R.I.P. GeoCities (1994-2009)...and almost nobody remember about it. What about Blogger (or Tweeter) by 2014? Reflecting on how the world changed since the Berlin Walls end, 20 years ago this week, The Economist makes a very good statement:At present capitalism is too often judged by the excesses of a few bankers. But when historians come to write about the past quarter-century, Lehman Brothers and Sir Fred the Shred Goodwin will account for fewer pages than the 500m people dragged out of absolute poverty into something resembling the middle class. Their success is not just a wonderful thing in itselfthe greatest leap forward in economic history. It has also helped spur on other chaotic freedoms: look at the way ideas, good, bad and mad, are texted around the world. A thought-provoking piece at the New Scientist: Seven questions that keep physicists up at night.This is the kind of stuff that keeps me as an innovation researcher up at night: from which of these questions will emerge the next industrial revolution?Just think about Plank staying up at night, over the black body problem then you have the digital technology. The 20th Century would have been very different without those Planks asleep nights.So what is next? I am betting on What is reality really? Russ Ackoff, pioneer systems engineer and operation research thinker passed out on October 29th. The Economist makes a very nice obtuary:The meltdown of the financial system during 2007-08 was a classic example of the dangers of putting atomised thinking ahead of systems thinking. The conventional wisdom judged the efficiency of markets by the accuracy of individual prices rather than on their robustness in the event of shocks or their vulnerability when liquidity dries up. The performance of individual financial institutions was judged by their profits, their capital cushions and their risk-management systems, which were supposedly becoming ever more sophisticated but failed to detect the approaching systemic collapse. The Economist's new column Schumpeter, looking at the Kraft-Cadbury affair, makes a good reflection about how brands are affected by mergers and acquisitions:Most Britons would rather eat scorpions than Hershey bars. Wired reports - again - about an "impossible" engine technology called Emdrive:"The Emdrive is an electromagnetic drive that would generate thrust from a closed system impossible say some experts. To critics, its flat-out junk science, not even worth thinking about. But its inventor, Roger Shawyer, has doggedly continued his work. (...) While the argument over the drives impossibility continues, so does the engineering work. The problem is that nobody wants to talk about it." Reading this, two of Clarke's technology laws come to mind:- When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Might be the pink paper the quintessential element of the economic journalism? The X PRIZE Foundation announced it will receive up to $5.5 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to