A Year in 12 Posts

This Magnus Carlsen is amazing. Beating a 12 year-old world record at only 22 is a huge achievement (Kasparov was 41 when he set the previous record). Magnus become world #1 at 19.

The origins of chess are unclear but the game has been played for about 1500 years. Go was born in China and has been around twice that long. Both are great challenges for computer programmers (in Go, humans still rule, though - but not for long).

As strategic games, both chess and go are interesting metaphors for politics, business and even Internet Marketing. Major difference between Go and Chess? In chess you destroy your opponent set position. In go you conquer an empty space.

While I have my doubts and myths, as everyone (was the world created by playing dice?), they are private questions. Politically, I'm an atheist and laic. Yet I think that Pope Francis made a great debut. His positions on homosexuality, abortion, contraception, his openness to atheists, Muslims and Jews are to be praised.

If only the great leaders of this world could use their power to nurture tolerance and peace...

Maps of the religions of the world:

• a comprehensive version
• a simplified version

Age and number of followers, by order of appearance:

• Hinduism           4000      800 million
• Judaism             4000     14 million
• Taoism, etc        2600     800 million
• Zoroastrism       2600     <1 million
• Shintoism           2600     3 millions
• Buddhism           2500     400 million
• Christianity         2014      2 billion
• Islam                  1392      1.2 billion

(Sure, Zoroastrism is not a major religion in terms of adherents. But it intrigued me since I saw "2001: a Space Odyssey" and heard Richard Strauss' "Also sprach Zarathustra". I had to know who that was!)

It's interesting to see that all major religions were born in Asia. And how their histories and inspirations and so often closely related.

What a milestone! Entering your worst sci-fi nightmares, or opening the door to personalized medicine? Expect interesting debates on ethic, risk, manipulation and the rest. Great achievement nevertheless.

This makes me optimistic: just one step closer to #cloneAlly (@Ally Greer, Scoop.it Community Manager with Super powers).

Browse the science interest for more. I'm specially fond of Dr Stephan Gruenwald's Amazing Science.

Not so long ago the world celebrated the Arab Spring. But things are complicated and painful. After having fought against Hosni Moubarak, Egyptians democratically elected Mohammed Morsi. But he gave lots of power to the Muslim Brotherhood and opponents said he betrayed the revolution. And now the army takes him done in a coup and the country is back in a deadly civil war... Messy and sad.

Since the hope of early 2011, unrests, fights, civil wars have continued to spread in Egypt, Syria (60,000 people killed), Mali, Somalia, Kashmir, Iraq, Afghanistan. Scary world. We should never forget how lucky we are, us who live in peace today.

When we started Goojet (our Mobile Social Media adventure before Scoop.it) in 2007, neither iPhone nor Android existed and Nokia ruled the world. Their N95 was the best device then for mobile internet. And now they're gone. Talk about a market disruption initiated by Apple! Check today's phone market shares. Impressive performance by Samsung.

Speaking disruption, 2013 was a turning point for three major evolutions:

• Bitcoin. Its price increased 100x ! What does it mean for the finance world and the world in general? Read more on Investors Europe Stock Brokers' topic.
• The MOOCs, which address the most important asset: knowledge. Lots of good reading on MOOCs on Scoop.it
• 3D Printing which changes the rule of the production game, some going as far as calling it the third industrial revolution.

These, plus IoT and Big Data: some fundamental changes, not mere buzz, emerged or exploded in 2013. Thinking of something else? 

Huge success (its IPO valued Twitter $30b+). As a multiple of sales, it's more than Facebook. 1600 Twitter's employees will become millionaires and the government pockets $2b+ in taxes.

Some believe that the price is too high, but we at Scoop.it ran a survey [infographics] and found that, relative to its interest to Small and Medium Businesses, Twitter is cheaper than Facebook or LinkedIn! The sure thing is, this simple concept of 140 characters communication changed how we consume information and therefore, the world we live in.

Another mindblowing event in the digital economy this month: Evan Spiegel saying no to Facebook $3B offer for Snapchat. 

Oh, the photo in this post is not Twitter nor Snapchat related. This is the famous Three Studies of Lucian Freud by Francis Bacon. This November, it sets a new world record price for an art work at an auction, at a mesmerizing $142m.

5 Oscar, including best actor for Jean Dujardin. And first best-picture award for a silent film since first ceremony in 1929. A Touching film, with daring choices (black and white, silent) and great actors. And also probably a superb marketing campain.

Google get clearance for its $12.5B bid on Motorola. Seems to me like Google went into mobile just yesterday. The pace at which the mobile world is reshaping is amazing ; the Android v. Apple battle is epic.

And for the geekiest : IBM getting closer to Quantum Computing! (can someone please explain this ?).

With armed conflicts in so many countries, it's almost impossible to catch the good news. Well, things are going better in Myanmar! D. Cameron, British P.M., called for suspension of sanctions; the European Union does it and Japan will write off the debt.

April also saw the mega acquisition of Instagram by Facebook for $1B! Instagram was a 2-year old, 12-people, no revenue company. Its founder, Kevin Systrom, 27-y old, pockets $400M.

Mark Zuckerberg then claimed "Not much will change with the service". I wonder if Instragram's users would agree with this statement today.

Solar Impulse, the Swiss project, completed the world first solar-powered intercontinental flight from Spain to Morocco. An important technical achievement when energy is one of the world next big challenges.

The plane was piloted by Bertrand Piccard, who was also the first to complete a non stop balloon flight around the world.

Less mediatic than a Richard Branson or Felix Baumgartner, but interesting family: his father Jacques was the first (with Don Walsh) to explore the deepest point of the oceans (Mariana Trench, - 36.000 ft) and his grand father Auguste set altitude records in balloon and invented the bathyscaphe. 

After a  352 million miles, 253 day journey from Earth, Nasa's heavy-weigth (1 ton) rover Curiosity lands on the red planet! One of the mission is to collect data for a manned mission!

Paul Doherty has a great video explaining what (Carbon) - and how - the rover is searching. Must watch.

Things to know when planning your next trip to Mars.

And if you want more good news from the stars, discover Guillaume's topic. And keep traveling!

On the business front, it was decision time for the Apple v. Samsung patent trial. Apple won.

I love the design of Apple's products. And I believe that patent rights are a necessary protection of R&D investments. But things are getting absurd. E.g. a "rectangle with rounded corners"; or "a tap is a zero-length swipe". Come on Apple, please...

Amazing feat, scientific achievement, egotistic trip? Whatever. We all watched and were thrilled. Congratulation Felix Baumgartner.

Records he set: first man to break the sound barrier with no engine (834 mph or Mach 1.24), highest jump ever (120.000 feet; previous record was 102,800 feet by Joe Kittinger back in 1960!). But also the most watched live video on Youtube (8 millions).

Here is a cool list of 15 speed records.

On a more dramatic note, Sandy hit on Oct 2012. Nasa has analysis and pictures. Impressive.

A meteor hit Chelyabinsk in Russia in February.

Relatively small (20m), it came undetected. It travelled at 60.000 km/h and exploded when it entered the atmosphere, 23km above the ground. The generated air burst was 20 times more powerull than the bomb of Iroshima; it damaged buildings and injured people tens of miles away.

It tells a lot about kinetic energy, and why scientifics and movie makers are so interested in asteroids. Meteors are also a favorite end-of-world scenario for would be Nostradamuses. Speaking of which, I could not find his predictions for 2014 but an interesting curation by Business Insider.

The smallest exoplanet was also detected this month. With around 1000 alien worlds detected so far, the search for Earth-like, life-capable planets is hotter than ever! More good news from the stars.

Drones have been in the news since the gulf wars. They became a hot topic on 2013. Military, police, entertainment, delivery (well, not quite yet, Amazon, but PrimeAir certainly was a communication hit), they are everywhere. In April, the Scientific American review started to warn against the impact of drones on our privacy. To be read in the perspective of PRISM and other scary initiatives. Democracy, beware.

And insect drones are coming! (from Miguel Prazeres's beautiful Biomimicry topic).

Moving further to a connected world, 2013 was also the year of the Internet of Things (IoT). Its impact will be felt in the economy, health care, media, energy, transport... in all our life, hopefully for the better. Major stake. Special praise to rising stars Arduino (a topic on the Italy-born open source popular platform) and Sigfox, the first IoT dedicated network.

Prism, Drones, IoT, Big Data, Robots... seems like 2013 heralds a new era where the Internet as we know it was just a humble start to immense control and power given to machines and computers. I think it's time to watch Terminator again! And to be careful.

Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Youtube, AOL, Facebook, Skype, Verizon, ...: the NSA is spying on US (and perhaps not only US) citizen with a data mining program called PRISM, revealed in June.

Edward Snowden gave this interview. Getting closer and closer to 1984, the dystopian novel by George Orwell. Blurred boundaries between democracy, freedom and security... How afraid are you? I'm impressed by the power of the program... I'm also very impressed by Snowden's position. Must watch.

Meanwhile, China reclaimed top spot in the TOP500 list (most powerful supercomputers). [geek alert] Tianhe-2: 33.86 petaflop/s, more than 3 million cores. 30 times more powerful than the most powerul supercompters from 5 years ago. That's lots of power for data mining... 

Died in December 2013. His courage, vision, tenacity and wisdom changed his country and made him an admirable leader of unique dimension.

Nelson Mandela inspires leaders beyond Africa and beyond politic.

Other people, famous and infamous, said goodbye in 2013 : Hugo Chavez (March),  Margaret Thatcher (April),  Henri Dutilleux (May),  Tom Clancy, Vo Nguyen Giap (October), Peter O'Toole, Mikhail Kalashnikov (December)...

__________

2013 for Scoop.it

___________

In 2013, Scoop.it entered the era of meritoc[u]racy, aka #curatethecurators: peer organization of the best topics in interests. We have also more millionaires, our most succesful curators having even passed the 3 million bar views!

Scoop.it also further proved its values to professionals and businesses. Read what the web says and checkout a few business topics.

We are also always eager to share, learn and progress! Please join the conversation on our blog, on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Thanks a lot to all of you, our users and our community, for a great 2013. It was tough, exciting and rewarding at the same time.

Peace, success and fun to all, for a greater 2014! 

January 2011 was full of hope: we celebrated the Arab spring and the beginning of a year which ended up being tough on tyrans.

2012 was less glorious on many fronts (armed conflicts, economic crisis). The ship Concordia (= "harmony"; beautiful name...) gave the starting signal. A half a billion capsized ship and a chaotic evacuation.

We however need to learn to catch the good signals and to generate good vibes! Here is a personal curation of some 2012 events - politics, business, web, sport, art... what marked me in the past 12 months. Enjoy, share and comment. And most importantly, let 2013 be a better year for everyone!

Moebius reach was so wide: US comics, Japanese mangas and even movies (Alien, Tron, The Fifth Element). A creator of universes, a rare artist.

Also in March, Putin's come back. Back to the cold war days, Russia was the bad soviet guy. Now it's more complex: Russia embrassed capitalism but embarasses with its positions on Iran, Syria, democracy.

And if your software crashed with no good reason, you might have an excuse: the biggest solar storm in 5 years. Stronger storms expected in 2013!

Of course: Oscar Pistorius, Felix Sanchez, Michael Phelps, Usan Bolt (and his TPM record: more than 80.000 Tweet per minute), but ...

My prefered stories: Dong Hyun setting a new world record in archery although he is ... blind! And Hamadou Djibo Issaka: was given a wild card and 3 months to train to rowing... that's the olympic spirit!

Also from the Olympics but much less glorious: the scandal of censorship.

But there was something bigger in July 2012: The Higgs boson has almost certainly been discovered!

The Higgs boson was a "missing particle", predicted by the standard model of physics 50 years ago, but never so far observed. A mega device, the Large Hadron Collider (cost: $1B+) has been build just for it. Electroweak interactions, symmetry-breaking scalar fields... poetry!

On Nov 6, Barack Obama was elected to a second presidential term, defeating Republican Mitt Romney (332 - 206. Full results: here).

Web perspective: Beyond the political stake, this post links to Obama's FB page. Super classy pics of a super classy man. Also, his "four more years" tweet broke the record of most RT ever (800k+).

On Nov 18, one of my heros (this is a personal curation) died. Patrick Edlinger was a free climber and a free man. Here is a beautiful video of him climbing (dancing? levitating?) bare hands, bare feet, no rope. Music by Bach. Enjoy, dream, remember.