to the quest for the new. And if that is applicable in a cutting-edge profession like medicine, one wonders how much so in other areas.               

What Has 3D Printing Wrought?

An article in the Huffington Post by Dominique Mosbergen reports about an very clever man who managed to manufacture gun arts from 3D printing and assembled them into a usable weapon. for a country alert to recent disasters by people who handled guns maliciously and harmed fellow citizens, this development introduces a new challenge for public policy on firearms ownership and use. At the same time, there is the realization that 3D printing technology may lead to production of goods whose ownership and use remain in contention.

It may not be illegal to get blue prints and manufacture a weapon as the subject of the story did but a regulatory issue arises whether the product of that process requires registration. My hunch is that a bureaucrat will probably find good reason why it should be registered if not altogether outlawed. The fears of a criminal using a similar process to manufacture and sell large volumes of similar weapons, is perhaps overstated because the production of that weapon presupposes a high degree of knowledge and technical capability that many people save for dedicated students would have. Additionally, most of these goods are already manufactured by corporations whose processes use cutting-edge technology and who would probably wipe out a lone working competitor on cost and quality. What this state of affairs brings to the fore is that many technologies are marginally neutral in their effects and can also be applied for other purposes that portions of a society may not approve.  

Is the Goal Line Technology Cost Effective?

FIFA finally made the decision to allow for technology to be deployed during soccer matches to be able to tell whether the ball has crossed the line even if it does not get to touch the net. There has been wide demand for the deployment of some mechanism to assist umpires to make the correct decision but this organization has been reluctant to accept any change. At a meeting of FIFA's International Football Association Board last week, the organization made three decisions with the most profound being that on Goal Line Technology (GLT).  The effect of this unanimous decision is that the rulebook will be amended to include two approaches to support referees in making decisions about goals. Interestingly, the statement issued clarifies that the Hawk-Eye and GoalRef technologies will only be used on the goal line and nowhere else on the pitches.

One must applaud the fact that this decision was made after appropriate testing of the technology in order to determine their fitness for the game and thereby reflect evidence based decision making. As a person who watches a moderate number of soccer matches at club and international level, I am wondering whether these technologies are cost effective. I am not privy to any data but understand that soccer is a low-scoring game hence the number of instances in which the technology will be required is less than 10% of all competitive soccer matches. Does this justify the deployment of these machines during on all professional soccer matches? My hunch is that it is not cost effective since only a small number of matches present a scenario that requires a decision that will be improved by GLT .      

Learning Through Digital Technology

In the last decade, many industries have been changed fundamentally by innovative applications of digital technology tools. This state of affairs has led to the erroneous assumption that these pace of change will maintain and also that no specific industry will remain the same. Many people view the growth of Google, Apple, Amazon and mobile telephony and assume that digital technology must therefore transform every industry from energy, education, publishing and so forth. As already stated, the Internet and these new applications of digital technologies have had profound effects on industries by creating new value and made entrepreneurs very wealthy.

However, it is clear that there are industries in which the amazing effect of digital technologies seems to be overstated. Konstantin Kokaes makes a strong argument in this article in Slate Magazine that in education generally and mathematics in particular, the fact that technology is superior is more an article of faith than a demonstrated result. Among the more profound points that he makes are that the rush to introduce digital tools into education is an expensive experiment without evidence that it is either useful or cost effective. This argument is real because it is not based on a preference for what is familiar and known but is based on the fact these new tools are being pushed by interested marketers. 

I am not surprised that these new tools are not proven to be better but are incorporated into education policy by the fact that the education departments are buying them as symbols of modern ways of teaching science and mathematics. The point that I made in a blog post here remains valid.     

Promise of National ID Sytems

Soon after reading the book Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani, one of the founders of Infosys, I learned that the author's proposal for a form of identification mechanism for individual citizens had been accepted by the government. In the book, he mentions that the absence of an identification document for most Indian citizens leads to a lot of fraud in government assistance for social programmes. It is understandable that a technology solution to this would reduce cost and ensure cost effective delivery of the services to deserving people. While reading that book, it immediately came to my mind that the retention of all sets of data on individuals has implications for their rights and their relationship to governments.

The Republic of South Africa has also commenced a citizen registration system mentioned here by its Minister for Home Affairs. In that piece, it is argued that there is the need to consolidate all registration and identification documents in the form of a smart card that would enable citizens to be registered for voting, driving and other interactions with the state. Needless to mention, my libertarian instincts tell me that this endeavor is not only bad for liberty but also technically unsound. To start with, the consolidation of all forms of identification under a single smart card may seem smart but simply shows that an individual is more vulnerable because a large amount of data is available in one place. Secondly, I see the tendency for well-meaning state officials to overstate the power of technology in the statement that this card is absolutely secure and cannot be breached. To my mind, that is such a preposterous statement that can only have been made up or used by the firm that is marketing this system to governments that would not care to audit that system.  

So to add my conclusion, I am certain that the quest to make identification of individuals may have some social value. What I am less certain of is whether it needs to be in form of governments collecting and maintaining a lot of data for individuals in one place. Now, the technology savvy thief knows which database to breach and find out more than they should about some citizens.    

Defining Yahoo!

Many people underestimate what t takes to run a large corporation such as Yahoo and to make it a success while even many more mistakenly believe that CEO's determine all the outcomes of such firms. It is rather unfortunate that Yahoo! has had to lose its CEO because of a misstatement in his resume just at the same time that it has been struggling greatly to revive its businesses. I hate to kick a person who is on the floor and therefore will not overly condemn Scott Thompson for the error on his resume. However, I am unsure that having a computer science degree on its own would mean that he was more capable than not. In my view, his departure is about material misstatements that could have misled the recruiters.

That aside, I think that the most perceptive piece that I have read about this unfortunate incident is by Charles Arthur, the technology editor of the Guardian. He suggests here that the present circumstances show that the successor CEO must answer an important question about what Yahoo! is. To be honest, that question is one that not many people can answer for the firms that they work for or purport to run. Added to the fact that in Yahoo!'s arena are Google, Facebook, Twitter and many more, I would not answer that question in a thousand words or on a postcard. It may even be a question that has no answer. But as Charles suggests, it is possible that the inability to answer that question convincingly shows that there is cluttered thinking in that firm.

I hope that any readers of this blog would venture an answer as I am wondering whether Yahoo!'s trajectory is an illustration of creative destruction at work.

Atul Gawande's Prescription for Complex Systems

I have found that Atul Gawande is a rarity among professionals because he not only writes very clearly but is also eloquent. I pasted a quote from him in this blog post after having read his latest book, The Checklist Manifesto. In this TED talk, he goes into a lucid discussion about the complexity that a highly trained surgeon encounters today and how this has almost led to definite limits in their ability to perform many functions. The idea he comes up with is not to apply more technology or other fixes but just to use a checklist. As he says it, this has been tested in real surgery conditions across different nations and has had incredible results than one would have guessed. I cannot help but think that a well-thought checklist leads to benefits that surpass a blockbuster drug.  

Should We be Freed From Passwords?

It took me a while to realize that security in the Internet and related gadgets in use today is an arms race that will keep security consultants perpetually at work. This stance came to me after reading the analytical model that Bruce Schneier adopts to discussions on security. That notwithstanding, I was impressed with the idea expressed in this article by Randall Stross of the NYT. It correctly identifies that most people use very sloppy passwords by not giving much thought to it in addition to the fact that really strong passwords will be difficult to remember. In recognition of this human weakness, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has commenced thinking to go beyond passwords as known today.

This project seeks to design a mechanism that allows for use of a a connected device by detection of an individuals' user signature, which he calls "Cognitive Signature". This means that access and use of computers and devices will be left to software that has the ability to detect the individual's unique interaction pattern with the keyboard. "Keystroke Dynamics" are actions that are undertaken repeatedly and therefore not subject to deliberate thought. I sense that they would build a profile which will authenticate the user of the device. 

This is without doubt an extremely clever approach as the tests show that it is very difficult to consciously bypass. This will raise the threshold for those who would breach security but it also means that it will be difficult to log in people who are authorized to share a machine unless their "Keystroke Dynamics" is embedded in the system. Unlike Randall Stross who speaks of the password free environment as providing a near perfect environment,  I remain less sanguine. The requirement for simplicity of systems is part of the reason why securing computer systems remains difficult. I do not see how this password-free system makes it disappear. 

Apple Stock Reflects Value of its Products

In my view, Farhad Manjoo's articles in the Slate mMagazine have been reliable sources of information on technology. His latest piece involves the analysis on Apple and specifically its stock performance over time. bBased on the numbers in this article, the Apple stock has risen by more than 32% since the death of Steve Jobs  some months ago. The author identifies clear drivers of the stock price as being a good set of high margin products such as the iPad, iPhone and the Macintosh computers. All this is uncontroversial and the dominance of Apple in these markets suggest that its profits are guaranteed for a while. Indeed, Farhad goes on a limb and states, tongue in cheek perhaps, that he would recommend a buy for anyone with money to invest.

I agree that Apple stock is a great buy but I am less inclined to believe that any savvy person should consider the  P/E ratio in making that decision. My reason is that it is true that Apple's P/E ratio is still lower than that of other comparable firms but that should not lead to the conclusion that Apple's numbers should match those. It may just be that the other firms are now due for a downward adjustment. tThis change would still make Apple a good buy in relative terms and not necessarily because it would rise further. In other words, the P/E is a guide yes, but it does not tell one whether it is Apple that will rise or others with a lower ratio that will be coming down. Apple is a good buy because its management makes fine products with a higher margin that its competitors and which satisfy its buyers. With these factors established, the P/E ratio is a red herring.

 

  

Africa's Tweet Data Means Nothing

It is a well-known that due to the availability of digital technology, there is a surfeit of data that represent human behaviour than ever. And yet the availability of vast amounts of data does not mean that it is necessarily more accessible or comprehensible. For instance, Portland, a firm that tracks technology uses has presented the results of its research in a chart appearing in image on this post and appearing on this datablog by Simon Rogers of the Guardian. The chart presents data on the the volume of Twitter messages sent within African countries. As is possible the image looks neat but I am certain that the chart tells the casual observer virtually nothing except that it was prepared by a person who does not understand the data that was collected.

To start with, there is a diversity of countries in Africa and so presentation of the absolute numbers is useful. However, there are number of school boy errors that emerge from that presentation. First, the placement of the data side by side invites comparisons among countries and creates the ranking system that the developers of the charts displays. This ranking is not possible because of the differences in population among these countries. Second, given the failure to account for the populations differences that are truly vast, the data cannot provide information that the heading of the chart purports. This second error may not be the fault of the data collectors but I suspect that the Guardian's data editors would spot this. The volume of messages are definitely provided by a different number of people in each country.  

Professors Experiment With College Education

I keep wondering how different education will be supplied and consumed in a couple of decades when digitization will be more mature. My wondering was in part reflected in this blog post in which I linked to an article about the MIT having introduced an e-learning course for which certification would be provided to participants. To my mind, the MIT may have been experimenting with a system which would then be varied and then used to inform the methods for delivering university-level education in the future. And the provision of certificates was the institution's way of ensuring that it has sufficient takers to allow for the experiment to yield meaningful results while assessing demand.

Sebastian Thrun, a professor from MIT learned from the huge demand for the free course on artificial intelligence and opted to convert that into a business opportunity. As MSNBC reports, the business will provide online education through video instruction with the teacher's time used in helping students to solve problems. This model is not a radical invention as the Khan Academy has a comparable model except that the latter is provided for open participation and with points accumulation as the evidence of accomplishment.

I am quite surprised that Sebastian Thrun resigned from MIT and is becoming a competitor in the provision of education services. It is difficult to assess the prospects of the new business but my view is that the demand that was expressed could follow the new business and this experiment means that soon, the top schools may have to consider taking the competition to their former employees. The MIT should consider taking over Udacity.  One cannot say anymore that technology is not changing education.  

Blackberry's Wrong Call

Soon after the election of president Obama in November 2008, the press made reports about the fact that he would have to let go of his Blackberry device because it was not approved communication device for the US president. At the time, I stated on this posted a blog post stating that Research In Motion, the makers of the Blackberry set of devices, ought to have taken the opportunity to assert that its systems were quite robust and that the security features could be comparable to considered alternatives. In my view then, their failure to pitch in here may have been a chance lost for high-powered marketing irrespective of whether the challenge was taken up or not.

Three years later, it is clear that Blackberry has had a difficult time and has lost a lot of ground to its competitors in that smart phone market. Its struggle in that market has culminated in the the resignation of its leadership team and replacement of the Chief eExecutive Officer. Juliette Garside of the Guardian reports that the slide in market share and the share price prompted the changes in management as the firm struggled to provide new gadgets.

While I still think that the firm will continue to provide its gadgets in spite of the lower market share, its new management will be required to make tough choices with no guarantee of success. To my mind, this episode illustrates the fact that the technology industry is not only dynamic but that it is difficult to tell what clients will buy in the future in addition to executing business plans perfectly.

The iPad as a Textbook

A couple of months ago, I stated in this post that Steve Jobs of Apple had stated to his biographer that information technology had not demonstrated revolutionary value for education. My interpretation is that he foresaw that the one area where this could happen would be to digitize textbooks and thereby undercut the huge rents that go to publishers every year.  It appears that the corporation has taken this further by attempting to build on the success of the iPad to deliver textbooks and other applications for young learners. Cecilia Kang of the Washington Post reports on the business approach taken by Apple in introducing a number of new approaches to delivering an interesting learning experience for learners.

There is a definite concern about the possible lock-in effect that would result from widespread adoption of the iPad and related software from Apple. Even assuming that this will be successful, one has to consider whether the quest to break the hold that textbook publishers have on education is worth breaking in exchange for the possibility of better education outcomes. I am inclined to believe that the delivery of education would be improved substantially and it is less likely that Apple would dominate for long since other manufacturers of tablet computers would be able to provide the same textbooks on their platforms.  An additional advantage is that the use of iPads and other tablets will call for innovative ways of delivering lessons.