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ay three of QITCOM 2012 opened with Michio Kaku giving his audience a glimpse though the portal of his research into how our world will continue to transition during the first half of this century. He explained that the evolution of sci-ence could indirectly be blamed for the three larg-est financial crashes ever. As we recover from the most recent one – the 2008 global financial crash – what will be the scientific catalyst for the next meltdown?

In the early 1800s, the physics of steam engines triggered the Industrial Revolution. Huge capital was invested in two large locomotive companies competing on the London Stock Exchange. It created a bubble which inevitably burst.

Eighty years later, physicists harnessed the power of electricity and the gasoline engine. Wealth was created from the electrification of Eu-rope and America, which created a bubble in auto-

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The CosT of evoluTionWill you be alive in 2050? Would you Want to be? seminal research by one of the World’s most decorated physicists, michio KaKu – Where he intervieWed 300 of the World’s top scientists – reveals hoW the World Will be in fifty years. his booK physics of the impossible explains that tumours Will be a thing of the past thanKs to technology We can install in our toilet. rory coen Wonders What We Will be trading for such advancements.

Michio KaKu,Physicist and author, addressing his audience on the final morning of Qitcom 2012.

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mobile and utility stocks. It burst in 1929.A third wave of wealth was catalysed by high tech-

nology. Computers, lasers and space programmes generated massive amounts of global wealth, and where did it go? In the US, it went into real estate and it popped in 2008. The third crash.

“The engines of the fourth wave will be a combina-tion of artificial intelligence, nano-technology and bio-technology,” said Kaku. “Moore’s Law states that computer power doubles every 18 months. Your mo-bile phone has more power than all of NASA in 1969 when they sent two men to the moon. We actually sent astronauts up into space with 64K processors to back them up!”

It’s almost as difficult to believe looking back at reality as it is predicting the future, but, as Kaku ex-plained, we have to understand the past to predict the future. Moore’s Law dictates that we may have to strain our imaginations to generate ideas about what the world will be like in another 45 years. The law will be exhausted by 2020, but by then, what kind of capacity will computer chips have?

Ubiquitous computers“Computers will go the way of electricity. It will be everywhere and nowhere. Electricity is in walls, in ceilings, in floors. It’s everywhere and nowhere. The word electricity has pretty much disappeared from

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mEEZA officially announced the opening of two new data centres here during QITCOM 2012. The leading managed IT services and so-lutions provider in the Middle East and North Africa is trying to posi-

tion itself at the vanguard of technological innova-tion for the next decade, and believes in that time private and public cloud computing will grow and revolutionise business, so these data centres are a sign of its intentions.

MEEZA’s Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Acting Chief Operations Officer, Ghada P. El-Rassi, said: “As an end-to-end services provider we are committed to promoting IT innovation and bring the most advanced solutions to Qatar in line with the National Vision 2030.

“The launch of our state-of-the-art data centres, M-Vault 2 and M-Vault 3, will enthuse the entire ICT sector across the Middle East and North Afri-ca,” she continued. “They are the first ‘green’ data centres in the region, which are LEED-certified. This marks a new milestone for MEEZA, as our new interconnected, highly secured facilities will focus on backup sites, disaster recovery solutions and business continuity solutions while offering

managed services to our clients at the same time.”

Located on its own campus, 30km outside of Doha, M-Vault 2 is scheduled to begin opera-tions at the beginning of the third quarter of this year, and is designed and built to Uptime Institute Tier III Standards, with 99.98% guaranteed avail-ability. It is LEED platinum-certified, where it maximises

energy to increase performance and it offers busi-ness continuity solutions for all key disaster recov-ery requirements criteria through service delivery and IT experts.

The second new data centre, M-Vault 3, is sched-uled to begin operations this month. It is located close to MEEZA’s initial data-centre at Qatar Sci-ence and Technology Park (QSTP) and is tailored towards high-density computing, in particular for the purposes of servicing research, engineering, health, banking, pharmaceutical and technology sectors. It is LEED gold-certified because of its sustainable and environment-friendly design.

“Our new service offerings reflect this commit-ment as we provide to industries at all levels, so our clients can focus on their core business,” El-Rassi said.

El-Rassi added that QITCOM 2012 is in perfect harmony with MEEZA’s objectives. “We are dedi-cated to continuous innovation and we have joined QITCOM 2012 as a strategic partner because this annual event has become the premiere platform for ICT providers, regulators, policymakers and end-users in this thriving and rapidly developing region.”

meeZa commits to cloud strategy

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the English language – nobody says it anymore. That’s the future of computers – they are to disappear. It’s to become part of the walls, ceiling and floor; it’ll be on our body and in our clothes. Computer chips will cost a penny. And how do we pay for electricity? We meter it. We’ll meter computer power too, in the cloud.”

So computers will become as ubiquitous and cheap as electricity and running water. How will this trans-late in the future?

“Google are currently spending millions of dollars developing ‘Internet glasses’,” he reveals. “These glass-es will recognise people’s faces, and if they speak a for-eign language they will provide subtitles.”

If you don’t want to wear glasses, if they make you look boring and antiquated, then there will also be a so-lution for contact lenses. You blink and you go online! Effectually, X-ray vision will be possible, because you can place cameras on the opposite walls. Kaku joked that we’ll be putting chips into everything, even dolls, which provides for an unfortunate contradiction in

terms: smart Barbie doll.“You’ll be able to change the colour and design of

your wallpaper because paper will be intelligent. The same as your kitchen window - instead of looking out at the city dump every morning, you can upload an image of the Taj Mahal or the Eiffel Tower. We’ll have driver-less cars in eight years.”

Where is all this going from a consumer perspec-tive? Kaku explains that we are now transitioning from a mass-production era to one of mass-customisation. You can order the exact car you want, the exact dress you want, the exact suit you want. Everything will fit perfectly to your specifications and you will have it the next day.

Perfect capitalism“All of this leads to the consumer having knowledge on demand and being able to recognise a bad deal in an instant,” continued Kaku. “You will be able to af-fect a product’s real worth, as opposed to its displayed

huawei continue to declare that invest-ment in broadband infrastructure is critical to creating an environment attractive to businesses, whilst they believe their unique and thorough end-to-end solutions will save businesses

money. They have been redressing their focus from the telecom operators to the enterprise segment since 2010.

While consolidating its leading position within the telecom market, Huawei is also growing rapidly in the enterprise market, specifically in the gov-ernment, oil and gas, transportation, banking and finance and power sectors.

“There are huge challenges and opportunities in ICT for applications and construction,” said Su Baoqiang, General Manager and Vice Presi-dent, Enterprise Business, Qatar Branch Huawei. “140,000 lines have already been installed in the fibre-to-the home (FTTH) project and QNB have also issued another tender to do the same work. There is 10 years of broadband construction ahead of us. On the application side, we are working on e-government and e-services.”

“Enterprise IT Managers need routers, infra-structure, broadband technology, and we can pro-vide these,” said Issam Fadlallah, Deputy General Manager, Huawei Technologies, Qatar. “Also, if they want IT services delivered effectively to the busi-ness customer, and they want a reliable super high-way, we can provide this. On top of this you need good application software. This is where Huawei adds cloud computing expertise. We are in a unique position today – we can develop an end-to-end, in-

tegrated solution from all these elements. “We have terminals like the iPad; we make hand-

sets; we produce dongles; we deliver software. We provide broadband networks, wireless routers, and applications software for cloud computing. E-government, e-house, smart-city solutions. Based on this infrastructure, we have it all; it’s true end-to-end. Huawei invests 10% of its revenue in R&D; $2.5 billion each year,” Fadlallah added.

“Huawei is targeting to design a cost-effective market, because if you don’t have a smart phone that’s cost-effective to trigger demand and you’re building a broadband network nobody is using, you cannot drive demand on the broadband network. If you have low average revenue per user (ARPU) – Qatar is high, 50-60 per month; Algeria 7; India 4 – you need to have a cost-effective smart phone to trigger the demand, and this is what we are focusing on. Integrating the three levels – application, tube and devices – brings down cost,” he said.

Xiao Ning, General Manager, Huawei Technolo-gies, Qatar, added: “Huawei has developed a strong presence in Qatar and is committed through its partnership with ictQatar to helping start-ups and SMEs through the exchange of knowledge. Tech-nologies such as cloud computing can spur eco-nomic growth by allowing smaller businesses to access IT resources at a fraction of the cost, but lack of understanding of what cloud is can mean smaller businesses believe it to be out of their reach. QIT-COM provides a lively forum for correcting miscon-ceptions such as these, showing how investment in ICT infrastructure can help foster a nurturing and entrepreneurial environment.”

huaWei looK to be cost-effective

issam fadlallah

dePuty general manager, huawei

technologies, Qatar

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fosi WorKing for a safer online experiencethe family online safety institute (fosi) works to make the online world safer for kids and their families. they

do this by identifying and Promoting best Practices, tools and methods in the field of online safety that also

resPect free exPression - a challenging balancing act. its members - yahoo! and facebook, amongst others

- helP shaPe Public Policy, highlight new technologies, Promote education and convene sPecial events. fosi

brings together leaders in government, industry and the nonProfit world to collaborate with one another

and develoP new solutions to keeP children safe on the internet.

megan cristina, director of trust and safety, yahoo!, is an active board member of fosi and was invited by

ictQatar to join in their discussion “Promoting online safety and cyber ethics in the middle east”. her Primary

focus is engendering trust and ensuring user safety through Proactive education Programmes, advising Prod-

uct teams on safety features and Partnering with internet safety exPerts.

“we work to make sure that all of our Products have safety features embedded into the yahoo online ex-

Perience globally. we helP Promote our education and outreach initiatives through our global resources.

yahoo maktoob [yahoo’s official arm in the mena region] has created the yahoo safety oasis which is an edu-

cational tool for Parents and children to learn about using the web safely. it’s for everyone, and it’s been

widely adoPted by many of the schools but it’s for a younger audience; for younger kids. they’re using it to

teach kids how to surf the net and communicate safely.”

yahoo safety oasis educates arabic-sPeaking children about how to surf the net ProPerly and Protect

their Personal Privacy, through a series of fun, interactive edu-tainment courses offered through a number

of yahoo maktoob channels such as kids, games and family links.

cristina believes that online safety must involve everyone in a child’s life: “we believe in the village concePt

– family, educators and any other adults in the child’s life. kids try to mimic older kids as well, so we try to

engage teens to teach the younger kids how use the net ProPerly. that’s the way kids learn. you don’t learn

to ride a bike by somebody telling you to do it. you get careful guidance by an adult. the same thing as using

the internet.”

luc delany, euroPean Policy manager at facebook, where he is heavily involved in child online safety and

in develoPing self-regulatory initiatives said: “facebook tries to Provide a sPace to helP PeoPle share and

connect in the safest way, with the most transParency and Privacy as is Possible. we do this in three ways: the

develoPment of technology; PartnershiPs, so we have a safety advisory board to helP us regulate the site

from a safety PersPective; and education – fosi’s ‘Platform for good’ will Provide educational material for

students and Parents.

“facebook can be a very educational tool, and teenagers are not always being educated on it in the right

way. it can be used in the classroom to great effect and there are guides available for teachers online. the

life skills that young PeoPle will need will include their behaviour online.”

yahoo maKtoob has created the yahoo safety oasis Which is an educational tool for parents and children to learn about using the Web safely.

mEGaN CRisTiNa

director of trust and safety, yahoo!

price. You’ll have instant access to supply and demand trends, which means producers will have to rely more on trademarks, quality, slogans and positioning. This is perfect capitalism and this is where we are headed.”

Medicine will ultimately be the greatest beneficiary from this proliferation of computer power. A tiny chip, a camera and a magnet will be placed in capsules and send into a patient’s abdominal cavity to scope for problems. Definitive cancer cells will be killed, sparing the proximate healthy ones, as opposed to the profli-gate and painful method of chemotherapy.

Kaku explained how your bathroom toilet could be fitted with mechanisms to detect cancer ten years be-fore it becomes apparent. It will analyse your body flu-ids for proteins and DNA fragments of cancer.

“Steve Jobs died from pancreatic cancer. It is said that pancreatic cancer kills inside three years. Two months ago, scientists discovered that it wasn’t so dev-astating. It actually takes twenty years to develop - it’s only the last three years where it starts to really affect the patient. Jobs could have detected his cancer years ago. MRI machines which now cost three million dol-lars will be the size of your mobile phone.”

Employment – where will the jobs be?Every revolution has winners and losers. As technol-

ogy progresses, more efficient technology forces many employers to offload staff. This is one of the costs of evolution. So where will the future jobs be?

“Repetitive blue collar workers will lose their jobs,” predicted Kaku. “Anyone who does repetitive work will need to re-train, such as middle-men - brokers, low-level accountants and agents. Which jobs are safe? Construction workers and garbage men - every con-struction site is different, every garbage site is differ-ent. Robots can’t do these jobs.

“There’s going to be a swing from commodity capital to intellectual capital. Commodity prices get cheaper every year, so knowledge-workers, artists, actors, co-medians and strategists will all fare well in the future - this type of work cannot be done by a computer. Na-tions will need to prepare for this transition.”

Language barriers will be liftedAs Michio Kaku pointed out in his keynote speech at QITCOM 2012, Google are working on “Internet glasses” which will print subtitles of what a foreigner is saying to you, so you can understand in realtime. It will revolutionise the world as we know it, breaking down language barriers that have historically come between possible friendships or partnerships.

Jeffrey Stibel – brain scientist, entrepreneur and

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at braingate, We cre-ated an implantable computer chip that

sits in the cortex of people’s brains

and literally al-loWs the patient to transfer thoughts

into actions. you can thinK about turning

on the lights, the lights go on. it

WorKs for typing an e-mail, moving your

car, anything you can thinK about. this

is reality; this has already been done.

JEffREy sTibElchairman of

braingate

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chairman of BrainGate, a brain implant company that allows people to use their thoughts to control electri-cal devices – thinks that it is possible to go a couple of steps beyond this technology and focus on the root is-sue: the brain. He gave the keynote speech on March 6, the second day at QITCOM.

“A universal language is unrealistic, and language learning is impossible,” explains Stibel. “By the time a child is 12, his brain doesn’t have enough neural connections to learn a host of new languages. Lan-guage translation is definitely interesting, but there are inherent problems such as slang and cultural differences.

“At BrainGate, we created an implantable computer chip that sits in the cortex of people’s brains and lit-erally allows the patient to transfer thoughts into ac-tions. You can think about turning on the lights, the lights go on. It works for typing an e-mail, moving your car, anything you can think about. This is reality; this has already been done.

“Our brains all work in fundamentally the same way,

whether we speak French, Arabic, English, whatever language it is. Neurons have a sound,” he continued, as he allowed us to listen to a distinctive crackling, elec-trical movement. “Thoughts have a sound, and we can translate these thoughts into actions, so in theory we can understand what everybody’s brains are saying at a root level.

“The good news is that because the sound is coming as an electrical current, we can translate it to transis-tors, the fundamental element of the Internet. The amazing thing here is that the brain and the transis-tors are actually communicating in exactly the same way. If you can leverage that information and build from there – not translate, but come from a root lan-guage. A question in English from Silicon Valley will be understood seamlessly in Qatar in Arabic without the need for a translation. When that happens, and it will, we will have a true network revolution. The world will open up in fundamental new ways, just like every other new revolution. We will grow in our capacity to reach all areas of the world”

vodafone Qatar announced that ‘Stalk-ers’, with their m-Health app called Oni-giri, were the winners of the Indie Fikra Appathon on the final day of QITCOM 2012. Onigiri is designed to teach chil-dren with, or at risk from, diabetes how

to live a healthy lifestyle by caring for a virtual diabetic pet.

Second place was awarded to ‘Noble’ for their interactive magazine Abtal 22, which is aimed at exciting kids about football. Third place went to ‘Cereal Killers’ and their app ASF – Al Sadd Fan-tasy, a fantasy football game – while fourth place was awarded to team ‘AppliQations’ for Shofferz, an app for aggregating and displaying shopping offers around Qatar.

The winners were handed their trophies by

Vodafone’s CEO Richard Daly, who exclaimed: “Indie Fikra – I have an idea! Vodafone and QIT-COM have a shared vision – to see more Arabic content created and, perhaps more importantly, to see more content created in and for Qatar. That’s why we part-nered with QITCOM to bring this unique event to life.

“There is a lot of great entrepre-neurial talent in Qatar – and espe-cially in mobile app development – and the Appathon is designed to nurture, celebrate and reward that talent. We asked teams to do

something quite challenging – we really pushed them, and we were impressed with the outcome,” he continued.

The first event of its kind in the Middle East, the event brought together mobile app developing tal-ent from all over the country to compete for over QR50,000 in prizes and inclusion in ictQATAR’s start-up incubation programme Dajtala. Teams had just 48 hours to code and create a working demo for a new mobile app to be considered.

A panel of judges viewed pitches and demonstra-tions from the teams before selecting the best four apps from the competition. The apps were judged based on the following criteria: if it was created in Arabic, its creativity, its functionality and its overall potential to be successful.

indie fiKra - i have an idea!