This fleet-footed company is making the world better.  The story of a company that is making the world better , including innovative non-touch forms created to help deal with COVID. And, one of the brilliant team members helping make it happen is our son.

In 1979, Sony revolutionized personal entertainment with the Walkman. It was nearly as big as the iPhone. For joggers, sports fans and outdoor workers, this could be huge. People can raise or lower the temperature of the air surrounding their torso with Sony's  new device .

Ike and Mamie Eisenhower at the White House Via Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas  In his farewell address , President Eisenhower gave our nation two warnings. Although we usually only hear about one of them, both have proven prescient: The caution about the "military-industrial complex" becomes more dire all of the time. We are far overextended in the Middle East. From what I can tell, many in the military like it that way (people in combat tend to get promoted more than during times of peace) and the weapons suppliers grow their already-large businesses (even though some of those weapons are extraordinarily expensive and are of dubious value). The media periodically mentions this warning from Eisenhower, so at least the citizenry is aware.  The far less well known warning is the one about what I call " Big Science ." We almost never hear of it.  As a technology  publication put it last yea r : President Eisenhower surrounded himself with brilliant...

For people younger than about 50, it is hard to imagine what a tremendous effect Walt Disney (yes, he was a real person!) had on the world. He was the Steve Jobs of his era. Today is the 110th anniversary of his birth. I've read the new biography of Steve Jobs (excellent book) as well as two biographies of Mr. Disney. If I had to choose, while they were both giants of their time, I would say Disney had the greater effect on the world. When Kathleen and I took our family to Disneyland for the first time, I made sure we stopped at the statue of Walt and Mickey to make sure our children knew a little of the history of this remarkable man. If you would like to learn more, there is an great article summing up his influence on business and the world here .

I have been a huge fan of Apple and their products since the  Lisa computer . We even had an Apple II in WeatherData's original office 30 years ago. I wish Steve well and thank him for his amazing accomplishments at Apple, NeXT, and Pixar. To have started just one of those companies would have given him a tremendous legacy. Three? Amazing.

Below, I talk about 3D manufacturing. Today, the Wall Street Journal  has a story about custom-growing a trachea for a cancer patient and implanting it into the windpipe. Think about combining the technologies: Fast-developed custom-made body parts to cure the injured. We live in an absolutely amazing world that we often do not appreciate.

I have heard about 3D printing, but this is the first time I have seen it.

Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. Roger Pielke, Jr. and I have been friends for years. He is one of the smartest people I know. In his new book, The Climate Fix , he describes his "Iron Law" which is that people are not going to replace energy sources and technology that work well with more expensive sources and technology, especially if they work less well. No amount of "environmental guilt" will change that. Others are coming to the same conclusion. Venture capitalist Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal, recently gave an interview where he criticized "clean tech" companies. He believes they are run by "sales people, not engineers" and so are not innovating in any meaningful way. He goes on to say, Something has gone quite wrong in clean tech. As a result, most clean tech companies that try to develop alternative energy forms are building power sources that are more expensive... We need something cheaper, not more expensive. It doesn...

As I was working on the posting about disaster mitigation which included comments on the dysfunction in Washington and the mess on Wall Street (i.e., SEC, financial meltdown, Madoff, etc.) it occurred to me that little has gone right in either place since the passing of Louis Rukeyser in May of 2006. I was a huge fan of Wall $treet Week with Louis Rukeyser  and counted on his weekly tutorials and his pun-filled good humor to help navigate the world of investing. He was and is the only person in the field of economics dubbed "sexy" by People  magazine, largely for his dapper appearance (and George Washington haircut) and his ability to make complex financial information simple to learn and understand. One of a kind, he is greatly missed. UPDATE:  Some of our readers are too young to remember the program. Here is an example of W$W right after the crash of 1987 (the edition the week before had Marty Zweig explicitly predicting a "crash" which occurred three day...

If you are a manager trying to manage an R&D department or a group of applied researchers, this is an  excellent article  from Wired. Like the author, I have found that groupthink is a real problem as well as a barrier to innovation which is why it is vital to mix disciplines. UPDATE:  Related article on worldwide progress and innovation  here.

A wonderful article about   innovation. And, around 1985, I thought WeatherData's AT&T 3B1 computers with 1 megabyte  of memory would be all that we would need for five years or more!  At least I was closer than Bill Gates. The author is correct:  The more technology accelerates, the more it can  accelerate.