First was described by Jonathan Swift about 300 years ago:

by his contrivance, the most ignorant person at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, may write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, law, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study. GULLIVER’S TRAVELS. CHAPTER V: The Author permitted to see the Grand Academy of Lagado. By Jonathan Swift, 1726.

The most recent version was created by the group of MIT scientists 10 years ago:

Three computer science Ph.D. students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—Jeremy Stribling, Max Krohn, and Dan Aguayo — created a program to generate nonsensical computer science research papers … [The program] SCIgen uses a “context-free grammar” to create word salad that looks like reasonable text from a distance but is easily spotted as nonsense by a human reader … The goal…was “to expose the lack of peer review at low-quality conferences that essentially scam researchers with publication and conference fees” … [SCIgen] found users across the globe, and … automatically generated creations were being accepted by scientific conferences and published in purportedly peer-reviewed journals…

[As a result of this successful scientific experiment] Academic publisher Springer this week is releasing SciDetect, an open-source program to automatically detect automatically generated papers [but still wasn’t able to find the proper tool to detect “nonsensical computer science research papers that were manually generated and continue to publish them].
–Hoax-detecting software spots fake papers By John Bohannon

See also: “Data & analysis don’t matter — we KNOW the truth”

and everyone else is eating our dust,’ – Jonathan Medved, founder & CEO of OurCrowd, an Israel-based venture capital firm.

TheStreet’s Scott Gamm sat down with Medved at the Israeli Capital Markets Conference in New York and asked him a couple of questions:

-What about the startups of Israel? Should Silicon Valley be worried?

No, Silicon Valley shouldn’t be worried of nobody, but the rest of the world should, because we are the #2.

– How do you compete? Why should I go to Israel to start my company?

Next wave …[that challenge the world] … is the hard technology problems. Internet of things will be driven by Israel ans big data will be driven by Israel. Amazon just bought Israel chip company for $400 millions, so they would integrate that technology to resolve the issues related to their data services. Israel is good for hard technology problems… Average exit price for Israel startups is going up to $200 mlms from $30 millions only 6 years ago. Read more: http://www.thestreet.com/video/13093068/silicon-valley-shouldnt-be-worried-about-israels-rising-tech-scene.html

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How does Israel, a small country with roughly 8 million people, produce more tech startups and receive more venture capital per capita than any nation in the world? Why does a country with few natural resources have more companies listed on the NASDAQ than Europe, Japan, Korea, India and China combined? Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/20/from-the-8200-to-silicon-valley/

See also:

to solicit national security ideas from start-up firms with little or no history of working with the military…

There is a precedent for the initiative. Startled by the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA… Now, the Pentagon has decided that the nation needs more … to find new technologies to maintain American military superiority… Stephen Welby, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for systems engineering, visited a dozen Silicon Valley start-ups that are pursuing new technologies … Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/science/pentagon-looking-for-edge-in-the-future-checks-in-with-silicon-valley.html?ref=topics&_r=0

See also: Roads and Crossroads of the Internet History

1957: Sputnik has launched ARPA
President Dwight D. Eisenhower saw the need for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) after the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik.

1957 – October 4th – the USSR launches Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite:
1958 – February 7th – In response to the launch of Sputnik, the US Department of Defense issues directive 5105.15 establishing the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).

The organization united some of America’s most brilliant people, who developed the United States’ first successful satellite in 18 months. Several years later ARPA began to focus on computer networking and communications technology.

In 1962, Dr. J.C.R. Licklider was chosen to head ARPA’s research in improving the military’s use of computer technology. Licklider was a visionary who sought to make the government’s use of computers more interactive. To quickly expand technology, Licklider saw the need to move ARPA’s contracts from the private sector to universities and laid the foundations for what would become the ARPANET.

The Atlantic cable of 1858 and Sputnik of 1957 were two basic milestone of the Internet prehistory. Read more: http://www.netvalley.com/cgi-bin/intval/net_history.pl?chapter=1

Less than a decade ago, Wall Street firms were the premier destination for young college graduates and talented executives… [and] Wall Street is certainly not hurting for talent [yet]… Last summer, Morgan Stanley had 90,000 applicants for roughly 1,000 entry-level summer jobs… [but the general trend was sufficiently changed –] Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a top source of young recruits, only 10 percent of undergraduates went into finance in 2014, compared with the 31 percent who took jobs on Wall Street in 2006 … Software companies, meanwhile, hired 28 percent of M.I.T. graduates in 2014, compared with 10 percent in 2006… At Harvard Business School, for example, the percentage of graduates going into finance dropped to 33 percent last year from 42 percent in 2006, while the numbers going into technology jumped to 17 percent from 7 percent.
– Wall St. Stars Join Silicon Valley Gold Rush By Nathaniel Popper and Conor Dougherty, New York Times. March 24, 2015

See also: Can Silicon Valley Survive “Wall Street’s infiltration”

It’d easy to understand why Ruth Porat, the chief financial officer of the venerable investment bank Morgan Stanley and one of the most powerful women on Wall Street, would want to head west to become C.F.O. of Google… there is some solid evidence that Ms. Porat isn’t the only person deciding that technology offers a more compelling opportunity than banking… In 2008, 45 percent of M.B.A. recipients there went into financial services, versus 7 percent into technology…in 2014, it was 33 percent finance versus 17 percent technology…the economists Stephen G. Cecchetti of Brandeis University and Enisse Kharroubi of the Bank for International Settlements have found clear evidence that an unusually large financial sector actually reduces the growth rate of an economy, rather than enhances it… Read more:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/25/upshot/why-wall-streeters-defecting-to-silicon-valley-is-good-news-for-the-economy.html?smid=tw-nytimes&abt=0002&abg=0

Morgan Stanley CFO Ruth Porat is off to manage Google’s finances, and her new job has become a useful data point in the debate over the changes in Silicon Valley—but is it good news or bad?… if a too-large financial sector is bad news for the economy, the financialization of its most dynamic and innovative industry isn’t a necessarily a step forward either… Americans are studying technical fields or starting new firms would be positive signs when it comes to the tech sector. News that bankers are moving in for the profit-taking doesn’t seem like a leading indicator of innovation. Read more: http://qz.com/369233/wall-streets-infiltration-of-silicon-valley-is-a-bad-sign-for-the-us-economy/

even before it was launched. WSJ investigates:

Since Mr. Obama took office, employees of [Google] have visited the White House for meetings with senior officials about 230 times, or an average of roughly once a week… On Nov. 6, 2012, the night of Mr. Obama’s re-election, Mr. Schmidt was personally overseeing a voter-turnout software system for Mr. Obama. A few weeks later, Ms. Shelton and a senior antitrust lawyer at Google went to the White House to meet with one of Mr. Obama’s technology advisers. By the end of the month, the FTC had decided not to file an antitrust lawsuit against the company, according to the agency’s internal emails… FTC officials and Google worked to bring the investigation to a close, emails show. Messrs. Drummond and Leibowitz exchanged emails and phone calls over the year-end holidays while on family vacations and on New Year’s Eve. “At your service to close this out,” Mr. Drummond wrote to the FTC chairman on Dec. 17, 2012.

See also: Google Manipulated Search Results to Favor its Own Services Over Rivals.

Within 24 hours of Apple launching its platform for health research this month, tens of thousands of iPhone users had signed up to take part in five inaugural studies involving some of the US’s most respected medical institutions… Apple’s ResearchKit is the latest example of the technology industry’s deepening interest in healthcare as mobile devices open new ways of measuring wellbeing. Apps ranging from step-counters and heart-rate meters to alcohol breathalyser kits and ovulation monitors already provide individuals with a wealth of personal health information. ResearchKit demonstrates the potential for this data to be aggregated in ways that could shed light on trends across wider population groups… Apple is not alone. Google has invested in two companies that aim to do their own research on the back of the proliferation of medical data … Read more: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/064a4a20-ce63-11e4-86fc-00144feab7de.html

Apple Watch measures all the ways you move, such as walking the dog, taking the stairs, or playing with your kids. It even keeps track of when you stand up, and encourages you to keep moving. Because it all counts. And it all adds up… Read more: https://www.apple.com/watch/health-and-fitness/

Tests designed with ResearchKit use the iPhone’s sensors to record data. The touch screen can feel people tapping in rhythm to detect inconsistencies that may signal a disease. The accelerometer can compare the gait and balance of someone’s walk against a healthy person’s speed and posture. And the microphone can notice minute fluctuations in someone’s voice that may indicate Parkinson’s or another health problem:

Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/09/apple-introduces-researchkit-turning-iphones-into-medical-diagnostic-devices/#tmhmdj:LJLc

Dr. Michael McConnell, a professor in cardiovascular medicine at Stanford Medicine who also directs Stanford’s cardiovascular health innovation program, said Apple’s new health efforts that include ResearchKit will be a game changer in cardiovascular technology. “We can use the power of something that they carry with them every day to help with measurements and surveys,” he said. “I think it is offering us a new way to do medical research. … I think we’ve amassed already what may be one of the world’s largest pieces of data on fitness… the impact on health could be profound.”
– ABC video: Inside Apple’s Top Secret Health and Fitness Lab for Apple Watch Development.

Services focused on tracking health will be able to use the Watch interface to display relevant, up-to-the-minute statistics in a way that’s more convenient than on a smartphone, or on a monitoring device’s screen. It will do this using the processing power of your iPhone, rather than a mobile chip onboard the watch itself, and updates will be sent to the watch wirelessly. DexCom Monitor will work this way. It will use the Apple Watch to show blood glucose levels for Type 1 diabetics by presenting an easy-to-read graph on the smartwatch’s display… Cohero Health is working on an Apple Watch app so asthmatics can better track their medical adherence and lung function… Malay Gandhi, managing director at Rock Health, says that giving people continuous feedback, prompting and reminding them at the right times, is key to inducing those sorts of lifestyle changes… The watch could even potentially help you make better decisions when you’re having a night on the town… Read more: http://www.wired.com/2015/02/apple-watch-apps/

Obstacles on Border.

When Apple Inc. started developing its smartwatch, executives envisioned a state-of-the-art health-monitoring device that could measure blood pressure, heart activity and stress levels, among other things, according to people familiar with the matter. But none of those technologies made it into the much-anticipated Apple Watch, due in April [2015]. Some didn’t work reliably. Others proved too complex. And still others could have prompted unwanted [FDA] regulatory oversight… Read more: http://www.wsj.com/articles/challenge-of-apple-watch-defining-its-purpose-1424133615

Apple initially experimented with sensors that measured skin conductivity to gauge stress levels, but struggled to get a consistent performance when they were tested on people with dry skin or hairy arms, according to the WSJ. The ability to passively monitor glucose levels without breaking skin — an achievement that could give unprecedented insight into someone’s diet — has also long been cited as a particularly difficult feat by medical and health tracking device makers. Another issue for Apple was the uncertainty over how such a souped-up health monitoring device would actually be regulated. In the Dec. 2013 meeting, the FDA said it wouldn’t need to regulate a glucose meter that monitored blood sugar to help a wearer better understand their nutrition. But it would have to step in if the meter was marketed to diabetics… Read more: http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2015/02/17/apple-watch-health-tracking/

See also:
– How the Apple Watch Could Revolutionize Healthcare
– iWatch – Apple’s Next Revolution: Era of Humanized Computing

WSJ — Officials at the Federal Trade Commission concluded in 2012 that Google Inc. used anticompetitive tactics and abused its monopoly power in ways that harmed Internet users and rivals, a far harsher analysis of Google’s business than was previously known… An FTC staff report reveals new details about how Google manipulated search results to favor its own services over rivals’.

The staff report from the agency’s bureau of competition recommended the commission bring a lawsuit challenging three Google practices. The move would have triggered one of the highest-profile antitrust cases since the Justice Department sued Microsoft Corp. in the 1990s.
–Inside the U.S. Antitrust Probe of Google. By Brody Mullins, Rolfe Winkler and Brent Kendall. WSJ, March 19, 2015

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Google 3G: Why Bing More Useful to Google Than to Microsoft.
By Gregory Gromov.

Yahoo switched to Bing-powered search results in August 2010. Shortly thereafter, search specialists at Google began noticing that many of the results for Yahoo! searches were the same as those Google searches of the same terms.

Google engineers set up random results on their site for a series of unlikely search terms, such as ‘hiybbprqag.’ (Google arranged for the nonsense word to point to a Los Angeles theater seating plan on its search engine.) ‘Within a couple weeks of starting this experiment, our inserted results started appearing in Bing,’ Google said in a statement on its official blog …
‘ Google: Sting proves Bing copied search results‘ By the CNN Wire Staff

When Google published the search experts’ findings, their colleagues at Microsoft only shrugged, essentially saying that such things happen, that it was no big deal. However, they immediately stopped copying Google’s results. Yahoo! somehow skirted the debate altogether.

However, it was not until later that the most interesting part of the story emerged. At the outset, Google’s experts were very vocal in complaining about the abovementioned results. They then did an abrupt about-face, apparently accepting Microsoft’s explanation. As if on a signal, all the once-spirited grumbling ceased. Both sides suddenly stopped discussing the story.

The reason for this is that with the search engine market so out of balance, Google really needs at least a nominal competitor in the business. In other words, if Bing spontaneously combusted tomorrow – if, for example, Microsoft decided that there was no further need to pursue the already long-lost race for search engine dominance – this would in fact be a great blow to Google.

Google would then be completely vulnerable to accusations of having a monopoly on the US search engine market, and would quickly become the next subject of the Department of Justice’s anti-trust investigations. Conjoined twins Yahoo and Bing hold second and third places in the search engine market, protecting Google from allegations of monopoly, and making Bing more useful to Google than to Microsoft.
Read more: http://www.netvalley.com/silicon_valley_history.html

See also:

As it can be seen above, before 20th century the great part of population did not have a chance to reach the peak age in tech & science…

… the combined cash of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Verizon Communications and Pfizer climbed to $US404 billion at the end of … [2013] year … That figure is up over 16.4% from the prior year and is in excess of some of Asia’s most cash-laden nations including South Korea, with foreign exchange reserves of $US336 billion, Hong Kong ($311 billion), Singapore ($270 billion) and India ($268 billion). America’s top five holders of cash not only have more in the bank than most Asian states, but their savings are also in excess of the entire Eurozone’s ($221 billion).
–Apple Has More Cash On Hand Than All These Different Countries

Mr. Gurley, a … partner at Benchmark, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, has been warning of an impending Silicon Valley bubble burst for quite some time. He cites the multiplicity of so-called unicorns, or private companies valued at more than $1 billion by investors. By some accounts, there are more than 50 of these billion-plus companies in the Valley at the moment, with more added seemingly every other week…
Read more: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/silicon-valley-investor-says-the-end-is-near/?_r=0

About two dozen protesters, led by a computer engineer, echoed that sentiment in their movement against artificial intelligence… Tesla founder Elon Musk donated $10 million to the Future of Life Institute because of his fears. USA Today

See also, some quotes from Business Insider’s article “… Tesla’s Only Profitable Because Of Your Tax Dollars“:

Elon Musk has a plan to get rich. It involves you. The taxpayer. You pay taxes. The government gives huge dollops of that money to Elon. Elon gets rich. Who could possibly object? Who could deny Elon’s genius?… Musk has three ventures: Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity. All are heavily dependent on government largesse.

Mr. Musk is Occupy’s favorite crony capitalist. And Occupy is one of Mr. Musk’s favorite movements.Yes, once upon a time Musk started a real business, Paypal*, that proved very successful without any government help. That was then, this is now.

Musk has three ventures: Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity. All are heavily dependent on government largesse… It’s a lucky thing for Tesla Motors shareholders that the U.S. Department of Energy loves the company’s loan applications… Without the hundreds of millions of dollars Tesla (US:TSLA) has received from the federal government … the electric-car maker’s financials would be gasping for air as 2012 winds down… sadly, Elon Musk is a Man For Our Age, in more ways than one.

– By Dr. Craig Pirrong, Professor of Finance, and Energy Markets Director for the “Global Energy Management Institute” at the Bauer College of Business of the University of Houston
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*/ PayPal was initially established in December 1998 as Confinity, a company that developed security software for handheld devices founded by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Luke Nosek, and Ken Howery. PayPal was developed and launched as a money transfer service at Confinity in 1999. In March 2000, Confinity merged with X.com, an online banking company founded by Elon Musk. Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal

Microsoft Research Silicon Valley was founded in August 2001 and quietly closed in September 2014… Lab’s primary focus was on distributed computing and included privacy, security, protocols, fault-tolerance, large-scale systems, concurrency, computer architecture, Internet search and services, and related theory. Research in these areas continues in other Microsoft Research labs around the world. Read more: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/labs/siliconvalle/

In other words, … everywhere around the globe but not in Silicon Valley. Why? There appears to be a crises of corporate cultural incompatibility, that can be traced to early 80th and then continued in 90th:

• “If the company does well, I do pretty well,” says [Mark] Andreessen. “If the company doesn’t do well” – his voice takes on a note of mock despair – “I work at Microsoft.”
• Bill Gates:”…an Internet browser is a trivial piece of software. There are at least 30 companies that have written very credible Internet browsers, so that’s nothing… ”
• Steve Jobs: “The most important thing for the Web is stay ahead of Microsoft.”

–Roads and Crossroads of the Internet History by Gregory Gromov

techcrunch.com expressed its expectation in strong words: … we don’t need solid gold on something that is disposable after a couple years. So, I’m lost. Who is this watch for? Without a technological advantage, and no upgrade or trade-in path, I would imagine the value to the consumer is that of broadcasting wealth. There are certain markets where this watch will sell well, regions of China (just put a goat on it) and Dubai come to mind. “The Gold Apple Watch Is Perfect For Douchebags” by Kevin Rose, @kevinrose

See also: What is a Real Value of “The Economist” Tech Market Predictions?

This is one of the best (text-book level) examples of so called “back mirror” predictions:

Generally speaking, “The Web reminds me of early days of the PC industry. No one really knows anything. All experts have been wrong” ~ Steve Jobs, 1996

See also: How the Apple Watch Could Revolutionize Healthcare

Apple went on a hiring spree of numerous digital health sensor experts. This expertise, coupled with Apple’s resources and design magic, fueled hope that Apple might overcome the technical, regulatory and usability challenges to sensing and helping consumers act on vital data like blood pressure, glucose, oxygenation and stress levels… Easily and accurately measuring blood pressure, for example, is key to controlling high blood pressure and therefore a person’s risk of heart disease and stroke. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 68 million US adults have high blood pressure, and about half do not have the condition under control. Almost 1.8 million die from heart attacks and strokes each year—and the total costs of cardiovascular diseases in the United States were estimated to be $444 billion in 2010.

Similarly, blood glucose monitoring could help the 29 million Americans with diabetes and the estimated $245 billion in diabetes-related medical and productivity costs. It would also help the 86 million with prediabetes—90% of whom do not know that they have it and 15-30% of whom will develop diabetes within 5 years.  Read more: http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2015/03/07/the-apple-watchs-disappointing-slide-from-health-care-killer-app-to-gold-plated-bauble/

It seems like there are some reasons to expect a good news today: