Geoff's blog

Brain interfacing, data control and replicating Silicon Valley

Geoff Mulgan - 28.09.2011

The last week has been all about ideas, a welcome antidote to the darkening economic outlook.

A Hot Topics event at NESTA looked at brain-computer interfaces. Kevin Warwick, who has for many years been a one man laboratory with sensors and implants in his body, showed us some of his latest thinking. This ranged from RFID implants allowing him to open doors without pushing buttons and implants to reduce the tremors caused by Parkinson's disease. Another speaker was Emlyn Clay who demonstrated a new device allowing severely disabled patients wearing an EEG cap to spell out words by thinking them, which you can watch here. Also discussed was a rather amazing device which helped unconscious patients answer yes or no to a series of questions, opening up radically new issues for the ethics of comas and life support machines. All of this felt like a more practical and humane alternative to the grandiose claims of futurist Ray Kurzweil who says that we face an imminent moment when artificial intelligence will take over from human intelligence (the rapture for nerds).

Reclaiming control of our personal data

Another fascinating discussion here looked at the potential for radically new ways of handling personal data. Mydex, led by serial entrepreneur William Heath, has been developed to give citizens control over their personal data. The idea is that Mydex - structured as a community interest company (CIC) - would look after personal data and then loan it out to private firms or public bodies, but on terms controlled by the citizen. The aim is that this would guarantee more accurate information, reduce the risks of abuses and save a lot of money and hassle (for example when changing address). 

Pilots have been underway with several local authorities (led by Brent Council) and with backing from big firms such as BT and Experian. The ultimate promise is to turn customer-relationship management (CRM) on its head: instead of big organisations holding extensive data about you, and selling it to each other, you would hold that data. Medium term, Mydex could also provide a way of handling CVs (with automated validation of claimed qualifications) and personalised health records (again with some automated validation through links to the NHS records). Mydex may not turn out to be exactly the end point, but I'm convinced they're right in thinking that before long people will want to own and control their data, and won't trust either big firms or big government to do it in their interests. 

Silicon Valley comes to the UK

We're limbering up for the next Silicon Valley event which will be bigger than ever, with an extraordinary range of activities now planned in universities across the country as well as in London. I'll be writing a piece to accompany it on what we should and shouldn't learn from Silicon Valley.  After a generation of attempts around the world to emulate it, with Silicon Glen, Silicon Fjords, Silicon Wadis and Silicon Steppes, the debate needs to move on. It's clear there are some things which can, and should, be copied - not least because Silicon Valley has retained its edge in creating world-beating new technologies (even as California has become an uneasy embarrassment). But the places around the world doing best at innovation in IT - Finland, Israel or Taiwan - have ended up pursuing distinctive strategies, very different to the cookie cutter Silicon Valley ones touted around in the 1980s and 1990s.

Studio Schools

I did a short talk at the TED University in July - for a couple of hundred people - about studio schools,  an idea I've been working on for five years now that's beginning to take off. A few schools are already open and several dozen are due to open next year, mainly thanks to the skill and determination of the Studio School Trust, run by David Nicholl.    

We think it's a very powerful idea, combining some quite old elements and some quite new ones. Our strategy has been to keep pretty quiet and let the schools achieve impact by word of mouth, and through demonstrable results (a very opposite strategy to some school projects which get overhyped before they're really ready). The talk is now on the TED home page which has the virtue of getting 100,000 views within a day, and lots of interesting comments - though possibly a bit more exposure than we'd intended!