is finally coming around in a big
way. Hoorah!
Brooke Farrell
Houston
Carbon is one of the best business
tools to determine efficiency
across the board, from processing
to services. Why spend more when
enviro-economics shows that
businesses could spend less, and
better? With increasing carbon
legislation and taxation, ESG may
have its day, but we first have to
recognize that sustainability can
play hardball economics.
Mark Clayton
London
correct response—was the basis
of an ultimately unbalanced comparison of human and machine
problem-solving ability. As a
Mensa member, a past Jeopardy
contestant, and a former product
manager for IBM supercomputers,
I’m more curious about how Watson might score on something like
an SAT or a GRE, compared to the
best human performance.
Fred Bothwell
Georgetown, Texas
Water World
I was pleased to find and read
“A Sea of Dollars.” I have long
been interested in water as a greatly
overlooked concern for both of the
reasons presented in this article:
ecology and economy. In the years
I spent managing a large retirement community, I was shocked
to learn of the enormous amount
of water lost to evaporation in the
cooling tower of air-conditioning
systems. What a waste and what a
huge cost. On a more profound
level, there are a host of sound
theological reasons to be more
conscious and supportive of water
conservation. It is encouraging to
see notions of economy consider
waste and the freewheeling
habits of taking humanity’s
common treasure for granted.
Samuel M. Stone
Raleigh, North Carolina
Veggie Tales
I think this new baby-carrot
campaign is onto something (“The
New Junk Food”). If we’ve got
vending machines that refrigerate, why not use them to sell fresh
veggies and fruit? And why not
make baby carrots look just as cool
as Doritos? It can’t hurt. Yes, it’s a
sad commentary on the state of our
immense, crinkly, shiny, vacuum-packed, all-American diet, but
if kids start choosing carrots over
Cheetos, it’s worth a lot.
Annie Happel
San Francisco
UPDATE
Making baby carrots an enticing
side for fast-food restaurants will
add another vertical to the company’s growth. Kudos to Jeff Dunn
for giving healthy food a new look.
Rosangela Santiago
Altamonte Springs, Florida
Artificial Intelligence
The brilliance of the Watson
team’s attainment in developing
what is arguably the world’s
most advanced inference engine
(“Robo Force”) was unfortunately
tarnished by the fact that in its
Jeopardy appearance, buzzer
control—Watson’s unbeatable
reaction time when both he and
human competitors knew the
Child’s Play
Imagining, conceptualizing,
realizing—bravo! I hope these
children enjoyed themselves
(Big Bang Design). They have
much to be proud of.
Stuart Bogue
Huntsville, Alabama
BROADCAST NEWS
You Tube played coy about rumors of a possible acquisition of Next New Networks in our February feature
“Blown Away,” but now they’re coming clean. Not only
is You Tube acquiring the web-video-production outfit
that recently songified Charlie Sheen’s “winning” rants
to the tune of 21 million views (and counting!), it is also
launching You Tube Next, a team that will help its ragtag
community of video producers go pro through industry
meet-ups, investment and training opportunities, and
initiatives for audience development. Still, You Tube’s
push for higher-quality original content under recently
installed CEO Salar Kamangar may only be the beginning. It started hosting live streams from partners Revi-
sion3 and Streamin’ Garage in April, and rumors are
swirling that You Tube may offer Hollywood types as
much as $5 million to appear in original, three-minute-long shows for their own branded channels. Under this
deal, the stars would hold the rights to their videos while
You Tube profits, or at least tries to earn back production
investments through something more traditional:
ad revenue. —HANS VILLARICA
This is inspirational. I look forward to more people getting on the
brain train that transforms our
spaces to address the needs of the
many, rather than the bottom line.
Casey E. Palmer
Toronto
Fast Fixes
In April’s “I’m With the Brand,” we misspelled the names of Fiona Morrisson
and Lynda Resnick, and incorrectly
attributed Iron Man 2 to Sony Pictures;
the movie was produced by Marvel
Studios and distributed by Paramount.
Pei Bin was named as a senior
program officer at the Asia Foundation
in “Follow the Billionaire.” She is the
director of China partnership develop-
ment at corporate-responsibility firm
BSR. We also misnamed Tsinghua
University’s Center for Innovation and
Social Responsibility.
